But new alphas aren’t sticking around.
When alphas were made there was a small increase in player activity and then a drop. Alphas have not actually lead to more people playing.
What looks like has happening is that omega players are unsubbing and playing the game as alphas. Hence there needs to be a bigger divide between alpha and omega to encourage subbing, or to discourage unsubbing rather.
Hence the idea of taking away the big sticks but giving them better small sticks.
Yes we want more players. But it’s not the kind of player who just logs in once a week for an hour and then leave. We want more involved players. Players who spend time and effort in the game. Content creators or at least supporters.
Alpha has nothing with it. I you only play the game because it’s f2p and leave as soon as you reach top level of free play (read: hit paywall) then you are not that kind of player we want CCP to care about.
You cant treat people like second class citizens and expect them to commit
That’s a fair point. Are you talking about the skill and equipment gap, or the tone that conversations sometimes have around here?
Second class or not they are different from payed and playing players. They only provide ideal and theoretical benefit while costing real money.
They have nothing which can keep them login if they don’t feel it. They can leave at any moment to newly released game.
The only hope is that one day some of them decides to stay and start to bring money. Other that that they provide content for others. That’s it.
So yes, if you want to be treated as “first class citizen” then go Omega and play.
If you pay enough you can become a… Star Citizen
ba dum robs
I agree with the OP Alpha’s need more skills I am glad to say CCP has this covered, for a small contribution each month either with cash or plex and you to can have all the skills you will ever need.
CCP promised that Alpha was only double the skill time… then this. then that… then this… then that…
CCP is about as honest as Alex.
P2W. Loot boxes. What’s next?
Why should they?
Because its an advantage?
Do you really want those kind of players?
Seeing that number would be interesting, I’m currently alpha myself.
Although as I’m kinda taking a break the only plus point of alpha status is that I can shitpost on the forums.
Likewise for most of my accounts. At one point it was all of them. I can still support myself and have fun in faction warfare and i can still fly a rattler in missions (although the lack of sentries hurts)
It could with a little tweaking imo, they’re very much focused towards PVP and it seems like you could open them up a little better to indy and trade in particular, but probably a few more options for PVE and mining as well without really breaking anything. Not sure I’d be entirely happy with how narrow the isk making opportunities are if my only account was F2P.
Somehow these F2P characters feel more valuable to established players with Omega accounts as throwaway characters to dickabout with.
Less skills please. Remove the ability to fly / fit high-sec ganking ships, so that the gankers are forced to use slots on their main (PAID) accounts to do it, instead of recycling free accounts with no risk whatsoever.
There is a major problem with that in that destroyers, which are widely used in ganking, are also an important part of any progression. Stealth bombers are already unavailable for alphas.
Now you may have a case against the use of ABCs by alphas.
What a can of worms.
They whole concept of free to play was perceived as crap from the get-go. And it has proven to be just that. Crap.
CCP tried to bring in dollars by opening up the game to free to play folks and has it worked? Doesn’t look like it.
Cut your losses and run. Drop the Alpha and go back to pay to play.
In my opinion, cutting the current monthly cost to 12.99 on a month to month basis or 9.99 on a tri-monthly basis would do more to retain committed players and keep new players.
There have been lots of folks discussing the cost and it seems to me that the majority are in agreement that the cost of a single fast food meal isn’t too much to pay for such a great game.
It is CCPs idea not my. Omega status provides for faster SP collection and access to more features.
I always opposed the whole idea of F2P in EvE Online. But it’s not players who decide here…
Looks like the median voters is saying, “No.” To new ships/equipment for Alphas…
It’s a difficult call because it depends so much on the player base and how they perceive the value of the game. Also of the cash shop setup, which frankly EVE has always been bad at.
Take a look at Neverwinter/Star Trek Online from Cryptic. As programmers, they aren’t much more successful than CCP (ie., every new coding attempt results in pain and bugs all around). As marketers, and cash shop designers, they are miles ahead. So they can make pretty much everything in their game available in F2P, and still make money hand over fist from their cash shop design and interaction between the player base and competition to have the shinies.
EVE has an issue where the cash shop design, by comparison, was done by 6 year olds with crayons. They have a game design where acquiring shinies is an excellent way to get ganked. EVE is far more bottable and multiboxable. The player competition to ‘keep up with the Joneses’ is much less of a driver, since things like skins, character cosmetics, cool gear that won’t get blown up - all that is pretty much non-visible, not a sales driver.
For the type of game that it is, I think the Alpha’s have about the right amount of access. Enough to explore the game, drop a few bucks while they decide if they want to go big or go home. Not enough to become a dominant force. The L4 mission changes will prob be all the rollback they need… might even be too much.
The original alpha had issues, like choosing gallente to access industrial haulers.
Fixing those types of obvious flaws in the original design should be all that CCP should have done so that, like omegas, the race you start out with isnt too much of a rigid path after you start playing EVE.
Access to so many parts of EVE at so many levels was just a bad idea but of note is that once a corporation puts even a bad idea into motion they usually just keep it going no matter what.
The reason that bad projects are rarely terminated by corporations is because it is hard to go to investors and tell them you spent 15 million of their dollars on some new game feature then removed it 8 months later. If you do this the chances of you being fired are pretty good, if you do it a second time, I can almost promise you that you will be fired.
Hence, a lot of bad ideas will remain in EVE forever.
The most obvious problem I had as an alpha was with the lack of a cloak. I can see not letting alphas have access to T2, i.e., covert ops, but for an exploration focused toon, a little heron would have been a lot nicer with a prototype cloak.
I’m not bothering with an astero, but I know a lot do; you still couldn’t get full use of it without going omega, if CCP opened up at least the basic cloak to alphas.
I hesitate to suggest this, but you asked our opinion, and that’s mine. I know cloaking and local interaction have been a hot button issue, and I in no way want to get dragged into that.