Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Edit: Most people have commented back on the price point. The amount i purposed is just an idea. That amount could be whatever CCP deemed the clone state was worth. It also also leaves room for CCP to introduce different clone states on a per character level with different price points. You could have a beta clone, which is just an alpha with the ability for to skill and use T2 fittings.


Welcome to another idea of mine. I hope this one is met with happiness and pleasure. Yet, I am also prepared for any constructive feedback as well, as I know the idea isn’t 100% polished.

Every day; Every month; Every year; CCP adds more things to New Eden. They adapt and updated game mechanics and so much more. They have shattered the norm for New Eden by introducing Clone states.

This idea of mine is a long-term project. I would say it would probably take two to three years for the development team that takes it to have it in a usable and polished state for EVE (I could only hope sooner).

As it is easier for me to do bullet points then just a wall of text that is how I will approach this.

1 - Take the characters and accounts as we know them, and decouple them from each other in a way that the characters are attached to the email account vs the player account. This would mean, that a player with one account or forty accounts as long as they are attached to the same email he can use the new Character Launcher

2 - Take the EVE Launcher and adapt it so that the player logs into their account/email and is presented with every character attached to that email account.

3 - All characters are at the base Alpha clones, and restricted to the Alpha clone features.

4 - Change the pricing structure from accounts and base it on a single character. This would mean the $15 a month norm we are used to now would be more like $5 for an omega character. The system would be looking at each characters clone state, not the accounts clone state.
4a - This would remove multi-character training and many of the other multi-character limitations we currently have when the characters are on a single account.

5 - The EVE Launcher would know if the character is Omega or Alpha or a different state and lock out characters accordingly do to restrictions.


The whole point of the system is to allow players an easier interface to their characters. To allow them to decide, do I let that toon be Alpha or upgraded clone. It isn’t locking a character to an account like it does now. It provides more freedoms for the end user.

Thoughts? Ideas? Questions?

I think that it lies in the the point of view.

CCP can't lose money they don't have. You can't lose something you don't have. The point is, you reduce the visible cost to the player. Smaller amounts are easier for some people to say "I can afford that" vs "oh. thats to much this month, I'll wait tell next month." and that ends up not happening.

So to me, every dollar CCP makes is money earned. They can't lose what they don't have.

edit: and with Alpha states - CCP makes no money for these people to play. If you open up the door for them and go. Hey look, you can go Omega for $5 a month for that character. More people will grab that. Than, hey look it cost you $15 for that account to go Omega and you can only play one character at a time. Oh, and if you want to train that alt on that account at the same time. You can't unless you pay $20 dollars.

I have a number of toons I'd be happy to pay to train, but i can't afford $20s per toon. I also have accounts that are inactive b/c I can't afford the current sub. So CCP isn't making as much money off me as they could.

Thing is people use the alt slots for toons with omega skills in spite of no longer training them. Need something done? There is an alt for that.
Although pricing the way you suggest it would essentially remain the same, there are ways to benefit from the status quo.
As to the economic motives there are pros and cons indeed.

I would appreaciate third of sub price system. I am a player not a CCP economist so yeeeey do dis.
I am sure that any change of pricing requires tons of number crunching and has severe consequence risking not regaining the current subscription income, also the transfers and the account related bs mentioned. But they just went free to play and pay to win so I guess whatever.

How is this even relative to my argument? If you pay a subscription, you get three Omega slots.

If anything, your argument supports the opposition of the OP's idea. The Alpha cone rules state that you cannot have an alpha clone logged on with an Omega clone. Therefore, under OP's idea, the only characters you'd ever get to play are the ones you pay $5 a month for, unless you log all your other accounts off first.

This isn't a great idea.

It's an overall loss of money to CCP, both in sub fees and MCT fees as well as engineering time required to rework the system as you suggest with no real corresponding gain in functionality.

EVE's barrier for entry, as of Alpha Clones, is very similar to other subscription-optional MMOs at this point. The subscription optional model has proven pretty successful even when the sub comes with significant advantages because it doesn't nickel-and-dime the user base quite as much as full on microtransaction models.

Not only that, EVE has some pretty good legs under it already even without Alphas coming in. They don't need to really lower the investment up front from 15 to 5 to bring in new customers as much as they need to give potential customers a better way to get invested in and familiar with a relatively complex system. Alpha clones accomplish this pretty well. You could play an alpha for like six months and still be meaningfully advancing skills and learning new ships.

You probably misunderstood me. I was not really posting a counterargument, I was merely stating that your argument, in which you claim you would no longer pay subscription fee for characters with omega clone restricted skillset or those that, as you yourself state, would need multiple clients up and running at the same time, is flawed. Because it ignores the basis of the alpha clone rules.

Since you clearly have read up on them now (good boy!) I think we can continue discussing this on the same level without baseless claims such as: "I would use this amount of alts with omega-restricted skills in conjuction with my main and thus CCP would miss out on this amount of sub money".

Good, now how lets get to the part in which I oppose the OP's idea:
I do not. I am perfectly content with subbing one "I can haz all the things" toon for fraction of the sub.
Hell even I (really cheap scrub that did not pay for sub past first month) would pay sub instead of plex perhaps of course that depends on how the PLEX use would play role in all this.

Could people relate to this?
Would they go casual and spend actual money on sub if it was third of a price and be more likely to start an alt with real money?
Do people with multitudes of accounts actually pay their sub in real money?

Cause then even the countries in which minimal wage is less than a third of 'Merica and average wage sits at half that, people might consider subbing over some ISK/hour farm and provide more social content.

Then of course if we break all the plex down into 3 smaller plexes we still get 400M thing. Which would end up being much easier to get (read as in couple years ago), yeah do not know how to factor that, but I am sure trillionaire manipulation would do it's job.