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Okay. I'm down with the f2p aspect of this but your application of clone types is short sighted.

I have 6 chars spread over 2 accounts, and because I like to multi-box occasionally I have spent the last few years giving the alts some useful skills. Cloaking/Mining/Scanning/Combat and PI (I notice that alphas cannot do PI) They have been contributing in their own way to this game, for some, as long as 10 years. Okay they are not overwhelmed with skill points ranging between 450k to 30M sps but your proposal effectively neuters them. The Primary chars will be the Omega chars by default, and the alts on each account will become Alphas. No cloaking or PI and limited everything else. Cheers.

I'm not even sure there is a work around. If alt A wants to initiate PI, do I have to change them to omega clone then set the PI. If I then log on alt B make them Omega, will it halt the PI of alt A.

If your going down this route, I want a 3rd clone state. If an account is active (plex/sub'd) *Omega and Theta clones are in effect.
If an account is inactive (no plex/sub'd) clones are alpha.

Revised States

Omega clone. Active skill training. All Skills.
Theta clone. No skill training. All Skills.
Alpha clone. Reduced skill training. Reduced skills.

That is all.

This new development embraces openly the nature of the game of alts that is EVE. It opens up alts to everyone, rather than keeping it limited to the richest players that can PLEX multiple accounts. It also encourages new players to get a better taste of the game, for a longer period than the current trials. And this is good.

Here are a few points I have read that I support.
- Alphas should not be able to post in forums or in local.
- Alphas should always have their safety setting set to enabled.
- Alphas should not be allowed to assign drones.
- Alphas's pods should align and warp at battleship speed.

At the same time the game is in a state where the hidden influences of anonymous alts and the lack of loyalties for a cause in-game create disruptive and artificial internal conflicts, limit fleets engagements, encourages risk aversion, create a real ceiling to what newer groups of players can accomplish and break the risk versus reward model of Eve, as the acts of betrayal, theft or scam, that are also a staple of Eve, are risk free in a game where alts remain anonymous.

When a player can be in FW with different alts in each faction at the same time, or in all the major alliances with various alts, what is the point when players are encouraged to build something with time and efforts? Why does it matter fighting for Caldari were I can run Plexes in the Gallente faction too? Why bother defending sovereignty when I can mine both in PLooNS territories, or Test territories? I can be running a charity with a trustworthy toon, or a third party tool that requires full API data and use the intel gathered in so doing to destroy my opponents without them having any way to know better, as the game protects my alts' anonymity.

Betrayals, scams and theft hidden behind alts that remain anonymous do not put the player that engineer those at any risk for their other assets. It is less dangerous to create an alt and go get recruited by an enemy faction, than undocking a ship. Players' rep is not at risk, and now that free alts will appear, everyone can have a finger in all the pies, all the time. Where will that lead us?

So it could be the time to encourage making choices made in-game by players more meaningful:

- Introduce a EULA change that requires players to link all their alts by "association", Alpha and Omega, together.

- Make it so that those clones that are tied together under that "association" can benefit from one subscription/PLEX to use the skills at whatever levels they are currently at. So to go beyond the alpha stage for each account, you still need to spend plex or subscrpition per account, as announced today, but once each toon is at the skill level you want them to be, one subscription will maintain whatever number of accounts you fancy, but all the toons of these accounts will be publicly linked to each others.

- Remove the character bazaar and ban all accounts that change ownership thereafter.

Make a player's action matter for all of his or her associated alt's, so that reps can be built, and scaming, betrayal and thefts are not risk free anymore.
If you use an alt as a cloaky alt, the other players will know who are your other toons and can get back at you.
If you apply with one toon to a corp, they can see the spread of your toons and decide if you are a good fit or not for them.
If you betray, scam or steal, you build a rep that can be legendary, but have to think about the consequences for all your toons.

imho, anonymous alts do not keep Eve edgy. It is risk free disruption in a game focused on building assets that matter.
Anonymous alts are keeping Eve down.

You know, this is something I would be looking forward to. Because they're skill limited and restricted to the things they can use. It might turn the tables on the n+1 "rule". Playing 8 vs. zerg would be fun again. Would be nice to have that happen more often.

I hope CCP reconsiders locking Alpha Clones into a single race.

Here's another one. Wardec Cost... Will these type of accounts mod that?

I have been idle quite a lot over the past few years, but my understanding of it at the moment is that its partially based on the size "in active accounts" of your corp/alliance.

Does this mean 10,000 alphas could be used to make that one man corp really expensive to wardec? :)...

I mean, a fix would be that alphas need (x) hours of play per week/month to be considered "Active".

They are thinking that they are out of ideas. They tried attracting casuals by making eve a more friendly place and that didnt work. They tried dumbing down the game and that didnt work. They forgot what made eve good in the first place, abandoning their base in favor of chasing after wow players. Nothing has worked. They are at the end of the rope. So like all mmo dev's who are out of ideas they throw in the towel and go ftp. Ofc this wont work. FTP attracts casuals - but eve is built around hardcore players - the casuals will spike eve's player count in the short term - but it wont last. It never does. The casuals being casuals they will fade away. A year from now eve will be in a worse place then it is today.

Free to play is the death knell for games. What I dont understand is why they feel they will be different then every other mmo that went ftp as a last desperate move before going belly up? This model doesnt even make sense - ftp is built around whales - this model ignores whales and micro transactions and instead its built around making the gaming experience inconvenient for its alphas e.g. they cant do this and they cant do that without purchasing a full account. But how are they going to convince casuals that what they are missing out on is so much better then what they are getting for free that it is worth spending 15$ a month for? Casuals already could try out the game on a trial account - if that trial account wasnt enough to convince a causal to subscribe how is giving them a permanent trial account for ever going to change that? CCP continues to burn its bridges to its core players. When this doesnt work will there be any going back?

Well it was a good run.

What do we have now?

A 30 day trial and with buddy invite which everyone uses it's 30day trial + 60day gametime and you can do ANYTHING.

Nerf that to T1 frigs and modules that lasts for the rest of their lives.
Don't let the noobs do any of the cool stuff unless they pay the sub.

Yes I've given my friends a plex what I got from buddy invite when they paid the sub.

OK im kinda worried for the update, maybe it would be good but I can see Jita being massively over camped.

I think Alpha Clones should have the safety button fixed so cannot be changed. That way they cannot gank, they cannot take loot that is not theirs. T2 Technology cannot and should not be allowed to be used. Cynos cannot be used. No Mining Bardges can be used.

It kinda reminds me when WoW started doing free-to-play upto max lvl10 ior 25.

I understand the need for this, but why not just turn off the 30 day trial and have non expire trial accounts, are they not very limited as to what can/cannot be used ? Maybe odd skills tweeked here ?

Trouble is this update is going ahead wether we want it or not, Same thing happened with the Store selling skins and stuff. Prices came down but it still went ahead. The skill injectors many didnt like but still it went in to the game.

New Skill window - bad, vertical labels are BAD. Big empty spaces, rigid formatting, too big and not scalable as it seems, queue completely non visible.

Leave skill window as it is now.

I suspect many holes will be in this design. Many throwaway alts for ganking will be trained simultanously no matter the design. Many multiboxers. No one of them being afraid of CCP retribution upon them. People playing to grief, and not afraid about them being banned for anything.
I will wait and see how these old and new players with alpha accounts will contribute to general EVE experience.

No matter how you will call it, its free to play. The emperor has no clothes.
They will play for free. Then they will complain about this ftp model being too restrictive and they will want everything for free on daily basis.

EVE isn't over, this kind of thing , even if we don't like it that much, isn't enough to destroy the game. But you are right in that it is the latest in a long line of moves aimed at bringing in new players that is again likely to fail because it doesn't address the core issues that keep people out of EVE:

Of the top of my head those issues are:

-Space setting (most people want elves and crap)

-non-consensual pvp (most mmo players despise this)

-The way ships are "flown" (of to Massively OP and read the comments, you will see this come up time and again)

-Lack of Avatars for people to "identify with

-Permanent loss of items/"death penalty"

-Sandbox nature of the game (most gamers want to experience a story, not make one)

And I'm sure there are more. The real problem is that the EVE community is mostly made up of ANTI-MMO players who like that EVE isn't like the others with all the leveling and sharding and pvp flags and instancing and safe cities and whatnot.

A game like EVE is forever going to be a niche that mostly attracts non-mainstream folks, and while it's natural for any business to try to squeeze every dime they can out of a property, there is simply a limit on how far that can go. That's true of everything, not just EVE.

My prediction is it doesn't destroy everything but it ends up like "opportunities" and the new NPE and such things: in the end it will have little to no positive or negative effect.