Every single Alpha account that gets banned will scream they were doing nothing wrong and were genuine accounts.
It worries me that players like yourself think they should be left alone, or at least left to run high level missions…
So does every single omega botter. But does that mean we remove level 4’s for everyone?
I never wanted alphas. It was a bad idea. Still is.
But if we are going to have alphas, which we are, they should have access to ‘good’ content that will keep them around long enough to spend money. Missions and faction warfare are the most alpha appropriate content. They can team with eachother for level4’s and form bonds/learn the game together and since wars are so utterly ■■■■■■ since 2012 and alphas have a bigger wall to climb in order to put a structure down, faction warfare is the only entry level pvp realistically available to solo and small groups of alphas.
Lock em out of courier missions and mining missions, certain abysmal space if you want, but level4’s and faction warfare are pretty important for retaining these players.
I agree. As a new father with a 5 month old, courier missions are all I can do for the foreseeable future.
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I don’t buy it, all they have to do for access to higher level missions is sub. Isn’t that the whole point?
I think some people are too keen on the whole ‘limit alphas’ idea and not aware of why F2P has been steadily taking over the industry for the past 10 years.
The worst thing that can happen to a game is ‘lack of player activity’. Once that starts (and EVE players have been complaining about it for years), many games enter a death spiral towards ‘maintenance mode’ where only the hard-core devotees stay and play.
Free to play, when done correctly, leads to more players and more revenue for the game. That requires having a decent microtransaction model, and an effective introduction and progression path in the game that encourages greater retention of the many “try it, didn’t like it, dump it” players who cycle through a game.
A quote from the Wiki on F2P: “In 2011, revenue from free-to-play games overtook revenue from premium games in the top 100 games in Apple’s App Store.”
The vast majority of other games manage to structure their F2P to encourage more players and more income. F2P fuels that increase, it isn’t a barrier. (Many of those games grant full access to nearly all game features to F2Players)
CCP needs to focus less on ‘clamp the limits on Alpha’, and more on “make a decent new player experience”, “adjust the botting activity to be less bottable”, and on adding cash shop options that appeal to a greater number of players, including Alphas.
Just a few things of note from my perspective.
Alpha Account Creation:
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It may be a good idea to put in a captcha on it. Captchas are a bad idea in the game as they have too much potantial to hinder gameplay for legit players, but there is no issue whatsoever at account creation. This would be a good step in preventing creation of automated accounts on mass scale. Sure tehre will be many still left over that will be manually created, but imagine creating 200-300 or more accounts and doing long captchas for them.
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You can also place a captcha or a mini-game on distribution missions, every X number of missions from same agent in the game. Have the captcha missions give out slightly increased rewards, both in ISK value and faction gain, since many legit players use these to get their faction standings up, especially newer players that do not have the combat skills developed yet for better combat mission yields. So this is very important. A bot will eventually run out of non-captcha (mini game) agents and will not be able to do the distribution missions at all. So add a component to them, just please make sure you properly compensate for the extra time and effort it takes to complete that component.
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On removing “dirty” ISK / assets ( such as mined materials etc.) from the game. You (meaning CCP) need to take a much tougher and more immediate stance on it, and make the removals public, or at minimum known to the people that you are removing it from and remove any related buy / sell orders and contracts from the market as well. This is very, very long overdue and needs to be done ASAP and needs to be done hard.
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You can put captchas or mini games on more then just distribution missions in the game, put them on FW missions, security missions, mining missions, just not so often that it hinders regular gameplay, and if you give these missions a little extra compensations, then it would work out fine.
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Anom ratting ( especially VNI, Gila, Carrier, Super ratting). Introduce some random components to the PvE. I know some of this has / is being done a bit already, but needs more. Have either a random scram frigate or a dictor (where appropriate for space / anom type) spawn from some random faction, not the one that is usually being spawned in the anom. They need to be weak and easily dealt with by players simply taking them out, and need to be random. Nothing wrong with a weak NPC scramming or bubbling where appropriate, legit players will remain largely unaffected while automated / AFk macroed ones will have a tougher time. Could even take it a step further and have some webbing, ecm, damp frigates spawn too. Again, make sure it doesn’t happen all the time though so the overall gameplay doesn’t become too affected for people that actually play.
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More on Alpha Account Creation. Have a way to legitimately verify and identifiable source, either through an actual ISP IP not VPN, or a required at least a 1 time 2FA via phone (not email), or a valid actual bank CC, not charge anything, just for verification. Do not have to use all 3 at a time, just any single one would do.
Just some thougths I had on this.
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When you introduced the alpha clones, players warned you about these things, you said you are convinced you can handle them. If you now figured out that you cannot handle them, you should go back to the drawing board. Just using Minmatar technology (duct-tape) will not be sufficient to fix.
You need to try to redesign the alpha clones - now that you know what problems you have to solve, you need to apply them to the design. Alphas don’t have much utility in the game, they are useful only for suicide ganking and botting, which is why all discussions about alpha clones end up in “just remove them, they just cause trouble and are useless anyway - no visible benefit (like PCU)”
Instead of just removing whole portions of the game for the alphas, you should maybe consider what is the real problem. For example, regarding the courier missions, if the problem are rewards, then either (for the alphas) remove the rewards or change them to a currency that is not tradeable.
But as I said, you will need to redesign the whole alpha clone model to fix all issues associated with them. I doubt you are satisfied with the state of the alpha clone implementation.
If you decide to remove something, try at least to add something else. Until the game will not be fun for real players playing as alpha clones, you will be fighting the botters until the alpha clones end up like Captain’s quarters.
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Thanks for the made-up numbers report
I just not really putting anything down on Eve or being a troll or whatever people have been accusing me off in the present. Are you just basically want to know why it was so hard for seven days to get into Eve without being transferred to some crazy thing on screen. And is it really blocked to go the opposite direction you try everything? Because I have a lot invested I’m trying to be honest with people when it’s not working. Am I doing right or wrong
And you apparently didn’t read what I said. I specifically said that it would need fleshing out to avoid abuse. Because it’s plainly apparent that such a tactic would absolutely be effective.
The spirit of the argument, however, that we need to target those who harbor botters, remains. When leadership literally tells their membership to move along, nothing to see here, that’s a problem. That’s a big problem. And the only way to target that is to punish said leadership. The amount of work that goes into maintaining powerbloc alliances is mind boggling. The idea that it could collapse as a result would be more than enough to scare most of them straight, and destroy the ones that aren’t scared straight.
And for the record, controlled burns are used in fire fighting all the time.
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The only way to flesh out to avoid abuse is to not do it. Your proposal is intrinsically bad.
and for the record, adding fuel to the fire is the opposite of controlled burns.
Removed some off topic posts. Please keep it on topic and civil. Thank you.
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By RMTing, or by harbouring people who bot and RMT, you’re contributing to the real-life wallets of people who do not care about EVE, or our community.
but i already do that by giving money to ccp
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I notice you mention facebook and ebay but there are plenty of other sites out there that sell accounts and isk on a regular basis but not as prominent as the ones you listed. such as
Cant you just hack them, after all they are illegally selling products they don’t own so really they cant bitch and whine,and you would get a clear list of who is doing what…?
yeah but they provide the game, and use an alpha then its free and you don’t have to give any cash
I feel for you dude! I do not run courier missions but I have gone from 5 accounts to 1 which I pay subs for so I totally get the lack of time you have for the game.
Would be totally unfair to tar everyone with the same brush. Alphas were a bad idea. it boosted the player base for few months then it went back to what it was.
( May of improved a little) ccp will never hit the 50k again no matter how much they try. also should remove the tidi crap. Yeah it used to make fights laggy and DC (still does in tidi) and sometimes damage wouldn’t apply to what ever you were shooting, but ya know in war not every shot hits its mark get over it. people want to know they can win when they fill in the spreadsheet.
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Please do not link to RMT sites. Removed 1 link
It is mostly the Thukker and SOE that get botted, because these have the most value LP. So restricting these to Omega makes sense. Regular Empire L4 courier missions are not used for the income generation, they are used for Standing gains. Particularly to reduce stuff like Market taxes, and raise Refining rates. I would prefer that they are left as is.
Personally I would be happy to see the cargo amounts raised to 50,000 m³ and all of the SoE/Thukker L3/4 agents moved into Low Security space - since these are both non-Faction entities.
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Yup. Been there done that myself on a couple accounts actually, but I still think you can put captchas or mini-games on the agents giving out missions, its not like PvP combat where often every second counts so you can’t afford a bit of delay on undocking, just don’t do it on every single mission either, like every 6-12 missions at random and the one that has it should give a little bit more, especially in faction standing, increase for the LP / ISK is not necessary since its pathetic and its not why actual playing players run them.
what ? nope, by far
L4D in HS : thukker can go 2780 isk/lp, other in HS can go 3k isk/lp . I can’t even find soe down to 1800 isk/lp
in LS/NS sansha rare 6180 and serps are 6590 (for distribution, again) isk/lp indexed.
security agents are all serp/sansha from 6400 down to 4800 isk/lp in NS/LS. in most cases HS are better
(that’s for direct orders)
if you look at average daily value, LS/NS L4S is up to 7390 but it’s only serp/sansha again(except one caldari navy item); in HS they are 4320 isk/lp
L4D are (avg daily) up to 4330 for calda/amarr items, feds are 3630, thukker are 3100, soe are out of chart.
so no, soe and thukker are ■■■■ isk/lp now.