EVE Information Portal

Changes are coming to Trial account restrictions. With these changes, CCP Terminus and the rest of Team Size Matters hope to make things easier for new players trying out EVE Online for the first time. Read more details here.

You're too early, it's still propagating though the internet tubes. Internet tube propagation complete, should be all good now.

These look like sensible changes.

Will all of the hints (including in the item description) be hidden from players with a subscription?

It's nice to see that you're opening up some activities like FW to trials. Especially on a 21 day trial, that's more than enough time to get bored of level 2 missions and wish you could do more and get further hooked on the game. I just hope you have some sort of flag system set up to track players siphoning isk out of FW plexing onto paid accounts through activities like purchasing an overpriced item on market, with all this tracking you mentioned.

Error:
"Skills that are currently restricted which will remain restricted:
...
Battlecruisers
..."

"Skills which are currently restricted that we will be allowing trial accounts to train are:
...
Amarr Battlecruiser
Caldari Battlecruiser
Gallente Battlecruiser
Minmatar Battlecruiser
..."


Now... Cloaking remains restricted.
I know you want to protect players who suffer from "afk-camperphobia", but back when I was a Trial I really missed the cloak.
I wanted to try exploration and highsec exploration wasn't worth it (if you found anything at all).
Lowsec exploration or even nullsec exploration is already hard enough if you don't know the game mechanics, but without cloak deep in nullsec you can't even pause the game for 10 minutes.

Maybe give trial pilots a "TRIAL" sign (like the "WANTED") so noone needs to shiver because cyno is restricted on trials.
That way you could give trials cloak... and cloaking your ship is a cool thing, don't you agree?

Good catch, it's been fixed.

As for the cloaking, yeah that will most likely lead to a large amount of headaches.

Do they afk-camp Jove space, too?
As I said, mark them as Trials, visible to everyone. Trial = no cyno = no brown/yellow pants.
Unsure, though, if a trial flag would motivate players to help the "newbro's" - or scam them out of game.

Fantastic changes. I've been advocating allowing trial account players into FW for a long time--it is a great way for them to make isk, learn where to find PVP, and join newbie-friendly PVP groups. I expect an increase in player retention as trial players join FW, then join newbie friendly corporations in FW, and stick around as a a result. I hope that public fleets in FW make efforts to include trial account players, in addition to newbie friendly FW corporations recruiting them.

HOWEVER, one big issue: How will FW PVP in rookie systems / career agent systems / Arnon be handled? Currently, FW players can go into newbie systems and fight enemy FW--and those players, currently, at least are not trial account players. However, with the change, we are now potentially going to have a lot of trial account players who know little to nothing about PVP and aggression mechanics at risk of dying to HS FW killers. This might not be a serious worry--after all, if the player joins up for FW, they are notified that they are joining a PVP type game system. If "farming" in rookie systems becomes a problem, I can see FW players protecting rookie systems. I do think that players should be better informed by the UI when they join FW about the possibility of being killed in their own high security space by enemy players.

ANOTHER, secondary issue: Are there any UI elements being introduced to help explain to trial account players about NPC faction police in enemy high security space (i.e., that they will get blown up if they go into enemy HS)? Currently, the mechanics for NPC "police" in EVE are fairly complex, and I've found that new players in FW often do not understand the mechanics (in addiction to the fact that the in game map is terrible, it also makes it hard for new FW players to figure out what space is friendly and what space is enemy).

ALSO important: Some of the career agents direct new players to the Sisters of EVE line--and it is common for trial players to do this mission line. However, if the new player joins FW in Amarr or Caldari, they will get killed by faction police in Arnon.

i hope the fact that trials can now enter FW doesn't cause the same problems as it did before you added the restriction a while back

if a trial player (a real noob) wants to join FW he can just join a player corp.

Looking forward to a followup blog about trial accounts and skills when you have more data on how the changes were used. Good work.

/c