There, fixed it for you.
And what damages? You don’t provide CCP or their shareholders any monetary value. You don’t affect the bottom line in any shape or form.
I mean, the only down side I see from this, is less whiney and entitled freeloaders complaining on the forums about the lack equality of outcome
No use of training into and having a battleship as an Alpha, much less T2 Large Weapons. Those things have better use in fleet.
T2 cruise missiles aren’t much more attractive for the price either. If one can spend that time or money to get those he might as well grind or buy the PLEX to Omega.
The Alpha-Omega set-up they got going seems to be just right. Piloting a Cruiser as Alpha is already limit. There’s only 5mil sp to work with. That’s not gonna get you into many ships including all the sp needed for the modules.
That’s not actually true. Alphas wouldn’t exist if they didn’t add value to the game, and any amount of value can be transferred to monetary value.
The 5mil sp limit is only a training limit, it’s possible to get higher levels of sp from other methods. The total sp an alpha can have is roughly 20million + whatever deactivated omega skills the character has.
That’s not true either. The alpha is a gamble on CCP’s part in the hopes of converting a few into omega.
But seriously, how many alpha accounts do that after playing for 6 months? The longer time goes on, the less likely an alpha will convert. And all that monetary nonsense in the PLEX store with daily injectors. I wouldn’t be surprised if those sales were just a fraction of the total revenue generated by full on omega subscriptions.
That’s why I’ve said, drop the gambling, and make the alpha a 2 week limited trial period. If someone isn’t going to join the game after two weeks, they probably won’t after 6 months, or a year. Why drag it on?
Alphas still have other ways of contributing money. Buying plex, buying skill injectors skins etc
True.
The question is, how much compared to the omega.
If, say they buy more plex and services than the omega, then I will concede my argument.
Even if it’s comparable.
But if it is only a fraction of total revenue brought in. Dump ‘em.
That’s not the only benefit CCP can get from Alphas. Besides transitioning Alphas to Omega status there’s also:
Micro-tranactions, not just injectors, but also skins. If you have a large enough player base, skin sales make a ton of money.
This requires a large enough player base to make work properly. WOW was only able to manage it because they’re effectively a glitch in the matrix. The likelihood that another MMO will ever be as dominant in the future as that game was at it’s peak, is near zero. Thus, the only way to make that amount of money off of skin sales as described in the link, is to have a free to play game that is appealing to players.
EVE isn’t that sort of game right now, but it could be.
Furthermore, Alphas also add value in the way of advertisement. In some businesses, advertisement is 70% of overhead, so being able to get that word of mouth viral advertisement (which is much more valuable than other forms) at the rates CCP has to pay for it, is a no brainer.
Some will never convert, but thinking of this as a zero sum game is foolishness. CCP’s objective isn’t to convert people to Omega, their goal is to make as much money as they can.
If someone will never go Omega, there are still other ways they can contribute to the company’s coffers.
Well, imho the main point about Alphas is, that they have almost zero maintenance costs. The server hardware can easily handle twice or triple the player numbers in most areas (we already had a lot higher player numbers in the past), so the capacity is there and paid for anyway. I doubt they will eat up much noticable support resources either. And that means, there are only “benefits” like having the game “populated”, delivering content for the players but also bringing it up in the public “ranks” of online games, getting more attention in the media. Also everyone who likes it and talks about it acts like a force multiplier. On top of that, all things alphas buy (be it skins, injectors, packs…, be it for real money or PLEX someone else has paid for).
So, in summary, yes, alphas are surely a benefit for CCP. However I also believe that their impact on CCPs income is really small, compared to the amount of omega subs and PLEX purchases by (usually also omega players…).And I mean in the low percentage area “small”. And because of that, they have to carefully watch how good they make the Alpha Account model, because if you can do most things with 90% efficiency without paying, a lot of Omega Players might actually think about if they really need Omega any more, at least on a bunch of support toons. And then they quickly go into the negative with their calculations.
Don’t give them too much stuff. I think with all the faction/pirate stuff they can use, it’s already too much for a free account.
Correct, and perhaps I was inadvertently thinking about this as a zero sum game.
Thanks for pointing that out!
But you’re right, if CCP makes a significant amount of revenue off of microtrasaction from the alpha state then it’s in their financial best interest to do so.
That’s not actually how that works. An alpha account being subbed to Omega through the PLEX system is a mark you would put in favor of money an Alpha has earned (even if it was purchased by an Omega.) Without a buyer, there would be less incentive for someone to buy PLEX for real money and sell it in game. Also, the fact that a sub costs roughly 2.5 billion isk (instead of the sub billion it used to) means people selling PLEX will get more for their money, so there’s more incentive to engage in the process for them.
I was having a similar conversation in another thread and during that conversation worked out that it seems like PLEX sales increased by 25 - 30% when alphas were introduced. (Based on the charts @ Adam4eve.eu) Those initial sales were done before the plex split, so all of those sales were for the purposes of turning Alpha accounts into Omega.
(The top chart is PLEX value and the bottom is sales volume. Blue is total sales, red is people buying from sell orders, and green is selling to buy orders.)
Also, even if an Alpha account is attached to a player that has an Omega account, all purchases for that Alpha account is revenue earned by the Alpha monetization strategy CCP is using, because that is money that wouldn’t be earned otherwise.
Yes. As long as CCP is going to make use of Alpha and Omega clones, they don’t want to have a situation where they’re encouraging people not to sub to Omega status.
I personally don’t see Alphas contributing a lot via micro transactions. There’s probably a reason Alphas are always asking for more free stuff, ie: expanded skills, higher skill point cap, ship availability, etc.
Not saying that this is the case in every instance -but it’s probably the majority.
It’s more of a blanket thing. If there are 10k alphas, and they average 1 dollar a month, that’s 10k a month they’re bringing in for CCP.
10 alpha Injectors (which each provide 50k sp) cost 200 plex in the store, or 25 plex if bought as a single.
Using the base PLEX price, that’s 20 injectors for $25 if bought as singles, which makes each injector an Alpha uses cost 1.25. This is however, the most expensive rate.
Using the same basic plex package, but purchasing them 10 at a time, will cost $1 per injector.
The prices drop a lot if a person buys PLEX in bulk, but for argument’s sake, we’ll say each injector is at least 50 cents, so 2 for a dollar.
On the market, an injector can be purchased for about 50 million isk. So, for less than an hour of doing pve (maybe even 10 - 15 min if they’ve got something good going on,) an Alpha can easily buy a daily injector and use it. That’s at least $15 a month (30 - 37.5 if bought with the more expensive methods.)
Obviously not all alphas are going to grind this way, but a few will, and they’ll bring the average up for the rest.
It’s a similar thing with skins. There are a lot of skins that are 10 - 50 million on the market. And some premium skins are over a billion. And even if the skin isn’t available on the market, the Alpha can always buy PLEX at 5 million per and save up for a skin they really want. The Angel Hex skins are a particular favorite of mine.
So yeah, I think people drastically underestimate how much CCP makes off of Alphas. I don’t think it’s as much as they make from Omegas (or they’d just ditch the sub all together) but it’s still significant.
Yes, but ships are disposable in EVE - so unless you’re flying the same ship over and over, I just don’t see paid SKINs as a real draw.
That happens all the time. In both pve and pvp.
Imo, they need to do a better job with the skins that are available… but there are some that are pretty cool.
I’m fine with SKINs, but I’m generally PvE - so I’m typically flying the same ship all the time (and being Omega, if I want a particular SKIN I’ll just save up the ISK/PLEX for it). If they released “crayons” in the NEX store (cash only) that you could design your own SKINs with, then that would probably have more appeal…
That’s actually something that’s planned. The skiner that is available for citadels will be coming to ships, and will cost PLEX to create.
Question is: Will it be permanent for ships or simply for x amount of time? And will this be available for players as well as corporations/alliances?
Source ?
There was something at Fanfest regarding it.
at fanfest they also said that we all gain skilpoints in another form then the current … and atm nothing visible is happen ! maybe they work on this or maybe they dont