What utter rubbish…Stop whining.
Alpha’s should never have been given access to lvl 4’s and 5’s in the first place, in fact they have WAAAAY too much access to everything.
It’s supposed to be a trial with the end result of getting you to sub, and other subscription based games don’t have a better option for f2p. There’ll always be some restrictions.
If you can’t/don’t earn enough to be able to sub, play a different game.
2.5% is only mission reward and time bonus. 5% of all ratting bounties are also made in HS. Thats roughly extra 4000+B ISK generated in HS, possibly by bots, which more than doubles that “2.5%” (up to 5.6%).
Right, because before Alpha came along, botting never happened. And RMT didn’t happen, because obviously RMT’ers need Alpha accounts to make money.
Except, of course, that ‘all ratting bounties’ are not earned from doing L4/L5 missions. And again, alpha bots will only be a fraction of that.
All I’m really seeing here is a bunch of people who paid for subs, who hate the idea that someone else will get for free a small portion of what they had to pay for, using every fraction of an argument and every illogical supposition (“remove F2P to make botting go away”) to keep someone else from accessing the game for free.
The drive for you people isn’t botting, or L4 access, or Plex prices… it is simply that no one should access for free a portion of the content you pay for. So it will be “turn off L4s”, then “turn off pirate ships”, then it will be “stop Alphas from BS access and Incursions”, then it will be “Alphas can’t fly in Null sec because hey, they can bot there!”.
It’s unfortunate that people are simply reacting from the short-term standpoint of “I pay, therefore you must pay or GTFO” and not realizing that Alpha/F2P is in fact a growth opportunity for EVE. EVE needs a re-envisioning, not a retreat to the Stone age of MMOs.
Well, no matter. PA owns it now, and they know how to make money and how to run F2P. I give them about a year to let CCP get its’ act together, then they will start calling the shots. We can try to help CCP achieve a level of F2P/sub mix that we are comfortable with and that works, or we can wait til PA loses patience and starts telling them how to do things the Korean way.
It couldn’t possibly be that CCP have actual metrics that show that alpha bots are a serious issue and that they are heavily using lvl 4 missions, & certain pirate ships to do so. I mean why would CCP base any decisions on actual information they can measure from server logs.
If you have links/sources where CCP refers to the extent of the problem based on their metrics, please include them.
If not, you’re just another “I paid, so you must pay!” knee-jerker flailing about and making up crap to support your argument. Again, CCP is addressing a fraction of less than 5% of the issue here. The issue existed long before Alphas were even invented.
Stop flailing about and making up arguments out of thin air, start addressing the actual issues.
Go read the security blog. Yes they don’t list specific metrics, however they clearly have them and are responding to them from the blog. Stop with the tinfoil.
Also you are confusing Isk generation with wealth generation when you try and quote your stats.
But only if those Alphas spend money on EvE, else it would be a waste of resources. As long as you don’t want to convert EvE into a pay to win game with gold ammo and like for cash, the options to milk Alphas are limited. There are daily injectors, PLEX, skins, and becoming a subscriber. Nothing else.
More flailing. There is nothing in the blog that addresses metrics or the extent of the issue. Only “this is part of the botting problem and we are addressing it this way”.
Quote:
"As part of the fight against abuse of Alpha accounts by those involved in botting and real money trading, the EVE Dev Team have been looking at what Alpha characters currently have access to in New Eden.
As we discussed initially in the New Year security update, the team were considering placing level 4 and 5 courier missions behind the requirement to have Omega clone status.
After investigating further, the decision has been made to place all level 4 and 5 missions behind the requirement to have Omega status, to assist the fight against RMT and botting.
Of course, we are aware that mission running is only a part of the issue, we’re also investigating more ways to reduce the abuse of alpha accounts."
This is basically management-speak for “this is the excuse we are using to justify this so you don’t complain too much”.
As for:
Since I mentioned only Bounties, sale of Commodity drops to NPCs, Incursions and Agent Rewards/Bonus as part of the bot/ISK creation problem, if you can outline how I am ‘confusing’ this with ‘wealth generation’ then you would look a little less like someone making up anything to support your viewpoint, and more like someone with something substantive to say.
Actually it’s pretty easy. Someone uses 10, 15, 20+ alpha characters to pull burner missions. They then warp to mission gate and create bm, then each character contracts all bm’s to omega character. Alphas log off and Omega logs on with a whack of contract bm’s. Omega character has 5 or 6 hours to do missions and will easily have multiple missions in 1 system. This can spread over several systems, creating a efficient way of running burners, earning good isk, very good lp and let’s not forget the faction loot drops.
Is selling or trading mission bm against the EULA? Not that I am aware and it’s done all over EvE.
Exactly. And that’s the real source of the problem with Alphas. Not that they are a major part of the botting/RMT issue (which existed before Alphas were even invented, and hasn’t changed much overall) - but that CCP has no idea and no mechanics of how to monetize Alphas. This is what needs to change - not trying to force Alphas back into the “restricted feature perma-trial” box, but how to use them to make more money overall.
Agree. To some players, they appear to want to have CCP act like a restaurant that offers free meals to all, while depending on some customers to buy overpriced desserts and drinks to cover all overhead costs and create a profit. Won’t work because it is a lousy business model. Most EVE players have shown a history in preferring good,tough, and complex gameplay over skins and player bought cosmetic add ons. Why are some people demanding free products; can’t they see all the costs involved in creating/maintaining EVE?
In this case I would pay for the sub and continue doing what I enjoyed.
However, why should Alphas buy the cow, when they can get the milk for free? 
And this is tinfoiling when they literally just said they investigated and found a problem. That matches up with observations and reports by players on the forums about mission botting rings.
And LP. LP is the main wealth creation on missions. Which does not show up in the mer.
You are totally correct here. F2P works so badly that a fairly new company running a F2P game for the past 5 and a half years can afford to buy out CCP for hundreds of millions of dollars. Obviously, this model is foolish and doomed to fail.
Well, unless you do it right, of course.
So you want to turn EvE into a pay to win game? Where paying will give you an ingame advantage you can’t get without paying cash? Because that’s the only other option.
Flail flail flail. Seriously, P2W is the only possible option for F2P? Are you folks completely out of touch?
I’m done here. There are none so blind as those who will not see.
It doesn’t have to be P2W. If they bring back WIS they can turn it into an interface for in-game services to assist the player. It would be a ISK/PLEX sink to help stabilize the economy, while adding content and making (some) players happy to play the game, while adding to CCP’s bottom line.
what is/was WIS?
What instability in the economy are you talking about first.