EVE General Discussion

TL;DR 'EVE is not free enough for me'

Seriously though, now that the mechanics are there CCP can easily enrich their F2P model, for example with progressive skill unlocks, aka beta, gamma, delta clones etc.

From a business point of view, it's not easy to balance & compare one-off transactions with monthly subs, so CCP is wise to take this one step at a time.

On a different topic, purely cosmetic microtransactions and money sinks can work very well too if done right, as proven in various other commercially successful games. I'm not too fussed about alpha accounts game play, while some things are limited there were other things limited as trial accounts as well. But I do think more expansions on cosmetic things could be good, not just ship SKINS.

"CCP GIVE ME MORE FREE STUFF NAOW!!!"

No, the restrictions are not too great at all. You are actually getting a whole lot of game for free. A whole lot more than you've paid for.

FTFY.

"restrictions too great"

No they aren't. You just suck at having fun.

I did not finish reading your post. I underlined why. EVE's F2P scheme is for NEW PLAYERS. Vets can use it. but at severe restrictions. Those restrictions exist to entice people to pay money to have them lifted, because CCP is a company (not a charity) and they need to make money to keep the game running.

If you want to use the stuff you already have, pony up the 50 cents per day it takes to pay for Omega state. 50 cents is, btw, 4 minutes and some change of working a minimum wage ($7.25 per hour) job if you are in the United States. Might be more in some other country.

I respect your opinions, even if I disagree with them.

Thank you.

Which is roughly 1/3 of the ships available. They are restricting 2/3 of the ships in the game. So, yes, in my opinion too great.

Im going to give you F2P fans, the harsh reality of F2p. Ive been playing MMOs for over 2 decades. Thats right i was playing MMOs before people currently in college even existed. Ive played many MMOs from dozens of game companies online and mobile games.


Here is the harsh reality of true F2P, P2W models:

1) A businesses reason to exist is NOT( this is going to be a shock to you) to provide you with free entertainment. It is to make a profit.

2) This may seem strange to you, but Devs have bills, like to eat, like having electricity, maybe take a vacation now and then. You know things that require a paycheck.

3) A sub game is actually cheaper than a F2P. "Its free" is the oldest marketing trick in the book. Its not really free, you have to pay to get anywhere and/or be anything but a farm for wealthy players.

4) F2P games develop a "class system". You have:
- Wealthy players ( like me) that can drop hundreds of dollars a month on a game and not think twice about it. These are at the top of the food chain. They have all the best gear and are pretty much untouchable. What makes them even more untouchable is they tend to band together with other rich players. So now you have an oligarchy of credit cards.
- Middle class players that spend $20-$100 a month. These can survive in the game but they lag behind in having the nicest stuff.
- The poor players hoping that the $10 they spent this month on that package will really give them a boost cause it took them all month saving change to get that much. The end up spending most of their in game currency on protection items so they dont keep getting slaughtered.
- Poverty level players. The ones who scream about how games should be free. Because they are poor IRL, they think everything should be given to them. When instead of playing games, they should be working on fixing their financial situation. If you can afford a computer to play a modern MMO, then you can afford a sub. But we wont get into that. These players think they are getting a good deal cause its free! Nope they are just content farms for everyone else. Most of them play a few weeks, say i cant compete, and move on to a different game.

5) F2P game customer support goes to virtually nil. GMs are replaced by some min wage college kid that reads from a script and tries their best to frustrate you into just going away OR they simply just dont bother to respond to you at all. Unless its a question regarding payment problems. Then suddenly you get someone that is an IT guru.

6) The devs in free to play games focus on income generation. Not a quality product. There are a few F2P games i play every once in a while in which major bugs have went unchecked for YEARS. Meanwhile they are pumping out new premium items and upgrades on the weekly basis.

7) Everything in free to play, ironically, is about revenue generation. They dont care what you want in the game, the devs wont even talk to you. They dont read the forums because they dont want to sift through the enormous amount of complaint posts. Its not like it matters anyway. Their bosses are telling them to pump out revenue generating ideas, not fix crap they dont make any additional revenue of.

8) The one thing that never fails, that never has bugs, and always works in a F2P game is the payment processor. It will take your money without fail every single time you use it. It is flawless in its job. And they probably spent more on their payment processor than the spent on the entire game.

F2P games are nothing more than scams.

In contrast you have the Eve current model:

1) You get good/great customer support from someone who has a clue what is going on and can actually help you.

2) Except for alphas, everyone is on the same playing field. For $15 a month( Its like $11 a month if you just buy a year, hell ask for money for your birthday and use that buy a years sub)you get the same access as everyone else, can do the same things as everyone else.

3) Eve is free unlimited trial. You have access to most things you can do in game. You are not restricted on where you can go as an alpha, You are just restricted on the ride you use to get there. Got to take the bus, if you cant afford a limo, sorry bro.

4) In eve you can play for free as an omega. And its super easy. All you have to do is earn enough to buy a plex in 30 days. I earn 2 bil plus a week casually playing a few hours a day doing things i want to do.

5) Wealthy players in eve make it possible for you to play for free. I buy a six pack of plex sell it on the market to poor people. They get to play the same as me with the same access as me and enjoy the game like me because i pay for their account. And in return they grind isk for me, so i can spend my time pew pewing or whelping ships, or blinging out my ride, or whatever.

Everyone wins. Everyone is on the same playing field. Im just paying for their game time and they are just grinding my isk. Its the perfect gaming symbiotic relationship.

6) The constant and steady revenue generated by subs allows CCP to focus on turning out a quality product, rather than trying to scam their next dollar like P2W. Bugs are fixed, the game is updated regularly. Devs take time to listen to players and bounce ideas off players. Devs are focused on making a good game for the players, not an ATM.


Learn how to make isk in eve, play for free as an omega. Its not hard to do. Vets been telling alphas how to bankroll an omega account since clone states came out. Ive told alphas how to do it at least half a dozen times on reddit in the last 2 weeks.

But dont try to dumb my game down because you are to lazy to put any effort into playing for free or learning how to play for free. The mechanic is there, put some effort in and learn how to use it.

It really does not matter how good your arguments for giving Freeloaders access to more ships or skills, or even all of them one way or another may be. The arguments against it are too strong:

In the case of giving players full access for free, and financing that through microtransactions, How do you prevent players from creating loads and loads of free SP farms/gank alts/cyno alts/market alts/spies/cloaky campers/...?

In the case of selling the game once, and allowing free access afterwards, how do you keep money rolling in? The same applies to the microtransactions as well.

CCP would need to keep players buying their stuff. And in order to do so, they would constantly have to release new stuff, that invalidates the old stuff. Why else would I want to buy something new, if I can play just as well with what I already have? Eve has this nice system where about every ship can be used effectively in one way or another. There are barely any "bad" ships. So, I could just "buy" me access to a variety of ships I need, and then fly just those (I tend to use the same ships over and over again anyway) and then never pay for this game again, unless they were to release new ships that are simply better in every regard. And then we'd see what we have in World of Warcraft for example, where you play the current expansion for one year, until the next one throws all that content on the garbage and gives you new, better content that of course you have to buy again.

Subscription based models are still the best in terms of balance, fairness and cost control. You can tell right from the get-go how much this game will cost you. With any sort of microtransactions, paid unlocks, pay to play expansions and so on, this goes out of the window. You start playing the game with no idea how much it will cost you to play the way you want, and in the end, you will be locked out from certain content by a paywall without knowing how tall it will be beforehand. And yes, this works exceptionally well for some games, but the ones profiting from systems like that over a subscription based model are the publishers/developers, not the players. It's baffling to me how so many players want to have ripoff models like that.