I’ll take your 24 bullet points, print them out, and then throw them in the trash.
Yes, I’ll go so far as wasting paper and ink, just to have the satisfaction of spite.
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Walking in stations needed more development time and work done, and was only used by 3% of the population. Most of the things you wanted removed are either widely used or require very little work to maintain.
“Hey guys! Guys! I haven’t played the game in 10-20 years, but guess what. You’re doing it all wrong !”
Welcome to the forums
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OP plays EVE:
4/10 troll. decent attempt.
EVE’s Forum Community:
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Wow, you really dont have a clue do you.
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I would like for you to explain this chart pls caus you seem to be defending the status quo, do you know what i mean? If the trend was going up, if the player base was expanding i could understand where you were coming from. I could understand why you act like everything is fine. but its not, yet you believe it is. please explain?
What is wrong with that?
How much are willing to pay for an expert’s advice?
–Mercenary Gadget
The peak you’re pointing at is Incarna. (ie: walking in stations.) It was bad.
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CCP is a business, how are they supposed to run Eve and all the employees and Hardware if everyone is playing for free?
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Other companies seem to make it work. WoW private servers are a good example. You play for free, everyone is equal in that sense, but you can purchase soulbound items for money and you skip the login queue if you have donated. you also pay real money for things like character name changes, and so on. But in-game everyone is equal and nothing is deliberately designed to limit or try and force a free player to pay money. But this is what EVE online did, and it clearly doesent work? The active players has been shrinking year after year for many years now as shown further up in this thread. So yes they are business and their current model doesent work. Something is broken af. And saying “its an old game” is a bad excuse.
Of course they want the free loaders to pay. This game started where you only played free for 1 week. Then you had to sub.
Then when they created alpha clones to entice more ppl to play without buying a sub, they still needed a way to make money
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The top 4 games on steam are free to play? How is this possible?
btw. the monetezation of EVE online is equivalent to not allowing people in Dota2 to use the heroes ultimate ability unless they purchase “Omega game time.” Or in counter-strike it would be the equivalent of not being able to use rifles unless you purchase omega game time.
Number of players playing a game does not equal how well a game company is doing financially. It’s just a way of finding out what is popular.
To be fair, plazid’s attitude here is the reason why I’ve advocated in the past for the ships Alpha’s can fly be able to be flown to the peak ability (in terms of allowed skills.)
The current skill allotment gives new players the idea EVE is pay to win, even under the most generous definitions.
You could even take away Battleships from alphas as long as all the other skills they could use could be trained to L5.
You need to slow your role. Eve online started as a sub. Meaning you couldnt play without paying.
It wasnt until a few years back, they made eve free to play
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Companies are crafty in monetization, and that includes CCP - who have succeeded in creating a hybrid of subscription and seduction. Yes, it’s advertised as “free-to-play” - and we all understand and should acknowledge (!) that it is “free-to-try”. Of course, if you believe advertisements, then there’s nothing anyone can do to help you…
One crucial element that you, and many others, always overlook is the core mechanic of training skills. EvE Online is the only MMO I have played that trains skills over (real) time, regardless of - or despite - in-game actions. As long as the sub is paid, the SP accumulate. That is the genius of it - and somehow that appealed to EvE’s early players. It’s also fair and equitable. Couple progression to subscription. That makes a lot of sense where “losses are real”. The true assets in the game are the SP. And those should never be obtainable for free.
Any extra income, from shaking the tree that holds the impatient, the casual, the opportunistic, the vane reflexes and weaknesses we all share, is of course welcome to CCP. That’s why we have the NES, the store, PLEX, the ads on the launcher, the emails, the packs, the “offers”, the extractors, some of which are indeed fair or reasonable deals. And that is the path that CCP has chosen, marrying their subscription model to casual expenditure. It seems to work well for them, and thank bob for that.
Alpha allows you to get 20M SP, which is roughly 4% of what is in the game for an omega’s 500M sp … Yes, alpha is a demo, that’s the proof. And anyone who believes and expects that anything is truly “free” needs education or hard lessons.
You want to promote a monetization that is entirely based on seduction ? I’ll take CCP’s pay-to-play over that any day. Don’t like it ? Want to swap fairness for “give me more of your moneys” ? Go play a so-called free-to-play game then, where advantages over other players are paid for by cash, where “losses are not real”.
If it were me, I’d reduce the alpha status back to a month real time, without skill limits, but with a strict time limit. “Free 1 month-trial” sounds a lot less confusing and more honest than “Free-to-play”, doesn’t it. But that won’t happen. It doesn’t resonate with the current generation of new players, used as they are to the “free” ads and never calculating what they actually spend on “free”.
Does the current alpha status do anything to acquire new omegas ? Only CCP can tell, but I would assume the increase is marginal at best. What is certain is that the current alpha status promotes casual expenditure on a game, and as long as that is worthwhile CCP will gladly spend the manpower on alpha maintenance - it does require extra programming efforts, and probably creates an extra necessity for more non-essential design of casual items to sell. As long as they are able to hold the alpha and omega balls in the air, the number of active players stays level. When they drop the omega ball, they lose subs. When they drop the alpha ball, they lose some casual income. A nice corner they put themselves in.
Not off to a great start when you don’t realize the reason behind this feature. Think of systems as moving from room to room in a dark house. Each player needs the opportunity to flip on the lights before getting pounced on by the mob of burglars within the room. No “magic” explanation needed either, since there is no such thing as invisibility or cloaking in science. Let’s assume there was, then I would tell you each EDENCOM stargate provides it as a protective service for travelers.
#2 Stargates aim their “magic signals” at other stargates not other stars. Once again you are attempting to make logical rules within a science-fantasy game. I wrote several books on fantasy and sci-fi, but mostly stuck with high fantasy novels. The reason why was people such as yourself who want facts and data sheets on everything. When I published Star Trek: The Rights of the Many readers criticized all the fantasy science which was based in science fact. I never responded to those letters. However anytime I published a high fantasy story, I was never asked how the wizard was able to fly, because the answer was just too simple, magic duh!?
The way things work in video games or science-fiction should never be taken so seriously. All or most of your suggestions is to remove content and not to improve upon the existing content. This is me being critical of your post, I hope it helps you grow as an writer in the essence, that we will read better postings from you in the future.
Relax and enjoy the game.
I would argue that Eve Online is not free to play due to the Omega time thing. I mean its not free to play if the only way to train a skill to max level is to pay. Or the only way to pilot all ships and use all modules is to pay. Then its not free to play. Do you know what i mean?