Please consider a change to Alpha skill points pause

Council Of Stellar Management Assembly Hall
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A few months ago, my buddy and I (we are 40+ and in the same group in another game) decided to join and play EVE Online together, start a corporation, and get a bunch of our other mates in our group to join also. We both joined as Alphas. And we already have another 5 of our group in our corporation, one of them joined as Omega.

I am retired, so after a bit I went Omega. My buddy never intended to go Omega as he works a lot and has limited time to play, maybe 2 days per week, and we were quite happy playing this way; we are up to level 4 missions and having a blast. Until…

…He found out yesterday, by reaching the limit, that there is a limit of 5,000,000 to the Alpha skill points ticker. Whoops - we never saw that explained anywhere; perhaps it IS there but this game is complicated and this fact is NOT obvious - I even had a hard time finding the official language explaining this, until I found it just now in the support materials.

Here’s my problem - I paid for a year of Omega based on our ability to play together, with his account free, since he has such limited time. We both play our other game for free - however, we are able to pay for premium assets and the like AS AN OPTION and we both have paid some significant money in this regard - BUT WE ARE NOT FORCED TO PAY real money.

Now, your 5,000,000 skill point PAUSE, as you put it has thrown a damper on our entire game plan.

What you’re doing is FORCING him to pay - either buy an Omega account to continue OR pay for skill injectors. Well…

You are going to lose his account - he WANTS to play, he wants to continue…and would probably play for skill injectors [or pay for them] BUT he feels he is being forced to PTP [pay to play]. And I agree - neither of us have any issue with most of the Alpha restrictions BUT THIS ONE IS AN EXPLOIT. I see your support section on EXPLOITS and I am hereby officially calling you out on this one.

I’ve spent quite a bit of real money on this game already, to support our corporation that we formed. HOWEVER, I am seriously considering just dumping the entire effort. I spend a LOT of money on computer games and have no problem supporting EVE Online as well. But XXX XXXXXX is my friend and if he stops playing, it is very likely that I will as well.

Please fix this issue. I doubt many players who find out about this 5,000,000 skill point ticker limit will choose to go Omega. If this issue didn’t exist, if the ticker kept on ticking, your company would not lose money - it would only encourage Alpha players to keep on playing and eventually, there is a good chance they will go Omega after all. The way it is now, you only bash somebody over the head with - PAY or we aren’t going to let you progress further. So, PAY, OR ELSE.

That’s the way players feel when they find out they have been pulled into something where they have no choice but to pay. With a choice, I feel that many players would pay anyway at some point.

Thank you for considering a change to this policy. Just let the skill points ticker keep going, that’s all. And it’s only half the Omega ticker, that should be a good enough incentive.

Please let me know soon - we are both enjoying this game immensely and we want to keep playing and inviting our over 100-member group into EVE Online.

Sincerely,
Koyaan

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Your mate can Use Daily Alpha Injectors, which are avaiable in the Market for isk. So He CAN skill up to 20m SP at all, without paying any real Money.
If you want to get rid of Alpharestricions, which are very clear mentioned in the Eula and also at CCP´s Support website, you have to switch to an Omega Account.

Servers are not free for CCP, Employees want to be Paid, and also the ongoing Development of the Game takes a hughe ammount of in RL.
See Alpha as a free and endless Trial version …

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Thanks for the obvious answer.

The main point here is: Why stop progress for a player on skill points, when it’s half of the Omega ticker rate? There’s no real money lost. The choice is to give Alphas an incentive…or squash their enthusiasm and assure that there’s no future income for CCP from that account.

The alternative, in our case, is to lose the potential for 100+ more players from our group to pay for Omega.

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If ccp enables skilling free from 5m to 20, they will surely loss lots of money. Speaking from Omega Accounts Which are under this border. with 20m sp you can do almost every activity in Eve, so why anone should pay for omgea with such da change?

The commericals are talking abount sdkilling 5m sp for free. If you want more, pay for it.

For a long Period of Years there was a free Trial mode for 14 or 21 Days, no Free to Play possibility at all.

And, to be honest, telling that 100ppl "would " pay Omega if one single player get more free Accesss. - i have a problem to belive that :wink:

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You do not need to get skill points to be able to play. It sure is nice, but not necessary.

What you could do if you do not wish to pay, is to make multiple Alpha characters and specialise them within the 5M SP. A miner, one that can fly Amarr battleships and lasers, one proficient in minmatar cruisers, etc.

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Nobody is saying that 100 would pay Omega. It’s just potential. And I’m not talking about 1 player, I’m talking about the 1000’s of players that have come across this limitation that you don’t know quit because of it.

You can’t do ANYTHING at all with 20,000,000 Alpha skill points. And THERE’s your incentive point to go Omega.

You can’t:

use a cloak

buy T2 mods - this alone completely separates an Alpha PvP player and an Omega PvP player.

use anything over a battleship

do you really want me to list everything an Alpha player can’t do LOL?

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The slogans marketing uses may lead to some confusion, true. Instead of “play free” it should say “try free”. Having to hear from other players that the game is in fact subscription based (or paid game time) is probably not the best approach they could have picked.

But in the end, to ensure revenue for ccp, a line in the game has to be drawn - unless they’d opt for horrible alternatives like free to play, and buy what you think you need via the official store. That is a nightmare scenario for a game that relies heavily on long term participation.

As a group of friends, you guys also have the possibility to buy plex with isk, donate to the person who won’t buy a sub and get him omega status that way - corp taxes help in that respect :wink:

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I can agree that a line has to be drawn - let Alphas have their full Alpha of 20,000,000 without buying anything - at 5,000,000 explain that after the full Alpha skills are earned, the only way to progress further is with Omega. Or don’t let the ticker run unless they play that day, say do the dailies. There’s just so much MORE an Omega can do, this is the incentive to subscribe - not to force someone to pay for skill points.

Corp taxes don’t work as an incentive, they decentivize the entire recruitment process. When I first proposed EVE Online to the group, they researched the game and immediately started asking me if we had corp taxes.

Even explaining that corp taxes were a way to grow the corporation doesn’t help.

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They can, if the corp uses them correctly by giving something in return to the members (SRP’s are the most obvious example, structures, etc). But it does require patient explaining and repeating for some. Players who are worried that much about corp taxes are unlikely to be team players anyway, and you can’t build successful corporations with them.

5M SP at alpha training times is around 5 months worth of game time. That’s already a very generous demo. Prolonging that x4 up to 20M SP (almost two years worth) without alphas having to spend a single cent on the game - with the hope of eventually selling a subscription - is not a viable business model, I think.

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You probably did not knew, but as alpha you can get actually 6 mil SP , you train to the 5 mil SP limit then inject the 1 mil SP you get if you joined the game using a refferal link .
To pass that 6 mil SP cap , you can use alpha daily injectors or even normal injectors up to the maximum alpha limit of 20 mil SP . Also you can subscribe , train to a target set between 6 - 20 mil SP and then relapse as alpha , and as long as you are below or equal to 20 mil SP , you will retain those skills (trained or injected) if those skills are alpha skills and to the allowed level as alpha .
On the page below there’s a list that explains it more in detail for you , there’s a table that you can expand there and it will show you skills you are allowed to train as alpha and the limitation:
https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Clone_states

To play you don’t need to be omega necessarily . Some players are happy as alpha as you can even specialized more characters (with their limitations ofc) . There’s a lot you can learn by staying alpha for a while , it’s more important to learn game mechanics than having a bunch of SP at first.
Eventually , there will come a time when you will need omega , and it is what it is , you either subscribe or use the in game PLEX for that.

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There are other reasons why alphas are limited. There are a lot of asshats out here that break the rules and not only is it rule breaking, but game breaking as well

Due to those rules being broken, alphas lost the ability to run L4’s. They never had access to anything above a battleship, hell they were given faction ships

The T2 modules most are given to alphas, the major ones that alphas could abuse, are not given, like cloaks.

Why do you think you can’t have more than one alpha, but multiple omegas logged in together. CCP needs a cash flow, but turned the trial into a free to play to encourage newbros to come play, or vets to still be able to play if they can’t get omega.

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This is a hilarious “full entitlement” thread. I love it.

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Alpha is a free trial, your friend has reached the limits of that free trial. I’d love it if we could go back to the old days where you had to pay your subscription to play Eve…no Alpha accounts to confuse people with.

Eve is most definitely a pay to play game, there is nothing wrong with that.

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I think folks are taking “pay to play” to mean “pay to win.”

There is no MMO that has a completely free to play model. They can’t - MMOs have upkeep costs that require a steady stream of income, and if they don’t get that, they shut down. Even in the emulators for SWG and the like need donations to keep them going.

It’s just not reasonable to expect or demand that you can play a game for a year without putting any money into it.

And, as noted, the main reason for this is to make it impossible for skill point farms to operate with alphas.

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aside from monetization reasons, allowing alphas to keep skilling past 5mil sp will have other ramifications, such as allowing skillpoint farmers to flood the market with injectors, making it easier for botters to skill up new accounts to replace banned ones, and likely lead to economic havoc (such as allowing vets to flood the market with p.i.).

moreover, you seem to have a “curious” perspective on the matter. i your friend wants to play the game for free, he is more than welcome to continue playing as an alpha, or to create new alphas with new specialties… or you, know, he cold actually support the game he enjoys playing.

oh, and btw, i’ve played games that allow you to do everything or free (i.e. warframe), and they often include design decisions that make the game objectively worse. they intentionally create problems, and then sell you the solution. personally, i’d rather pay a sub for a better game, than play a sabotaged game for free.

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Give an inch, and they want a mile. Dude, you’re lucky that you’re allowed to play so much of this game for free as it is, and now you want MORE? This used to be a 30 day limited trial and that was it. And OP’s self proclaimed to be over 40yo? God damn, entitlement knows no age, does it?

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Not a very good argument. No one is forcing him to pay. It is completely voluntary. CCP does not have a gun to his head, can’t threaten him with prison, etc.

“Breaking News: Today the Iceland Parliament has declared that all citizens must have an Omega account. Failure to comply will result in levies against person and property. Long live the Althingi!”

That is force.

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What do you mean by that? You can use T2 guns, T2 Points/Webs and most T2 mods in general.

If you’ve just hit 5 mil skill points, you shouldn’t be in anything larger than a battleship. I have nearly 40 mil sp on my current character and I only use him for cruisers and below.

Yes that was deliberate, I don’t want people creating burner characters that can cloak for free.

You do know that you can buy 500 plex (which can be used to get 1 month of omega) for about 1.2 billion isk?

That would break the game. Currently, you cannot extract SP below 5.5 million SP. This is to prevent SP farms from using Alphas, which would essentially create infinite SP for free.

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The 5 million SP limit is pretty much the end of the free trial so to speak. If he likes the game and wants to continue playing he will pay the sub fee, either with isk or real cash up to him. As someone else said this entire post reeks of “entitlement” just pay the damn subscription fee if you want to play.

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Why is everyone assuming the guy is unable to play when he doesn’t get new SP? You do not need to have an active training queue to play.

You can play for free forever as Alpha character.