I have been playing EVE on and off for a while. I have payed for playing on and off for about two years. For about half that time I have payed to play. I think the whole play for free thing was a step in the right direction but frankly it’s too limited.
I think a great idea would be to make the alpha clones able to use any T1 piece of equipment. Not limit them to only medium drones for example. But allow them to use ALL T1 stuff.
That would allow for a better experience and motivate more people to play.
I don’t think that goes far enough. If you allowed alpha clones to use any piece of equipment, that would allow for an even better experience, and motivate many more people to play.
Shortly there is a rebalance coming of T1 ships available to alphas.
I think if anything, rather than making any piece of T1 equipment available to them, just make sure the equipment they do have access to is sufficiently flexible and strong enough that they want more.
CCP Seagull explained that alphas are not merely an extended trial, but should be a viable way to play. At the same time, what they provide should ideally male a player desire more, so they subscribe.
So I don’t personally think they need access to more equipment, just access to enough well structured/balanced equipment that allows them to complete a variety of content with challenges.
One time plex in order to get access to the racial allies Alpha skill tree. So Gallente would get minmatar and vice versa and Caldari gets amarr.
Would give both armor and shield skills as well as another racial gun type, drones if you didnt have them and missile skills and a whole slew of new ships.
Stuff like Navigation, engineering, industry and whatnot would stay the same.
Where you say, " just access to enough well structured/balanced equipment that allows them to complete a variety of content with challenges" to me that would be ALL T1 stuff.
The difference with all and racial ally would still make initial race selection something to think about with consequences and limit how powerful an alpha can be while still giving a LOT of options. The racial ally would also make sense from an Eve point of view.
Racial ally would even open up pirate frigates and cruisers for players. But now all of them.
The point is Alphas ARE severely limited. Anyway… I don’t want to argue, we all got ideas. As far as proof goes… try doing some anoms with only medium drones… how far do you get?
From my time playing consistently 2 years ago I have seen a steady decline in numbers.
I would say give them access to all pvp related content including T2, just nothing of the activities which could be exploited by free accounts such as PI and Science and as well industry and everything else which is an exploit by using non paid accounts.
Also no ability to use skins bought with isk, have to be activated from eden store.
Test it out for 3/6 months as a public experiment or something, and full access to pvp content, exploring, pve etc. what could go wrong and what right.
Sure. If you want to make a point and not accept other views for what they are, then don’t ask right in the OP:
What do you all think?
If you don’t really want to know what anyone thinks (unless they agree with you) then go right it somewhere that people can’t actually express their view.
Dude… you need to chillax… I am asking for opinions… but you seem to dislike it when someone disagrees with you. I am not saying I am 100% right… And for sure neither are you.
Care bears that don’t interact much with the other players and primarily interact with NPCs, and don’t fund development of the game, are probably the least important class of players. They only consume server resources and provide little or no content for the other players of the game.
I’m not saying they have no value as even a little interaction with the market adds something to the universe of New Eden, and they are still a potential paying customer, but to claim they are somehow important and CCP should cater to them is a little rich. Their primary value to CCP is as a future customer, and if they just give them more things for free that decreases the chance they will convert them to paying customer.
Sure, there is a balance there where the alpha experience has to be interesting enough to showcase the game fairly, but it also can’t be to fulfilling or less players will upgrade to full subscribers. As was said the alpha clone is primarily a mechanism to give new players a peek at the game to see if they want to subscribe, and to make it easier for returning players to reconnect with the game. It was not designed with the goal of giving alphas access to everything, rather just a taste of everything the game has to offer without be overly exploitable by existing players.
Maybe the balance isn’t perfect, but no matter how much you give people are going to complain that you don’t give them more. I think the current restrictions are at least reasonable and see no reason why CCP change them unless their internal data is telling them something I don’t appreciate.
Consider the possibility CCP might also want alpha abilities to be sufficiently capable that you can realistically PLEX using one within a certain amount of game play / time, they do get more money per month of game time paid for that way.
Obviously if that is part of the aim it has to be balanced against making them too useful, they’d have to leave people enough reasons to still want to PLEX
Which might be a tricky balancing act to pull off, so maybe not of course
