CCP seems to have decided (rightly or wrongly) that certain parts of eve are available for FTP and certain parts require subs. Things like PVE combat, PvP combat and exploration are fairly open to alphas.
The Industrial side is very closed… from mining to manufacturing to trading.
My guess (and it is a guess) is that their view of the economic situation of the game is that production is outpacing consumption… so they want to increase demand for stuff. Demand is increased by… Creating more destruction. If you have ships and modules blown up, people have to buy replacements. This means they’ll buy stuff that player industry creates.
CCP seems to want to avoid having more production at the moment. They want to increase consumption. So they are largely limiting Alpha’s to activities that would cause them to consume but not produce.
The entire point of Alpha is draw you into the game. Either as a new player or a returning and un-subbed player.
Based on studies, there is the understanding that players are better retained when they have a social connection to other players in the game.
Mining is a dead end. It has strong leads to solo play or niche group. Which means Alphas more mining defeats the purpose in the first place.
Roughly the progression is:
Mining: Frigate -> Cruiser
Combat: Frig -> dest -> cruis -> BC -> BS
And there is a lot more group content for combat. Have a look at how many groups alone there are for Incursions. Which is just the tip of the iceberg for the amount of group content for players. Want to give guess how much group content there is for mining that is well known and website published? (well other cap-ship mining of null).
We already have threads where Omega miners reach the end of their “progression”. And wonder, what is after a barge? Well, no - as I said; dead-end.
I am sure, if a player will be not retained at Venture, then its just another few months of barge and they will still end up leaving. And all without exploring the wonder that is outside of an asteroid belt.
The line that is currently drawn is acceptable as is. Frigates can use mining lasers and gas collectors. Ice should be an omega limited event. What people want is to allow the ice mining laser onto the venture to allow fleet alts to mine ice with mains without cost.
If you wish to mine ice in eve subscribe or plex up. If you don’t wish to subscribe or plex up for that then find something else to do.
The big issue here is not that CCP couldn’t or wouldn’t let alphas use barges it’s that people would exploit this with VPNs and bots alot more than now.Perhaps they may allow them soonish seeing as alot of alpha players wish to go on an industrial path namely mining.
yes, I moon mined with this. I had a orca alt, so I had my orca warp in and had my rohk next to it. I would transfer the ore over every cycle and boom, profit. I stopped mining, but im working towards 1 rorq. The goal by the end of the year is having 3 rorqs mining at the same time, mostly moon mining. I can make up to 80-110mil an minute if Im mining a r64 moon, and delve and fountain has a ton of those.
Fit your rohk with the lasers, fit cargo expanders and scanning equipment to see whats inside the rock. then transfer to a buddies hold.
