EVE General Discussion

Multi-boxers definately have a major impact on some of the smaller sub-markets, like non-third party LP trading. Some boxers who choose to publicly unload can depress prices by 25% or more for, in one case, about 2 months, by himself.

Lets demolish these, eve style.

1: whining and tears mean your opposition is doing it right, and you need to HTFU.
2: fairly easy to spot most bots via logs, as they tend to have even more regular input than broadcast characters, and the smarter bots are mostly going to be updated to look like they aren't even broadcasting.
3: Bombers aren't particularly balanced right now regardless of who is in them.
4: In many ways, boxers are propping up the economy and making it artificially cheap to PVP. Almost everyone agrees that a lower hull cost is good for the numbers fielded in PVP, and especially for newbies
5: While boxers make a large income overall, they are less effecitve at collecting isk than the same number of clients run either single or in groups of 2-3 (the "normal" for most players if one averages active accounts and players) in almost every case.

Show me a graph where they have incomes of multi character users vs non-multi character users. I believe this is only available to CCP and members of the CSM so far (Mike from the CSM mentioned the availability of this information a few months ago during a general discussion in a public incursion chat). This is not publicly available.

As do non-ISBoxer characters, even solo ones. Sometimes I use just a single alt to crash an entire product for no reason beyond the fun of it. Mutliboxers aren't the reason, you simply only notice when it's a multiboxer doing it publicly, because they are doing it publicly. A corporation, an alliance, a group of mates, or even a nolifing individual can all do exactly the same thing.

This isn't hard to figure out though.

Ship scan a boxed miner. Now, assume maximum boosts and skills and you have an upper limit per character. Multiply this by the number of characters being run.

For incursion boxers, follow their fleet for an hour here and there. Average the site times, then do the appropriate payout math.

For anom boxers: ask about their ticks. multiply by number of characters, then skim their tax rate off.

Anything else you want to claim is boxed en masse?

Yeah that gives you the average hourly rate, now tell me how much of an effect that's having over the whole game - do you have the number of multiboxing accounts to hand? What percentage of the playerbase that is? How much of an effect that percentage is having over the whole game?

Please let us all know and we can all see whether this is a non-trivial effect.

I've been wondering for a while how you're a successful trader with such an inablity to discern the effects of supply and demand on markets.

Each to their own I guess.

Percentage of the playerbase using input multiplexing
Percentage of minerals supplied on the market by this subset
Percentage of isk created by this subset
Percentage of LP created by this subset


etc etc....

edit:

Percentage of the monthly plex usage attributable to this subset....

You can make some pretty tight estimates from public data. around B-2 categorization if you know intel analysis.

Players: maybe 2%, upper bound of 10% who have a input multiplexing method installed but not in common use
Minerals ~10%, Not more than 20% as an absolute upper bound.
ISK: 10%, 20% as an absolute upper bound
LP: 2-3% of total LP, higher if you take incursion LP alone due to the higher concentration of boxers.
Plex usage: 12-15%, upper bound of 20%

Perhaps it's because I understand there's more complexity to the economy than simple supply and demand based off of anecdotal evidence. Your entire principle is "A multiboxer buys more PLEX for subs than a single player, thus they are the reason PLEX prices are high". Except you don't know how much PLEX is bought by multiboxers. Over half the PLEX put into the game is bought and stored by traders, specifically because traders know it will always go up in price. In that way it's better to hold PLEX than liquid ISK. You also don't know what other uses people have for PLEX. Fanfest for example can be paid in PLEX. A full set of tickets for someone to go to fanfest is 50 PLEX (4.1 years gametime) and if they are taking their partner who is going on SoE tour, 106 PLEX (8.8 years gametime). Then there's character purchases, PLEX to AUR, resculpting, dual character training, etc.

The fact is that the economy stats prove that with the increase in ISBoxer use, the market has not shifted in any noticeable manner. Mineral prices have practically done the opposite of what people claim ISBoxer has done to them. The "but the economy" whines are always from people with very little knowledge of the subject.

Honestly, it's not entirely clear. It seems to be that he wants to prove that multiboxers earn more than non-multiboxers and thus they must be negatively impacting the economy.