It’s likely much higher. Alpha accounts are users but not paying subscription fees.
Also, EVE may not have the largest customer base but it sure is impressive at the longevity of that customer base. Outside of WoW how many games have managed to sustain EVE’s player numbers for 10+ years? It’s not really fair to compare a game built on multi-year customers to the peak player numbers of a F2P cash shop MMO that will be dead within a year and replaced by the next cash grab.
@Jonah_Gravenstein
That’s fair. Where my mind tends to go is that we want to turn new players into subscribers by giving them a good experience. That isn’t however the core of this discussion.
Changing the framing a little bit… let’s say we gave people more skills so that they could have different options. What would a “successful” change look like? Besides retention.
If you want negatives, read most of the replies above. I don’t need to rehash those. Of course you need to be thoughtful in how a change like this would get implemented, I believe it would be worth the attempt for all audiences, new players and veterans alike.
Even if a change like this doesn’t occur today, it needs to be considered periodically in a game like Eve where feature creep (skill point expansion creep) happens. It’s probably overdue for another update.
i’ve read just about every comment in this thread and I just wanted to pop in and place a lil bit of wisdom here.
A alpha pilot with 5-10m SP with tremendous playing skills and what not, can actually take down a pilot with 40-50m SP or higher if they know what they are doing when flying a ship…
So, to say that someone needs to spend $200 just to try to compete with those thats been here 4, 5, 6, up to 16 years is ignorant at best. If a 16 year old player gets cocky around a noob (which we have no way of knowing) then the noob with 5-15m SP can take the bittervet out.
Giving newer players more skills is a placebo, in general the skills that they need to be even remotely competitive against players that have been here longer can’t be bought, they come with experience and knowledge. This applies to both PvE and PvP.
In terms of PvP there’s plenty of examples on youtube of experienced players running an alpha alt with a couple of weeks of SP taking out players that, in theory, vastly outclass and outgun them in terms of SP and what they’re flying.
SP is only part of the equation, it gives choice which is good; but knowing how to leverage both the SP and the game mechanics to your advantage is only obtained through experience and knowledge.
IMHO newer players aren’t running up against an SP wall, they’re running up against an experience wall; that is where most will always lag behind.
IMO it applies much less to PvE. PvP is overwhelmingly about player skill and choices, and any disadvantage in SP can be overcome by cooperating with other newbies to gain an advantage in numbers. But PvE, especially the sort of PvE that newer players tend to do, requires very little player skill and is almost entirely about your ship and character stats. A new player will very quickly reach a point where their player skills are sufficient for any PvE activity in EVE and progression can only come by increased SP and/or buying better gear.
All true, it’s a powerful modifier for PvP.
In terms of PvE it’s not as important, but still plays a part in the industry and trading side of the game, knowing what to produce and where to buy and sell is part of what I’m talking about; you don’t get that from SP.
NPC murder wise it informs on ship fits, ammo types etc; it becomes very important when you make it so by choice and start doing silly stuff for a challenge and the giggles.
There’s some of us that like to pit woefully inadequate ships against the harder hisec sites and missions they have no business running. Then it becomes important because you’re doing the polar opposite of minmaxing and relying on your experience and knowledge to survive rather than tank and gank.
Edge case I know, but we’re out there.
No. PVP is overwhelmingly about fitting as you’re told and learning to listen to your FC. It’s on par with PVE in skill needed. Some would argue that you need even less skill in most PVP as you don’t need to think for yourself.
Mr Epeen 
You do know that there is more to PvP than nullsec blob fights, right?
You do know that you said overwhelmingly, right? EVE PVP is overwhelmingly blob and large gang.
Mr Epeen 
Sure, if you ignore all of the PvP that isn’t mass nullsec blobbing.
Sorry. Not playing that game tonight.
Mr Epeen
Solo pvper here, it is all about player skill, not player skillpoint.
Period.
For sure. That’s not the issue.
The problem is his implication that solo and small gang is the majority of PVP in the game.
Mr Epeen
Well huge blobs certainly aren’t the majority. I’d say that the average fleet size for pvp is somewhere around 18-20 pilots. This is not large enough to prevent the necessity of significant skill.
Why so expensive? Are you under the impression that skills need to be level 5 to be competitive?
Unless the skill unlocks something al tevel 5 that you need, getting the skill to level 4 is more than enough to be competitive for a fifth of the investment.
Level 5 is relatively a tiny increase for a massive amount of extra time, or in other words, a good way to keep players training long for barely an advantage over newer players.
As new player you definitely do not level 5 in a lot of skills; get the skills you often use to 3 or 4 instead.
Secondly, pretty much every activity in EVE has cheap competitive entry level ships in which it is much easier and cheaper to learn the game against other players who also don’t have the personal skills and knowledge yet. If you skip this step, you may have a competitive expensive ship, but you will lose from people who do know the game.
That too is a fair point. But alongside it you must ask the question if you will retain people in the long run by giving them, as you suggest, “more skills so that they could have different options”. Probably not (and nothing in the publicly available retention data even hints at it), because part of the EvE experience/enjoyment is growing into it, seeing improvement on invested time. Open up more challenging, possibly isk rewarding aspects too soon and you end up with an early feeling of “is this it ?”, where PvE is concerned, even if they develop more ingenious AI for the npc’s and more murderous ones than trigs. As to PvP, knowledge comes before skill points, as others and I have already written.
You are, basically, looking for better ways to move alphas to omegas - and I agree that the NPE is far from what it could/should be. Part of that is entirely due to its design and not preparing new players for what lies ahead. Handing out skills doesn’t remedy the challenge of choice in this game. That the NPE doesn’t prepare new players in seeing and understanding that challenge is a real flaw. That there are 500M+ SP in the game is irrelevant, unless we were discussing richness of choice. It’s about what you learned doing with the sp you do have. And that is, and should be a slow and steady process.
My guess is that many new players leave the game confused-unimpressed-overwhelmed by the choices they never understood because of lack of guidance, and the fact that the game demands commitment. And of course there is the extra issue that finding your social spot in New Eden is not the easiest of things in a pvp open game, although there are plenty of corps/alliances that take in very new players. Getting involved in fleets early on is the best retention factor - see other threads and official presentations. But other than showing people where to get involved, and offering explanations and mentoring, it’s the horse and water situation.
lol idiots and their money.
You gotta have a really, really short willy …
… if you’re grasping for pseudo-equality so desperately.
Yeah that doesn’t work.
There’s always going to be the next guy declaring that it’s not enough.
Always. They’re inevitable.
Quite so. Funny how EvE confronts a player with his/her own abilities and limits… Not exactly a marketing slogan, but true nonetheless. So who will rise up to the challenge, and grow, that is EvE in a nutshell 
Oh but it is …
… and bears would love it at first …
… because they feel so strong and skillfull… (is skillfull even a word? it makes sense!)
… and then, when reality hits them …
… they’d be hating it.
The EVE ONLINE experience. 
Paying for character skills will never replace the experience you will get by playing the game, and this could take a long time to develop in your playstyle of choice. You don’t need to max your character skills to lvl 5 to be competitive in any area.
Recently there was this guy who came to the forums bragging how everyone was jealous of him spending hundreds on the game in order to buy character skills veterans had taken years to develop the non-paying way - his post became an angry tirade after he had lost a ship in a WH due to sheer inexperience playing the game, regardless of his character SP. Which was the point most people was making - you can buy character skills and ships but not playing experience.
A few days later he lost 2 more ships and I believe he rage-quitted the game, biomassed his character and joined the Doomheim corp
So you could spend hundreds to inject skill points, but you still need to be learn the specific part of the game you want to fiddle with to be somewhat useful anyway.
