Player Features and Ideas Discussion

What would happen if F2P players were only able to train skills to lvl 2 or 3 across the board and were only able to purchase meta0 and meta1 modules? Idk, like I said, I personally don't care either way as long as it doesn't break the game. I'm just throwing ideas out there. I'm not very well educated on how things like this effect other games because I honestly don't care. I just want to play the game. But this is the only mmo that I thoroughly enjoy, so I find it interesting to speculate on what kind of things changes like this would affect, and what those effects would be.

Problem is EVE has no money making hook to the F2P. Especially for older players. I am done training on main...and 2 alts tbh. F2p...the no or limited training means nothing to me.

F2P ='s P2W....damn near a universal law. You can play the game for free...so how do devs get paid? The give us the money to buy this, that, and the other thing in game app purchase. usually has some benefits over not paying. not a bad thing per se, a dev has to keep their family fed and a roof over their family's head.

Example: In WoT I was a wallet warrior. Paid my cash, got a nice stable of gold tanks. What did I get? In the case of my Lowe I was in heavy tanks long before I would have been following the tree progression. Other tanks bought as well.

I also got better money returns at end of match. All that mattered most times. Built in multiplier for money reward. Just a few shots here and there and it rolled in. Had our ass stomped in match? I still made money. We stomped that ass? I made damn good money.

Or they were tanks I could get no other way.


Eve doesn't have this. So to be f2p it would have to have this hook. before mentioned...the cosmetic skins would not meet this. I see no need to buy a skin to slap on my say Kronos. I even have the RL means to buy aurem or the isk in game to buy off market. It to me it is just a waste.


P2W would have to in all honesty pull this Kronos off the open market, and make it pay only option to have some hook to get some cash. Or....make a ship that makes kronos (or vindi) look like ass and make that a pay to have option. Now its the darker side of P2W. Even WoT never went down this path too much. My lowe was far from OP. Unless fixed if you knew how to hit it (or used hitbox type stuff)....you could crit the hell out of it to be an overglorifed paperweight real fast and real easy.

This is where eve breaks. A main advertised feature is most things are player built, player sold. AT ships the only exception or the present ships we get on special patches/anniversaries as well. Latter usually hangar ornaments and former is usually as well. This is gone with any hook to get people to pay for ships otherwise not obtainable.

For F2P to work you will absolutely need micro-transactions that are explicitly P2W (special ammo, special ships, etc. that will grant an edge for having a fat RL wallet) which will almost surely kill off much of the current player base, IMO. Given the low number of players currently logging in, that would likely kill the game, again IMO. I don't think enough new players willing to try EVE as a F2P game with P2W could be brought in fast enough.

Seriously, have any of you guys sat down and figured out how this brilliant idea will help pay the bills at CCP? No? Color me surprised.

You know people are pointing out problems with this and you sit there with your fingers in your ears going "Lalalalalalala...." Maybe you should come out of the echo chamber.

Eve players can already pay to win. If you have enough money, buy a bunch of PLEX and sell it on the market. Then go buy that nice shiny ship that you've been wanting. You can even bling it out with faction and deadspace mods if you want. Worried about losing it? Nah. You make enough money to buy more PLEX and replace it. Of course there are very few of us who are actually able or willing to play the game that way, but players like that do exist in Eve. So you can already pay to win.

I think that the core issue here is actually that Eve is just a really hard game to get in to. The learning curve is incredibly steep and quite often is extremely frustrating. Why would new players want to pay a subscription just to get frustrated? I'm not saying that I want to see the learning curve made more shallow. I like it how it is. Eve's learning curve is one of the few things that has kept me interested in the game because there is always experience to be gained. It's mentally engaging.

If a viable F2P option could be agreed upon and introduced, it would allow new players to get their feet wet without feeling like they're just wasting money and without softening the learning curve. It's just going to take some collaboration to come up with such an option, if we can all come to an agreement. But that's what Features & Ideas Discussion is for.

You mean a decline in Bots and IS Boxers.

A metric I would be very interested to see is what the increased trial length did to CCP's retention rate.

I am very much against EVE going F2P, F2P means people will wander off the second something shiny catches their eye, subscriptions keep people loyal.

However a longer trial with less restrictions I would happily consider. A totally unlimited 2 month trial on skills for example, with the only restriction being that you can't turn your safety to red, to avoid totally consequence free gank alts. Train whatever you want, yellow safety lets you be a low security pirate, do whatever you want.

I think you would find that 2 months gets people past that learning curve hump, and they don't feel punished by being blocked from certain classes of ships that are very useful to getting around and starting to make money like T2 Frigates, Industrials and Mining Barges. So they can actually experience a real amount of EVE, and feel that they are losing lots of time if they don't continue to pay.

Tricky question of course, if people would try chaining 2 month free alts instead of an actually subscribed PI alt for example, but if the metrics from the increase in trial length support it, I'd be interested & willing to take the small risk.

Read up on sunk costs, and how they get people continuing to invest. There is a sweet spot obviously where it's still short enough to not satisfy them entirely but long enough to create the sunk cost effect, and I don't believe our current trial yet hits that sweet spot.

there is no cost in a free trial

An interesting idea. Any free account should be given the same restrictions as a trial account... for that matter, just migrate all trial accounts to these 'free' accounts. You will be able to do things in EVE, just limited according to the Trial Account restrictions.