Denying lvl 4 (& lvl 5) missions to alpha's (March patch notes) is a very bad idea

[Herzog_Wolfhammer]

Actually I think CCP can do whatever the hell they damned please with their game.

But banning alphas from lvl 4s is good. It will separate the people just logging in to say hi from the bots.
And bots are bad.
And when you see level 3 missions suddenly being swarmed to death, the majority of those will be bots.

IMO I think alpha accounts get away with way too much. Paying to play has to really mean something.

[Lord_Rolfski]

@Kezrai_Charzai

My own opinion is that the L4 changes, like the ‘skills on demand’ changes, are far more likely to have been put in place to appease certain factions within the game, rather than address the actual issues they are ‘supposed’ to be for. Factions often represented heavily on the CSM, for instance.

Exactly this really. If anything, this is more of a stop gap to please a completely corrupted player election system that should have been disbanded ages ago.

[Brisc_Rubal]

@Lord_Rolfski

Only when alpha was launched I actually started playing this game and you can be sure there are more players like me.

So you’re never going to go Omega, no matter what?

[Brisc_Rubal]

I would value your opinion more on the CSM if you could vote.

[Lord_Rolfski]

@Solstice_Projekt

As much as I consider myself an experienced alpha, it’s a matter of logic really:

• players join a space game and want pew pew
• preferably at low risk
• they also want to progress and make income
• almost instantly they get introduced to PVE missioning so predictably, they follow that path
• when it comes to low effort/low-risk PVE income, it turns out that there aren’t that many viable alternatives in the game

So yes, this IS a big letdown for alpha players

So what now. There you said …

… and now it’s a matter of logic, not actually personal experience.

Do you not see how that does not work together? Worse, no where in that point-list …

• players join a space game and want pew pew
• preferably at low risk
• they also want to progress and make income
• almost instantly they get introduced to PVE missioning so predictably, they follow that path
• when it comes to low effort/low-risk PVE income, it turns out that there aren’t that many viable alternatives in the game

… does your personal experience play any part in your “argument”.

Can you please stop trying so hard that you’re failing even harder?

Obvious troll is obvious

[Lord_Rolfski]

@Solstice_Projekt

I’ve asked people about this thread.

No one I’ve found thinks that you’re actually really caring about new players. Everything points at you guys just being selfish Alphas who want to keep running your lvl4s for free.

See, the thing is, reasonable people behave reasonably . A reasonable person wouldn’t behave like you do, because what you’re doing is unreasonable simply because you - as reasonable person - should be well aware that CCP is going to go through with this.

It is simply extremely unlikely that you care more about new players than about yourself. The arguments are loose, at best, too. The last thing someone should do is sending new players to missions, because “levelling up to a raven” is a thing CCP is aware about and doesn’t actually like, because those people quit once they get bored with the missions.

You really have nothing. All you’re doing is continuously making it clear that you’re really only caring about yourselves and that “think of the children” is, just like so often, just a smokescreen.

This is hilarious! We could go on forever! Just like the afk-cloaking thread, or all these ganking threads in the past, or the bumping threads now. Fascinating!

Anyway … as you will not change anything about this, and as CCP is definitely not caring about what you’re having to say, I will opt out and wish you a happy day anyway.

Oh, by the way, subscribing with real money is really cheap. Costs 15 bucks for a month. That’s THIRTY DAYS! Grinding for ISK wastes FAAAR more time than simply doing one or two hours of actual, real life work! You should try that instead! You know… a job! You could have subbed an account with the time wasted on the forums, if you just had a job you could do to earn money for omega!

Have a nice day anyway.
It’s 1am here … so “good night” from me.

As I said before, you’re either an obvious troll or lack any empathy or knowledge whatsoever about what goes on in a human mind. Probably both.

[Nevyn_Auscent]

If Solstice & I are on the same side of an argument, and you are on the other side, it’s a good sign you are wrong.

[Rich_Darine]

Nonsense. If you’re scrubbing it up as an alpha and doing level IV’s shame on you it’s time to sub lol

[Lord_Rolfski]

@Gerard_Amatin

PvE is a small part of everything EVE has to offer and missioning is a small part of the PvE in EVE. And an even smaller part of those missions is a specific tier of level 4 or 5 missions.

And I see absolutely no reason that new players need access to the specific level 4 missions to be able to figure out if they like the game. Denying lvl 4 missions might annoy the Alphas that want to earn a lot of ISK for free, but perhaps it’s time to become Omega in that case?

This change will help against bots. If you think botters can just spin up twice as many bots at the same time to make up for the ISK lost by this change, why didn’t those botters spin up that amount of bots to begin with? I’d say that profitability correlates positively with amount of bots: more rewards means more bots doing that thing.
Now that mission running becomes less profitable, wouldn’t the logical reaction of bots be to figure out something more profitable to do with their amount of bots? Instead of suddenly running twice the amount of bots to make up for the lost ISK, an amount of bots that they couldn’t run earlier due to some reason you haven’t provided?

I haven’t looked much into it, but I can only assume a computer can only run a limited amount of bots at the same time. This means if mission running bots suddenly give less ISK/h after a change like this, I’m pretty sure the botters start looking for other activities. Buying extra computers to create more bots for less ISK/h seems like a bad idea to me.

Thus, I would be really surprised if this change increases the amount of mission running bots, like you claim.

“PvE is a small part of everything EVE has to offer” is not the point. It’s about what players actually end up playing what Eve has to offer is what counts. And I can assure you that lvl 4 missions are a big PVE deal, especially for alphas with their limited income possibilities but having access to battleships.

And as I said before, this will do nothing to get players to omega, nor was alpha designed to be a trial account-only.

And besides the question whether lvl 3 botting will end up becoming viable, what’s to stop botters from plexing their bot account and compensate the plex costs?

[Nevyn_Auscent]

If it was economical for them to plex and bot that way they already would be doing it.
If they aren’t doing it, they make more isk being an alpha.

[Lord_Rolfski]

@Herzog_Wolfhammer

Actually I think CCP can do whatever the hell they damned please with their game.

But banning alphas from lvl 4s is good. It will separate the people just logging in to say hi from the bots.
And bots are bad.
And when you see level 3 missions suddenly being swarmed to death, the majority of those will be bots.

IMO I think alpha accounts get away with way too much. Paying to play has to really mean something.

It won’t stop the botters at all and will only screw over alphas, who are way more important for the future of this game than you think.

[Herzog_Wolfhammer]

Give me reasons to believe what you just told me.

[Lord_Rolfski]

@Gerard_Amatin

That’s true. Alpha accounts aren’t just a trial, alpha accounts also make it really easy for players who have taken a break to come back to the game, check out the new changes, log in and fly around a bit, meet old friends and get hooked on the game again. But I’m pretty sure you don’t need to be able to run specifically level 4 and 5 missions to do that…

You do actually if you want to stick to casual play and seeking out to low risk/low effort PVE-only. Like it or not, lvl 4 missions definitely fulfill a player need.

[Lord_Rolfski]

@Gerard_Amatin

There’s lots of bots and it would be good if CCP addressed them all, including the lvl 4 and 5 missioning bots. Just because they haven’t solved the entire problem doesn’t mean they shouldn’t solve the botting problem bit by bit.

I’m all up for really solving problems in this game. But this is not solving botting at all. This is just pleasing an intensely corrupted player “election” system called CSM.

[Kezrai_Charzai]

@Brisc_Rubal

You’ve been around long enough to remember the Summer of Rage. EVE lead the way in terms of MMOs when it came to early monetization and was one of the very few games that allowed players to earn subscriptions through in-game play, which has since become common in a number of other MMOs.

Please! The summer of rage was about ridiculously badly implemented monetization, showing that CCP was nearly entirely out of touch with the player base. I will give you that they were on the ball with in-game currency for subs, which is one of the few successful monetization moves CCP has made… because it was their earliest step towards F2P or at least play-to-sub. "Monoclegate’ hardly counts as:

@Brisc_Rubal

EVE tried implementing the standard monetization model

That entire period was simply a fiasco of CCP trying to figure out how to sell stuff to players, flailing, and failing.

[Brisc_Rubal]

@Kezrai_Charzai

That entire period was simply a fiasco of CCP trying to figure out how to sell stuff to players, flailing, and failing.

But, honestly, looking back on it - they weren’t doing anything that every other game hasn’t done. It was weird that we went nuts over it, given what has happened since.

[Kezrai_Charzai]

@Brisc_Rubal

It was weird that we went nuts over it, given what has happened since.

(whispers:) yes but it’s always been known you have to be a little bit nuts to enjoy playing EVE…

[Lord_Rolfski]

@Brisc_Rubal

So you’re never going to go Omega, no matter what?

I occasionally do by plexing for a month or so. But we all know this is not the recommended way to sustain for a more casual player. I would personally advise players that can’t be bothered with my objections just to pay for their subscription.

[Lord_Rolfski]

@Brisc_Rubal

I would value your opinion more on the CSM if you could vote.

I voted actually. It only convinced me that the CSM is a completely corrupted joke of a system that does nothing but diminishing the trust of the average Eve player because their interests are simply not being represented.

[Maekchu]

@Lord_Rolfski

If anything, it will only annoy you and give you fewer reasons to support this game.

If you didn’t pay the sub, you didn’t support anything to begin with. Just saying…