EVE General Discussion

Trying to make me famous?

Anyway, The main reason multiboxing is usually allowed in an MMO is that it provides no advantages that a group of players could not achieve.

In fact, I would rather fight someone multiboxing 20 ships instead of 20 ships played by 20 players.

Ask yourself which would be more difficult to overcome.

I find the term "advantage" to be a very interesting one in terms of EVE Online. I played World of Warcraft for several years (multiboxing 10 accounts), and just recently started playing EVE (enjoying the hell out of it!). This is why I am baffled when folks post a tangent about ISboxer creating an advantage.

Yea, ISboxer provides an advantage. duh. That is rather indisputable. The real question you should ask is if any player or group should have an advantage over another. If you want something to be 'fair' and 'balanced,' you should go play WoW. They limit the size of groups that fight each other. They cap the maximum stats that your character can have in a battleground. The devs of WoW are constantly altering their game to cater to people who cry when they lose.

From what I've seen in EVE, every combat encounter is about advantage. There are no skill point restrictions that prevent pilots of vast SP differences to fight one another. There are no enforced 1:1 ratios allowed to fight, as is the case with Battlegrounds in WoW.

Realistically, there is no such thing as a 'fair' fight in this game. There is no balance; there are superior fits, skills, numbers, fleet comps, effective leadership, and firepower.

Trying to appeal to fairness about anything in this game is gut-bustingly hilarious.

War isn't fair. Real life isn't fair. EVE isn't fair.

Just one feels like a job some times.... :D

I will never be a fan of multi-boxing clients in EVE. I honestly feel that it hurts the game and community. However, there seems to be too much money in it now to ever get rid of it.

Feel free to google "eve online +G15" as example. Key macros are totally fine as long as you're the one pressing the buttons. This has been GM confirmed multiple times over last 7+ years. Macros that automate client functionality, aka receive command, macro runs "undock, activate tank modules, warp to belt, lock npc rats, shoot while scanning local, if someone shows up, warp to SS, otherwise shoot all rats, warp to next belt, repeat until x amount of time, redock, refill ammo, repair ship, repeat above for 23.5/7" are banana worthy, as they should be.

You can thank keyboard quick macros for the fact we even have turret stacking in place, otherwise we would still be f1,f2,f3,f4,f5,f6,f7,f8 :n all over the place.

EDIT: Since I was feeling nice, I'll leave this here. http://oldforums.eveonline.com/?a=topic&threadID=1321518&page=1#11

I honestly thought it was... The more you know, I guess.

To the multiboxer naysayers I have a few points to make:

1) What you are seeing here is probably six months of practice, mistakes, failure analysis and expensive lossmails. Not to mention years of prerequisite EVE knowledge and resources to accomplish it. You see the end result and don't take into consideration the commitment to do it.

2) Multiboxing is not botting. Nothing is automated (besides MAYBE basic macro's, which even singleboxers might use). You have to be at your PC to do anything, and every click and keystroke is human generated.

3) ISBoxer is little more than fancy window management and a keyboard/mouse repeater bundled into an incredibly unintuitive and confusing application.

4) In PVE, you make more isk/hr, yes, but you're paying more money/plex a month for the privilege. Not to mention dual boxers do the same thing. What's the difference between running two drakes with two windows or multiple with this software? Keep in mind there is nothing magical about it. Where do you draw the line? Should we eliminate dualboxing as well?

5) Multiboxing like this is incredibly error-prone. Something as simple as warping all your guys to a stargate can have many implications and complexities. (For example, refresh rates of overviews different on all clients, ghosting on overview, different clients selecting different objects, aligning difficulties) A single multiboxer is never going to be as effective as an equivalent number of real people. This is true in both PVE and PVP. It might look easy, but it isn't.

I absolutely agree that botting should be a bannable offence. It removes all skill from the player and replaces it with automation. Something like this on the other hand is exactly the opposite. It requires enormous experience, skill and practice, and for a lot of people it is a whole new type of endgame for this game.

Your post is a really excellent summary and I appreciate it. I have a neutral opinion on this subject. I just thought that it was a bannable offense until reading this post. I had a friend once send me a link to ISBoxer and I never pursued it because it seemed like the kind of thing that would not be permitted.

My opinion is neutral because it is difficult to decide where to draw the line. I have alts that will be on at the same time, but I alt-tab between them. I've never used them together in a fleet as I feel that would be difficult. In that regard, I think ISBoxer would make that a lot easier to do, but there's also the disadvantage in that every character must be flying the same type of ship and fit, and that is not what my alts are for, thus it wouldn't be a benefit for me.

I do think there's a gray area for those that do this for mining. They are often put in the middle of controversy just for being semi-afk; being able to control an entire fleet and raping belts by one *player* doesn't sit so well with me. You say get internet friends; well, perhaps that miner with the dozen alts I see every day should do the same. I've seen him get decced only to put his alts in an NPC corp, thus making ganking truly the only way to counter what to me is abusive.

Other than that, I don't see an issue with it. This, of course, is just my own personal opinion. Everyone's opinion is different.

It's true, EVE isn't fair.

The difference between EVE game mechanics and ISBotter, however, is that you create the advantage with a third-party program and not by using the same measures everyone has access to just by using the legit client.

But you do have access to it, you're just chosing to not use it. You could just plex instead then use that amount of money on an ISBoxer sub... you saying that you don't have access to it, is just silly.

Please say how you can have an advantage with ISBoxer compared to the Cons.