EVE Online needs new blood and unfortunately the alpha program is so limited that people don’t tend to stick around long enough to find true enjoyment in the game. No corp will recruit them because it’s assumed they are all spies, etc.
My advice…
Increase the SP cap significantly or remove it altogether.
Leave the slower SP progression in place.
Limit them to T1 ships, but remove all restrictions on modules / training.
Leave the restriction of only allowing a single alpha account logged in at one time.
Add a restriction to not allow skill extraction for 30 days following Omega activation to avoid people skill harvesting by exploiting the 1 day or 7 day omega offers.
Can’t remember what they are called but offer the programs that offer temp. skills for direct purchase and purchase on NES.
Make it more compelling to play as an alpha long term and for corp’s to bother with recruiting alpha’s. I think if they could basically fly anything T1 and don’t have SP caps it would accomplish that. Especially when augmented with the programs that temporarily add skills, maybe even given them one free one a month. it would give them chances to try different things out.
It is more than enough. I have two Omega accounts and several Alphas. Although quite a few of my Alphas have more than 12 million SP, frankly they are just using up free SP from daily goals and login rewards by that stage. 6 million SP is enough to have a pretty competent Alpha, fully trained (within Alpha limits that is) at 9 million or so.
No, they can only mine in Ventures. No, they are limited in scanning/hacking the more complicated sites. But they are perfectly good for casual, fun ratting in a cruiser or battlecruiser.
I am very happy with them, as they are, and would think that they are more than enough for a player to decide whether to make the jump to Omega, as well as serving a useful alternative for paying customers like myself to have a few extra characters, flying different types of ships in different parts of the galaxy, in addition to my main Omegas.
Speaking as a alpha only player who has been lurking here for about 8 or 9 months. Nothing @Solus_Blacksun listed would make me sign up as an omega subscriber for this game. I play here very casually and nothing has peaked my interest to join the kool ade cult.
On the other hand @Arthur_Aihaken cutting back on ships, returning the game to sub only, and other opposing suggestions could have major game population losses. I know I would be thinking about freeing up drive space. The devs would need to also address how to fix issues with alphas who own skills and ships for those skills. For example; do they get grandfathered in to keeping the ships or do they get any kind of reimbursement or nothing at all?
As for skill points, modules, etc. nothing really has anything for my play style. I am very relaxed. It is my opinion, they don’t need to change alpha to make the alphas better they need to fix the game to make it more popular to become omega for cash money. I wonder how many omegas just “Plex” for their omega? I already know I won’t get honest answers, so don’t bother. The only people who know the numbers are at CCP and see the raw data. It would be very interesting to see the game flip to cash sub only and find out how much of the population would remain online six months later.
That is my personal thoughts. My apologizes, if anyone thinks I am attacking them. Of late it seems every time I voice an opinion someone thinks I am out to get them.
Most sensible Alphas do not, as an Alpha battleship will usually be rather inferior to an Alpha battlecruiser. Unless one is using a medium sized missile fit, the reason for an Alpha to avoid battleships is that they cannot fully train, let alone specialise, a large turret. Which is very sensible and balanced in my view.
@Vortigern_Vitalis I did purchase a few battleships, didn’t know what else to buy with the ISK. I don’t believe I need a third space station do I? lol
Currently I have one battleship on the market for sale (Armageddon) which was horrid when I took it out for ratting combat sites. I almost lost the damn thing. I lost an Apoc over in Vecamia which means an omega would not have got a kill, if an alpha wasn’t out spending their ISK foolishly as I often do. The 8 Banana Tigers who blew up my first space station enjoyed their victory.
I just don’t recommend tossing the baby out with the bathwater.
They should not be able to use ANY T2 of anything, period. Also, CCP should reverse the waste mechanic to be 0% T2 and add it back to the lower skill modules, it make no sense to punish people who put the time in to use good modules with this mechanic.
Multi Boxer Paradise. Disgusting.
Expert Systems. Its even on the news feed of the mess that is the new launcher.
Plenty of corporations recruit alphas. Plenty of corporations will not touch them.
The alpha state is just an indicator of a tendency towards other negative character traits.
They would end up locked, like an omega who has skills that are beyond the cap for an alpha when their sub runs out. i.e. if you were in space in a ship you couldn’t fly, you’re still in it, but once docked, you can’t undock it again, and the skills would be there, but temporarily turned off.
I said sensible Alphas. There are plenty of Alphas, and Omegas, who are not sensible. If they are foolish enough to fly a sub-optimal ship that they cannot fully exploit, are they really a problem?
How do you know they are Alphas anyway? Are you just assuming? Very common mistake on these fora - witness the wild assertions made about AFK Orcas of years past…