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You missed the point I was making, there are many things that deter people from Eve, the sub model is only one of them, and probably the least of them given the brutal nature of the game.

I didn't, but my own point was kind of opaque.

Obviously EVE is simply not the game for a lot of people, there is no chance of turning those people into long-term players. If this free-to-log-in scheme were meant to attract every possible player to EVE, it would fail.

But I think CCP knows that. The goal is instead to give new players who are the target demographic time to find their niche in a niche game, and I think allowing unsubbed accounts to log in and poke about might help control the attrition of older players as well.

On the subject of Gnosis, cutting down some quotes which were related in the context and had a conversation with each other before as well;

1) The problem is how Eve uses it's own terminology. By preview, it's a Combat Battlecruiser. By size and stats it's a battlecruiser. By skills, it isn't. Same thing with people calling a Freighter a capital ship, when it doesn't require the capital ship skill, yet uses capital ship components but has no restrictions of capital ships. So while you are technically correct on the "common sense" subject, you are also incorrect on the technical aspect.

2) But we don't know which path of definition CCP will follow in the area. The Gnosis is a special edition ship acquired from the 2nd Decade of Eve Special edition box, which is still available, but I don't think many people will put out 140+ dollars just to have their Alpha character fly a special ship which they'll inevitably lose. Coming from this point of view, CCP wants the stuff they sell to be used. From a marketing perspective, how stupid would it be to sell something to someone they can't even use up front? This is not a question of viability, but of inherent customer feeling and satisfaction right out of the gate.

3) Alpha Clones flying Gnosis is just a non-issue in terms of game balance as trials flying Gnosis is, since they are limited in their skills. They are not even remotely powerful if you look at the skill list again. So yes, I actually encourage Alphas to fly Gnosis. The more they blow up, the more rare a Gnosis will become as it is not a readily available ship.

4) This guy gets it. Hence he's quoted last. And to prove him right, as this has been questioned too:
Yes, a Gnosis can be flown by Trial accounts today as they always could. Nothing to ponder about that.

"But Drazz, you idiot," I sense others typing feverishly into the keyboard now, "Trial accounts can fly up to battleship nowadays, they won't be able to do that later, your argument is invalid."
It actually isn't. First, this was a recent change, and back then everyone could fly them. Second, reread what I wrote about special edition sales. I'm 99% certain the Gnosis will remain available for Alpha Clones, as they rightfully should. It's their fault if they get blown up with it, and the supply of these ships is very finite.


Trying keep myself in check for a change...
What gives you the impression of a player being able to field dozens of Alpha accounts? Can you field more than one trial? No. Will you be able to field more than one Alpha? Extremely unlikely. 99% no, if CCP knows what's good for them. Will people try to circumvent it and still try? Maybe, and then it will hail permabans. You can't mask everything, and if you keep violating the rules that way, data privacy can be lifted when a lawsuit is eligible. CCP can already monitor our hardware and software running to prevent this kind of tampering.
While your fear about this issue is understandable, I'm sure it will be handled appropriately.

you know, if CCP ever decides to make a secondary server called "Mortality" which functions the same as eve, only with permadeath, I would not be surprised to see a spike in subscription numbers again All jokes aside it won't happen. Which is good.

Disagree. If you tease them with huge fights from the get-go and they get thrown into a paywall, that's suicidal reputation. You want to give them something to have the new flesh hooked. Bring them into nullsec with backup of the NPE friendly community, clash against nullsec inhabitants. See a supercap, get killed. Be hooked. You'd be surprised how often it works this way.

Quoting for agreement with the general idea. Numbers are elastic.

the idea of the clones - ****

There is other ways of "fingerprinting" a particular physical machine.

I am actually hoping this works.

I told an active gamer that uses game consoles that EVE would have a free access for them and they are aware I have played for years and then they said they'd "have to fire up their computer. A positive response.

Please CCP don't screw this up like you did with DUST514.

True, but once people figure out what they're using, you can work around it. VMs of course are the obvious answer. Perhaps even containerization could be done at a much lower resource cost. I'll have to set up a Windows Server 2016 w/ Docker(whenever they get around to finally releasing a non-RC, final version) instance in AWS and see if each client can be made completely discrete from each other.

Also, things like MACs, UUIDs, and SIDs can be spoofed or changed. Whether it is "worth" it will depend on how long it takes for the offender's accounts to get banned. If it takes 1 month, hey, it's probably worth the overhead to them. If it takes 2 hours, probably not.

Good point about the new skill window. When I saw that I just thought to myself CCP definitely has no clue. Obviously Dev's are scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to come up with stuff to justify their employment.


DMC

Yes, on average you can pay for your sub, but the problem with averages is that some months you won't and you'll shell out nearly $1500 to keep the game going.

Tell me which side of a 6 sided die has 3.5 on it?

And in any event, all you end up doing is paying for PLEX for the account, with practically nothing else...and if this crashes the injector market as this moron said, then it won't work at all.

He is a complete dumbass, and there is nothing more arrogant and dismissive than a Goon when he is wrong.

And I'm not saying you couldn't PLEX 100 accounts, but WTF would you? You get minimal return for a crap ton of work. Seriously, you are going to go through 100 accounts to extract some small amount if ISK and with a sunk cost of $3,000 bucks? And as I suspected the first skills you train will have to be cybernetics, and to get +5s you need cybernetics 5 which will mean you'll have to pay 2 months of subs before you can start extracting.

So, somebody who does this will be able to PLEX their account after 2 months...and maybe make a little after 5-6 months...which is worth the hours it would take to do this for 100 accounts and $2,990 up front. No, the assertion is stupid as Hell. Some people might do it with a few accounts, but it is unlikely everyone is going to do it with 100 accounts or even a dozen. Who wants to send that kind of time on a crap ISK source. You'd be better off skilling alts for PI in NS FFS.

Edit: Oh, and put numbers in where you use sell orders for extractors and buy orders for PLEX, it looks even worse. Unless of course you are going to sit there and 0.01 ISK the injectors to max out your take....which with 385 of them on average is going to take a bit. Like I said the opportunity costs here are pretty large, if you are a no life Bad™ living in your parents basement maybe not an issue, but if you have any semblance of a life....

Bot banning has usually been fairly fast on CCP's end, at least to my personal experience. I cannot confirm or deny that other accounts being associated with the reported connection and computers will be permabanned as well.
A possible weak point in VMs is their lack of hardware masking. Each individual component has a unique number at which the system identifies and operates with and I'm not sure how easy it is to fake those on each VM layer without glaring compatibility issues. This should give away most VMs easily.

Naturally, they won't catch all illegal Alpha-Multiboxers yet I would imagine they'd be catching most of them, who would likely be the ones with the most damaging effect.