EVE General Discussion

Hey EvE Players

A thought came to mind about subs, Free To Play or Pay To Win.

I know of people outside of EvE in real life that will not play EvE because of Subscription as they cannot afford the cost.

I am asking the EvE Community of your thoughts should EvE continue to do Subscription.

1. Continue paying Subscription or do the grind for isk in game to pay for your characters.

2. Free To Play and those players could only use T1 mods and ships and if they want better items from the market like T2 or T3 Items or ships & Capital Ships they would use Aurium instead of ISK.

3 And this one was knocked back quite a few years ago was Pay To Win.

CCP its time to make EvE online allot better and to get more people motavated to play EvE and get rid of the Subscription base and have a look at the MMO's out there and allot of them are Free To Play.

One Game I also play is Warframe and they are Free To Play and you buy platinum if you want better Items from the market.

I just want people thoughts if CCP should change from Subscription to F2P or P2W.

Thank You

I agree with your Idea

This debate has been done and beaten to death.

tldr;

- F2P won't work due to the way the skill system works. Once you have a certain amount of skills (a small amount), you can earn as much ISK, affect the market, and influence warfare as much as you want.
This means...
-------- Infinite alts to earn ISK with
-------- Inflation of pretty much everything
-------- Alt shenanigans (infinite scouts, infinite cyno alts, infinite trade alts, infinite holder alts, infinite gankers, infinite mining barges, etc)

- P2W is equally bad. While the current system allows one to buy PLEX and sell for in-game ISK... the way the skills, modules, and ships are balanced means that people with lots of ISK will die in comedic ways due to lack of experience and knowledge.
In short, having lots of money does not necessarily make you powerful.
True P2W systems generally involve giving hard bonuses and benefits to those with lots of cash... which exist outside of the current balance of things. And the EVE community won't stand for that.



Speaking purely for myself... either is a "game killer" for me as I want to have nothing to do with F2P or P2W games. My experience with both has been terrible content, obvious money grubbing, terrible support, toxic community (if you think anything on the forums is bad now then you obviously haven't been on a F2P game community forum), and unstable online numbers.


edit: I should also point out the following regarding subscription prices...

- a bottle of so-so wine or 6-pack of beer is about $10 and usually won't last 2 or 3 days (maybe not even a day if you're like me).
- a NICE meal at a restaurant is about $10 to $15 and won't last more than 30 minutes to an hour.
- a monthly gym membership is about $10 to $20 a month and, on average, people don't go to it more than 3 days a week for an hour or two at a time.
- a good night at the bar with friends will EASILY cost $50 and MAYBE you remember about 3-4 hours of the experience, followed by hours of pain the morning after.


- EVE costs about $15 a month (less if you get an extended subscription) and allows you unlimited access for 30 days to a world where you can freely interact (for better or worse) with several thousand similar people (see: nerds) in ways that can keep you occupied for hours.

As far as entertainment and services go... EVE is a bargain.


And if you live in a place where $15 is a lot of money... you have bigger issues to worry about than a mere gaming subscription.

And if you think, "oh... but F2P / P2W is cheaper" think again. Most of those games generally require you to spend about 30 to $100 to be truly "effective." Otherwise, you are stuck playing "kiddie pool content" with the scubs on the bottom tier... or grinding away for hours upon hours on end to see even a small increase in your general effectiveness.
And after awhile, you give up due to boredom and/or frustration.

People who keep advocating for this for personal reasons (generally disguised as a "hey, this would be great for the game") obviously don't understand the implications of such change.


- the game would have to be made annoying and way more grindy in F2P mode so that people will be enticed to pay, but even when they do that the game (still being grindy) wil still suck.

- free expansion updates as EVE has them? Gone, we'll have to pay for updates

- Pay2Win and power creep will occur in order to keep us interested in buying the new FOTM stuff

- CCP's focus will have to change from long term progress towards short term income generation

- paywall keeps out the riffraff, check a game like World of Tanks where every match there's at least 1-2 afk on your side and people so ******** they're too stupid to poop. No thanks

- CCP will (have to) accommodate for those people who are too stupid to poop, they are after all part of their customer base. Do you REALLY want CCP to cater for people like that, in EVE?




Tell us, how is this all a good thing?

As seriously bad of an idea as this is, they're working on it.

See: skill injectors. All they have to do is stop the skill queue for F2P and we can still grind out more skills. And it does require about $50 worth of training time (and some knowledge of game mechanics, so more for a newbie) to do this.

I think it's safe to say that EVE is a slow terminal decline and any/all ideas should be looked at...then again there are those that rather break their toys than have to share with others.

Hard locked F2P as I mentioned...one option.

Content isn't going to add much and might only slow or stop the decline temporarily. If a game is hard, making the learning phase "free" is a way to attract people and as long as the glass box they can play in is well designed to not f-up the paying customers then why not...

The alternative is grim...

I would say the problem is the way you "share" the game with others...

F2P is never free because someway the developers have to earn money. Eve is concentrating on doing things for the player not inventing new methods to get payed for your 'free" game.

You are right, but tweaking the payment system isn't a good idea. Could you name me a F2P that is still kicking after 5years let alone 13?
CCP does need to lower the entrance difficulty for new players. A "New player Guide" would be good that would concentrate on the important things (how to fit a ship, how to progress fastest, making certificates more vocal) and working on the fitting window. That's not really much but it would help new players a lot. The main problem for me was to find out where to begin and which skills to learn and how to fit a ship. Eve has a bunch of Endgame opportunities but a lot of them are nothing for new players and there is no help to sort out one from the other. Other games have "the best class" and new players don't realize that this concept doesn't really exist in Eve. A Tycoon can be as important as a CEO or FC ( hi Lenny).

Game already has a free to play model built in via PLEX...you just have to work for it.