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

[Brankos_BasCelick]

Maybe they should try to find a real botters, not just to deny content that can be used for botting to everyone.

[Humongous_Trithead]

I have been running lvl 4 missions for years, when alphas arrived with the ability to access lvl 4 missions with no monetary outlay. A metaphorical slap in the face was felt from CCP whom has been quite happily jumping the Omega monthly sub from my bank unto their own every 30 days like clockwork, (the biggest bot like activity known to modern man) lol. Alphas can do way to much imo especially in high-sec maybe it is time to bring back lvl 5 missions for us Omega High-sec dwellers to cut our teeth on? Or are Omega high-sec dwellers still the crud you scrape of your space boots when entering your new shiny pod even though we make up the majority of Eve players. Lvl 5 missions used to be in high-sec i’m sure they can be again. Everything given to alpha’s no money from them maybe a few ingame items skins and what not from the Nes store. Null gets everything, High-sec gets mediocre moons at 0.5 system lvl and war deccs if you put up a structure to utilise the said 0.5 mediocre moons. Its a joke and needs to be fixed. Also anyone else can come and mine your crappy moon while you and your structure are the ones at risk.

[Makshima_Shogo]

They are super easy to run in low why make them even easier in high.

[Humongous_Trithead]

I was talking about High-sec Omega dwellers of which there are many. We do not go to low-sec or null-sec we reside in high-sec. One is not going to jump a mission fit battleship into a low system just to get it blown up after five seconds of entering the said low system, especially when you only run one account. Now do you get the point?

[Makshima_Shogo]

Join a corporation with similar interests, but yes completely solo is not very viable, unless you ofc run level 5’s in a tengu as those are un-catchable, I ran them in 2 harpies costing 100mil xD so I mean they are not tough even in low.

[Kezrai_Charzai]

Sadly, CCP and many of the people replying here don’t understand the base concepts behind making money on F2P models, or using F2P to increase the profile and activity of your game. This is why a F2P company half CCPs age can come along and buy out CCP.

It’s perfectly natural and understandable that people who sub, or who play EVE to plex their accounts, would have this reaction. Basically it boils down to: “If you get for free what I have always paid for, then that makes me kind of a chump, doesn’t it?”. And who wants to be made a chump by some freebie newbros?

People faced with this kind of prospect will shut out any reasonable argument, or comparisons to the industry as a whole, and fall back on “You can’t have for free what I paid for! EVE is different! Everything’s been tried before! It can’t work here! SUBS FOREVAH! Alphas go home!” and variations on those themes.

Even the excuse of L4 Bots is a smokescreen for whatever reason CCP is actually doing this for. Either that, or CCP is as deluded as many players are on the issue. I assume some duplicity on CCPs part (as opposed to delusion).

Here are the stats on ISK payout activities that could in some way be carried out by botting on Alpha accounts (from the Jan.2019 MER):

Bounty Prizes: 83,782B (the vast majority of this is in Null)
Commodity/NPCs: 25,886B
Incursions: 10,905B
Agent Mission Rewards(Pay+Bonus): 3,064B

Total of Botting/Alpha related direct payouts: 123,637B
Percentage of B/A related payouts from Missions: 2.5%

So even if ALL Agent missions, everywhere, were run by Alpha bots… it addresses 2.5% of the potential Alpha bot ISK faucet in-game. A more fair estimation would be that, at maximum, Alpha bots running L4 missions are perhaps picking up 1% of the ISK creation market. (Note: this does not include Trade bots as that is not an actual ISK faucet, and is probably an even larger chunk of the RMT problem)

To whatever extent alpha accounts are being used to bot ISK creation, the place to look will be bounties and other earnings occurring in Null sec. Personally I do not believe evidence of ‘extensive alpha botting/RMT’ has been shown by CCP, and all the “no free play!” types on the forums just assume it is so because it supports their argument. It is hard for me to believe that an actual botting operation would not generally make more profit from an Omega account than an Alpha account, and that this partially accounts for the size of the Plex market (and the difference between supply and demand there).

Obviously, this is not being done to address in any real sense, botting, Alpha abuse, or RMT. It is being done to either appease certain player factions, or because CCP has decided it was a mistake to allow Alphas access to battleships, and so this is one way to ‘back off’ on Alpha battleship usage without going back on their decision to open up battleships to Alphas (barely more than a year since they implemented that).

Again, this merely demonstrates that CCP has not understood how F2P works or how to make it contribute to the game. They implemented it because they felt they had to, it has helped to solve the ‘declining player numbers’ issue that was pointed out for years; and now that that issue has lessened, they are apparently locked back into the mindset of ‘putting Alphas back into restricted trial mode’ rather than actually using them as a tool for further growth.

[Humongous_Trithead]

There are a lot of solo lvl 4 omega mission runners in high-sec, with no interest in joining larger groups or running more than one account. These people seem to be have been left out of the Eve Universe narrative, yet command large number of the player base.

[Lord_Rolfski]

@Geo_Eclipse_Oksaras

wow, even i agree with solstice and that is rare.

There’s huge differences in Alpha and Omega. Alpha is not meant to be given full access that I pay for. It’s not fair for those who have paid for years that Alphas are given free access to. NO. @Nevyn_Auscent I hope they remove the pirate factions from alphas.

https://support.eveonline.com/hc/en-us/articles/213020969-Alpha-and-Omega-Clone

with a few changes to that, Alphas will look better minus battleships and some hauling ships.

If Eve was a proper F2P game then I can guarantee you that the differences between Alpha and Omega would be A LOT smaller. As a F2P game Eve is just a horrible, handicapped experience for the average newcomer, used to F2P games. A proper F2P game simply doesn’t limit players in their progression. From a game design point that’s just a horrible idea.

[Lord_Rolfski]

@Nicolai_Serkanner

Lvl 4s also don’t bring them to omega. Get rid of Alpha altogether is a better solution. ■■■■■■■ freeloaders.

That would be the fastest way to turn this game into a hardcore-only graveyard.

[Lord_Rolfski]

@Aceyfacey

Also about the alpha thing I personally spent money for the first time after they released the expanded alpha status since it felt like my moneys worth when I kept the skills forever.

This is key for CCP to understand. The average F2P new player will only spend money on Eve because they’re having a good time and want to support the developer, not because they feel limited and feel forced into a subscription model. That’s just a horrible way to engage new players.

[Maekchu]

If eve was a proper F2P game, there would be no limits to the free account. That is the whole point of F2P, to give you the whole game experience for free and monetizing it in a different way like micro transactions.

This is why eve is not a F2P game and based on the original devblog, they never intended to switch eve to a F2P game with the clone states.

As it is now, eve is a sub game with a microtransaction shop, the ability to buy game time with ingame currency and a generous trial. It can be argued, that CCP should do either business model and not do a shoddy version of both.

[Lord_Rolfski]

@Aves_Asio

Remove battleships instead, let them run l4 in drakes, we all know its doable

Whos bright idea was it anyway to give them a rattlesnake with geckos, id love to meet that dumbell

You obviously have no clue why CCP created alpha accounts. Hint: It was more than being just trial accounts.

[Daichi_Yamato]

@Lord_Rolfski

Denying them Lvl 4 missions will only annoy the heck out of alphas, it will do nothing to bring them to Omega.

That’s exactly what it’s going to do.

@Lord_Rolfski

As I said, alphas are content, which is equally important for the future of this game.

Are they?

Mission runners in hi-sec aren’t known for going out and mixing it up. Send your alpha to fw or null.

The pay is better and you can actually be content then.

[Maekchu]

@Lord_Rolfski

You obviously have no clue why CCP created alpha accounts. Hint: It was more than being just trial accounts.

This is again a sentence, where you imply that CCP business plan somehow align with your own opinion.

To make your argument legitimate, provide references where CCP explicitly state their intent with the creation of alpha accounts.

[Lord_Rolfski]

@Gerard_Amatin

Here’s how proper f2p works. The majority will never support the game but that’s fine because they will still provide content, The revenue comes from the 20^% that actually supports it. That doesn’t make the other 80% less important though: 20% is supporting the game because the other 80% is giving them content.

Instead of made up numbers, I’d love to see some real numbers about the amount of people paying for the game and the amount of people playing as Alpha. Because I seriously doubt that I’m part of a tiny group of 20% people that pay.

Unless you would count everyone who ever logged into the game, tried it and decided EVE was not for them as among those 80% active ‘players’, because they left the game before paying.

Keep in mind it’s people I’m talking about here, not alt characters or accounts. Because I too have an Alpha character that I use to fly around in high sec.

Eve is not a proper F2P game, it’s a game that’s moving from an old-school subscription model game into a F2P game. As such, you can expect the numbers between paying and non-paying players to be different in Eve compared to a typical game that’s built from the ground up to be F2P.

[Lord_Rolfski]

@Traco_Miritu

The paywall is by far not large enough.

Sooner or later ccp will see the light and will return to trial accounts.

This alpha ftp crap was the biggest fault they ever made in the history of eve…

A return to trial accounts would solve the botting problem with one single blow.

Reversing the alpha program would cause CCP to go bankrupt and still not solve the botting problem.

[Lord_Rolfski]

@Tipa_Riot

This. Giving Alphas access to anything better than plain T1 Cruisers was a bad call. The grab of the highsec markets by the nullsec superpowers is heavily fueled on Alpha-alts.

If anything, CCP should give alphas more options, not fewer. From a F2P perspective (mind you, that’s how the far majority of new players enter this game) Eve is just a horrible experience.

[3lla]

@Lord_Rolfski

And in this particular case, many alphas enjoy level 4 missioning to finance their other (PVP) activities in Eve. I’m one of them btw.

Then dont freeload and support CCP to play the game you enjoy.

[Buoytender_Bob]

Some people don’t want to have to pay for the development costs of a product.
Some people don’t want to pay for maintaining the product.
Some people don’t want to pay for future development and improvement of a product.

…and they want the product FREE as well with no restrictions.

In RL we have many names for these people; perhaps the most gentle would be “freeloader”.

[Lord_Rolfski]

@Whitehound

You’re bordering on racism there, mate. We’re living in a global economy and we don’t have any need to point out where somebody lives, or is from or isn’t from.

Anyhow, I still remember my first L3s and I had a good amount of fun with those. I didn’t even want to go into L4s, because everyone was only arguing based on ISKs, but not necessarily on fun factor. L3s were for me the peak of the fun and L4s is where the grind started. The fun with L4s came back only after I went into a Marauder, with a bit of faction gear and many of my skills at level 5.

While I’d be happy with giving Alphas access to everything does the reality not always allow it. That’s just how it is… Pigs don’t fly, chickens don’t moo, and alpha accounts get abused by botters.

I’d say your entire argument anchors on the fact that you (specifically) don’t get to do L4s with your Alpha account any more and so that’s why you hate the change. Try to see the bigger picture instead. CCP tried to let you do L4s and botters f’ed it up for you. Blame them, don’t blame CCP.

I find your accusation of racism completely ridiculous and frankly appalling, seriously.
As for the big picture: This not about me playing lvl 4s as an alpha. It’s about this change doing nothing to stop the botting but instead screwing alphas over in general for no good reason,