Assembly Hall

I came back just to check things out because of alpha clones... I quit playing about a year ago. After playing the grind game to make isk I had managed to turn a couple hundred thousand into about 3 billion in less than two months. BUT... IT WAS A SERIOUS GRIND. I don't know how many hours, probablywell over a hundred just to grind out that isk.

I think the conflicting thing about this game is just that everything is tied to isk. You really can't do much of anything without it. That's why I just can't wrap my head around playing this game much. I'd say my logic probably follows along with a lot of people and it doesn't really matter if you have the money to pay to play or not.

I want to play EVE and I don't have the money to pay for a sub.
- Let me spend hours grinding out isk to pay for a sub...
- I still need isk to do the fun things I want to do.... but I just spent my isk for a PLEX...
- Crap... lets grind some more to get isk for the actual fun I want to have.
- EVE online turns into job...
- I quit...

That is the situation I played through when I tried to play without paying a sub.... even though I could (and did for those couple months, even an extra for an alt account one month).
Now, even considering coming back and paying again, my logic goes something like this...

I want to play EVE and I DO have the money to pay for a sub! YAY!
- Well I have paid for my sub, but again I still need isk to blow up space pirates and have fun.
- I can spend some time farming isk to have fun, or I can buy another PLEX.
- I can afford it, just an hour at my actual job can afford me a sub PLEX and a PLEX for fun! Saves me countless hours grinding....
- Buys 2 plexes...
- Why am I paying $30 a month to play a game again? I can go play guild wars 2 or any number of games that are just as much fun without the reliance on in game or real life money.
- Realizes other games are just as much fun without being $30 or even $15 a month....
- Does not compute...
- End Sub


I think currently Alpha Clones do have too many limitations. They shouldn't be able to do everything, but they should be able to do a lot.

The real underlying problem is there isn't really enough fun to be had without constantly worrying about isk. Also, since you are capable of losing a lot of isk just by simply playing the game or making mistakes that makes the point even more sharp. Maybe change up the structure of the economy a little by having NPCs offer a wider variety of ships and mods for purchase very cheaply so there is a broader range of things that can be done without sinking in tons of isk. Let the whales have access to cap ships, personal stations and top of the line modules and such with their abundance of isk and/or money if they want to spend it on the game.

When people come to play the game, they don't want to just fly frigates around all the time. They want to be able to have their battleships too but may not ever be able to get them or continue losing them stupidly resulting in them just quitting because they can't afford to replace them. Maybe instead of just getting game time with a PLEX you could get NPC currency that could only be used to purchase those cheap ships and mods I mentioned. Make them non transferable if you want. This would allow people to still pay for a sub but then also have access to things that make the game fun. Slightly better versions of the ships could be available as usual with isk and just have a moderate advantage over the NPC varieties. So there would still be incentive for people that want to spend the money to acquire isk and these other ships.

Just my opinion. I did enjoy the game for a time... but if it just ends up turning into a second job for farming isk... people won't tend to enjoy it for long.

The main restrictions come in the form of skill training caps that limit what you can do and/or use. You can only fly about 1/3 of the ships, and actually less than that when you take into consideration faction limitations. For example, one of my characters I started as Gallente but fly a lot of amarr ships. Can't use any of those now if I log back on as alpha since they are the wrong faction. Skill cutoffs make using most of the modules I was using impossible to use. I just read another post specifically talking about someone that had started Gallente but quickly realized that hardly any of the much needed drone skills were trainable, which is supposed to be one of Gallentes strong points.

Before I quit last time one of the easy things I did to make some extra isk on another account while I was doing something on my main, was just going to defend FW sites in a little punisher stacked full of warp core stabs. Could just sit at a station and farm LP while actively paying attention to my other account. Not only can that toon not fly the punisher anymore, she cant use WCS either. Was fun to just do that and not pay attention until you heard the targeting beeps then just align and laugh while you warp out even after they try and scramble you.

My hauler doesn't even have access to his Charon anymore. You can't do hardly anything effectively in industry, trade and all sorts of areas because of the harsh training limits. As I said, if they want to limit anything, it should just be MAYBE cutting off access to the very highest skills and cap ships. Just the 2x training time is enough of an incentive to get people to sub if they like the game and want to continue to a more advanced level.

My quote from another post:




I think the main TL:DR here is just that not many people want the "pay to grind" experience anymore. If they pay they want to be able to do whatever with the game without worrying about grinding on top of a sub. Vice versa some people just want something to play for free for whatever reason and don't mind grinding. There are lots of bad F2P models out there, but there are also a lot of good ones.