EVE Online is a game that seemingly needs alt accounts to play fully. However, I do not want to actually use alt accounts, as I'm just happy with my own main account.
If I choose to continue not having an alternate account, what game features and progresses will become unavailable to me? In other words, what experiences (and experience opportunities) will I lose without having an alt?
Best Answer
While many features are designed to scale with more characters, and thus are strongly recommended by alts, there really is only one thing that is considered a need for an alt: Capital ships.
Capital ships do not have a normal navigation system, while they can now use Stargates, doing that by yourself is very risky. Additionally many alliances in Nullsec do have Cyno beacons you can jump to freely, however they can still be trapped, or otherwise require a second character to scout.
To realistically be a capital pilot in any measure you require two accounts, one to be your cyno, and one to be the capital pilot. The nice thing is the cyno alt doesn't have to be active in anyway beyond lighting your cynos for personal movements, as many combat maneuvers will be done in a group, where a cyno will be provided. All that said having any capital ship without a cyno alt is basically asking to die eventually.
Other tasks that are generally considered to require an alt:
On the other hand, with the combat boosting changes coming in November, the playing field between alt assisted players and truly solo players is going to be significantly improved. So there is that.
As the other answer has said, technically most of this can be done by friends and other players, but EVE is about trust. And you never know what is on the other end of the jump unless you have eyes on it yourself.
Edit: Update - The changes to boosting did encourage solo gameplay. Also, the addition of solo content such as the Abyss has vastly increased solo play activities.