EVE General Discussion

I've been thinking about this. Especially after talking to some older players returning to play the alpha.

The whole point of the Alpha program is to give people a taste as many different facets of eve play while still reserving enough to give incentives to subscribe. We want more people in null and ls right? The problem here is that getting in-and-out of ls/null in standard racial ships is generally done with the aid of an prototype or improved cloak.

With a cloak standard ships have a chance, not a great one, but a viable chance of getting through gate camps, especially bubbles. An explorer, for example, doesn't only want to get their ship through a camp, but they want to bring the loot back as well. Which is important. Players generally need to feel like they have a worthwhile chance before they take a chance.

And back on the whole concept of giving players a taste of EVE. This is only a taste. The most common piece of advice given about the prototype cloak is "never use it. Use improved cloak only." Why? Because prototype sucks. But even a prototype cloak can be better than no cloak. Anyone that uses a prototype cloak will desire a better cloak, which provides incentives to pay. On the other hand, if a player has to base their gameplay on not having a cloak, then there is less incentive to pay for a subscription.

Denying cloak skill to 2 week or 30 day trial members is one thing, but now that it is basically infinite trial, trial players should be able to access intermediate gameplay. I don't think anyone can argue that prototype cloaks are OP, and slowboating around with a prototype cloak active will give lots of incentive to subscribe and use a better cloak.

Anyway, what do you think?

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edit,
Well, we are 3 pages in and I thought I had a good point, but even in light of that the response is overwhelmingly negative. So let me modify the argument.

If prototype cloaks were modified so they consumed fuel and limited the duration an alpha could cloak, which would eliminate afk cloaking. Would you accept alpha cloaking then? If so what kind of limit on the cloak would be appropriate.

I think it should definitely be long enough to slowboat out of a bubble get far enough away to decloak and warpout from a standing camp.

edit2 - Another interesting suggestion is a 1 minute cloak. Such a cloak would be useful for getting past camps, and not much else.

And here I was thinking about a big ball of Alpha justice dealers rolling thru lowsec and null sec...

What a disappointment. 😭

Big ball of Alpha justice dealers are still on the table. This is more a matter of solo or small group play.

Dumbest idea ever. As a BitterVet©, I would routinely use a cloaked Alpha as a scout. Yes, it would benefit me, but it would make it way too easy for any and all players to essentially have a free, untouchable scout if they have a spare computer in the house. Not to mention how epicly ******* broken the whole cloak-align-warp trick is.

I, for one, am glad cloaks are disabled for Alphas.

Never used one, not sure what I'd do with it to be honest if you can't do anything while cloaked iirc.
Are cloaks important now? I remember recon ships and stealth bombers having those but it never seemed interesting to use

Looking at ships id rather have access to planet stuff/mining/industry but I'm not a pvp guy at heart.
I only made this guy to try and get into it actually once I get my wifi turned back on which actually went out on the 15th as my luck would have it.

Well, I'm just repeating a common sentiment. Normally, I was satisfied with a prototype, especially if trying to move a standard frigate through hostile space. The whole point of "fly cheap" can be defeated real fast with more expensive modules than necessary.

Ehm....no

You're talking about my primary laptop lol. I'm on low to medium for all settings with most stuff disabled lol.
If I could afford a second laptop I could afford to subscribe and have a not junk laptop to play on and I never would have went inactive on my 2009 account which I just recovered.

Holy sh*t no.

Maybe people aren't aware that running an alpha and an omega clone concurrently (however you do it) is going to earn you a permaban?

Pretty prominent in the EULA and easily detectable if CCP choose to do so :

"2. YOUR ACCOUNT

You may establish more than one Account for each copy of the Software licensed. You are however not allowed to play EVE by using more than one Account at the same time, unless you pay a subscription fee for each of the Accounts you intend to use for that purpose."

That's condition 2 of the EULA guys and affects CCPs revenue stream so best case you'll get hit with a 6 month ban. Far more likely you get permabanned,

I think alphas need access to cloaking skills/mods so they understand their options aren't just "jump & be ganked" - from their limited perspective.