Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The issue here is that a F2P system wouldn't work very well in EVE for balance reasons.

As Omnathious Deninard was trying to say... you can use the trial period to get all the skills you need for a menial task (hauling, trading, basic mining, etc) and then just keep the character as a free to play alt til the end of time. It never needs to train beyond the skills it needs.
Of course... you wouldn't need a trial period when the game is F2P... but the workaround for that is to just PLEX the account for a month and then let it lapse back to F2P once it has what it needs. And getting the ISK required to buy a PLEX isn't all that hard when you know what you are doing... even with no skills (ie you can scam, beg, get a loan, perform an out of game service, etc).

PLUS... given how enterprising and quickly EVE players take advantage of any loopholes you will most certainly see such characters being used en mass... which may have an adverse affect to the in-game economy and gameplay in general.

I could totally see myself getting a couple dozen cyno-scout alts (which require, at most, 2 weeks of training) and deploying them everywhere in low sec. My enemies would do the same.
I can see myself spending a bit of PLEX to get a couple dozen accounts to use mining barges (takes about a month of focused training), let them go to F2P, then strip belts I find to fund my activities (because really... why SHOULDN'T I take advantage of having as many free income sources as possible?) and keep the only account I really care about PLEXed.

What you'd have to do to make this idea even remotely balanced is by banning multiboxing, limiting one player to one account, and making WAY too many restrictions on what ships you can fly with what modules (which can be easily gotten around if you don't first ban multiboxing). I see neither of these things happening in the foreseeable future.

That might be the case if you're working with just one logical/physical machine, but the moment you bring in multiple PCs (with either friends, roommates, or just a KVM switch to swap controls while each machine is plugged into their own monitor) or virtual machines that restriction goes out the window. Yes, it's a violation of the ToS/EULA (at least if you use a VM IIRC), but CCP's going to have a hard time proving that that's what's going on.



Agreed. "Like" buttons/links without a "dislike" option are little more than lies in my less than humble opinion. I think it's grand that I have (ATP) 140 "Likes," but I have to wonder how many people would have Dislike'd stuff I've posted. I rather figure the number would be at least 3x the number of people who Like'd what I've posted.



Here's a prime example of this. Train a couple pilots to fly Ventures. Give them maximum nav skills, some moderate shield buffer skills, and then use them to haul ore for mining ops. At 4km3 a pop they aren't shabby haulers by any stretch, and if they might take more trips to unload an orca they'll make those trips faster than some industrials, and as long as they keep up with the mining ships it doesn't matter how many trips they need to make.



The old "PLEX a buddy invite to yourself for a free replacement PLEX" issue is a prime example of that. You could effectively PLEX as many "51 day trial" accounts at a time as you wanted, and within a few days they'd all be flying a retriever, industrial, or cheapo combat cruiser. I mention the latter because if you got one ship to aggro everything in the room you could use vexors or arbitrators, deploy dozens of light drones, and watch the mission get done in relative ease.



And if CCP had to ban multi-boxing I might very well have to quit playing the game. I've been playing the game about seven years now and I started multi-boxing within the first six months. At this point playing without multi-boxing practically makes my skin crawl.

Oh, yes, and CCP probably couldn't stop multi-boxing unless they made the client confirm that it's not being run in a virtual machine, a process which has been bypassed in several F2P MMOs, and/or not allow multiple connections from the same IP address which would effectively eliminate roommates/couples/families from playing together as well.

I could very easily see privacy nuts having a field day with the EVE Online client scanning active processes and whatnot to confirm that it's not being run in a virtual machine, and I could see the whole "friends and family" crowd having a field day with an "only one connection per IP address" restriction.

Sorry, but the limit on client connections when trial accounts are involved is so easy to bypass that it does little to nothing to negate any abuse concerns. In addition to the two methods I mentioned someone mentioned a supposed third method of bypassing the restriction without using multiple machines, physical or otherwise, to achieve it.

ShahFluffers' comment on CCP needing to block multi-boxing whole hog to make this idea workable was indeed quite accurate.

We should fight cheaters, but we shouldn't let them rule us. We shouldn't let them prevent the game from getting bigger and better. F2P would bring a whole host of positive aspects to the game. Saying we can't do good stuff because of cheaters is letting the cheaters define the game.

You are letting the cheaters win!

I think there is a VAST gulf between these two statements.
I'm sure that a perfectly reasonable middle ground could be accomplished that stops cheaters, and still allows real players to do their thing.

World of Warcraft has actively allowed multi-boxing for quite some time, and Rift has as well. Of course what makes Rift interesting as that it recently went F2P itself. Trion might have put multi-boxing limits on it as a response, or they might not have. It might be worth looking into to see both how they have handled it, what they have said about it, and what their take might be on, for example, people multi-boxing entire raids with free accounts.



The problem isn't that something might be abused, exploited, or worked around. It's that sooner or later, more often than CCP would appreciate it's sooner, it will be done, and with the player:employee ratio in excess of thousands to one we can probably find and exploit things faster than they can patch them.

That might be par for the course with gaming in general, but it's also a drain on CCP's resources.



Why couldn't they dock? Ventures are mining frigates with 5km3 ore holds (my bad on saying 4km3) that can be trained and used on trial accounts. Unless I missed something saying otherwise they are allowable under the current suggestion for restrictions to F2P accounts. Making them unusable by trial/free accounts would require an active change to current game mechanics and would in turn cause problems with getting potential industrialists to play the game.



Unfortunately EVE Online is really not the sort of game that works well in an F2P environment, and by and large I don't believe that the player base is one that would work well with a free EVE Online either. At the very least many players would begrudge the time and effort developers have to spend on making it a workable solution, most if not all effort spent on "vanity items," and then there's also the ongoing development cost of having to deal with a player base like EVE's who like to break things such as concurrent trial account login restrictions. That's not getting into what might happen if CCP introduces, or even suggests introducing, anything that might in any way, shape, or form give some sort of tangible benefit to someone in-game that is purchasable. Even if it's purchased via aurum it would still cause outcry.

I'm not against the idea where it's warranted, but EVE Online is working just fine as-is. I don't see any significant reason why CCP should give up being one of the few games out there that shows that it's still possible to grow your player base year after year while charging a monthly subscription fee. I also don't want to see EVE diminished in the ways it almost certainly would need to be diminished to support a free to play environment.

As for getting former players to come back and play it can be handled as simply as CCP taking a page from Blizzard and offering the occasional, "Hey, come on back and try the game for a week. A lot's changed and you might like it" temporary game time. In point of fact CCP has offered such things in the past, though I don't know if they still do it anymore. For that matter if CCP were to do a little work with contracts and bring back the loan style contract then people could come back and play under "Hours for PLEXes" take out a PLEX/isk loan, and get back into playing the game that way. Of course there would be abuse concerns there, but I figure that some creative penalties could handle some if not most of them.



How do you believe CCP should go about preventing people from concurrently logging in with more than one trial/free account without preventing multiple people under one roof from playing the game even if one or more of them is using a trial/free account? There's no significant difference between that scenario and someone multi-boxing with multiple physical machines.

Likewise how do you believe CCP should go about preventing the use of the game client inside a virtual environment without either causing privacy issues or being done in such a way that players can, and will, work around the restrictions to continue multi-boxing with VMs?

It's not about giving in to "cheating" or letting "cheaters" win, and for the record EVE Online does actively promote an atmosphere where "if you aren't cheating you aren't trying" is a valid viewpoint, so much as going with the most practical solution to solving a potential problem.

OP simply wants free-to-play suicide alts he can rinse and repeat.

I cannot safely type the words that describe how terrible this idea is, without causing the moderators to ban-hammer me so hard that my children's children wont be allowed to post on the forum.

Holy s**t!!!... while I'd like to note I think this whole F2P idea is generally terrible... this is the best suggestion towards it yet!!! but go one further... F2P accounts also can't use clone facilities at all. No JC's & no upgraded clones.

But seriously there is already a F2P model in game, if you can't earn the isk to plex your account each 30 days just buy a sub.

Lets be honest, if you can't afford £10/$15/month you probably can't really afford your internet connection and should probably biomass and go play something outside instead.

The sarcasm is so thick I could spread it on toast and eat it for breakfast with a nice hot cup of tea and some delicious fried eggs and bacon.

I don't support any iteration of free to play for eve online, I might come around to the other if the accounts were severly restricted such as only being able to fly rookie ships until they upgrade to a paid account and were exempt from cloning until they subscribed, meaning that if someone pod kills them they are not coming back.