Like it or not, but it’s a minimal risk PVE income source for alpha players and many players enjoy them for that.
He’s raging about every change to a more mainstream approach…
It’s in his genes to deny every change away from the 2003 status… 
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Ok. But they can make isk via lvl 3 missions. Blitzing lvl 3s is decent money if done well. and there is no reason I can see an alpha can’t blitz them. And that assumes they don’t want to use any of the non mission income options.
Why exactly are lvl 4s specifically so key.
Except this won’t help against botting at all. It will only screw over alpha players as the following will happen:
- Botters will Plex their botting account and deploy even more bots to keep up the RMT/hr
- Botters will deploy even more lvl 3 bots to keep up the RMT/hr
The truth is that lvl4 missions will not be the end of the line…
All botting abilities like escalations,lvl 3 and so on will be hidden behind omega in the future…
And this is a good thing…
They are THE low risk/low effort PVE income source for alpha’s
What’s to stop botters from plexing their accounts and deploy even more bots to compensate for the plexing costs?
I think the botter will not care, but an Alpha character will. It might make the Alpha sub, but judging typical human behavior people will usually quit because they would perceive it as punishment for a game already very difficult for new players grow into.
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Take up the argument with CCP then as they have made the decision. I wouldn’t be against CCP going a step further and stopping Alpha players from using t2 drones and faction cruisers and the likes, but this is a good start in the fight against rmt/bots.
They were and now they aren’t. But simply because they were the go to doesn’t make make it key.
Why is requiring a subscription to unlock premium content “punishment?”
You’re not exactly a ‘new’ player if you’ve figured out enough of the game to successfully get your status up to running level 4s.
At that point, if you are enjoying the game enough to play that much, it’s time to subscribe.
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I know from personal experience that lvl 4 missions are, in fact, still a major alpha revenue source. Which makes sense when you think of it. Casual and new players still want pew pew but preferably at a low risk. Doing missions is basically the first PVE experience they have in this game, so predictably they follow down this path.
Weren’t you implying that lvl4s are challenging?
Now you’re saying they’re low risk.
Can you make up your mind?
Can you elaborate on that? How big is your sample size? Or are you talking about your own army of alts farming lvl4s?
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I’m taking it up with CCP by posting here. And like it or not, for a healthy future of this game CCP needs to expand on its f2p model, not limit it.
Because that guy self-entitled himself into believing he deserves running lvl4s for free.
No, you’re taking it up with us.
No one at CCP cares about you making this thread.
It is unlikely that anyone will even notice it, except maybe the one closing the thread for ranting.
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Because the long playing, Alpha player has put more skin into the game, while the botter has not. The long playing Alpha may have struggled and fought for every ISK earned just to enjoy the game for free, and suddenly is faced with a change that s/he will now be forced to pay if they wish to continue doing L4-5 missions, which is the probably the whole point in doing those missions in the first place, that is to earn enough ISK to PLEX an Alpha account. They will suddenly weight the option between struggling harder to play EVE or pay to play EVE just for L4-5 missions? That will likely force them to evaluate whether EVE is worth the trouble of playing it at all. In the meantime the botter does not care. The botter will simply adjust their tactics and take a longer time to earn ISK. As long as the botter can make real money from EVE they will persist.
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I disagree. I think the state of F2P is fine as it is, and I would prefer they work on increasing subscription numbers rather than monetizing more of the game through plex. It’s a nice option to give folks a chance to start without having to sub, but at the same time F2P just encourages the kind of monetiziation methods most EVE players hate.
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It’s true that the botter doesn’t care, but having to plex an account is a big cut into the potential RMT profits of botters, and that makes the profit margin lower. Lower it enough and it’s no longer profitable to do it and that, coupled with better enforcement, means it goes away.
Again, if somebody is playing the game long enough to believe they’ve got skin in the game, then it’s time to subscribe, even if it’s just once, to get access to the better missions and bigger payouts so they can start plexing their accounts.
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I can’t really say whether it would be good or bad. Certainly it will cut some botting opportunities, however everyone knows that easily 80% of the botting problem does not occur in L4 missions.
It does not solve Alpha botting, as it does nothing for all the botting in null with VNIs, nor market botting, nor FW botting; all of which I would assume are a much larger issue than L4 mission botting.
It does have the issue that while Alphas can train up to battleships, there is now very little reason for them to do so, as L4s were the primary reason to use a BS. I suppose some few alphas will go the alpha incursion route, but that will likely be a small percentage.
Both CCP and the perma-trolls like Solstice Projeckt seem to have trouble understanding how a F2P system works, what role the F2P players represent in that model, and how you cash in on them. I could outline the details here, but apparently they’re not interested in any opinions but their own, outmoded and ill-informed ones. Suffice to say that a company half as old as CCP has made enough money in 5 years of running a successful F2P model to buy out CCP. Most of the industry has gone F2P simply because it makes far more money. When done correctly, of course.
CCP should probably learn how to control botting by addressing actual botting, rather than shooting themselves in the foot trying to be half-F2P and half-sub. They should probably also learn how to run a F2P model profitably.
I imagine PA will give them another 12-18 months to figure it out, and then they’ll send in someone to start calling the shots.
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I don’t thinks so. I think CCP will be throwing the baby out with the bath water.