I have seen some opinions about what people feel that Alpha accounts should and shouldn’t have access to. I find this to be an interesting topic, and I’d like to gain a clearer understanding of what people think about the balance of Alpha accounts, and the reasoning for those opinions. So, if you feel like taking part, please vote in the poll below, and add a reply sharing your views.
Q: How do you feel about the balance of Alpha accounts?
Alpha’s should have access to more skills, ships and equipment.
The balance of what Alpha’s have access to is appropriate.
Alpha’s should have access to less skills, ships and equipment.
Even on my main am an alpha, fully trained the expanded alpha skillset by PLEXing my account mostly by stealing stuff in Jita without any issue. The original alpha skillset was good enough for me already and the expanded one provides everything I could ever need as I rarely sign in and don’t really have use for most omega stuff. Cloak would be nice but to be honest it is very generous as it is and CCP needs to make money so having stuff behind a paywall is natural so no complaint there either. If someone needs those omega features or just wants to support the game can grind in real-life for an extra hour or few each month and sub, so no need for more alpha content it is already more than enough.
I think the phrase “give the devil a finger and he’ll take the whole arm” is appropriate in this situation; no matter what the product (virtual or not) people will always want to get things for free if they can and if you (they) get accustomed to that this is all you (they) would ever want.
We all know that Free to Play (F2P) will almost always end up as Pay to Win (P2W) or will be nothing but micro-transactions to do much of anything in a game. Not to mention various Loot Boxes in one form or another.
i’d love to see restriction to alpha accounts’ access to pirate and/or faction ships, probably by adding Criminal/Security connection social skill to ships’ requirements, then either move these skills to require Social 4 or limit alpha’s access to Social 2 or make requirements so that alphas cannot access cruiser-sized pirate and faction ships and above.
Remove access to battleships (except praxis?).
What alphas should not have access to: cyno, ice harvesting, cloaking, freighters, t2 ships.
Skills i want to see added to alphas: better cap skills, better weapon support skills (esp. missiles), Reactive armor hardener phasing skill (up to level 2 at least).
Alpha’s get also all skills and ships. Everything. For free.
Omega’s get…
Omega AURA implant. Cannot be destroyed. That aura implant gives ;
15% bonus to everypossible ship/module/drone in use by the omega user
1% bonus to everyone in the same fleet of that omega (might or might not be comulative, capped on 10% total)
Special Omega insurance that covers ;
100% cost price of ship and module (wallet history) reimbursed
Clone to any station in the universe (except the player ones with a restriction list)
Clonejump every hour.
Omega Wormhole Generator. Will generate a wormhole anywhere anytime at 0m so you can use it even when webbed and scrammed. It will connect to a private ‘safe space’ Class Omega Wormhole, where you can use access list to invite friends
Omega Force Bar (like in the Star Wars Galaxies Original / Combat Upgrade)
It’s magical points you can use to do magic and even summon a unicorn in your captains quarters. You won’t be able to see it but you know it’s there…
I will brainstorm on more ideas for Omega when I get back from work. Feel free to add neat ideas that makes the game pay-to-fun (not to be confused with pay to win).
This is just a trend in an industry that lacks regulation. It will disappear once public pressure becommes to great and if we are lucky some people will be held accountable for their actions.
If paying for a sub is such a luxury expense for you then you have bigger issues to worry about than your clone state in an internet pixel spaceship game. Furthermore even in that case getting everything for free will not make CCP money and thus will not sustain the game. Or you suggest CCP should be a charity organization and provide free entertainment and cover the server and development costs out of their personal pockets or something?
Cruisers gave players a good sample of the game. They covered various roles including logi and e-war (even mining for some), and allowed them to reasonably access a decent scope of activities like fw, missions and abyss space.
Battlecruisers wasn’t a big push since they’d be training med mods for cruisers but battleships was definitely too much.
Cross training was good. The racial skill lists were too restrictive and in some cases unintuitive (no logi drones for minnie, go gallente for haulers and everyone got ecm). However alpha access to pirate ships was bad. Very very bad.
T2 guns was good. The T2 ammo adds utility to weapons that stop you being worthless in some pvp fights.
What I would like to see?
Racial frigate, dessie, cruiser and bc to 5.
Battleships and large guns removed from alpha (no alpha abc gankers or structure bashers)
No specialised haulers for alpha (move skill requirements to indie II.)
Some good replies so far. It’s opened my eyes to how little my opinion is based upon. To put my view simply, I feel that Alpha accounts should be like a demo mode. With just enough available to have fun, but with enough restrictions that Omega feels like good value.
Given how often there are people asking for Alpha’s to be able to access more things, I’m surprised that more people haven’t been championing that side of the matter in this thread.
Just get rid of Alpha entirely. Eve did fine and was doing fine for many years without that crap.
I liked that you could get 4hrs free in the event you needed to log in to PLEX. But free accounts just feeds the greed and promotes an already problematic issue with players expecting hand outs.
And what’s the deal with skill injectors? Seriously! My ISK is apparently worth LESS than a new player because I trained real time for years?!? If you are going to do something for players, don’t just cater to the lazy asshats who don’t want to put in the time or effort.
As a perpetual alpha myself I’d love to see CCP remove the ability for alphas to have bc and bs. Instead let us train more t2 equipment for cruiser down. Afterburners etc. let’s us few perma alphas specialize a niche or two but will hopefully incentivize others to pay for bigger shinies.
