u/halkito

I really like eve, but the normalized multiboxing is making me want to quit way more than the learning curve.

I’ve discovered eve recently and started playing it, I joined eve university, I’ve been trying to learn the game properly, and honestly there is a lot about it that I really like

I like that the game is complicated. I like that there are a shit ton of systems. I like that you have to actually learn things and that the game doesn’t just handhold you through everything. The danger, the economy, the ships, the weird social/political side of it, all of that is cool to me.

So this isn’t really a “eve is too hard” post

The part that feels bad to me is how normalized multiboxing seems to be

As a new player, it is extremely off-putting to realize that a big part of "playing efficiently" seems to involve having multiple accounts doing different things at the same time.

and I know people are going to say "you don’t NEED to multibox", and sure, technically you don’t need to do anything. You can play however you want. But there is a difference between "you don’t need to" and "the game/meta clearly rewards this heavily enough that it starts feeling like the expected way to play" and that’s the issue for me

It’s not just that I don’t want to manage several accounts. It’s that I don’t even know IF I would enjoy managing several accounts until I’ve already invested a significant amount of time and probably money into the game

maybe multiboxing is fun, but that’s a really, really, really big IF

from my perspective, the path feels like:

- start playing the game
- enjoy it
- realize omega is basically the real game
- pay for omega
- spend a bunch more time learning/farming
- then maybe eventually pay for or farm another omega account
- then maybe multibox
- then maybe discover that controlling multiple clients is actually as bad as it sounds

That feels like such a bad proposition for a new player

The game itself is extremely fun, which is what makes this frustrating. If i thought eve was boring I would just quit and not care. But I do like it. I like the complexity. I like the learning curve. I like the idea of losing ships mattering, I like the politics.

What I don’t like is the feeling that playing one account means I'm basically choosing to be inefficient or disadvantaged before I’ve even gotten properly invested

getting killed by veterans doesn’t scare me off. losing ships doesn’t scare me off. having to learn the game doesn’t scare me off

what scares me off is the impression that the "real" way to play eventually becomes account management, and I’m just not willing to pay for omega, then spend more time farming towards another omega account, just to find out that multiboxing is not even fun to me

I'm not saying multiboxing should be banned tomorrow or whatever. I get that it’s deeply baked into the game at this point

but from a new player perspective, it feels really bad. it makes the game feel less like "this is a hard sandbox mmo" and more like "you’re going to be competing with people who are effectively playing several characters at once"

and yeah, that is a much bigger turn off to me than eve being dangerous or complicated