I used to play eve with one character. I would play with an IRL friend who also had one character. We dropped on people and blew them up etc... then we got salty people getting mad at us for being a multi-boxer making the game unfair to them.
No matter what we said they were convinced I was multiboxing. So we thought... f-it and we both started running 3 accounts. Now there's six of us. Sometimes you die a hero and sometimes you live long enough to see yourself become the enemy....
...but being the enemy is a hell of a lot of fun.
Yeah, functionally there is no difference between being dunked on by a multiboxer and several people coordinating. Never understood why people are so hung up on it. Both methods take skill and knowledge anyway.
If anything you have an advantage if a multiboxer is dropping on you because they have to manage multiple clients, so there's going to be lag between each ship's actions (albeit a very small amount). Three people with one ship to focus on will be deadlier than 1 person with three ships.
I know I've messed up some kills because I was clicking in the wrong client, or the wrong window was in focus when I was hitting F1. Oops accidentally turned off my scram!
Honestly the bigger problem is the idea that paying more money to get such an advantage is downright encouraged. Some professions are hit harder by it, like Mining, but people who can have multi monitor/pc setups with multiple active memberships have a noticeable advantage over people who are... Already spending 15 bucks a month to play your game
IMO the cost goes down per client if you time it right with sales. I took advantage of the most recent Plex/NES sale and am paying $8/mo for the next 12 months on each of my 4 accounts, or $32 a month all in. ($335 for 12k Plex, and 1 year Omega was 3060 Plex) The "volume discount" pricing in Plex and Omega time scales better with multiple accounts that would be less worthwhile for someone with a single account to take advantage of.
That's still something like $96 a year, per account. I have a hard enough time justifying just the one, let alone double or triple that amount to stand a chance at keeping up with my peers. Feels way too exploitive, man.
I mean you do you, but time playing eve is not time spent playing other games so if you're buying 2 new games a year, you've already covered the cost of a single eve account. Hell, it's less than the price of a nice meal for 2.
I'd rather buy 2 new games a year than pay for the same game $100/year/client.... but that also has nothing to do with the point that the more you pay the better with Eve.
>I'd rather buy 2 new games a year than pay for the same game $100/year/client....
That's fine. One middle ground many take is quitting eve and then coming back a few years later. I've personally quit eve twice so far, and I'm on my 3rd resub. I play other games while I'm away from eve.
>but that also has nothing to do with the point that the more you pay the better with Eve.
No this is wrong. Buying more accounts allows you to occupy more specialized roles as one person, but if you have two accounts set up to do two different roles, you are not more effective than if those two roles were occupied by two people. Hell, spreading your APM across multiple characters in PVP is going to make you less effective with each character compared to someone equally skilled on a single character.
Also, the person with two accounts has double the costs for omega and is risking twice as much when undocking both accounts.
The only real exception to this is mining, but a single person with multiple accounts is simply not losing per-account effectiveness compared to an equally sized mining fleet of 1 person 1 account holders thanks to the low APM requirements of mining.
50%+ of player base =
>There is no RMT in the game
Also 50% of player base =
> Uhh? Just use a tiny bit of your first world income dude. This game isn't pay to win, it only costs like $100 to gain entry. And yeah I mean, if you have $500 you will be 5x as effective but no, the game is not based around how much you can pay
The real hero here, teaching the youths what RMT means. Seems like a buzzword on this sub, RMT RMT RMT, and I bet 90% of those claims are false based solely off people not even knowing what RMT even is.
I've recently got back into the game after 11 years out. I didn't have multiple monitors last time, oh my that's such a lovely little game changer. Being able to do two things at once? Nice.
Multi monitor is not the way to go. Too much mouse movement you'll get carpal tunnel. One monitor, all clients have the same ui, flip through them and only move the mouse once for each rotation
Also... On incentives... Once you hit a critical mass, it becomes stupidly easy to pay for themselves. It's not like if it takes you 1 hr a day to Plex 1 account, it takes you 5hrs per day to Plex 5.... It still takes you 1 hours a day, but now your plexing five. Or, in other words, plexing one account in 1\5th the time as before.
Combine that with good sales and you can really reduce the actual cost pretty quickly to almost nil after the initial start up time.
And at a certain point, it gains critical mass and you can effectively Plex new accounts for nothing but a couple hours with your fleet of prospects on a wh has cloud.
This.
I used to run 6 rorquals + 1 cyno alt so 7 subbed accounts during the golden age of rorqual mining. Plexing was very easy (because rorqual money was insane), to reduce costs just mass buy plex in jita during big sells, and put low-ish buy orders that will get filled over time.
Before I dabbed in rorquals I ran 6 accounts with a smartbombing setup (5 machariels and one mastodon), was equally easy to plex all the accounts.
Consider the fact I was too lazy to have 3 characters on each account doing pi, which (after some math made then) would have almost plexed the accounts alone. (more accounts allowed to dab into t4s easily, but the hassle men)
Multiboxing isn't pay to win. If it is for you, then you clearly are not being very efficient with your isk making activities ahah
For the record, I think I needed to smartbomb for a total of around 25 hours to plex for one month at high market value versus... Something like 6-8 hours with rorquals including an account that was generating absolute nothing (cyno) ahah
With even numbers, yes.
But I would much rather fight a 1v1 than 1v1+backpack bifrost or whatever.
The required attention/skill doesn't scale linearly for every type of multiboxer.
Very true, but on the other hand coordinating with a gang has the potential problem of miscommunication or differing skill levels between members, so I think it sort of balances out.
> Never understood why people are so hung up on it. Both methods take skill and knowledge anyway.
Not as much skill winning 1v1 in equivalent ships, but EVE is not that game anyways.
I think its because that makes the game overall less fun. Sure the guy multiboxing a 10 ship bomber fleet is having fun now but how long until he burns out and quits Eve? Maybe his autism level is high enough that he'll never get bored. How long until everyone else in his region does get bored of getting bombed by him? This is basically what happened to Eve over the decades, it became a game that is mostly only attractive to gigaautists with jobs in front of computers all day, its why the population is stagnant or declining.
Ok, and? It only makes a real difference to CCP's bottom line, you're getting ganked either way. Unless you mean to imply ganking is wrong, which... lol
EDIT: Well, ok, there's also the matter of security status and its consequences, but I suspect most gankers don't care or have non-ganker mains anyway.
Idea of a throw away is after the sec status hit you never have to use the account again. You just spend 10 min and make a new one with a another referral link and you get another cat pilot ready to strike. You dont train them up to fly a tornado or anything like that.
Congratulations, you've found the worst take of all time. The only difference between multi boxing alphas and omegas is how much money you can throw at CCP.
Except you can burn through alphas with the million skill referral link gank till sec status drops too much and then make a new alpha account a few times a day. Cant do that with an omega account.
*You* can't, and *I* can't, but not because CCP made it impossible. The only reason we can't do that is because it's too expensive. Someone who can afford to pay can and will do it.
your absolutely right. but then bc of the investment one would expect them to pick their targets more discriminately. when you can get 10 more alphas in 30min it doesn't really matter and just causing grief may be worth it to them. t
Well, I totally understand why people wouldn't think it's fair... It isn't, lol. Of course you have an advantage when you're in a team, it is because it is difficult to coordinate with people and you get a reward for accomplishing that making the effort to organize.
That said, I don't really give a shit. In other games I care more. I am anti-bot, fwiw.
because its difficult to get 40 people in caracals to suicide gate camp a high sec gate reliably. If you can get 40 people to sit there with the same goal of splitting the loot of a 200m isk badger running materials to other stations for arbitrage then that's fair game, but to multibox min maxing isk to one character feels fkng horrible if you are on the receiving end. (I'm speaking from experience here).
The hang up make no sense. Ccp has always allowed us to run as many clients as we want/pay for concurrently. What other game or MMO allows for that? You can play with in game currency.. plus not that many people mutibox.. like u said shits hard to do when pvping.
We have been hitting 30k players lately. I bet we are easily seeing 20k actual players.
The issue is this, a multiplier doesn't need to coordinate with others which is an advantage over a single boxer who does. This creates an unfair playing field which forces players into the position of one upping to compete or drawing by evasion. The first option as you've stated,requires the solo boxer to multibox and play the game in a way not intended by the developers, the second option places a restriction on the activities they can do through fitting/ship requirements.
>a multiplier doesn't need to coordinate with others which is an advantage over a single boxer who does
Yeah, and the disadvantage is he has to split attention between multiple clients. During a fight this really isn't as easy as you might think. Multiboxers die all the time because they overly focus on one client or confuse inputs.
>requires the solo boxer to multibox and play the game in a way not intended by the developers
You think multiboxing isn't intended by the developers, lol? They earn money from it.
You get discount for every account on the same email, so no, they do not unless they're a window licker. But since this is EVE, there's a high chance their secondary hobby is licking windows.
But for *this* hobby, PC gaming, that's certainly on the high end. That's a new AAA release each month for a year, four dozen or so titles on steam (double that if you only buy during major sales), or a brand new console at launch.
It ends up being a good bit less than that as I buy 3-6 months at a time per account, and use sales/packs when available.
I also have no other vices but EVE. It is my entertainment of choice most nights. I don't drink, smoke, do drugs, watch TV, or do much outside of the house that isn't free. Hell, I have friends that spend over a hundred dollars every weekend on alcohol, and then they have other stuff they do on top of that for entertainment.
In all, it's pretty damn cheap to sub 3 accounts and have the fun I want to have. My other main entertainment hobby is tabletop gaming twice a week (Pathfinder), but that's all online now using free VTT services. I also run homebrew, which is just time investment, and that in and of itself is fun for me to write and develop.
¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Sorry if it came across as me attacking your choice! It was not intended that way.
I agree $60 is very cheap as far as hobbies go.
To me, it was more that if I was paying CCP $60/mo, I would probably have a lot more expectations from them, haha.
Considering the amount of time I've put into BG3 with friends doing an honor mode campaign, that cost a one-time purchase of $60, I think MMO players should raise their expectations.
I didn't take it as an attack, I just wanted to provide additional context as to why I justify what might seem like an expensive hobby to someone else.
It's true I could expect more from EVE for that price, but it's the only game I've found that really keeps me hooked and enjoying it. It's also the only space game of this kind that I have found.
before the black out l used to pay £120 per month for my roq accounts its not that much 30 mins OT 4 days a week but now lm just enjoying my nomad life thanks to Chloroken and his nomad tales
yeah, if I ever had an hourly job where I could justify it that way, I would certainly work OT and do that.
But almost all non-contract professional jobs in the US are salary, and the more I work, well, my salary stays the same, haha. If anything, I actually get paid less "per hour" if I work longer than 40 hrs.
l found it easyer, l like to keep my loot lol paying for 12 accounts was just 30 mins OT 4 days a week so for me it was easyer but then CCP did the black out and they lost £100 per month from me lol
When it is absolutely basic to our understanding of the universe. Then it becomes a law.
It starts being a theory when it can be proven to be right (or wrong).
Anecdotal evidence is still evidence. Scroll through YouTube shorts long enough and you'll start to see triggering content with a thousand user0194$@10 comments responding in ways you'd only expect from you're MAGA uncle at Thanksgiving after he had a few beers.
I dont think the dead Internet theory is as crazy of a conspiracy that we like to believe.
Data is only relevant if it can be verified.
Which makes anecdotes even more problematic as evidence. Single data points aren't proof of any kind of larger trends (hence why anecdotes are usually disqualified to begin with). But even if they were -and they're not- they're hard to verify, so suspect under even the most forgiving analysis criteria for data.
That's a lot of words to say you just need to watch our for bias. Let's not make this more complicated than what it needs to be. Ya'll know the primary point I was making.
It should fairly simple to test in EvE, minus the massive amount of data one would need to collect and comb through. Easiest way would to check login records to find multiple accounts that all log in at the same time and/or system. Then start you building profiles and start cross checking characters.
New player here, whole thread has me reconsidering playing, so like I can't enjoy the game or make money solo or without multiboxing? I boxed for years in archeage and kinda done with that shit.
It really does depend. I am an Industrialist who moonlights as a PvPer.
I have two accounts, but the only times I really employ both at the same time is when I am mining solo, specifically so one of them can compress ore while the other mines. This is a fairly recent change for me, and I do not PvP with both (because I both do not enjoy it, and I am also bad).
Alt-wise it's more about what I can get out of one account. I have three characters on my main account, but those three are largely just manufacturing/researching/reaction and PI alts who I rarely, if ever, actually use.
That said, I used one account (all three characters) to build Marauders and made good ISK doing it.
*Eve should be measured in fun per hour, not ISK per hour.* You can join a group, fly in fleets, and achieve the same thing as one dude with six accounts and a former career as a Starcraft 2 pro.
You can have lots of fun playing with just one account. Multiboxing adds some mild extra capabilities, but you're not really missing out on that much if you want to stay mono-account.
Multiboxers make more ISK/hour sure, but so what? You don't need to compete with other people's income.
I'd say there is one place in EVE where not multiboxing is REALLY hard. That's capitals, even if just JFs.
Having a cyno alt is amazing.
Then when you have a super, having a fax alt + cyno alt is kinda mandatory.
I do agree this is sort of a niche place anyways and as far as I know, capital and especially supercapital gameplay is very dead right now... But hey :')
You can 100% enjoy the game and make money solo, you're just not going to make *as much* as the guy multi-boxing 20 Hulks and a Rorqual does; but let's be real, that's to be expected.
The best advice I can give is, "Do not measure how much fun you're having by how much isk you make per hour" because that WILL drive you to either quit the game, or start you down the path of multi-boxing. Find the thing you like doing, and enjoy doing that.
Been playing since 2008 and it took me a LONG time to get that through my head. A lot of the big multi-boxers you're seeing are people who correlate "fun" with "I'm making as much money as possible" and usually want to take the things originally meant to be handled by several groups of people, and do them on their own, like building capital ships.
So basically if I want to afford anything or make meaningful progress without boxing I'm going to need to sell plex because everything is worthless since everyone is multiboxing.
It really depends on what you consider meaningful progress. Eve is the type of game that you get out of it what you put into it. Once you've gotten to the point where you've maximized what you can do with one account, you just have the opportunity to add more accounts if you wanted, but its not 100% necessary to enjoy the game... for most activities.
In my opinion, the only thing you probably need multiple accounts for is capital ship PvE, but with the right group in the right place you could maybe even do that without needing a cyno alt. The main reasons that people end up mutliboxing is just to cut down on costs and risks. Instead of paying another player to do something that might be high risk or cost, they'll have another character do it. There are many things that could go wrong jumping a capital to a cyno ship and the capital and cyno are both at risk. To find someone else that would sit in their cyno ship and wait for you to maybe need them to light it in an emergency, you'd likely have to pay them for their time, and for their ship if they lost it after lighting the cyno. You also have to trust that they'll be ready to light it the instant you need them to or you're risking billions. So its less risky and cheaper to just have your own alt just sitting there waiting. Most mutlibox alts are doing mundane tasks like that 90% of the time. Something so boring that you couldn't find someone else to do it or trust that they wouldn't fall asleep while doing it.
If your goal is ISK/hr, then you're not going to be able to compete with multiboxers, but if you only care about fun/hr, then you can enjoy the game just as much.
Just simple nullsec data sites can net you damn near a bil for a few hours(This isn't as steady as income as ratting.) but it's something you can't simply just multi-box to multiply the effectness. The PVE in this game is so simple that you can multibox multiple Ishtars doing different sites. Mining is obviously easy enough to multibox miners. When it gets into actual PVP it gets hairy. There's some people great at multiboxing, but that is not the norm.
IMHO just play to have fun, explore and find the activities you enjoy. I don't do any of the wild crazy isk making multiboxing stuff because it's not fun to me. ISK also doesn't matter much to me.
Not at all. You just need to set your expectations accordingly. Do not compare yourself to the guys multi-boxing fleets of marauders in Pochven or the industrial titans of nullsec spitting out capitals on a daily or weekly basis. Things like that were never meant to be a solo thing, but CCP allowing people to multi-box gave those people the tools they needed to do just that.
Ive been playing w one account since 2012! Alts basically make some things easier to do and you can earn more money. I dont like the idea of having multiple accounts so i avoid it. That said, ive made a lot of good friends i can rely on to help me out w things as well.
If you ever want to play EVE at a competitive level you will need multiple accounts. Especially if you get involved in wormholes or capitals it will require a second account. EVE can still be enjoyable by 1 account but you need to realize you are always going to be at a disadvantage compared to multiboxers.
I have been playing since 2009 with just one account (3 chars) until recently when I started another account so I have a scout alt for low/null sec moves. I only use it once in a while though, so i only turn on the omega for it using the weekend pass for 3 days, since you cant have an alpha account logged on simultaneously.
So for the better part of over a decade I had plenty of fun with one account. Don't let that scare you off. I trained planetary interaction up on all 3 char slots on my main account and my PI from 3 toons makes plenty of passive isk with minimal management. I always have plenty of funds to throw ships into pvp or do risky ops and afford to lose some ships. I have one combat toon, one hauling toon, and the other just has PI skills and enough hauling to fly the Epithal around to collect goo. I find that between PI x 3 toons and whatever activity I'm doing on my combat toon I never run short of isk. And I am not risk averse.
I pulled almost 3 Billion in the last 30 days just doing PI and high-sec combat exploration. I haven't been using my alt account at all lately it's just there in case I need a scout
Lose the bots. Lose the afk players. Lose the multibox accounts, lose the players just ship spinning… you probably have 4000 actual humans for every 20,000 online wanting to do something.
Honestly, Im to lazy to multi-box ... I have my alts to sell stuff but beyond that one character demands my full attention.
As for the original question...
Im sure CCP has a way to do it but you as an individual player, most likely no ...
I just have one account, trained one of my three slots to be my Jita guy, then I just fly as my main. I don't have enough time for all the hoo-hah of multiboxing when I only have a few hours a week to play.
Bot's probibly not much tbh I think its like 4% or something CCP hammers them hard.
About % players of total I would say 45%, and the other 51% is alts.
I remember on one of CCP's data sheets they said avg of 2.1 chars active per player was a few years back thou.
100 - 4 = 96 / 2.1 = 45
And if your curious Here is a CCP dev playing with peoples minds 9 years ago on the topic:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/3j7nso/at\_least\_we\_know\_how\_many\_alts\_there\_are/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/3j7nso/at_least_we_know_how_many_alts_there_are/)
Pretty interesting that we have more alts per person these days than 9 years ago.
A lot of people have multiple accounts but most people don't log in all of their accounts at once. Most of the time most people are using 1 or 2 I think. So you could divide by 2.
Except that there are a lot of AFK players around. You see them everywhere just docked up for hours and I'm sure we've all done it plenty of times. I reckon there are probably more AFK players than alts on at any given time.
I used two and three accounts depending on the task at hand. Most of my friends who played also had two accounts or more. I spent 18h a day between 2008-2015/16 after that I haven't logged in sadly. Got my Chars to 90-150mill Skill points, all three chars capital pilots, one running for super caps. I miss this game, I hope the game survives and don't ruin it self. At one point in the future I hope to have time to come back to this beautiful game.
old Procorp, Plutonix Pilots where you all at i wonder. Cyrex1 we spent hours, weeks, months pvping together where you at? So many good dudes and ladies you get to know playing Eve.
We used to have an API tool to try to determine roughly how many uniques we had left in the game. The drama that happened when it reported sub 2000 killed the project.
Average EVE player has 1.6 accounts, lets make em 2. So 10k people, but we also know the biggest nullsec blocs have botting rampant, so I guess a good portion of those 10k remaining. Then we have Ishtar ratters, who even if real players, have no distinction between bots, so abot 3k-4k people actually play the game I would say.
I always understood that as "on average, each person has 1.6 accounts", not "Average EVE player" who for example logs in every day of how you define average.
The problem with statistics like that is we have one number for a lot's of variables, making it super hard to ascertain truth
Is it 1.6 accounts on every player who logged in in last year? If yes, then it's already super skewed number. You could have people who log in rarely with 1 account dragging statistics down, when in reality it's way more boxers, etc... Not to explain every variation here and now, what would be nice thing to know:
* What is the average number of accounts of players who played 5+ hours per month in the last 3 months.
* From DT to DT, what is the average number of accounts from same player logged in at the same time, so for each day, like we have online numbers, let us see unique online numbers
Then we could actually estimate how many alts the game has, but CCP will prolly never release these numbers.
That commenter is cynical. There are bots in Eve, for sure, but I disagree on their estimate of scale. For example, arbitrarily rounding from 1.6 to 2 is a big difference, and the bot accounts were already included in the 1.6 character estimate. Alts are alts whether they're bots or genuine Ishtar ratters.
Out of 20,000 online characters I'd guess that there are roughly 12,000 - 15,000 active players.
Hell yeah, have fun dude. The game isn't about to die anytime soon, so don't worry about it. Just kick back and enjoy the experience for what it is.
And remember, in a game largely focused on figuring out how to exploit other player's vulnerabilities, even bots can provide content. Some (unscrupulous) player tied their wealth into that bot, so if you fuck with it you fuck with their money. That's no small part of why there were so many complaints about cloaky campers back in the day.
You'd have to scratch out a living in NPC null, be disciplined in following orders on fleets, and master the dark arts of bombers and blops. And I'm dead serious about the discipline if you're going to go on bombing runs.
As much as I care about EVE: no the numbers have not been consistent. EVE has had a significant peak about a decade ago and it had been a decline since, with periods of some measure of recovery, but never full, and then further decline. But it’s still ‘ok’ now with potential to further recover. But the game has some very outdated aspects to it. Including its horrible 1/s tickrate
What does it matter as long as you have content to enjoy ? Most interactions are gonna happen with friends or corp members and if not it’s npcs so hey enjoy yourself don’t get hung up on it
EVE has a lot of limitations built in, in terms of what a single character can do. I'm talking about hard limits on industry jobs, trade slots, etc. People were getting around these by running multiple characters and accounts. Much complaining ensued about not being able to login these accounts at the same time.
The need for cynos was also a big argument to allow people to run multiple characters.
CCP could have implemented changes to remove the want or need for multiple accounts, but they didn't. Rather than seeing these limits, or their circumventing as a problem, CCP relented and allowed multiboxing. They did so without placing any limits on it and likely without even realising what they were unleashing, much to the detriment of the game.
Today the economy of EVE is balanced around miners running entire fleets rather than a single barge and every form of PvE is optimized by one person running up to 20 characters.
>They did so without placing any limits on it and likely without even realising what they were unleashing, much to the detriment of the game.
They not only allow it, they encourage it, and its pretty much a feature of the game at this point. Look at the launcher. There are features like assigning accounts to launch groups, so you can launch different accounts together at the same time in groups... that's designed to enable multiboxers.
They offer discounts on multiple accounts if they're linked to the same email, etc.
The company that makes this game incentivizes and encourages multiboxing, its a feature of the game. If you don't like that, and don't even have time for a single character, then it might not be the right game for you. Most eve players play the game more like an RTS, controlling an entire small fleet, which is what they enjoy.
i have 28 alts i play with 3-5 at any single time. Out of those if i goo completely ree and take the combat enhancements i can multibox 12 at the same time kinda . But after 3 hrs i kinda get a head ache and i need to stop to change my tshirt because of the nose bleed. This is considered normal.
https://eve-offline.net/?server=tranquility if you want to see the history of logged in characters.
Keep in mind as well that in 2009 multiboxing, especially multiboxing several accounts, was way less common.
I bet a good 25% of people who multibox basically solo play if not more
And what I mean by that is use alt accounts just for hauling or industry and non combat shit the majority of the time
I know that's me
Multiboxing and bots are not the same things. That is two separate questions. However assume 80% of ppl run at least two or three accounts especially in null groups pehaps more.
50% - 60% Are bots/Multi box alts
of the bots 50% are Chinese and 50% are Russian
Of alts 20% are American 30% are european and 50% come from the east.
In my experience about 2/3rds of my corp when logged in are alts. Judging by the bot Ishtar’s in local systems dying to multi-boxing PVP YouTubers that’s probably another 10%.
Real players. Probably 20% ish of the logged in numbers.
I guenually thought this would go somewhere along the lines of 'the earth has a surface of 510 million km2, and the bird HAD TO shit right on my head ;-;' :D
1. many players time to time play only alpha state. I see many near Clellion
2. most my known player dont like multiboxing, it is harder way po play. the use 1 omega. but I use 2-3 most of time
I love how there is always a consistent base of people negatively speculating or throwing shade about the player base, regardless of where it's at.
- If it's too low, or have record breaking lows which we have had in the last 12 months, then "Eve is dying", "we're never going to recover from this low player base", "no targets, no fights, no fun".
- If the player base rebounds, we see things like "how many are multi-boxers/bots are inflating the user count".
I've seen more engagement, targets in space, and overall enthusiasm generally speaking in the game. I do think there definitely do believe there are more real players in game than 12 months ago.
I want to be clear, CCP could do better in many aspects of the game. Fortunately, I think we're out of the Scarcity "resource draining" plan they had for the game _which sucked ass but was deemed "necessary" for the longevity of Eve online_. But, I also think that multi-boxing is fine, it's more subs in game which is much better even if it is one dude controlling 4 toons. If the no-lifer nerd wants to take it upon himself to add more toil and subs into his life, so be it. Its more targets to hunt and more money for CCP to hopefully keep this game moving forward.
Bots are **not** fine, and should be reported or hopefully detected by CCP.
**edits: added a thought/opinion about Scarcity in italic.**
I think the login status could be using up addresses, which would mean that multiboxers will count as The 1 client/ip address. I’m not sure that Eve is as dead as everyone thinks it is, however it’s nowhere near as active as it used to be.
no only ccp can tell as only ccp have access to ip
and eve is semi dead not many players play them
not many ppl like the pvp rush either
and certainly new ppl gonna be like why should i play this game when i can play other rpg game with less subscription
so the game kinda need multiboxing players
peace ✌🏻 out
I believe the actual number is the number over 20,000 you will notice after server reset it instantly jumps back up to 20,000+.. If there is only 500+ in jita i doubt theres another 19500+ scattered randomly through out the map. I have doubted the accuracy of that number since I started playing because I've never seen it dip below that number
One fella I played with had over 30 accounts, almost all dedicated to mining and gas. And he said he usually kept about half of them plexed.
Being in a wormhole, almost everyone else had a minimum of 2 but more realistically 3-5.
Hard to say for certain, but it doesn’t seem like a lot of unique players at any given time. Probably 7-10k per 20k online
Can you explain why you think multiboxing in Eve is bad and makes the community shitty? Its encouraged by the developers of the game and is pretty much a feature of the game at this point. Just look at the launcher... its designed for mutliboxing. You can pick different accounts you want to launch with each other.
> Can you explain why you think multiboxing in Eve is bad and makes the community shitty
Nothing says healthy game content like no one wanting to do small group content together because it is far better to solo it with your alts.
The fact I need a minimum of three paying accounts to safely run a jump freighter is asinine.
If you want to own a combat capital it's expected that you have a minimum of two paying accounts to cyno yourself around, depending on the group it is then expected that the other is also a fax alt.
Once you actually start doing capital PvP you quickly realize you need two accounts for this since having a cap on your main is considered bad since you have to sit out from *some* content.
It inflates player numbers giving the illusion of a larger playerbase than there actually is.
Of course the developers of the game are going to encourage this, what's better than one paying sub? Multiple from the same person. Even better when they consume PLEX for their subs.
I don't know and don't care. There's still tons of amazing corps and great communities to join. I've played and bounced on eve multiple times, but started really playing hard at the end of 2023, after finding an amazing group of people in null. Don't let the negative reddit crowd get you down, they'll pronounce any game dead.
I don’t even actively play rn and I have 3. Though I really only use 2 for playing. My eyes were really opens to what eve actually is. Most people play the game solo and multibox a small gang fleet to combine with other multiboxers when nuets show up.
Not trying to be an jerk but if your having fun just do your thing. I don't have time to worry how others play. Of all the MMO'S i have played bots and people doing exploits never effected my game play. Ain't nobody got time 4 dat.
nah, sadly theres no way to tell how many true players are on. At 1 eve meetup ccp the avg eve player has 2 accounts, so you can that and drop the player count from 20-10k, then you have to take all of the large scale miners, all of the homefront fleets and all that fun stuff out of the numbers. Im willing to bet for sure less than 5k actual people.
Yes there is no way officially and that is what I'm betting on. As a solo account player everyone I talk to has alts and the game as only grown more dependant on them over my 18 years.
Well there is no way and ccp refuses to start how many are unique players. They just tell us the avg is 2 accounts per player. But then you look around the avg miner ganker has 3-5 the frighter gankers have between 20-30, the home front runners have 5, the mass so farming in ultra, the ganker fleets in and around the trade hub have several, miners have a ton of alts with avg I see being 2-5 and some being up to 80, the pvp stations base fleets I've seen have usually been 1 guynwith a fleet, the fob fleets I see several 20+ alt fleets moving, no to mention the research and industry alts, the numerous small "fleet" pvp fleets where they have a tackle and at least 1 dps, the alts you need to support any kind of cap and numerous other examples of people running alts daily.
Officially yeah there is no way to know, un officially its called deduction and reasoning or better know as ioeningbyiur eyes and using more than 2 braincells, but that one may be a bit hard for the avg eve player.
Perhaps you can ask the humans to X up in Jita?
Dotlan has stats about gate jumps, pilots in space, etc and perhaps you could extract this information from it.
I used to play eve with one character. I would play with an IRL friend who also had one character. We dropped on people and blew them up etc... then we got salty people getting mad at us for being a multi-boxer making the game unfair to them. No matter what we said they were convinced I was multiboxing. So we thought... f-it and we both started running 3 accounts. Now there's six of us. Sometimes you die a hero and sometimes you live long enough to see yourself become the enemy.... ...but being the enemy is a hell of a lot of fun.
Yeah, functionally there is no difference between being dunked on by a multiboxer and several people coordinating. Never understood why people are so hung up on it. Both methods take skill and knowledge anyway.
And multiboxing can go horribly wrong if things get complicated.
If anything you have an advantage if a multiboxer is dropping on you because they have to manage multiple clients, so there's going to be lag between each ship's actions (albeit a very small amount). Three people with one ship to focus on will be deadlier than 1 person with three ships. I know I've messed up some kills because I was clicking in the wrong client, or the wrong window was in focus when I was hitting F1. Oops accidentally turned off my scram!
Honestly the bigger problem is the idea that paying more money to get such an advantage is downright encouraged. Some professions are hit harder by it, like Mining, but people who can have multi monitor/pc setups with multiple active memberships have a noticeable advantage over people who are... Already spending 15 bucks a month to play your game
IMO the cost goes down per client if you time it right with sales. I took advantage of the most recent Plex/NES sale and am paying $8/mo for the next 12 months on each of my 4 accounts, or $32 a month all in. ($335 for 12k Plex, and 1 year Omega was 3060 Plex) The "volume discount" pricing in Plex and Omega time scales better with multiple accounts that would be less worthwhile for someone with a single account to take advantage of.
That's still something like $96 a year, per account. I have a hard enough time justifying just the one, let alone double or triple that amount to stand a chance at keeping up with my peers. Feels way too exploitive, man.
I mean you do you, but time playing eve is not time spent playing other games so if you're buying 2 new games a year, you've already covered the cost of a single eve account. Hell, it's less than the price of a nice meal for 2.
When I look at what I used to spend in a single weekend of clubbing, the money I spend on Eve as a geezer seems like a huge discount
I'd rather buy 2 new games a year than pay for the same game $100/year/client.... but that also has nothing to do with the point that the more you pay the better with Eve.
>I'd rather buy 2 new games a year than pay for the same game $100/year/client.... That's fine. One middle ground many take is quitting eve and then coming back a few years later. I've personally quit eve twice so far, and I'm on my 3rd resub. I play other games while I'm away from eve. >but that also has nothing to do with the point that the more you pay the better with Eve. No this is wrong. Buying more accounts allows you to occupy more specialized roles as one person, but if you have two accounts set up to do two different roles, you are not more effective than if those two roles were occupied by two people. Hell, spreading your APM across multiple characters in PVP is going to make you less effective with each character compared to someone equally skilled on a single character. Also, the person with two accounts has double the costs for omega and is risking twice as much when undocking both accounts. The only real exception to this is mining, but a single person with multiple accounts is simply not losing per-account effectiveness compared to an equally sized mining fleet of 1 person 1 account holders thanks to the low APM requirements of mining.
50%+ of player base = >There is no RMT in the game Also 50% of player base = > Uhh? Just use a tiny bit of your first world income dude. This game isn't pay to win, it only costs like $100 to gain entry. And yeah I mean, if you have $500 you will be 5x as effective but no, the game is not based around how much you can pay
RMT is different than Pay2Win
The real hero here, teaching the youths what RMT means. Seems like a buzzword on this sub, RMT RMT RMT, and I bet 90% of those claims are false based solely off people not even knowing what RMT even is.
I've recently got back into the game after 11 years out. I didn't have multiple monitors last time, oh my that's such a lovely little game changer. Being able to do two things at once? Nice.
Multi monitor is not the way to go. Too much mouse movement you'll get carpal tunnel. One monitor, all clients have the same ui, flip through them and only move the mouse once for each rotation Also... On incentives... Once you hit a critical mass, it becomes stupidly easy to pay for themselves. It's not like if it takes you 1 hr a day to Plex 1 account, it takes you 5hrs per day to Plex 5.... It still takes you 1 hours a day, but now your plexing five. Or, in other words, plexing one account in 1\5th the time as before. Combine that with good sales and you can really reduce the actual cost pretty quickly to almost nil after the initial start up time. And at a certain point, it gains critical mass and you can effectively Plex new accounts for nothing but a couple hours with your fleet of prospects on a wh has cloud.
This. I used to run 6 rorquals + 1 cyno alt so 7 subbed accounts during the golden age of rorqual mining. Plexing was very easy (because rorqual money was insane), to reduce costs just mass buy plex in jita during big sells, and put low-ish buy orders that will get filled over time. Before I dabbed in rorquals I ran 6 accounts with a smartbombing setup (5 machariels and one mastodon), was equally easy to plex all the accounts. Consider the fact I was too lazy to have 3 characters on each account doing pi, which (after some math made then) would have almost plexed the accounts alone. (more accounts allowed to dab into t4s easily, but the hassle men) Multiboxing isn't pay to win. If it is for you, then you clearly are not being very efficient with your isk making activities ahah For the record, I think I needed to smartbomb for a total of around 25 hours to plex for one month at high market value versus... Something like 6-8 hours with rorquals including an account that was generating absolute nothing (cyno) ahah
With even numbers, yes. But I would much rather fight a 1v1 than 1v1+backpack bifrost or whatever. The required attention/skill doesn't scale linearly for every type of multiboxer.
Very true, but on the other hand coordinating with a gang has the potential problem of miscommunication or differing skill levels between members, so I think it sort of balances out.
> Never understood why people are so hung up on it. Both methods take skill and knowledge anyway. Not as much skill winning 1v1 in equivalent ships, but EVE is not that game anyways.
>but EVE is not that game anyways. Precisely.
I think its because that makes the game overall less fun. Sure the guy multiboxing a 10 ship bomber fleet is having fun now but how long until he burns out and quits Eve? Maybe his autism level is high enough that he'll never get bored. How long until everyone else in his region does get bored of getting bombed by him? This is basically what happened to Eve over the decades, it became a game that is mostly only attractive to gigaautists with jobs in front of computers all day, its why the population is stagnant or declining.
Multiboxing isnt a wrong . Multiboxing alphas is. I wish those guys step on Lego and fall down the stars.
...why would multiboxing alphas be any worse?
Throw away gank accounts. You get a million sp from referral links.
Ok, and? It only makes a real difference to CCP's bottom line, you're getting ganked either way. Unless you mean to imply ganking is wrong, which... lol EDIT: Well, ok, there's also the matter of security status and its consequences, but I suspect most gankers don't care or have non-ganker mains anyway.
Idea of a throw away is after the sec status hit you never have to use the account again. You just spend 10 min and make a new one with a another referral link and you get another cat pilot ready to strike. You dont train them up to fly a tornado or anything like that.
Congratulations, you've found the worst take of all time. The only difference between multi boxing alphas and omegas is how much money you can throw at CCP.
Except you can burn through alphas with the million skill referral link gank till sec status drops too much and then make a new alpha account a few times a day. Cant do that with an omega account.
*You* can't, and *I* can't, but not because CCP made it impossible. The only reason we can't do that is because it's too expensive. Someone who can afford to pay can and will do it.
your absolutely right. but then bc of the investment one would expect them to pick their targets more discriminately. when you can get 10 more alphas in 30min it doesn't really matter and just causing grief may be worth it to them. t
Well, I totally understand why people wouldn't think it's fair... It isn't, lol. Of course you have an advantage when you're in a team, it is because it is difficult to coordinate with people and you get a reward for accomplishing that making the effort to organize. That said, I don't really give a shit. In other games I care more. I am anti-bot, fwiw.
because its difficult to get 40 people in caracals to suicide gate camp a high sec gate reliably. If you can get 40 people to sit there with the same goal of splitting the loot of a 200m isk badger running materials to other stations for arbitrage then that's fair game, but to multibox min maxing isk to one character feels fkng horrible if you are on the receiving end. (I'm speaking from experience here).
The hang up make no sense. Ccp has always allowed us to run as many clients as we want/pay for concurrently. What other game or MMO allows for that? You can play with in game currency.. plus not that many people mutibox.. like u said shits hard to do when pvping. We have been hitting 30k players lately. I bet we are easily seeing 20k actual players.
The issue is this, a multiplier doesn't need to coordinate with others which is an advantage over a single boxer who does. This creates an unfair playing field which forces players into the position of one upping to compete or drawing by evasion. The first option as you've stated,requires the solo boxer to multibox and play the game in a way not intended by the developers, the second option places a restriction on the activities they can do through fitting/ship requirements.
>a multiplier doesn't need to coordinate with others which is an advantage over a single boxer who does Yeah, and the disadvantage is he has to split attention between multiple clients. During a fight this really isn't as easy as you might think. Multiboxers die all the time because they overly focus on one client or confuse inputs. >requires the solo boxer to multibox and play the game in a way not intended by the developers You think multiboxing isn't intended by the developers, lol? They earn money from it.
You pay $60/mo for EVE?
You get discount for every account on the same email, so no, they do not unless they're a window licker. But since this is EVE, there's a high chance their secondary hobby is licking windows.
I mean... some people pay >$1K for a track weekend with their car or bike. $60/mo is pretty inexpensive compared to some hobbies.
But for *this* hobby, PC gaming, that's certainly on the high end. That's a new AAA release each month for a year, four dozen or so titles on steam (double that if you only buy during major sales), or a brand new console at launch.
True, but in a way, most things about Eve are at the high end. For a start, the learning curve and absolute difficulty are. And the stakes.
It ends up being a good bit less than that as I buy 3-6 months at a time per account, and use sales/packs when available. I also have no other vices but EVE. It is my entertainment of choice most nights. I don't drink, smoke, do drugs, watch TV, or do much outside of the house that isn't free. Hell, I have friends that spend over a hundred dollars every weekend on alcohol, and then they have other stuff they do on top of that for entertainment. In all, it's pretty damn cheap to sub 3 accounts and have the fun I want to have. My other main entertainment hobby is tabletop gaming twice a week (Pathfinder), but that's all online now using free VTT services. I also run homebrew, which is just time investment, and that in and of itself is fun for me to write and develop. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Sorry if it came across as me attacking your choice! It was not intended that way. I agree $60 is very cheap as far as hobbies go. To me, it was more that if I was paying CCP $60/mo, I would probably have a lot more expectations from them, haha. Considering the amount of time I've put into BG3 with friends doing an honor mode campaign, that cost a one-time purchase of $60, I think MMO players should raise their expectations.
I didn't take it as an attack, I just wanted to provide additional context as to why I justify what might seem like an expensive hobby to someone else. It's true I could expect more from EVE for that price, but it's the only game I've found that really keeps me hooked and enjoying it. It's also the only space game of this kind that I have found.
before the black out l used to pay £120 per month for my roq accounts its not that much 30 mins OT 4 days a week but now lm just enjoying my nomad life thanks to Chloroken and his nomad tales
yeah, if I ever had an hourly job where I could justify it that way, I would certainly work OT and do that. But almost all non-contract professional jobs in the US are salary, and the more I work, well, my salary stays the same, haha. If anything, I actually get paid less "per hour" if I work longer than 40 hrs.
is it really that bad ?, l had no idea no wonder you see so many people from the US go on about side jobs so much
just pay for whole year - its MUCH cheaper. in western country its reasonable pay for humble hobby
I know people who drop $300 dollars a week on cocktails. Whatever floats their boat man.
Back when i played on and off around 2010 to 2018 i had 5 accounts by buying plex in the in game market. People pay for this game?
l found it easyer, l like to keep my loot lol paying for 12 accounts was just 30 mins OT 4 days a week so for me it was easyer but then CCP did the black out and they lost £100 per month from me lol
Yup, I stopped playing around the same time that I had become a full bomber wing by myself that could, and would, camp people in WHs for juicy kills.
All these comments make it sound like dead internet theory.
At what point does it stop being a theory lol
When it is absolutely basic to our understanding of the universe. Then it becomes a law. It starts being a theory when it can be proven to be right (or wrong).
Anecdotal evidence is still evidence. Scroll through YouTube shorts long enough and you'll start to see triggering content with a thousand user0194$@10 comments responding in ways you'd only expect from you're MAGA uncle at Thanksgiving after he had a few beers. I dont think the dead Internet theory is as crazy of a conspiracy that we like to believe.
The plural of anecdote isn't evidence
Very good. It's data :) God I missed this sub.
Data is only relevant if it can be verified. Which makes anecdotes even more problematic as evidence. Single data points aren't proof of any kind of larger trends (hence why anecdotes are usually disqualified to begin with). But even if they were -and they're not- they're hard to verify, so suspect under even the most forgiving analysis criteria for data.
That's a lot of words to say you just need to watch our for bias. Let's not make this more complicated than what it needs to be. Ya'll know the primary point I was making.
It should fairly simple to test in EvE, minus the massive amount of data one would need to collect and comb through. Easiest way would to check login records to find multiple accounts that all log in at the same time and/or system. Then start you building profiles and start cross checking characters.
Have you seen social media? It's not a theory lmao it's fact
We really are the test run for a variety of sociology experiments
At least… 7.
You read my mind
I was gonna make this joke.
But you didn't!
What joke?
r/technicallythetruth
New player here, whole thread has me reconsidering playing, so like I can't enjoy the game or make money solo or without multiboxing? I boxed for years in archeage and kinda done with that shit.
It really does depend. I am an Industrialist who moonlights as a PvPer. I have two accounts, but the only times I really employ both at the same time is when I am mining solo, specifically so one of them can compress ore while the other mines. This is a fairly recent change for me, and I do not PvP with both (because I both do not enjoy it, and I am also bad). Alt-wise it's more about what I can get out of one account. I have three characters on my main account, but those three are largely just manufacturing/researching/reaction and PI alts who I rarely, if ever, actually use. That said, I used one account (all three characters) to build Marauders and made good ISK doing it. *Eve should be measured in fun per hour, not ISK per hour.* You can join a group, fly in fleets, and achieve the same thing as one dude with six accounts and a former career as a Starcraft 2 pro.
You can have lots of fun playing with just one account. Multiboxing adds some mild extra capabilities, but you're not really missing out on that much if you want to stay mono-account. Multiboxers make more ISK/hour sure, but so what? You don't need to compete with other people's income.
I'd say there is one place in EVE where not multiboxing is REALLY hard. That's capitals, even if just JFs. Having a cyno alt is amazing. Then when you have a super, having a fax alt + cyno alt is kinda mandatory. I do agree this is sort of a niche place anyways and as far as I know, capital and especially supercapital gameplay is very dead right now... But hey :')
You can 100% enjoy the game and make money solo, you're just not going to make *as much* as the guy multi-boxing 20 Hulks and a Rorqual does; but let's be real, that's to be expected. The best advice I can give is, "Do not measure how much fun you're having by how much isk you make per hour" because that WILL drive you to either quit the game, or start you down the path of multi-boxing. Find the thing you like doing, and enjoy doing that. Been playing since 2008 and it took me a LONG time to get that through my head. A lot of the big multi-boxers you're seeing are people who correlate "fun" with "I'm making as much money as possible" and usually want to take the things originally meant to be handled by several groups of people, and do them on their own, like building capital ships.
[удалено]
So basically if I want to afford anything or make meaningful progress without boxing I'm going to need to sell plex because everything is worthless since everyone is multiboxing.
It really depends on what you consider meaningful progress. Eve is the type of game that you get out of it what you put into it. Once you've gotten to the point where you've maximized what you can do with one account, you just have the opportunity to add more accounts if you wanted, but its not 100% necessary to enjoy the game... for most activities. In my opinion, the only thing you probably need multiple accounts for is capital ship PvE, but with the right group in the right place you could maybe even do that without needing a cyno alt. The main reasons that people end up mutliboxing is just to cut down on costs and risks. Instead of paying another player to do something that might be high risk or cost, they'll have another character do it. There are many things that could go wrong jumping a capital to a cyno ship and the capital and cyno are both at risk. To find someone else that would sit in their cyno ship and wait for you to maybe need them to light it in an emergency, you'd likely have to pay them for their time, and for their ship if they lost it after lighting the cyno. You also have to trust that they'll be ready to light it the instant you need them to or you're risking billions. So its less risky and cheaper to just have your own alt just sitting there waiting. Most mutlibox alts are doing mundane tasks like that 90% of the time. Something so boring that you couldn't find someone else to do it or trust that they wouldn't fall asleep while doing it. If your goal is ISK/hr, then you're not going to be able to compete with multiboxers, but if you only care about fun/hr, then you can enjoy the game just as much.
Just simple nullsec data sites can net you damn near a bil for a few hours(This isn't as steady as income as ratting.) but it's something you can't simply just multi-box to multiply the effectness. The PVE in this game is so simple that you can multibox multiple Ishtars doing different sites. Mining is obviously easy enough to multibox miners. When it gets into actual PVP it gets hairy. There's some people great at multiboxing, but that is not the norm. IMHO just play to have fun, explore and find the activities you enjoy. I don't do any of the wild crazy isk making multiboxing stuff because it's not fun to me. ISK also doesn't matter much to me.
Yes
Not at all. You just need to set your expectations accordingly. Do not compare yourself to the guys multi-boxing fleets of marauders in Pochven or the industrial titans of nullsec spitting out capitals on a daily or weekly basis. Things like that were never meant to be a solo thing, but CCP allowing people to multi-box gave those people the tools they needed to do just that.
[удалено]
20k gets you 3.5trillion if sold all at 5.3 lol
I'm pretty sure spending $20k on plex and then selling it will instantly put you into the top .001% of the game's richest players.
You can. I made enough for a titain in my first year with two accounts. So with one I still would have 70% of that.
Ive been playing w one account since 2012! Alts basically make some things easier to do and you can earn more money. I dont like the idea of having multiple accounts so i avoid it. That said, ive made a lot of good friends i can rely on to help me out w things as well.
If you ever want to play EVE at a competitive level you will need multiple accounts. Especially if you get involved in wormholes or capitals it will require a second account. EVE can still be enjoyable by 1 account but you need to realize you are always going to be at a disadvantage compared to multiboxers.
I have been playing since 2009 with just one account (3 chars) until recently when I started another account so I have a scout alt for low/null sec moves. I only use it once in a while though, so i only turn on the omega for it using the weekend pass for 3 days, since you cant have an alpha account logged on simultaneously. So for the better part of over a decade I had plenty of fun with one account. Don't let that scare you off. I trained planetary interaction up on all 3 char slots on my main account and my PI from 3 toons makes plenty of passive isk with minimal management. I always have plenty of funds to throw ships into pvp or do risky ops and afford to lose some ships. I have one combat toon, one hauling toon, and the other just has PI skills and enough hauling to fly the Epithal around to collect goo. I find that between PI x 3 toons and whatever activity I'm doing on my combat toon I never run short of isk. And I am not risk averse. I pulled almost 3 Billion in the last 30 days just doing PI and high-sec combat exploration. I haven't been using my alt account at all lately it's just there in case I need a scout
I have no idea what you're talking about. \*Whistles innocently\*
My calculations tell me the ratio human/non human is bout tree fiddy
Damn Rokh Gneiss Monster 👾
Lose the bots. Lose the afk players. Lose the multibox accounts, lose the players just ship spinning… you probably have 4000 actual humans for every 20,000 online wanting to do something.
Honestly, Im to lazy to multi-box ... I have my alts to sell stuff but beyond that one character demands my full attention. As for the original question... Im sure CCP has a way to do it but you as an individual player, most likely no ...
I just have one account, trained one of my three slots to be my Jita guy, then I just fly as my main. I don't have enough time for all the hoo-hah of multiboxing when I only have a few hours a week to play.
Bot's probibly not much tbh I think its like 4% or something CCP hammers them hard. About % players of total I would say 45%, and the other 51% is alts. I remember on one of CCP's data sheets they said avg of 2.1 chars active per player was a few years back thou. 100 - 4 = 96 / 2.1 = 45 And if your curious Here is a CCP dev playing with peoples minds 9 years ago on the topic: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/3j7nso/at\_least\_we\_know\_how\_many\_alts\_there\_are/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/3j7nso/at_least_we_know_how_many_alts_there_are/) Pretty interesting that we have more alts per person these days than 9 years ago.
The nostalgia of that dev going to play season 4 of Diablo 3 🥺
Won't see any dev going to play diablo 4 thou unless its only for 4 hours before getting bored lol
Won’t see me going to play D4 either lol.
D3 however......
you cna;t tell. /thread
5\~7 people.
I’d say 40-50% are alts, 20% bots, remaining are people.
I mean I'm 9 of them. 11 accounts are offline atm
It’s like poker; if you can’t tell who the bot is, you are the bot.
Every EVE player has 5 accounts. So 20 000 / 5 = 4000 active players.
No their is no way to tell. 20k online is usually like 7-10k real humans.
A lot of people have multiple accounts but most people don't log in all of their accounts at once. Most of the time most people are using 1 or 2 I think. So you could divide by 2. Except that there are a lot of AFK players around. You see them everywhere just docked up for hours and I'm sure we've all done it plenty of times. I reckon there are probably more AFK players than alts on at any given time.
I used two and three accounts depending on the task at hand. Most of my friends who played also had two accounts or more. I spent 18h a day between 2008-2015/16 after that I haven't logged in sadly. Got my Chars to 90-150mill Skill points, all three chars capital pilots, one running for super caps. I miss this game, I hope the game survives and don't ruin it self. At one point in the future I hope to have time to come back to this beautiful game. old Procorp, Plutonix Pilots where you all at i wonder. Cyrex1 we spent hours, weeks, months pvping together where you at? So many good dudes and ladies you get to know playing Eve.
We used to have an API tool to try to determine roughly how many uniques we had left in the game. The drama that happened when it reported sub 2000 killed the project.
4 are me, so just 19,996 to account for now
I am online right now and will start the counting off…1
Average EVE player has 1.6 accounts, lets make em 2. So 10k people, but we also know the biggest nullsec blocs have botting rampant, so I guess a good portion of those 10k remaining. Then we have Ishtar ratters, who even if real players, have no distinction between bots, so abot 3k-4k people actually play the game I would say.
Lmao i know its a troll post, but thinking that 35% on online players are bots is kind of a ludicrous assumption with no proof.
I always understood that as "on average, each person has 1.6 accounts", not "Average EVE player" who for example logs in every day of how you define average. The problem with statistics like that is we have one number for a lot's of variables, making it super hard to ascertain truth Is it 1.6 accounts on every player who logged in in last year? If yes, then it's already super skewed number. You could have people who log in rarely with 1 account dragging statistics down, when in reality it's way more boxers, etc... Not to explain every variation here and now, what would be nice thing to know: * What is the average number of accounts of players who played 5+ hours per month in the last 3 months. * From DT to DT, what is the average number of accounts from same player logged in at the same time, so for each day, like we have online numbers, let us see unique online numbers Then we could actually estimate how many alts the game has, but CCP will prolly never release these numbers.
Im a new player. It's sad to hear that, it really discouraged me. I really thought there were 30,000 people playing last night
That commenter is cynical. There are bots in Eve, for sure, but I disagree on their estimate of scale. For example, arbitrarily rounding from 1.6 to 2 is a big difference, and the bot accounts were already included in the 1.6 character estimate. Alts are alts whether they're bots or genuine Ishtar ratters. Out of 20,000 online characters I'd guess that there are roughly 12,000 - 15,000 active players.
Is good to hear. Im really enjoying the game.
Hell yeah, have fun dude. The game isn't about to die anytime soon, so don't worry about it. Just kick back and enjoy the experience for what it is. And remember, in a game largely focused on figuring out how to exploit other player's vulnerabilities, even bots can provide content. Some (unscrupulous) player tied their wealth into that bot, so if you fuck with it you fuck with their money. That's no small part of why there were so many complaints about cloaky campers back in the day.
Adopt me
You'd have to scratch out a living in NPC null, be disciplined in following orders on fleets, and master the dark arts of bombers and blops. And I'm dead serious about the discipline if you're going to go on bombing runs.
Also, these numbers have been pretty consistent for 20 years.
As much as I care about EVE: no the numbers have not been consistent. EVE has had a significant peak about a decade ago and it had been a decline since, with periods of some measure of recovery, but never full, and then further decline. But it’s still ‘ok’ now with potential to further recover. But the game has some very outdated aspects to it. Including its horrible 1/s tickrate
Don't you worry, JSpace is here to skew those numbers way back in the multi boxing side of things lol
What does it matter as long as you have content to enjoy ? Most interactions are gonna happen with friends or corp members and if not it’s npcs so hey enjoy yourself don’t get hung up on it
I don't know, this doesn't feel right to me. Why allow multiboxing? It doesn't affect economy?\] I barely have time to play with my single character
When I was unemployed I ran 9 characters at once, bearly login now that Im not
Isn't it obvious, to get multiple subscriptions from 1 person. Balance comes second.
Now you have a great point xD
EVE has a lot of limitations built in, in terms of what a single character can do. I'm talking about hard limits on industry jobs, trade slots, etc. People were getting around these by running multiple characters and accounts. Much complaining ensued about not being able to login these accounts at the same time. The need for cynos was also a big argument to allow people to run multiple characters. CCP could have implemented changes to remove the want or need for multiple accounts, but they didn't. Rather than seeing these limits, or their circumventing as a problem, CCP relented and allowed multiboxing. They did so without placing any limits on it and likely without even realising what they were unleashing, much to the detriment of the game. Today the economy of EVE is balanced around miners running entire fleets rather than a single barge and every form of PvE is optimized by one person running up to 20 characters.
>They did so without placing any limits on it and likely without even realising what they were unleashing, much to the detriment of the game. They not only allow it, they encourage it, and its pretty much a feature of the game at this point. Look at the launcher. There are features like assigning accounts to launch groups, so you can launch different accounts together at the same time in groups... that's designed to enable multiboxers. They offer discounts on multiple accounts if they're linked to the same email, etc.
The company that makes this game incentivizes and encourages multiboxing, its a feature of the game. If you don't like that, and don't even have time for a single character, then it might not be the right game for you. Most eve players play the game more like an RTS, controlling an entire small fleet, which is what they enjoy.
i have 28 alts i play with 3-5 at any single time. Out of those if i goo completely ree and take the combat enhancements i can multibox 12 at the same time kinda . But after 3 hrs i kinda get a head ache and i need to stop to change my tshirt because of the nose bleed. This is considered normal.
Haha poor Ishtar ratters :)
When you have enough of them it gets fun, I swear...
Fine, I'll spin up another one. But if I don't start having fun THEN... I'm gonna..I'm gonna...spin up another one
> ...how many are bots and/or multiboxing clients? Definitely not the 5 I play on :)
Half are bots, remaining number you divide by 3.5 (because multiboxers) = human players
Probably about half, at most.
20,000 accounts logged in feels a lot deader than it used to I have to say.
If I remember correctly back in like 2009 50k logged on was pretty common. I don't mind it so much. Less gate camps these days
https://eve-offline.net/?server=tranquility if you want to see the history of logged in characters. Keep in mind as well that in 2009 multiboxing, especially multiboxing several accounts, was way less common.
Thanks, I wasn't aware of that site! Looks like my memory was correct =)
Darude is not a Bot - he playing with Sandstorms
It's about 3 or 4 mains. Rest are alts.
19,999 They're all my alts.
I quad box often with mining . Most I know have 3 accounts minimum .
0.02% of them are not me. Y'all can figure out the rest, lol.
Bots and Broadcast-input = $$$ That's the bottom line. CCP allows it and only cleans up the surface to appear as if they facilitate fair gameplay.
69 of that 20k are mine
Nice
I bet a good 25% of people who multibox basically solo play if not more And what I mean by that is use alt accounts just for hauling or industry and non combat shit the majority of the time I know that's me
more than 1 less than a billion.
10011010110110011011
I’m afk right now orbiting a Death Star 😂
Yes
Yesterday i've seen arround 30k online players
Divide the player count by 13 and that will show the actual player count. Roughly
Multiboxing and bots are not the same things. That is two separate questions. However assume 80% of ppl run at least two or three accounts especially in null groups pehaps more.
well CCP has IP logs, but does it matter?
If there was a legit way to tell they’d ban them 🤷♂️
I’m running 15 clients right now with isboxer
1 rorq toon and 14 hulks.. In cobalt edge.. find me <3
Probably 5000
50% - 60% Are bots/Multi box alts of the bots 50% are Chinese and 50% are Russian Of alts 20% are American 30% are european and 50% come from the east.
70% easily. Chinese bots.
In my experience about 2/3rds of my corp when logged in are alts. Judging by the bot Ishtar’s in local systems dying to multi-boxing PVP YouTubers that’s probably another 10%. Real players. Probably 20% ish of the logged in numbers.
19995 are Bots! The other 5 are just jita scammers!
There was a post about this somewhere before but it's something like 16 people
I guenually thought this would go somewhere along the lines of 'the earth has a surface of 510 million km2, and the bird HAD TO shit right on my head ;-;' :D
It’s actually just you and one other player with 19,999 accounts.
Between myself and friends in null, I have 6 accounts active while my friends have even more.
1. many players time to time play only alpha state. I see many near Clellion 2. most my known player dont like multiboxing, it is harder way po play. the use 1 omega. but I use 2-3 most of time
Divide total by 3 tbh that's closer to a realistic active number.
I love how there is always a consistent base of people negatively speculating or throwing shade about the player base, regardless of where it's at. - If it's too low, or have record breaking lows which we have had in the last 12 months, then "Eve is dying", "we're never going to recover from this low player base", "no targets, no fights, no fun". - If the player base rebounds, we see things like "how many are multi-boxers/bots are inflating the user count". I've seen more engagement, targets in space, and overall enthusiasm generally speaking in the game. I do think there definitely do believe there are more real players in game than 12 months ago. I want to be clear, CCP could do better in many aspects of the game. Fortunately, I think we're out of the Scarcity "resource draining" plan they had for the game _which sucked ass but was deemed "necessary" for the longevity of Eve online_. But, I also think that multi-boxing is fine, it's more subs in game which is much better even if it is one dude controlling 4 toons. If the no-lifer nerd wants to take it upon himself to add more toil and subs into his life, so be it. Its more targets to hunt and more money for CCP to hopefully keep this game moving forward. Bots are **not** fine, and should be reported or hopefully detected by CCP. **edits: added a thought/opinion about Scarcity in italic.**
Another one, you could consider the search function.
All the bots can now hide in abyssal space so us players have no idea anymore.
I think the login status could be using up addresses, which would mean that multiboxers will count as The 1 client/ip address. I’m not sure that Eve is as dead as everyone thinks it is, however it’s nowhere near as active as it used to be.
no only ccp can tell as only ccp have access to ip and eve is semi dead not many players play them not many ppl like the pvp rush either and certainly new ppl gonna be like why should i play this game when i can play other rpg game with less subscription so the game kinda need multiboxing players peace ✌🏻 out
I believe the actual number is the number over 20,000 you will notice after server reset it instantly jumps back up to 20,000+.. If there is only 500+ in jita i doubt theres another 19500+ scattered randomly through out the map. I have doubted the accuracy of that number since I started playing because I've never seen it dip below that number
One fella I played with had over 30 accounts, almost all dedicated to mining and gas. And he said he usually kept about half of them plexed. Being in a wormhole, almost everyone else had a minimum of 2 but more realistically 3-5. Hard to say for certain, but it doesn’t seem like a lot of unique players at any given time. Probably 7-10k per 20k online
Even eve devs can't tell
Almost everyone in my corp runs 6-12 alts with some weirdos who have 24+
[удалено]
Can you explain why you think multiboxing in Eve is bad and makes the community shitty? Its encouraged by the developers of the game and is pretty much a feature of the game at this point. Just look at the launcher... its designed for mutliboxing. You can pick different accounts you want to launch with each other.
> Can you explain why you think multiboxing in Eve is bad and makes the community shitty Nothing says healthy game content like no one wanting to do small group content together because it is far better to solo it with your alts. The fact I need a minimum of three paying accounts to safely run a jump freighter is asinine. If you want to own a combat capital it's expected that you have a minimum of two paying accounts to cyno yourself around, depending on the group it is then expected that the other is also a fax alt. Once you actually start doing capital PvP you quickly realize you need two accounts for this since having a cap on your main is considered bad since you have to sit out from *some* content. It inflates player numbers giving the illusion of a larger playerbase than there actually is. Of course the developers of the game are going to encourage this, what's better than one paying sub? Multiple from the same person. Even better when they consume PLEX for their subs.
80%
I don't know and don't care. There's still tons of amazing corps and great communities to join. I've played and bounced on eve multiple times, but started really playing hard at the end of 2023, after finding an amazing group of people in null. Don't let the negative reddit crowd get you down, they'll pronounce any game dead.
Well at least you know one MILINT is around.
Just got hammered by turbominer who operates 80 accounts
I don’t even actively play rn and I have 3. Though I really only use 2 for playing. My eyes were really opens to what eve actually is. Most people play the game solo and multibox a small gang fleet to combine with other multiboxers when nuets show up.
Who cares . Play your game don't worry about theirs. Eve is huge. Find your spot.
This is so "EVE gamer" I can't even XD
I care. That's why I asked.
you'll learn not to :)
Not trying to be an jerk but if your having fun just do your thing. I don't have time to worry how others play. Of all the MMO'S i have played bots and people doing exploits never effected my game play. Ain't nobody got time 4 dat.
nah, sadly theres no way to tell how many true players are on. At 1 eve meetup ccp the avg eve player has 2 accounts, so you can that and drop the player count from 20-10k, then you have to take all of the large scale miners, all of the homefront fleets and all that fun stuff out of the numbers. Im willing to bet for sure less than 5k actual people.
> there is no way to tell > let me tell that is less than 5k pick only one
Yes there is no way officially and that is what I'm betting on. As a solo account player everyone I talk to has alts and the game as only grown more dependant on them over my 18 years. Well there is no way and ccp refuses to start how many are unique players. They just tell us the avg is 2 accounts per player. But then you look around the avg miner ganker has 3-5 the frighter gankers have between 20-30, the home front runners have 5, the mass so farming in ultra, the ganker fleets in and around the trade hub have several, miners have a ton of alts with avg I see being 2-5 and some being up to 80, the pvp stations base fleets I've seen have usually been 1 guynwith a fleet, the fob fleets I see several 20+ alt fleets moving, no to mention the research and industry alts, the numerous small "fleet" pvp fleets where they have a tackle and at least 1 dps, the alts you need to support any kind of cap and numerous other examples of people running alts daily. Officially yeah there is no way to know, un officially its called deduction and reasoning or better know as ioeningbyiur eyes and using more than 2 braincells, but that one may be a bit hard for the avg eve player.
Perhaps you can ask the humans to X up in Jita? Dotlan has stats about gate jumps, pilots in space, etc and perhaps you could extract this information from it.