Not much apart from information (unless you happen to be one of those people who care about zkillboard stats).
Anyway, I think @ResonanceOfWar means that the information on your zkillboard shows Lucas Kell has been winning (= not playing) the game since start of '20.
I am wading through this thread but basically? You are right. The WHOLE game is not free, a portion of it is and this is similar to free trials in other games. You can get ‘so far’ and learn ‘limited skills’ So yeah, the entire game is not free, just a portion of it.
Does that make it a ripoff? Nah. Yer a drama queen. This is a game with a full studio behind it and the devs like odd little things like feeding their families etc.
YOU have a choice, play what you can for free . . . pay and play the full game . . . or go away.
As for pay to win? Those goal posts move far too fast for me to try a field goal from here.
The game is too nice to even think they’d have it for free. CCP lets players play it indefinitely for free as Alpha and that’s already a LOT for free.
I would feel really bad if I played this game for free for years without at least sending some cash CCP’s way and give the devs at least some due in the form of some months out of the year as Omega. Those guys don’t work for free, no one works for free. Do you work for free?
The real issue in Eve is not the level of raw materials but the total absence of decay. Ships can sit in dock for decades and don’t even need a new coat of paint. The destruction of ships is supposed to deal with this, but I doubt it does.
The introduction of some form of decay factor would make it disadvantageous or expensive to hang on to massive fleets just sitting there in dock. Repairs from decay would push materials through the system.
But, of course, nobody wants to have their fleet of 500 Titans decaying in dock.