EVE General Discussion

That's easy: change nothing.

One the other hand, something that's bound to create the level of retention you're envisioning there is to implment all the things you've suggested and completely break the game to the point where it will soon shut down. None of your ideas actually address any kind of problem with the game, and they most certainly do not address the issue of the topic — they're just random bits of industry buzzword thrown out with any understanding of purpose and intent. Hell, you haven't even managed to articulate what benefits the original idea was supposed to bring.

The entire OP can now be answered in a single question: why?!

This has been answered in full: no. The game is not designed to allow for it and doing so would break the game on a fundamental level. Actual game designers have looked into this; the EVE devs have looked into it; everyone with any kind of insight into the game, its audience, and the gameplay it is trying to provide has looked into this. The answer from all of them is no. The two are not compatible even on a conceptual level, and with the game as it has been developed, they are wholly incompatible on a practical level too.

Your unfamiliarity with the game and your absolute refusal to actually discuss the many many many points in opposition to your half-baked and uninformed ideas only serve to demonstrate that you are not anywhere close to being in a position to actually have a constructive discussion on the topic of EVE development, much less on EVE customer retention.

you are not giving back to the community you are trying to attract a playerbase which is clearly not suitable for this game

Are you doing the same with every other response you're getting?

so far i'm seeing a huge NO (for very good reason) to your question.

free to play = NO!

take it on the chin and move along.

Perhaps not, but F2P is not the answer to that regardless. There are never “enough” players to replace an existing customer base. Trying to do so only ever has one outcome: the game has to shut down.

If you're going to feign industry experience, you should at least take the time to learn this simple fact first.

new players? do i really care if the game is getting enough new players, no i dont because i leave my work at 5pm where i have worked for 8 hours to get my company new customers so id rather drop rattlesnakes on some poor cruiser fleet than worry if ccp marketing department are doing their job properly.

so as long as i have daily targets to shoot at i couldnt really care because i pay a subscription to have fun not run a 2nd job for free

what part of NO to free to play do you not understand? ffs

Few years ago, I would dismiss OP's ideas as silly and for reasons already described in this thread. But today I see ever-increasing PLEX prices and numbers of active players steadily falling (I am also rather convinced that the number of subscribed accounts hasn't been so low ever since I started playing in 2011, but CCP is no longer willing to give us that information, and after they fired their Ph.D. economist we know less about their business results than ever) and it makes me wary about the future of the game. While I'm still hoping that EVE won't die, some changes are necessary (and I don't mean things that Fozzie is usually responsible for, since most new players don't care about sov or rebalancing changes).

Hopefully most people here will agree with me on these two points:
1) EVE needs new players desperately or it will face a slow death.
2) Subscription-model MMORPGs are outdated and won't attract new audiences.

Therefore it seems necessary for CCP to change subscription model. Turning EVE into a F2P may have its disadvantages, but most of them should have a way to remedy them. Allowing only one F2P account per player, changing trial accounts so their subscription never runs out or giving some limits to F2P accounts (for example, capping their SP/hour to 1800 or less) are some of the ways that could be worth considering.
But I would be satisfied if CCP would just lower subscription and PLEX prices (which is unlikely since with rising PLEX prices, more people are likely to use their credit card to pay their sub instead of their hard-earned ISK). However, if nothing of the above happens, I give EVE maybe 3 more years before CCP decides to shut down TQ for good.

They really don't, short of redesigning the entire game from the ground up — i.e. by creating a completely new game.

There would have to be an entirely new way of making more people pay more money than they do now, and it would have to be done in a way that doesn't in any way affect the competitiveness of the individual. You'd also have to create a game where N+1 > N is no longer true. Restricting the number of accounts is a foolish idea because it's simply not technically feasible and would only serve to restrict the ways in which the N crowd can overcome the N+1 one.

The monetisation scheme of a game is an integral part of its design. You cannot change it without fundamentally change how the game is played. To make EVE F2P, you have to make not-EVE and hope that it will attract the same customers (and more), when there is absolutely nothing to even suggest that it would attract either of those two groups… and we haven't even gotten to the far more crucial problem of actually retaining this fantasy customer base.

Don't worry, CCP already said some years back that it wouldn't be possible for EVE. It's not technically possible and would have had to be done pre-launch by design. I completely agree with them, it's not possible by the design architecture of EVE, and there is no magic wand to do such a thing w/o destroying the game as it is; what makes EVE, EVE.

I really hope you are not having a conversation with your alt here.

Also - if you love EvE as you say , why do you want to break it and alienate the complete player base?
Remember when they burned Jita ? That's because they care and do not want this game to go down the free to play , pay to win path (and other issues). I would quit my subscription and recycle my characters to make a point if if would come to EVE F2P.

If things are as you say ,doomsday around the corner (which I do not really believe). Then I would gladly wait for EVE II and prefer to not violate a lady like EVE in her final days.