Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I think you would find it would not particularly increase the number of players, but would increase the number of people with drake and maelstrom alts to bulk out fleet sizes. Cuz, seriously, why wouldn't you ?

EVE is pretty much free to play as it is.

Edit: Off topic part removed, CCP Phantom

run missions, buy plex, free to play.

Sure alot of people sign up to "free 2 play" games but how many are actually active?
How many get pissed off with the advert spam\limitation of not investing money?

Free to play is a horrible business model that's just been brought about but investors wanting a better return on their money at the expense of a game being fun or engaging (99% of the time).

Name me one free to play game that's actually better than an alternative that costs money.

I dread to think of the horrors this would unleash on us, no thanks. It's bad enough now with the crying about realising that the game isn't Hello Kitty Online.

Free to Play

The game exactly is it is now but with 3 restrictions:

1. Certain skills cannot be trained (Same as with trial now.)

2. No skill can be trained to level 5.

3. Skill training time takes twice as long.


If you pay for a month then the above restrictions are lifted.


If you love to make stuff more complicated you can add further restrictions like only 1 character slot and a limit on wallet but I don't think its necessary. The skill restrictions are enough to motivate someone to pay.

The reason I am suggetsing this is because it would make the game more accessable (obviously), and it might even make it more popular. I don't see anything wrong with my restrictions, with one or two exceptions. How would you be able to get all of that done on a standard 14-day Trial Account? That is why I'm limiting that kind of stuff to 'Premium' Accounts.

And PLEXs take alot of money to purchase in-game. Not only that, but they don't magically show up in the game. You have to buy them with real money first. So when you are buying someone's PLEX, they are practically spending their money for your account.

Besides, who the hell makes 450 Million ISK in 14 days? And I don't mean a 14-day timespan after playing for several months, I mean when your account is less than a month old. As far as I am aware of, the only legit way you can get that much ISK in 14 days is by running Level 4 missions non-stop.

This is a bad idea, it'll be abused so badly that you won't recognize the Eve that results. If you really think that Eve is dying, let it pass in piece and not the train wreck that would happen if F2P were introduced.

Neither the battlecruiser nor battleship skills are trainable on trial accounts, why would they be trainable (or usable) on playing-for-free accounts?

Trial accounts can not:

• Use contracts
• Give money
• Use research skills
• Request missions from L3 or higher agents
• Cloak
• Light a cyno

If those restrictions were in place for playing-for-free accounts (i.e.: if your cyno alt's subscription expires, it can no longer fly any T2 ship, can't use a cyno, etc. I would add Weapon Upgrades and Warhead Upgrades to the list of not-trainable-on-alt skills, thus shutting down the use of T2 weaponry by play-for-free pilots.

Playing-for-free accounts might need to be restricted from posting orders on the market (i.e.: restricted to only selling to buy orders or buying from sells) to prevent free alts being used for massive market manipulation attempts. Trial characters can currently post buy and sell orders quite freely, so all they need is the ISK to fiddle with the market: it is already possible to play the market with disposable trial alts.

There doesn't need to be an SP cap. Just disable the skills that can't be trained on trial accounts, and thus any skill that depends on that one. No more need for "hours for PLEX", the character can still log in and do something even if it is just sitting in station chewing the fat with corpmates.

EVE Online already has a thriving micro transaction economy courtesy of PLEX and the Market. More players getting blown up in frigates and cruisers can only be good for the game.

The use of low-skill throwaway alts for ganking, scouting, corp infiltration, etc will increase, certainly. I would expect that players would get attached to these F2P alts once they trained certain gateway skills: resub with PLEX for a month to get that T2-catalyst ganking alt out for another month of Hulkageddon merriment, and so on.

I expect the ability to be able to log on at any time without being reminded that you owe CCP money will encourage people to play. The desire to take that Rook out for another bout of PvP might be enough to get the player to subscribe. This would be especially useful if "Micro-PLEX" were available that allowed for a single week or day of subscription (I suspect a week-long subscription would be better, rather than having existing subscribers drop down to weekend subscriptions only).

It would be nice for people to expand upon the methods that they feel a F2P system would be exploited, so that it can be clearly seen that some exploits are easily dealt with, or others are simple game breaking. This commentary must be given in the light of the current environment where one can create a 51 day alt that is not restricted by trial account limitations. As an example: a 51 day account can train to fly a cloaked T1 frigate (about a week for Electronics IV and Cloaking 3), providing free/cheap eyes on a system entry point for the remaining 30-odd days of the subscription.

A 21 day trial character can fly destroyers and fit small weapons, providing a cheap and disposable suicide ganking alt, totally free of the restrictions in place regarding the biomassing of characters with negative security status. A F2P version of this alt would be able to fly that ship better (but with the added restriction of weapon upgrades, could not use T2 weapons).

The availability of PLEX doesn't really make EVE "Free to Play", though it does add the option of "Play to Pay".

And a reminder: trial characters (and thus, F2P under this model) are limited to frigates, destroyers, and cruisers. They cannot use T2 ships, can't post contracts, they can't even change the names of cans in space.

The (incomplete) list of current trial account restrictions is available in the EVElopedia.

no lifetime trial.

You'd think it be limiting but its not. I am taking advantage of a 60 day trial offer for an alt. Using nothing but non-trial skills I will make a very decent baseline alt. good fitting skills, nice combat skills for frgis for sure and maybe cruiser (I just eve mon'ed up t frigs since only planned ship they'll fly), etc.

End of 60 days I activate, throw in the trial locked skills for a month I have in mind (this basically will be an uber cyno alt, maybe a fun AF pilot as of current plan) plex the transfer and kill the account. 3 month train I pay 1 month for....not too bad a setup since its shotgunning with a paid account for the other uber cyno alt to stack an account with 2 cynos in the same time span.


Lifetime trial you are looking at some very high powered and free combat alts. Alts that can run along side your pay accounts as well if you have more than one computer. I have no problem with dual boxing....paying for 2 accounts by plex or rl money do waht you want. the game however does not need every pirate, alliance blobber, empire ganker with 2 computers spamming a free uber alt for life. they want that abiltiy....collect up the isk to plex as many accounts as they want to run.

Now you might say well kill 2 connections with 1 a trial from one connection. Apt/flat mates, cyber cafes/coffee house wireless services, one half of a couple trying to get their other halves to play eve.....lots of reasons why you will never see an IP block.

Exploit this idea to do what?