EVE General Discussion

Huh. Found a mad site while probing.

Free to play is a better business model for MMOs. The industry has proven it time and again. The average user will buy a little (maybe $5 of stuff per month), but the obsessive users will spend oodles of dosh.

Also, more people playing Eve = more targets. And that's never a bad thing.

Yeah.

Sometimes it's a desperate move to breathe life into a dying game.

Sometimes developers ruin the game by selling power.

Try taking a peek at how much League of Legends makes. Or consider that Dota 2 will be F2P.

Or, consider that TF2 made more money for Valve as a F2P game with a cosmetics shop than it ever did as a retail title, and it spent years as a retail title and sold very well. And yes, I know the Tf2 shop sells weapons, but they can be gained somewhat easily through normal play / trading too. More or less the same effect as PLEX.

F2P is the future in the MMO / persistent game business. Done right it will always make more money than a retail / subscription model.

If you want F2P, please leave EvE alone, I prefer a game with people cunning and intelligent trolls than kids going capslock all over. For example, take a GOOD look at Combat Arms US chat channels. Then watch your own brain cells fry themselves.

Now if you want F2P, go ahead and bug CCP on DUST instead.
It's gonna be micro-transaction anyway as per CCP.

If it is ever released of course.

CCP and Sony are giving DUST a mimimum of 18 months to hit the mark.

Well, apparently the NEx concept is essentially dead, according to The Mittani's impressions at the meeting. Quote, link and details in my post here:

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=527183#post527183

You are wrong. Mark my words.

Forget about walking around; we already have plenty of FP MMO's; it's stretching this game too far.
IMO, CCP should make a decision - is EVE going to be a tactical or an action game? Do you want your players to think, almost treat it like an RTS, or do we go for some pulse-pounding excitement of giant space battles, with you strapped in the cockpit?

If you go the first route, give me the ability to position my ship in space, sort of like Homeworld. Have us hire some NPC escort/figthers, if we don't care to play with other humans. Make ships more or less vulnerable from different directions, different shield layouts, different armor layouts. Make each encounter be a mini-puzzle as to where you need to be, and what weapons you need to use to hurt the enemy the most.
In this mode of play, ship losses would possibly mount, so make ships reasonably cheap. (and who cares about NPC escorts?)

If you go the second route, strap us in our cockpits, or on ship bridges, and let's have at it. In a small ship, you'd do more flying and trying to hit specific parts of the large ship. In a large ship, it would be more about the maintenance/repairs and positioning of the defense batteries/shields, etc. Have vulnerable points on ships - engines, shields, etc, etc...
Here, ships would get customized, so the cost would be in components. People would get attached to their ships, so make them non-lootable. Make a loss hurt a little bit, but not too much.

Either way, encourage battles, and give people safe zones. No ganking anymore.

Could you provide some actual numbers and compare them with EVE? Because without those your argument is just so much hot air.

Ask not why. Ask instead why not.

You can thank those scrubs for being able to play for free.