Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I totally agree.
But Quality <> Income.
CCP don't make this game to have quality players , it makes this game to have income.
Trying to overcome limit of active basic accounts - perma ban.
Shared IP? This is not needed, you can read 'PC' and block ability to use any type of Virtual PC for Basic accounts.

Read earlier posts.
Basic account don't allow you to do much trading , mining in a venture is not profitable ( we can make gas harvesters not trial account skill)

Exploring in a non covert cloak ship using T1 modules - well there is income in there , but if someone love to farm, he will buy plex from market fast.
Scouting - yes you can play with friends , but you cannot scout for yourself as you can login 1 account.

Lan Wang"whats wrong with the current model? i dont see how t1 frigates with t1 mods will encourage people to play the game, i think faction warfare has enough t1 bot frigates roaming around farming lp"

The current model doesn't allow players enough time to get into the game. If new players have more time to get into the game and develop social contacts with other players, I would guess they are more likely to continue playing and eventually upgrade to a proper account when they get bored of the T1 stuff.

Mike Voidstar"Imagine a guy using a program that synchs up 50 accounts to the same input, Yoloing everyone in newbie frigates, all the live long day..."

Multiplexing while multiboxing has already been banned and people who do it are permabanned, and basic accounts would be restricted to 1 account online at a time per computer, just like trial accounts are today. Plus you can force basic accounts to verify their account via Paypal, credit card or SMS, this way if they abuse the system, just disable the accounts and ban their Paypal, cc etc. This is more difficult to get around in terms of abuse.

Lan Wang"so whats the point in this again? cant actually do anything in the game"

Venture mining, exploration, frig/dessie PVP, frig/dessie PVE etc. Basically much of the same you can do with trial accounts, except there is no time limit, allowing players to learn to play the game and develop social contacts in the game, which hopefully would increase the chances of them subscribing.

Paul Pohl"It still doesn't address, why anyone having gone through the 30 day trial would sign up for you imaginary 'basic plex', that stops them using the ships and skills they have acquired in the past 30 days of playing - seemingly because you have decided what they can and can't do - which includes scamming."

Well the title of this post is "What if CCP removed 30-day trials?" ... so there would be no trial accounts. Just the basic non-subbed and advanced subbed accounts.

ShahFluffers"- it allows for people to essentially create infinite alt characters
(banning based on IP-address is a non-starter because it is not reliable and it pretty much outright bans college-dorm dwelling players and multi-EVE playing households)
(having the client locked to a one "free" account at any given time can be easily gotten around with a simple crack. And given the potentially limitless rewards for doing so, I'd imagine many people would do it)."

This problem is actually easy to avoid. First of all, it's hard to do what you are suggesting undetected, so people abusing the system this way will get their accounts disabled very quickly. Second, CCP can introduce account verification via SMS, Paypal, credit card or some other reliable way of identification other than only email. If the player abuses the system, just disable the account(s) and ban their credentials. Requires much more effort to get around this than just a new IP and email.

ShahFluffers"- there are a plethora of activities you can perform in EVE with minimal skills. Mining, exploring, trading, scouting, etc. Once players find out that, most of the time, skillpoints are functionally a "nice to have" sort of thing, the odds of them subbing in any long term way will radically go down."

Not a problem, make a hard limit of let's say 2 million SP for a basic account or 1.5 million SP per character per account. Any account with more than the limit has to subscribe.

ShahFluffers"- you are falling for the classic folly of "well, as long as we have more people it will all be better and justify everything."
Quality > Quantity
MacDonalds serves more people per month than any Mom and Pop places do in a year. Yet I find that the burger place down the street is VASTLY superior to MacDonalds. And I don't get no happy meals or toys."

What keeps EVE and CCP alive is revenue. What keeps the game alive is players. What provides CCP with revenue is subscribed players. If the number of subscribed players keeps going down, CCP will either shut down or increase their fees. I'd rather have more players, more of whom will become subscribers, even if some of them are idiots. Actually I enjoy blowing up idiots, so that's not a problem at all for me.

CCP does get revenue from subscribed players. So, for this idea to work it has to achieve one thing and one thing only: result in more subscribed players. It could achieve this via two paths:

1. The ability to leisurely explore Eve leads to more "trial players" subscribing.
2. Existing subscribers have a better gaming experience because there are suddenly more people doing things out in space. It becomes easier to find content, even if that content is T1 mining ventures, T1 relic ninjas, or hordes of T1 destroyers camping a gate.

I am not sure that either premise is true. I think it is more likely that this will be abused by existing players - who find a way to circumvent your safeguards - than result in a better Eve experience. One clue to this is the number of possible exploits we have already see in this thread. Any time you have to put in that many safeguards up front, the idea is inherently fraught with peril.


Free scouts. I run one of these on my laptop, while I play on my desktop. He just watches a gate or system forever. Oh, but he cannot cloak! Okay, so he sits in an Atron with MWD and flies in a random direction at several mm/sec. Even if you do catch him, you have killed a T1 Atron. Yay!

Steady trickle of T1 minerals for free, or rat bounties, or whatever.

Fifty of my closest friends and I each get one of these. We put them in T1 destroyers and wait on a gate. We kill your HAC. We win.

And so on and so forth...

I think Eve needs more people who feel they have a stake in this game, not just more people.

Before suggesting any new idea to get more newbie, people really need to start asking themself how a vet would abuse the hell out of it. If they can find an answer, scrap the idea. Once it's posted, as soon as other player find way, scrap the idea again.

And it seems like CCP is already heading down this road with the skins being AURUM. They should have added it to various LP stores to increase isk sinks.

Sure, sounds good. Now excuse me while I register a small army of planetary farmers, spies, probing alts, ECM alts, manufacturing alts, etc.

By the time you're done cutting it down to reasonably "unabusable" you'll be left with an account that can log in and chat in local.

Because then the game becomes pay to win and not pay to play



This model hardly ever works in the long run and is normally only used when an mmo is on its last legs trying to cling to any bit of lad it can find

I dunno, I might stop paying if I could keep flying T1 frigates for free.