EVE General Discussion

Each alt is on a separate account.

You are paying for the account with PLEX - Albeit with signup PLEX.

I believe that PLEX transfer is your question. I am not sure if you can receive a PLEX for "yourself" as opposed to new players.

Is this about right in what you are asking?

Basically the process is activate buddy trail 21 day malarky, transfer ISK, buy plex on alt, activate. I have done this before when I first decided to get a mining alt and it gave me game time on my main. As far as I am aware and have been told that is completely fine in of itself.

However, my question is more related to the recyling of alts in order to constantly have cyno alts you never actually need to pay extra for and of course the rookie chat question as well.

That's my issue, the word "abuse" is vauge and there is a gradient between avoiding sec status punishment and rolling an account to keep being able to post in rookie, on which side of legality do cyno alts sit exactly?

Do you know of any actual rulings made pertaining to cyno alts specifically? I've definitely heard the lion's share about pirate alts but I can't for the life of me find anything on cyno alts.

"Rulings" on game moderation are strictly between the player and the GM, so no, I do not have access to any. Abuse is whatever CCP feels is bad for the game or their finances. People running two accounts for the price of one, while generating useless inactive accounts, sounds like both of those put together.

You could file a rules petition asking specifically if this is allowed, or hope for a GM post in this thread, but I wouldn't try your idea before getting confirmation it's okay.

Vagueness is necessary for that sort of policy - otherwise players would instantly start looking for loopholes.

A sufficiently vague policy allows the GM to take likely intent and circumstances into account when making a decision and it prevents the policy from having to be updated each time some player thinks he found a new loophole.

Your "question" sounds to me like

"Dear CCP, I want the utility from two accounts but I don't want to pay for two. Are you ok with me abusing the buddy system to achieve the desired result?"

Now read that question and use your commonsense.

What is the intended purpose of the trial system and buddy program?
What is the motivation of your use case?
Are the intended purpose and your purpose at odds with each other?
How do your intended action affect (a) gameplay and (b) CCP's coffers?

I don't know what's wrong with people (and maybe it's culture/internet-related) but I am getting pretty fed up with all the people who knowingly ignore the intent of restrictions/rules so they can find "clever" loopholes by interpreting everything as literally as possible.
What kind of thinking is that? I know that what I am going to do is not ok but now I will just turn my brain off and pretend I'm mentally ******** so i can justify doing it anyways.
Don't like playing by the rules and don't have the balls to admit to yourself that this is the case? Spent too much time dealing with byzantine bureaucracies and lost your commonsense on the way? Think the other guy doesn't realize what you are up to?

Separate characters on a secondary account, third account and so on, to serve a purpose is not an exploit. To fuel the very notion is just silly.

It would be a exploit if you had character A and character B on one account and being logged on character A and character B at the same time.

edit: If you just use (abuse) the buddy system to make a bunch of disposable account to light cynos or whatever, then you are just a douchebag and I fully support CCP in banning these individuals that take advantage of the system.

Yup you would get banned of you did that.

From the initial OP question, I think its a sort of an exploit, but not an obvious one.
You can use that way to infinatly make new accounts.
Account A invite B, B before ending invites C and send plex to A, C before ending invites D and send plex to A and so on.
The only account you need to pay for is A.

As long as CCP say "this is not allowed", I'm not sure you will get banned.

But basically you can use that way to make a new account, train a character for almost free, and sell it for the price of 2xplex + a few extra ISK to make a profit, and than kill that account.

You can also use that way for example to chain invite 3-4 accounts, train them to gank, use them to gank for a couple of weeks, and than before the end make new accounts with fresh characters, 0.0 security, and restart the fun.

This in a whole opens a lot of options.

Unless something has changed recently, alts have no effect where the Rookie help channel is concerned. Rookie help is only available for 30 days from when you start the account. But of course the other help channel is available.

In the past, CCP has come down hard on people who abuse the buddy system. I don't think the case the OP lays out would result in a full ban or anything, but CCP might take away the offender's ability to use the buddy program. Someone who creates a number of new alts at once and farms game time with the buddy program on a bigger scale very well might get a ban for it though.