Player Features and Ideas Discussion

[I'm a new player (less than two months old) to EVE, but a veteran in various MMOs. This is a series of small "Quality of Life" suggestions that should have no game balance ramifactions. The suggestions are being posted in individual threads so they can stand or fall on their individual merits, rather than being one disorganized mess.]

Players of EVE tend to be a paranoid lot, and understandably so. When PLEX and friend invites enter this picture, the paranoia can be taken too far. One common arrangement is

1. Veteran invites friend and chooses PLEX as a rewar
2. Veteran gives friend a PLEX
3. Friend redeems PLEX, which causes the veteran to be rewarded with a PLEX -- making this mostly a no-cost operation for the vet but giving their friend 51 total days free

(For consistent terminology in this post, I'll use 'Veteran' as the person sending the invite and 'Friend' as the recipient.

Friend invites don't always involve actual friends who you can trust. There's even a CCP-sanctioned forum thread dedicated to new players who want to find someone who will give them a friend invite (for the longer trial, among other reasons). So there's trust issues here: How does the person sending the invite know the person they're giving the PLEX to really is the person they invited, and that they won't just run off with it? How does the invitee know they'll actually be given what they're promised? (This is based on a true story involving me and the person who invited me -- who was so worried I'd run off with a PLEX that he wanted my account info to apply it himself. Suffice to say, I refused.)

My proposal is to add some robustness to friend invites. Not all of these need to be implemented, but they're here as ideas

1. Allow one of the invite-a-friend reward options to be free game time given to the friend invited, rather than to the person sending the invite. This allows you to say "Here's 51 days of game time, enjoy!" without having to worry about the whole mess of PLEXing

2. Allow the veteran to associate a contract with their friend -- if their friend upgrades within X days, they receive contents of contract Y. The veteran should not be allowed to cancel this contract before it times out (to stop them from yanking it just before their friend upgrades), but the timeout period insures they aren't permanently out the contents of the contract if their friend does not upgrade. The invitation email friends receive should contain the contents of this contract. This allows for the invite programs of "I'll give you X million ISK!" to be guarunteed to be honored

3a. Make it possible to see if a given character is indeed one of your friend invites and, if so, whether their account status is trial or paid

3b. Make it possible to redeem a PLEX on another character, rather than giving the PLEX item itself to that character.

3a - is simply intended to be "Is this person really on an account spawned from my invite-a-friend", without revealing additional information.

3b - I invite Joe Random to the game. I want Joe Random to have an activated account/30 more days of gametime, but I don't want the risk of him running off with a PLEX. I redeem a PLEX and say "Apply this to Joe Random's account rather than my own".

Trust does not work in EVE.

Don't try to trade with newbs, cause they might be some scammer scrub alt.

Don't accept a new invite, because the guy may not give you a plex.

Problem solved, HTFU and just pay for the install like everyone else.

Because, you know, discouraging new players from trying the game is good for the long-term health of EVE.

Besides, scamming involving friend invites is against the EULA/TOS, unlike all other forms of scamming. Of course, it happened to me anyways.