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Dude, I'm not talking from an existing player's POV, which I obviously am and will immediately become Omega when this goes live.

I'm talking from a new Alpha players' POV. For me, who's been playing the game for nearly a decade, it doesn't change what I can do.

I said what I said because I believe CCP is introducing Alpha account as a marketing tool, not for players like you and I, but total eve virgins.

For them, it will seem like P2W, and I'm not sure that is a good perception for these noobs to have, so I'm questioning the pros and cons of Alpha accounts as a marketing tool and from brand management point of view.

That's how things work RL (as you ask me to grow up in RL...) - free stuff can be good, but it's not always the best marketing/sales strategy. I've seen companies suffer negative long term consequences because they managed free events and promotions in a wrong way.

Sure, you can say CCP is a successful company and has a dedicated professionals working on marketing and sales strategies so they 'should know better than you, forum idiot'.

Guess what, I too work in a marketing/sales/business development as a professional. I'm not commenting on this as an EVE vet or whatever, I'm genuinely questioning whether these Alpha accounts will have good long term beneficial effect as a marketing tool.

Even companies in Fortune 50 sometimes make major marketing blunder. There are valid questions we can ask to CCP whether something they have in plans is a good idea or not.


Getting back to the topoc - as a player I really don't care. I already have my SP and I can fly all the ships and fits I want. And yes I've paid for my subs long enough that I'm happy that I have something these free players won't - so I'm not arguing against you.


But from Alpha players' perspective, would it offer them good experience to commit cash to the game over long term?

That is debatable.

1. This is the same. In my opinion the exclusion of number of social skills that increase mission payouts and LP gains would already cover the reduced resource collection rate that is common in F2P games for non-paying customers. I would leave to Alphas only social and connections basic skills. I.e., no skills that increase LP or isk gaining rate from missions regardless of mission type. Reduced resource collection rate is considered perfectly normal in F2P games. In addition it might be reasonable to apply an additional NPC tax on Alphas on bounties, perhaps something in the range of up to 25%.

2. Now with this I have an axe to grind as it quite clear from my previous posts. I'll just state again that as proposed that is way too much pay to win and way too little free to play. As an example see comparison between currently proposed "Alpha" pvp Omen example fit and an "Omega" fit which the same just with T2 modules and proper skills. I do not see how could anyone fathom how would Alpha come out on top from that engagement. Link to EFT numbers side by side: http://www.overclock.net/g/i/2864021/created-with-gimp/sort/display_order/ The T2 fit is doing 20% more damage at 22 km with Scorch than the Alpha would be doing at 6 km with Imperial Multifreq! On top of being 230 m/s faster, longer cap life, better buffer and resists and noticeably better damage application from the few drones the ship has. Unless the T2 pilot is completely clueless he is going to win that engagement any time of the day which is the very definition of pay to win! The example is for one specific fit and case but as proposed by the devblog the same situation is presient throughout all the possible fits that Alpha could field. Either do it properly or do not do it at all. Going only half way will just leave everyone pretty bitter. And ofc some of the restrictions go directly against core philosophy of EVE in my opinion, like racial restrictions, for example. Now in idustry the restrictions are quite reasonable as it scales way too well as it is currently implemented to allow Alphas into that sandbox. Couple of Ventures half-afk minind do not worry me too much even if they have max skills - if they are serious about it the guy will grind out enough for a plex and upgrade to Omega for getting access those sweet sweet mining barges. But for production you just have to do few cliks every some weeks, depending on what you are doing and what amoutn of resources you have available. To be clear the issue is not the new guys, the issue is old and bitter omegas taking advantage of 20+ Alpha accounts for making stuff. Industry scales oh so much better with the number of accounts one can throw at it than pvp and that is a problem.

3. No extraction of Alpha skills - I think that should take care of the worry about how much SP the Alpha can have.

4. PI scales way too well with the number of accounts one can throw at it as all it takes is few cliks every few days and hauling once or twice a month. Some special attention should be directed so that it is not possible to abuse the Alphas for that. It is mind numbingly boring way to play anyway and I hate PI with passion but I do these mindless clicks every once in a while for isk/h! Last I looked the number was roughly 200 mil/h doing it casually (2d cycles, hauling twice a month) in null null. It is also way too trivial to script it even by a simple mouse script as you always have to ckick exactly in the same places for a given account and setup.

5. The full EVE experience starts with two accounts. Sometimes it is told as a joke but in my observation this is actually true. Give them these 2 accounts. Or if you must limit it to the one account.

6. Not giving Alphas T2 guns will not make it much harder for them to gank people. While ganking is legitemate way to play the game these involved should face the consuquences of low sec status. Last I looked biomassing negative security ganker alts was classed as exploit - let them at least upgrade to Omega if they want to get concorded. Plus it would be way too easy to abuse the system from the server stability standpoint by rolling crapload of Alphas and getting them all concorded, for example, outside Jita 4-4 or on some busy gate in the pipe. If you must then yea, red is liveable as well.

7. Now this is one of the main points for which I have been driving. I do believe that for a person to stick around long enough to be invested in the game he has to have at least possibility of being close enough competitive with a paying customer in F2P game. In my proposal the Alpha has already a number of clear disadvantages: (1) reduced skill training rate, (2) reduced resource accumulation, (3) inability to fit certain modules deemed too disruptive for Alpha access. There is no need to cripple the Alpha to the point he is not even theoretically competitive with the Omega with similar fit in similar situation. I DO want these of the new guys who can handle EVE to stick around, but for that to happen they should be around long enough to find a group for themselves and/or have a goal which is reachable before they commit to be the paying customer. That is why I would propose for them to have only frigates at first but give them possibility to fly these as good as any Omega can! Fully skilling for frigate is already pretty long process - especially if you take into account reduced skill training rate. So the incentives are there to upgrade to Omega all the time. At the same time the frigate specific content is well fleshed out in EVE both pvp and pve wise so the Alphas would, in essence, get the "full experience" in that niche. Sooner or later they would want a larger hammer and would upgrade. Or if all they want to do they would be the free players - and let them be. By getting good they would be still an important part of EVE and would make the experience greater for all the paying customers as well.

to be continiued ...

100% true.

And sooner or later a poor young Alpha will realize that he/she can become 150mil SP Omega... even tomorrow if needed… for a moderate amount of USD, since skill injectors are available, and PLEX can be converted to ISK…

OFC, we all know this possible in game today. But nobody was trying to convince us this was F2P game when we subscribed…

As a new user of a F2P (!) game I would be slightly disappointed with such a discovery. Slightly enough not to subscribe.
This is too much to pay to win...

I would argue that the core issue is not the total possible SP number but the level caps on the allowed skills. If the cap would be just, for example the same, 5 mil SP without the level caps I would not be screaming half as intently as I do currently. Ofc with just the total SP cap the issue would be the skill extractor abuse if nothing else is implemented.

I personally would put the cap much higher though. At minimum at ~10 mil SP, preferably somewhere around 20-ish. But much simpler would be just to make a good clear list of skills Alphas can have and just not put max cap on the levels in these. If a specific module or module group should be excluded from Alphas there is better way to do it than through capping the skills.

This will backfire horribly, when people realize their accounts aren't "truly" F2P, like thought they would be, but simply trial accounts without time limitations. It will be even worse, if CCP puts "BUY NAO!" buttons on every single item, which Alphas won't be able to use. Imagine a reaction of a new player, who just went through the ship tree and saw all these cool, huge ships to only be greeted by an orange button reminding him to pay up or bugger off. If I were him, I wouldn't bother launching EVE ever again.

CCP, please, for the good of the game, don't redo interface to remind Alphas, that they are second class citizens every time they open their ship's inventory. No amount of "This is EVE" videos will ever fix that first impression of EVE looking like some cheap mobile game with cash shop ads taking every inch of screen.

No T2 ship hulls in my proposal, if the comment was aimed at me. But yeah - if a ship hull is allowed Alpha should be able to fly it as well as Omega does. Indeed including all these important support skills. Not like in the current proposal where even the basic fitting skills for CPU and Powergrid are capped at L4. In both official plan and in my proposal they were training slower than subscribed accounts anyway.

Might as well just allow them to fly just noobships with civilian modules then. Otherwise they might somehow manage to kill a paying customer, oh the horror!

gonna add my 2c.
as CCP stated in the announcement, this is to let new players experience more of EVE without the doom of end of trial sub hanging over them. and I think this is a great idea! however, they need to make absolutely sure that this isnt abused by experienced players to simply get a ton of free alts.
so the most important thing is to limit the number of aplha alts logged in from 1 PC to 1. I would suggest though, that if a non-paying player can have 1 alpha account logged in, then so should a paying player, even if he has an omega character logged in already.
and no skills that allow offline ISK accumulation - no PI, manufacturing, etc.

Why I can't see all those World of Warcraft: Starter Edition 20 level players complaining that 80lvl paladins are better than them?
What we have now is a pure copy of that wow:se. It's not EVE meant to be played for free, it's EVE that you can TRY as long as you want.

Because WoW is a different game. For a start their match making system is not putting those lev 20 "free" dudes up against a Lev 80 Paladins - and its a theme park - aimed more at PVE content than PvP. While EVE is a sandbox. In here if the Alpha goes to try out FW, for example, all these "lev 80" dudes are waiting for him there - they are not separated into their own little corners of universe with very little to no interaction between them. Second - WoW has no meaningful death penalty - you get ganked by a random lev 80 in your little noob zone - no problems stand up and resume doing what you were doing.

I think the alpha clone idea could be a good thing for eve. It will provide more pilot’s in eve, more life in eve. Some of these alpha pilot’s will be good for eve and some bad.

A Few minor thoughts
Most solo freighters will now be able to have a scout
Every roam will have a suicide scout.
Gankers can have a character ready to go in every trade route.
Every Duel will have a neut suicide logi ready to warp in.
I am not sure if the added pilots will add any quality to eve.

A few minor thoughts about passive game play that may, or may not, have been made.
Probably have been made.

My concerns are really with clone going from alpha to omega, learning skills and doing a job, then dropping back to alpha.
PI . learn 5+ planets with good command center while an omega and then going to alpha. Can they control 5+ planets and can they control a good command center? I would hope only 1 planets, and cannot control a good command center.

Manufacturer and Science jobs that have been learnt while at omega and have submitted 10+ jobs and then going to alpha. Can they then deliver the jobs which they don’t have skills to submit? I would hope they cant deliver any jobs they don’t have skills to submit.

This could be any tech 2 job or 6 month research job

This is also really important for long time research jobs, as this will kill the copy business of high send BPO’s, particularly on long time research like capital or structure ME etc.

Although to submit a 2nd time the account will need to be an omega again. And you could sort of do this now on a 2nd account, but this just makes it so much easier.

This clone change could be good or bad.
Lots of these alpha pvp pilots will leave as they will be outgunned I fear.


Cheers