Returning Player Experience Absolutely Disgusted

[Batankh]

Hi guys I figured it’d be worth sharing my experience to try and avoid others having the same. It has been an ABSOLUTE NIGHTMARE trying to just get into the game and play this weekend after a friend recommended I come back and give it a go.

First of all I had to locate my accounts which seemed to go through endless verifications, but ok fine. I have them and I’m in. Find out I can’t train my character as he’s over 5m skill points but ok fair enough, if I’m going to give this a proper go again I’ll pay for a month sub.

I then try and get the client which has to go through Steam but when I now try and Sub it applies to to my Steam account not the account I want. 1st Support Ticket raised and eventually it turns out I have to do this within an incognito browser so that it doesn’t automatically apply to my Steam Account.

Day 1 is lost at this point but I’ve finally got into my account and subscribed. I transfer one of my characters from another account to this one so that I can keep track easier and figure at least I have one day left on Sunday.

Sunday morning I go in and my transferred character is now there, so I stop training on my main and try to train her so that I can learn mining frigate and do the mining tutorials. NOPE. Won’t let me train as she’s over 5mill skill points. I thought it should be fine as she’s Omega (shows as such on character sheet) Second support ticket raised. Suggestion is that if I try and activate MCT this might work and I figure ok I could do that and train both for a month, because I’d really like to get on and play today. This is my one weekend off without my daughters and I want to give it a go after working hard all week.

NOPE. Still not able to train as says she’s over 5m skill points, so I’m left with having spent approx £43 (Sub, Character Transfer, MCT), 4-5 hours over 2 days and unbelievable amounts of frustration and have gotten barely anything done.

At this point if I can just get my money and get off this again that’d be a positive outcome. I’ve gone from being excited to get back into this to absolutely raging at how difficult you are seeming to make it.

Please can someone either help me and sort those issues out, or just issue me a refund.

[Vixen_Vix]

Getting into account is security measure. Steam is Steam, never use EVE with Steam. You can convert EVE steam to regular account.

I believe you should stay alpha. Why return and omega account for a weekend.

[Batankh]

I couldn’t fly my ship (wolf) so when I logged in I couldn’t do anything I just wanted to run the tutorial but it won’t let me undock on my old ship as I need to be omega to use it

Basically a terrible experience for someone with a character over 5m skill points who wants to come back and try the game again.

[Shipwreck_Jones]

Okay. The account security stuff is for your protection. I can see how the alpha restrictions might be confusing to a returning player, but I consider them fair. And what you’re saying about steam doesn’t make any sense. So, I don’t know what’s going on with that.

However, when it comes to training your alt, I will say that you got some bad support, and are within your right to complain. So, here’s the deal:

You can train any character without restriction on an omega account. However, unless you activate multiple character training, you can only train one character at a time. Now, the reason you couldn’t train your alt was likely due to a known bug. The last time I transferred a character from an alpha account to an omega, and activated multiple character training, it would let me train omega skills, but it was training me at alpha speeds and wouldn’t let me put more than 24 hours of skills in the queue. It was like the game was confused over whether or not my character was omega. I filed a support ticket, and was told that this was a known issue, and that it would resolve itself after then next downtime (which it did).

You should have been told this. And the GM should not have told you that you needed to buy MCT to fix the problem. That was bad support. I mean, it’s one thing to not know how to fix something. It’s another to say that the customer has to spend more money to fix it.

Now, what I suggest to you: (1) it is after downtime. Try to resume training on your characters. (2) File another support ticket, and ask for CCP to make this right. They should, at the very least, throw some Omega time your way for this. And, I would not consider it unreasonable to demand a refund for the MCT you bought.

Finally, I’m sorry that you had a bad support experience. Normally, Eve support is much better. Unfortunately, it looks the corona virus has impacted the speed and quality of eve support. I don’t know if the GM’s are working from home, or if they hired any new GM’s, but I do know that there has been a huge influx of players recently, and they appear to be overwhelming Eve’s support staff. I’ve seen quite a few threads with people complaining about slow response times recently.

Anyway, I hope you get this resolved to your satisfaction, and that you can finally get some quality play time in.

[Vixen_Vix]

I’m sorry to hear that. Just sort out the bugs with support and try to enjoy the EVE. Good luck!

[Batankh]

Appreciate you taking the time to respond.

I did get this sorted in the end by clearing my skill queue, logging off, then logging back in and training.

I only had about 5 hours in the queue so shouldn’t have been the 24 hour thing, haven’t checked the speed so I’ll have a look at that when I get chance.

Tbh I think I was just getting over frustrated as I really wanted to play and bugs and poor support were keeping me from doing so.

With 3 daughters nowadays my free time is more valuable than if was 12 years ago!

I’m still disappointed about the MCT as I only needed to train about 5h worth of stuff (my miner now appears to need mining frigate skill that I’m pretty sure I’ve never had before when in exhumer) but I’ve now paid £17 for those 5h.

Hopefully support will come back to me but I think probably the damage is done sadly.

Thanks again for such a well thought out response!

Batankh

[Do_Little]

A little research (or a few questions on the forums or in chat) may have saved you time and money. Alphas can train a limited set of skills up to 20 million SP - the 5 million SP limit is all they can train for free. After that, you need injectors. A daily Alpha injector costs 20 PLEX for 50K SP and likely would have given your character all the skills she needed instantly without the expense of the transfer and the MCT. Another option would have been to purchase the $5.00 starter pack which includes 250K SP and a week of Omega time. https://www.humblebundle.com/store/eve-online-starter-pack?