Warfare & Tactics

Plenty of games allow alts. Through some kind of means; typically all MMOs where the client application acts as a terminal, they all function in the same manner - you can run multiple clients on a single machine and log different accounts.

This in itself is not the issue, and would be bad business decision if it weren't possible. If a single individual pays for 2 accounts, that's a worthwhile business opportunity, and it would both ignorant and unreasonable for the players to beg for it to be otherwise.

Ignoring all the kumbaja bullshit about how EVE is "like real life and therefore doesn't have to be fair because parallels", the issue lies in that the priority for alts is higher than the desire for having real pilots for certain roles. This isn't the first MMO I've played and I think this is true for multitude people in this thread, and we've all seen alts in those MMOs. But it was almost always better to have an actual player use that character. You would get alts when the gameplay you were engaging in was largely remote from the rest of your group (for ex. different level bracket, hence different hunting grounds, or a solo quest, etc)

Not in EVE. It's never really better to fly a dedicated prober because the role is so empty. Neither is it better to fly a link ship, because the reality is you won't last on grid, or you will get blueballed.

Adding weapons timers to link ships will be nice, but at the end of the day it will be a bandaid, not a fix. Link alts will continue to produce full effect for the minimal player involvement and attention investment, to the obvious point that a single individual will be able to control two characters at once with the illusion that it's one. This obscurity and it's workarounds pose other problems ("just minus red their linking alts" - "right now I just avoid this guy, and that guy, and that guy, and this group...") in a snowballing cascade, tug battle of arguments.

Ergo the only real solution is to make the activity more involved, rather than brainstorm for artificial barriers of how to "stop people using linking ships the way there were not intended".

I don't feel bad explaining the truth to someone who is denying reality.

I do think Arla is right though, they need to discourage alts and encourage mains. This is why other MMO's have an active character training system as opposed to a passive one. Those games don't have altoholic problems.

I do stand by the decision to remove links though. Other forms of alts in this game are immediately visible and don't specifically grant you a combat advantage per se, whereas combat links are different.

Weapons timer and killmail notation will solve the issue.

You wanna sit your links on a stargate with a 60 second timer be my guest. My 1050 DPS Vigilant might have something to say about that.

Of course a valid game issue is actually just a whine when it doesn't work in your favor.

Give everyone link boosts available at a few hours training?

T1 links are one of the least used modules in the game and a hurricane and cyclone could use those two utility slots for some small fleet boosts but I am NOT going to train over 15+ days just to be able to fit one, no one will.

Biggest issue is that you can still make t3 boosters nigh impossible to scan out with anything less than perfect skills, virtue implants, and t2 mods.

Only thing this would do would make people more averse to engaging a pilot with a booster on their kms.