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I'm going to add my voice to the general call for limits on simultaneous logins. Let's just go with a one-alpha max. That can be one alpha one its own, or one alpha with some number of omegas, but never more than one alpha logged in simultaneously. That limits what you can do with them by a lot. A freebie non-cloaky scanner to go with whatever you're doing? A semi-afk mining frigate you put in your other monitor? T1 PvP character to burn rifters in Ama? Great, fine. Ten of either? Bad idea. Not that people wouldn't find a way to circumvent any limit on simultaneous logins anyways, but I think that leaving that door open is going to be the only major risk.

Otherwise, I'm generally in favor. Nice way to introduce folks to the game without forcing them to get hooked in a 14-day window. I'd make sure (and I'm pretty sure this is already the case) that alpha accounts can't contract-spam or make decoy corps and wardec people.

Oh, yeah, what happens if a corp leader reverts to alpha? Does the lower corp management skill kick a bunch of people from the corp? How does it affect the alliance?

I think this is a great idea and fully support it. However, my only concern is Faction Warfare LP farming.

Alpha Clones are limited to the racial combat skills up to Cruiser sized ships and weapons, and it seems like T1/Faction modules. This leaves most farmable content out, such as PI and Mining alts. However, it sounds like Alpha clones can still sign up for Faction Warfare and participate to receive full Loyalty Points. This has much potential to be abused and farmed for free; this would also hurt the LP-to-ISK ecosystem greatly. So what do you do?

Option 1: Restrict Alpha Clones from participating in Faction Warfare. I don't like nor recommend this option. Faction Warfare is a great way for rookie pilots to learn the ropes of combat while still flying relatively cheap ships and to earn money via the LP Rewards.

Option 2: Allow Alpha Clones to fully participate in Faction Warfare; however, change their Loyalty Point gains to a certain percentage of what normal gains are. I recommend this option because it encourages new players to actually venture out to lowsec, join Faction Warfare corporations and alliances, and participate in fleet/solo PvP, and also see the fruits of their labor with LP gains, albeit diminished than their Omega clone counterparts.

Option 3: Allow full participation and loyalty point gain by Alpha Clones. As mentioned above, I believe this would lead to a massive increase of LP which would severely affect the LP ecosystem.

*EDIT - I also believe the other players are correct about only launching one Alpha Clone at a time.

A friend just suggested: "CCP could disallow turning safety off in highsec for Alphas too, then not much of an issue"

Question at the devs on this:

1. If I launch an alpha account, can I launch another one on the same computer?
2. Can I sign up for multiple alpha accounts w/the same email address?
3. If I have an omega account can I launch a single or multiple alpha accounts with it?

These questions will affect how your current player base uses these.

Swarms of ventures will drive mineral costs to zero.

In retrospect, I see your point. You could create one colony, but it wouldn't generate much at all because you'd lose access to the cc upgrades skill.

Ok, objection to that recalled.

And while CCP is at it changing clones how about:

- No implants for Alpha clones.
- Implants for Omega clones can only be installed (and more importantly) removed in stations.

Disclaimer: I have only skimmed over the skill lists and maybe comment later on them.

The game provides the means and the world where a completely new player can start from scratch with no help inside and only a bit of background research beforehand to amass enough wealth to plex before spending a single buck and keep plexing. Apparently this is undesired, and I do agree with it.

What drives this Free-to-play decision? Is your your subscription rate going down so much from the abundance of bad design choices you communicated and made over the last years, so you would like to give players the chance to see for themselves if it's still worth it which potentially improves online times and thus more chances for them to get hooked again?

Or is ISK vs. gametime going down so much that you now need to bait a ton of players into the community and hope they're spending a few bucks on ship skins before they jump out again?

Regarding multiboxing; To me, one Alpha account on top of as many subscribed accounts sounds like a good intermediate mix between "trial only" and "as many paid accounts as your computer can handle"

Regarding support: I can still log in with accounts which are long unsubscribed (and one old trial account) into zendesk and write tickets. I don't understand why you think there should be a problem?

Regarding test servers: Mass tests yes, anything else no. Because you want many people on mass tests. The more the merrier.

Questions:

1. Will regular Trial accounts be completely going away? Or will you become "Alpha" after the trial stage?
2. Can old characters who still have unallocated skillpoints use these to train restricted omega skills which have been started and half finished?
3. If you are going to kill trial accounts, what was your reason for allowing tons of skills not that long ago, including Trial PI and now everything gets scrapped? Did your feedback feelers shown it was no good and you decided this wasn't a direction you wanted to take?
4. Are you going to change current new player starting skills (again?)

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the idea of an extended trial and the ability for people to get back with their old accounts to see what the game is like before resubscribing blindly. Just be careful to not mess around too much with people having had subscribed accounts with all those hoops and loops to not corrupt character entries.
But I don't see the current state of being beneficial to grab more new players.

Yeah.
So where are your plans for a proper UI overhaul, spectacularly good NPE and revamped career choices to pursue? Without those, it will be one big rid of disappointment for everyone you try to lure in. This will not change replacing trial accounts with Alpha clone states.
Because if a player cannot be hooked or understand your game within the 14 day trial period, you've failed. A player doesn't need more time.
You want a player to be hooked within the first session, craving more on the next day and subsequent days. Unlimited trial is not the answer to that if your core game interfacing and outlook remains... "insufficient."

I couldn't find an argument to disagree with, so I asked for clarification.

I particularly found the idea of there being inflation, when the EVE economy has been deflationary for some time somewhat odd.

Following restrictions MUST apply here, ccp. I mean seriously...

- Not being able to join FW. Farming alts are already a problem.

- Apply current restrictions like with trial accounts. No Alpha and Omega being able to be logged in at the same time.

- No corperation management skill. Scout-wardec corps and even more failed newbro corps will damage the game and NPE.

- Not being able to gank right from the bat. Don´t even let this begin, ccpls.

- No jump clones. Being able to scout 2 systems with an Alpha Clone on either side of the universe seems rubbish.

- Think about something for industry because having 4 production lines per Alpha Clone means 12 per account. I already ran a few numders in my head and under certain circumstances this means a not unreasonable ammount of impact on Industry. Of course you need to know what you do but pretty much every Industrialist in this game should be easily able to figure out ways to abuse this.