By BB, do you mean Battleship (BS)?
I know BB is the correct abbreviation IRL, but might confuse some in EVE.
No large T2 weapons.
Im not sure of pirate BBs.
The blog I just checked seems to suggest they will be available.
Iirc, faction weapons are not rated as T2.
I dont fly BBs, nor L4s, so I dont know how capable a skill-set restricted Alpha BB (faction or not) will be at completing them. I would expect you have far better completion times with a well skilled Omega BB capsuleer though. SP really does matter and there are significant multipliers that Alphas cant train into.
Alphas also have implant restrictions, which further reduce their efficiency as compared to an Omega L4 runner.
OK I just checked. Alphas can use faction BSs, as I just shipped into my Navy Raven. They can also use faction cruise missile and torpedo launchers. The only thing I canât use on my current set up is my MJD, which is a bummer, but it looks like Alphas can certainly run L4s no problem. I had an Alpha alt also ship into a Nestor. There were a few more T2 modules I couldnât use on that one, but nothing that couldnât be easily replaced with meta or faction. I donât have any âpirateâ BSs, but I donât see why theyâd be different.
Would L4s be easier as an Omega? Well yeah, but they should be.
I can use my Machariel as an Alpha, but not the âScoutâ Artillery guns, and not the MJD either (like you). As for the rest of the Omega fit, Iâll have to jiggle around; the mid-slots were suspiciously darkened tooâŚ
yea alphaâs can use some nice things, but by being omega I get +5% for the bs 5 skill (x2 if a pirate BS) +5% for the weaponâs skill and +10% for the t2 weapon spec skill, and I think some small percentages on a few support skills that get locked at level 3 or 4 for alphas.
There are a lot of small things that add up to something that may be significant.
so take customers that donât pay and convert them to paying customers? How is that a bad thing for CCP? Every plex in game is there because someone bought it and using it for omega or injectors is a conversion for CCP.
yep, a ton of Omega only stuff, and I pretty much need omega to play the way I want to play. But there are still a bunch of activities that the changes open up for alpha players to get more established in the game.
I think itâs the combo of alpha and omega is greater than just omega, or omega and limited alphas. I think most of us already here are hooked on omega, I know I need it for just about everything I do. But a lot of people on the fence that were never customers, will become customers, and it doesnât really cost CCP anything extra.
With the old trial accounts it was play for a few weeks and either you are in or out, the conversion rate was never really all that great to begin with. The introduction of alpha may have increased their stay some, but I doubt it helped the conversion rate much as alpha gameplay was pretty limited. Now it will be interesting to see what happens, even if they donât convert to subs, they may buy some plex for alpha injectors and thatâs money for CCP.
I guess that leaves the question of how many drop omega for the new alphas?
some of us are time rich cash poor, and/or have to deal with currency exchange rates.
Sorry, it doesnât. Iâm not sure how vast your experience of Eve, but it isnât vast enough obviously. Something like that could be said only if you never leave highsec systems. Yea, you can run incursions in t1/faction bs hull with t2 guns and officer stuff, but when you move to lows/nulls, or wh, things get complicated. You suddenly need at least one scout account, and it must fly coveops if you value your time (alphas canât use cloak of any kind), you need t3 cruisers to earn a decent isk, if you do exploration in nulls you must fly a cloacked ship or ceptor as well (you can do without it in wh, I guess). Even if you farm npcs at belts, youâll benefit from a cloack installed, otherwise there are good odds youâll get rected by a profficient enough roaming gang.
This all is out of reach for alphas (and hope it will stay so). So CCP just hid the hook deeper into bait, giving alphas opportunity to invest more time into game so that one day they would discover they now must pay for omega to proceed to a content of a higher level. And if they will decide to stay as hs carebears for eternity - then it perhaps not that bad, more targets for wardecers and suicide gankers.
Once you progress enough, it gets worse. You now need t2 hulls, cynoalts, capital pilots of your own etc. You want to run a decent PI or production/research installments - you must pay for omega as well.
The initial alpha clone seemed very minimalist to me⌠5m SP? Thatâs nothing. Now they get to go to 20m SP if they use injectors that match closely to the idea of being omega for a day, once per day.
Neither of my accounts finds this set up acceptable given what I do with them. So, i remain subscribed as normal. As a benefit of being subscribed, I donât have to log in each day in inject skills. I can just set amarr carrier V or whatever and take a week or two off if I so choose. This benefit alone would keep me subscribed even if they went full free to play with no SP limitations but required injectors to get SP every day.
Alpha clones means more people in the game. More people is better. Maybe some people will choose to go from omega to Alpha⌠that is fine. So long as the added population brings them extra funds above what those clone downgrades lost them (through players returning due to extra popularity and subscribing, plex, etc) then all is fine.
Pretty sure that isnât true. The 20 mil limit is the sum of all the alpha skills. Not an arbitrary cut point. You just canât put any sp into omega skills or ranks till you are omega.
Yup, this. You can use alpha injectors while alpha and the resulting 50K pool SP per day can either be spent on approved alpha skills or upon the conversion to being omega status dumped into omega skills.
The actual total amount of SP in allowable alpha skills is within the region of around 20.4 million. And CCP actually makes more money by having people able to use them to fill in alpha clone skill gaps even while their omega sub is currently âdownâ than by denial of use⌠because the items cost plex thereby making CCP a profit.
That is the pattern weâve seen creep over the industry.
Iâd wonder if this is part of the reason hisec is so populated by farmers who donât like leaving hisec: they know theyâre at a serious material disadvantage vs. the people who have bought the power. Someoneâs bought power with PLEX, but they donât get to farm the people who traded them product and ISK for their PLEX.
Whales like to buy and use power, but nobody likes to have unstoppable force used on them. Itâs⌠not fun. This is the house of cards of most modern commercial multiplayer games. The people who want to be the unstoppable force but canât afford power⌠well, eventually learn thereâs nothing there for them. As that pattern developed across the industry, people who wanted to keep up but couldnât found something else to do or went bankrupt (not joking) trying to keep up. If the power to do something interesting costs $OMGLOLWTF, your playerbase isnât going to be very big. In an MMO, that translates to âno content, failcascade incoming.â
If anyone remembers the Dead Space series, the microtransactions that killed the third one were absolutely tame by todayâs standards. No lootboxes, just a bunch of stuff you could buy in the cash shop for a few dollars each. Then the industry pushed and saw what it could get away with, intentionally trying to get people to spend literally thousands of dollars on things. It had to take a step back this year, but you can bet itâs going to try again when it thinks it can get away with it.
The other part every MMO (including this one) is that feeling of progression as your character gets stronger. Thatâs why all the carebears carebear in any game: they like learning to optimize a system to progress fastest. Itâs not the rate of progression thatâs interesting, itâs the process of finding out how to do something faster. Once youâve learned all there is about how to go fast, thereâs not a lot left. The skill system was an accidentally clever way to make this take longer: the optimal way to do things changed as you got more skills. Putting injectors in the mix made it really easy to ruin this aspect of your gameplay.
Giving away BCs, Battleships, and Cerebral Enhancers like popcorn. Far cry from the day of grinding missions and ratting to afford Skillbooks to afford better ships to afford attribute implants to train skills quicker, all that without a skill queue (therefore logging in at early A.M. hours just to start training the next level, let alone another skill).
Bitter Vet whining aside, the business must bend to the realities of the marketplace and the social landscape of younger players.
I, too, savor the time spent trekking up the training mountain while sharpening my gameplay, and really appreciating the stronger ship capability as a skill level is reached. Glad to be able to focus and have patience, quite quaint the aptitude I hearâŚ
Battleships was a bit overkill IMHO but all in all the new Alpha skills are a benefit in my opinion.
New players can test more of the gameplay before they buy a sub.
Players that canât sub for any reason (parents/partner wonât have it, flucturating income) have a good option to play EVE beside the boring grind for PLEX
Veterans coming back to EVE can jump into most basic ships. (And I gues that is the point why they allowed any T1 and pirate ship up to BS. They wanât the players that come back to be able to just jump into the game again. Gila roam up tonight? Go for it! I think this is a great feature.)
