EVE General Discussion

Hardly. It's just a statement of fact. If you have little to no expendable cash then spending money on video games should be very low on your priority list. Harsh, but true.


As for the OP's idea... as others have pointed out there are too many ways to exploit this. Just have accounts for everything including, but not limited to...

- spy alts (doesn't require skillpoints)...
- cyno scouts (which can be trained in under a month and also won't have to worry about skillpoint loss because it will have less than 900k skillpoints... which is completely covered under the basic free clone service)...
- hauler alts (requires less than a month of training... basic versions of these alts won't exceed 900k skillpoints and will be covered by the free clone service)...
- market/trading alts (which won't worry about skillpoints or being podded since they always stay in station)...
- mining alts (similar to trading alts... but they do undock. Just use Procurers and stay in NPC corps and you won't have to worry about ganks or wars)...

The list goes on.

This also doesn't take into account that mission runners and high-sec carebears who have just the right amount of skillpoints they need, never participate in PvP (or put themselves at risk in any way), and hide in NPC corps will see no need to pay for their accounts either. They have what they want. They haven't lost a clone in "X" amount of years. Why should they pay more unless they have to (if they get ganked for the first time in months/years)?


I see it quite clearly...
Under the OP's system PLEX use will initially spike as everyone trains up all their alts... followed by a slow and painful decline in both PLEX use and subs as people get all the necessary SP they need for their new, free to play, alts.

Then CCP will introduce Pandas and other **** just to encourage us to pay again. And a [horrible] cycle "boom-bust" sub numbers will begin.

If your friends are having trouble financially and are unable to plex ingame also, then maybe you could help them stay in the game. Run missions with them when they're on and make them not share their mission rewards while you share yours. Buy their ore at a generous price. Be there for them.

Eve may be a cold world but friends can provide a hot meal (and a cold drink) in a comfy station to drive out the chill, together.


I'm having a bit of trouble myself. Fixed incomes are a joke. Started playing on a buddy trial and someone lent me a plex so I could train skills to earn isk faster. The buddy trial gave me a couple of hundred isk, which helped me get started with a little buffer. After realizing I sucked at station trading, I trained a miner and mined for my plex for two months, 4-6 hours a day every day... after a month I stopped training my miner and trained this one towards level 4 missions. Then once Xera was in training my corpies helped me get into incursions. Plex became a lot easier. I helped two miner friends stay in the game when plex prices spiked and all they had were miners similar to mine, with less playtime and lower ore prices. Now they're training for level 4 missions because I helped them understand what skills they would need. I'm not even in a battleship yet (needs 14 days of training) and the community has been very helpful. Someone gave me a Hyperion so I would only have to buy the fittings. (Someone gave him isk randomly and he passed on the good luck when I jokingly asked for a ship, lol!) With the money from incursions and the free ship I was able to pay back the loan.

Due to the new ui changes for Odyssey I can't do incursions or level 4 missions right now (the new target flickering gives me a headache) and I don't know if I will be able to make a plex next month without any combat activity. Mining is only fun when you don't HAVE to do it for hours every day just to make a plex to mine some more...

But I know that those friends I helped will help me get a plex when I come back if I need to leave the game for a while, because in about a month they'll be doing level 4 missions because of me. Or maybe I can salvage missions for corpies until the graphics problem is fixed.

The mechanics are fine how they are. CCP deserves to get paid, and the way it works now those who are willing to pay real money instead of working Eve as a job are helping those of us who currently have to treat Eve as a job to play at all. Best FTP mechanics ever. It's funny how in such a cruel game they managed a way to have everyone win.