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I'm going with the extension to battleships you mentioned, so we're talking about the entirety of the T1 combat lineup in that hypothetical. And I'm sure a fair set of accounts could do without higher tier ships if it means freeing up real money or time spent earning PLEX.

That aside this reads at this point like a reaction without a benefit. The biggest part of the issue with the direction you'd take this is keeping the value of Omegas, especially in relation to alt account Omegas (even skill goop funded Omegas consume paid resources incentivizing further real money purchases). Worse you eliminated a large driver to move to Omega accounts. Further you've exasperated the P2W issue by making alphas the norm, which makes Omegas that much for visible as a paid advantage class rather than the method of intended long term play.

So you've cut into your current income, offered no dependable replacement and made the P2W perception more prevalent to pander to the clickbait musings of game news. Still not sold on this being a good strategy.

Worse I'm worried about it backfiring and more cost becomes heaped upon fewer Omega players.

So what you're saying is that nothing is changing and you're unhappy about it? People who don't tank their ships enough will get always get ganked, and gankers have already access to low cost ganking characters. Due to the limits imposed on Alpha Clones, low cost ganking is actually being nerfed.

I raised the idea once in F&I for attribute booster drugs and got trolled into the dirt.

CCP really needs to moderate that section better.

Good catch. It's highlighting multiple existing problems, which largely centre around multiboxing. Which feels like a leading question from CCP - are they asking us, as players to set an upper limit on characters per player? Yes, it can be bypassed by techies. But the majority aren't (as evidenced by the recent hacking wave). The question is buried in the topic, and not unfair. What's a reasonable limit of Omega accounts, or farming in general - these impact the ecosystem too.

FW/Ganking/Mining sort of tie in, but this multiboxing/ability to scale might be the underlying theme for a lot of issues.

The NPE is something fundamental that needs it's own topic imo - altho not pleased this change was announced before the NPE changes, there's time to remedy it and give people chance to participate at a fairly high level. Might be a deliberate strategy, and not a bad one.

Convenience. If I wanted to maintain 30 ganking Omega accounts, I would have to get extractors for each, do the extraction, sell the injectors, buy PLEX, and use the PLEX, each month, for all 30 accounts, over and over. Its alot of busy work.
On the other hand, with Alpha accounts I need to do none of that. Just undock and gank whenever I want.

In short:

e2 goes dormant and I just undock 294578275265795671581254784562756356 catalysts and make involuntary sooper-capph dis-assemblies all day long?

That will be glorious! So why would anyone ever want an omega clone?

You need to prevent a person with a omega toon from logging on any alpha toons at the same time.

Otherwise EVE pvp will become everyone's omega toons plus their griffin alpha alts. and it will be JAM online and it will suck.

Plus many of us dont enjoy the low graphics, sub 5 fps, tidi, no sound battles that huge null sec engagements become. I was their during the first keepstar kill and it was the most boring, horrible looking (due to low graphics and sub 5 fps) gameplay I have ever experienced in eve. ( I am above the recommended spec and I was not multi boxing)

If you allow simultaneous log in of alpha alts with omega toons these huge tidi, horrible graphics sub 5 ps battles will be extremely frequent.

I want more people (real people not alts) playing eve and I think clone states concept is excellent but ccp you need put in place strong measures to stop alts online. Because right now people will be forced to do it. If my opponent is bring their omegas plus 1 griffin alpha alt (or 5) then I will be forced to do it do.

I'm not anticipating a 50/50 split, that was again going from a statement you made and that as a part of an expanded Alpha set of limits pushing participation in favor of their use. If Alphas have the capacity to be strong stand alone accounts in terms of capability that's what they will become (assuming there is sufficient interest out there).

Why avoid this? Because alternatives are a true F2P/P2W game with literally distinct classes. I'm not sure why you want to turn the disadvantages class into anything other than a stepping stone for those that intend to stay while citing variance in ability as a reason. It's wholly contradictory.

Anyone who's grown into a monster PvPer A) Wouldn't be classified as new at that point and B) Made the decision to stick around while under the constraints of a low SP character unless a patron of the character bazaar or more recently an injector junky. Those gaps exist because the SP system allows for it.

Also there's the number game which has been a personal power equalizer since literally the point people figured out more than one person could shoot at the same target at the same time.

Bit of an oversimplification. Free, unlimited expansion of a number of capabilities is a concern, including in terms of force, everywhere that specific numbered caps aren't in place. That's pretty much the entire game.

The rest of your post is less important than this, so I'll just answer this. See, the thing about Eve is that it's a single server sandbox and every player that logs in and undocks enriches it for every other. It doesn't even really matter whether they're mining, missioning, plexing, or PVPing - they've enriched the game by taking part in it. Thus, having alpha players who aren't willing to spend money but are willing to play is a net win because it improves my game.

However, I'm not merely looking at it from my perspective. I'm also looking at it from a cold business perspective. CCP's goals have always been (and will continue to be): higher DAUs, higher retention, and ultimately higher revenue.

DAU measures how many people log into the game every day. However, what might be more interesting how many people undock on any given day - because the majority of interactions with the game happen when someone is undocked. That is, the person isn't playing Skill Queues Online.

Retention measures how long someone will continue to play (or pay for!) the game. Eve's always been pretty sticky once people cross certain boundaries, so I'm less concerned about this (except for the undocking part mentioned above). While this isn't particularly relevant to Eve yet, it's been shown in other F2P games that there's always a chance for someone to convert as long as they continue to play a game.

Now, consider the following: alpha accounts drive DAU (and thus player interactions), have their own retention scores (and probability for conversion), and influence the retention of omega accounts via social ties. Thus, we can't treat alphas as merely a stepping stone to omegas. Thus, a fully fledged F2P Eve experience should have a free tier that is fundamentally playable. It doesn't have all the options, but you at least need to be able to compete in some areas of the game.

And yes, I've worked in F2P gaming for several years now.

-Liang

Ed: I very nearly went off on a very long explanation of many F2P concepts and how the data and numbers behind them form a viable business model. Be glad I restricted myself to DAU and retention, because I almost went off on ARPU and ARPPU and how driving ARPPU gives the F2P industry a bad name!

Nice follow up. Thx.