Assembly Hall

I would like to say that i will Continue playing EvE in the middle to long term though certain cosmetic restrictions are anoying.

I have played many MMO's and half of them have gone free 2 play with Micro-transactions.

With the world Economy as it is now is a good time to consider the following.

1) Micro-transactions have a wide scope of services

1a) EvE could go free 2 play , Example would mean smaller client download size. install content as required
If you have say only 1 character slot , and only the region of space for your race. Say can only fly around in amarr space since you chose that race. Buy from ingame store other space regions .

1b) Buy other services like character slots. and this could be expanded

1c) in-game store currency could be acquired through selling special loot items to NPC vendor , Real world currency , A 6 or 12 month subscriber would get X amount of in-game store currency per month.

2) The content which you might not want would be to walk around in space stations ,

3) Player owned space stations could have custom design interiors and exteriors based on the content bough from the in-game store through micro-transactions.

4) Going to the planets surface could also be extra content from the store.

Now is the time to work and perfect a micro-transaction system that works for EvE before EvE is just left with the addicts.
Else you end up with the following scenario

1) those who play eve are addicts

1a) the addicts will try and play for free buy exchanging ISK for game time

1b) Even if addicts have 2 out of 10 accounts funded by subscriptions and they do not buy ETC since they have enough ISK
Then who buys the ETC for the addicts to use to keep the other accounts running.

2) If the number of active accounts who are on a subscription fall below Y % of X % then CCP will need to rethink their payment options.


I have one example



Now you might not be interested in this MMO , but they failled to create the free 2 play properly and just limited it to a zone.
A better solution like Champions Online , DC Universe Online , Star Trek Online , Age of Conan online , Lord of the Rings online



Although LOTRO went F2P in Late Q3 / start of Q4 in 2010 .... you have to wonder what Free 2 play with a correct

that works for EvE would do not only to the number of unique players (not those with multiple characters and accounts) but also the revenue for CCP.

Final example is World of Tanks MMO from Wargaming.net and is doing very well for its self since it is completely free 2 play but has a prestiege "elite" mode which is only unlocked through gold currency which you can buy for real world money or by winning events.

This is all pure speculation but as i said above now is the time to develop a business subscription hybrid model using micro-transactions for EvE and do i need to remind everyone about the Italian and Greek Debt the countries have. The global finacial Pain will not go away for a few years maybe with us for the rest of this decade.

Firstly I find those replies to my OP and proposal very narrow minded. My opinion on those who reply without even picking apart the OP's original post is even lower. To just say its wrong , "abomination" and fail to have any proper criticism is really poor.
To me you are like a politician with high levels of national debt and you just want to put you head in the sand ignore any problems and hope it goes away. The other view is that you are just rich and pay €131.40 per account and you have 10 accounts , well in that case you are just trying to escape life spend your money as you see fit and ignore the world around you.

To download the client is 4GB . With limited Free 2 Play and micro-transactions this could be a ~1 to 1.5 GB download then content and systems could be installed in a few 500MB packs.

Even with highspeed broadband 4Gb for some can take a while and now both Traffic management and shaping profiles via ISP's to prevent bit torrent hogs and the heavy filesharing.

The modular client works well with micro-transactions

Yes i know my proposal is a double edged sword and I doubt if everyone will like it. I know former players of EvE may return and anything which would increase the number players all connected at the same time can only be a good thing for CCP.

You have to remember than CCP though privately owned still had to employ people and pay salaries. Even if CCP may or may not be for profit anything that increases market share of the MMO industry , Increase revenue would never be ignored by CCP.

The fact is no one not even I can say that my proposal will never happen but why wait and then not be happy with the result when we could try and be part of the development of the system to one that will work for the future benefit of EvE and CCP.

There's a single simple fix needed to drastically improve this service and none of your stuff is it:

Microtransactions - They should be micro.

Items on a micro-transaction store should not cost more than a couple of euros/dollars/etc each, right now we have a "mega-transactions" store.

The quote. It is not empty.

free to play is for B-team games.

Having to pay bunch of money for every single upgrade to get all the content is bullshit. All in one and even playing field is better. CCP better keep it cosmetic junk. I don't want none of this other junk.

Anyway if you want to play for free, plex.

Not plexing you can play free with trial accounts anyway, just keep remaking them. They have lots of restrictions in amount of skills and what can be trained. So if you poor and don't know how to make isk, do that. Thats your heavily restricted gameplay with no cost for you on the house.

Anyway, why have download slower for trial accounts, they want to get people in to the game not out. Its not like DLing the client will happen every day for each player. It costs them to have servers doing that, but its a investment that returns itself.

since it seems SO important to soem people you get actual "criticism".

this model is not meant for EvE, its meant for 2 kinds of people...

The first kind is devoted enough to the game to spend 15 USD or equivalent a month to play the game

The second is deovted enough to the game to devote weekends and weeknights in the game to accumulating money to pay for their next month with a PLEX put on the market by some kid from a country with a better economy and more money.


as long as both of these people are the oens that truly dominate EvE's active playerbase, then the subscription style will be the preffered and more efficient median for game access. Allowing those that are truly devoted and into the game to play with little issue, and those that arent too impressed or dont play seriously enough to decide whether this game is really for them. the latter group will eventually either realize the game is not for them and move on, or come to the forums and whine about how the game needs to change to be like every other MMO out there because apparenlty bandwagons are good.

Please realize that the only way to get EvE a larger subscription abse is to make it even more DIFFERENT from currently existing MMOs, and not to make it more similar. making EvE like other MMOs puts it in a market that it cannot compete in, as EvE is a game centered around difficulty and gradual progression, and between this and a casual-gamers MMO, if both play similar, they will always choose the casual.

Supported and liked for the following reasons...

Eventually EvE will have to move towards F2P as this is the general trend of MMO's if CCP wishes to grow the population of EvE further. As more and more MMO's are released that are F2P, fewer and fewer people are going to take a risk playing EvE when they can go do something else for free. The reason current MMO's are going F2P is because they can make more money off of Microtransactions with a higher number of free subscribers playing the game than they did with a lower number of paid subscribers at $15 a month. It is as simple as that. These MMO's aren't going F2P because they failed like some people seem to think. That makes no sense at all. "Our game is failing and we can't afford to keep the servers up...so lets make it free.". Sorry...swing and a miss. They are going F2P because there is more money to be made in Microtransactions than in pure subscriptions.

If CCP wants to take EvE into a sort of F2P model like LotRO where you still have to pay a sub to do certain things and swing more heavily on cosmetic Microtransactions then Ifor one fully support them in that decision.

Around 20 million MMO players have grown up seeing nothing wrong with monthly subscriptions. They will not refuse to subscribe to another MMO in the future, so I don't see the danger of this market being too small for EVE's growth plans.

10 years or so, subscription-based models were all the rage, and we were told that pay once, play forever games were doomed and that we were to see playing games as a service forever more. It didn't happen. Even now, a major MMO like GW2 is poised to go the conventional way.
New models just open new (niche) markets, they will not replace everything else just because they are a current trend.

MT seriously hurt the integrity of EVE's virtual world. As such, they'll have to go.

This. Just, this.