Great post, Galen!

Nah, it's just a way to look at your alts, as you said, obligated because they put that pilot through school.

As for the "free" comment, well, from the perspective of the main character, it is free, and that is the perspective you have to use to make the measure of "…whether or not the game play would have a different outcome as a result of metagaming", The main getting free stuff does give a different outcome, because he can sustain more of whatever he is doing because of the free source of income.

Of course it's not free for the alt, but that doesn't mean that gameplay hasn't changed.

Me personally, I don't run alts, as they diminish my immersion. I'm not a roleplayer (well not online anyway), but I like the fact that the EVE world is the most internally consistent MMORPG on the market. Most things in the game can do reasonably well when held up to the metric "Would things really work like this if this situation were real", and trading and industrial alts specifically diminish that aspect for me.

In my ideal world, people wouldn't run alts at all, but that being said, they don't come close to ruining the game for me…

Don't forget, you have the ability to create 3 characters per account. There is nothing stopping someone from creating that industrial alt to provide those cheaper modules to their main character. It's a matter of leveraging your character slots and thinking how to make things work for you.

That industrial alt is not providing 'free' modules to the main character. It cost time and materials for those modules or ships or minerals or whatever the alt is providing to the main. It's not that it ruins the game, it makes it easier for you if you need, say a research slot for a BPO. You have an identified person do to the work.

Granted, there are people who rent out research slots, but many people have been scammed by such things, hence the creation of industrial/research alts in the first place.

Don't get me wrong, EVE is a game that's meant to be played by a group of people and a group of people utilizing alts can accomplish a great deal. If we were not meant to use alts, why do we have the ability to create three characters per account? Why does CCP offer the 'Power of Two' promotion from time to time?

They do it because it's a game mechanic that is meant to be used.

Now, take a LARP for example. If someone metagames in a LARP, it immediately ruins the game. Use of that knowledge destroyed the immersion factor and changes the results of gameplay.

In order to use an alt in EVE, you are already immersed in the game, not the other way around. It's megatgaming, but the impact to the game play is very different. It enhances the activates, it does not dereail them.

In response to your observations, I do agree with you, Falcon pilot availability would probably not be as high if we were not allowed to create alt accounts. I do agree with you that the increased number of Falcon pilots in the game has changed things a bit. Falcons are overpowered, everyone knows this as many people create an alt to fly a Falcon. I can remember when everyone had Pilgrim and Curse alts as those ships pretty much killed the cap on anything they engaged. After the nos/neut balancing, the number of alts flying those ships decreased considerably as those pilots changed what they were trained on. It's funny, we have seen a number of Falcon pilots that are Amarr, wonder if they made the change from the Curse/Pilgrim to the Caldari recon ships. Some of the support skills would be useful for a Falcon pilot, including Recon shisp trained to level 5. It would not take that long to cross train into a Falcon.

You can always argue this point. Falcons in the current state to increase revenue for CCP as many people are creating Falcon alts for the sole purpose of PvP support, but I don't know how well that argument will hold water.

Alt do have an effect on the game, that point is not one that anyone can argue against. Does it ruin the game? I don't think it does. It provides some balancing to those people in smaller groups to be able to compete with the big boys.

I would like to take this point to another point of view. If alts were not allowed, then it would be the case that perhaps the Falcon would not be available as often to participate in combat thus making the PvP pilot more vulnerable. I.e. alts increases the supply of pilots in the game thus changing the dynamics.

So I would argue that alts are changing the game but I don't know if I would argue that they are ruining it.

As an aside, why did no one tell me about blog banter this month?

But that's not the same as funding another individual. Say for example a corp provides free ships to its members, but they have to buy their own modules. Someone with an industrial alt will also get a free/cheap source of modules (not free for the alt, but effectively free for the main), giving them a leg up over someone without an alt. And there is no reasonable expectation that someone without an alt would be able to talk an industrial character in to giving them free modules on a regular ongoing basis. There is again a difference in gameplay here. It's not a gamebreaking difference, because someone could simply skill up their main in time anyway (though at the cost of skills in other areas), but it's a difference none the less

And before you argue that you could talk a builder in to giving you free tech I modules or the like, remember it's to make an examaple. Replace modules with ships/minerals/research slots or whatever, and my point would still stand

I'm not saying that every industrialist in the game hands over all their isk, but they do make major contributions. It's the purpose of that profession to produce product and generate income.

In a nutshell, the characters in game are simply tools to accomplish an objective. It does not truly matter if those characters are being played by a single person or a group as the end result, an objective being accomplished, is the same.