EVE Vegas 2017: EVE Online’s free-to-play option is getting a huge boost
At EVE Vegas 2017, CCP announced that EVE Online‘s free option is getting a massive boost this December after the Lifeblood expansion. Alpha clones will soon be able to fly battlecruisers and use tech 2 small and medium guns, allowing them to fly many of the common ships used in nullsec fleets and removing most of the power gap between alpha and omega pilots in those roles. They’ll also be able to fly battleships and train for all 4 races of ships, which has the side effect of allowing powerful pirate faction and cross-faction ships such as the Machariel and Stratios.
Read on for a brief breakdown how the new system will work for new and current players.
The upgraded alpha clone accounts will have access to over 20 million skill points worth of skills but will still train at half the speed of an Omega player. In a confusing twist for new players, alpha skill training will pause once you reach 5 million skill points and you’ll have to either subscribe or use skill injectors to progress beyond that. Once the skills are trained, however, you’ll still be able to use them indefinitely when in an alpha state. CCP also hinted that new boosters may be added to the store to enable training beyond the 5 million mark or increase training speed to that of an omega character, but these plans aren’t finalised.
These changes also come with the potential for additional abuse that CCP will have to keep an eye on. Gank Brutixes with tech 2 guns and ammo can deal an incredible amount of damage with a relatively small investment of ISK and training time, for example, so we can expect freighter suicide ganks to rise following this change. A fully trained alpha will even be able to fly powerful pirate battleships such as the Machariel without too much of a penalty, leading to some worries that some veterans will have little reason to stay subscribed. On a positive note, nullsec alliances are already figuring out how to fit the new alpha upgrades into their standard battlecruiser fleet doctrines.
For everyone saying they’re going to drop their subs. You can’t play at the same time with two different accounts if one is subbed and the other is free. Unless they mentioned that at the eve event.
Yep, that restriction is staying and it’s what has curtailed most of the potential abuse of alphas thus far.
One worry here is that people could set up disposable accounts for ganking and so circumvent the security rating system. They can do that already but now they’ll have battlecruisers so the scope for damage is higher.
Another is that people could set up dozens of backup pilots inside wormhole systems so you can never evict them. Wormhole battles tend to snowball because killed pilots respawn in normal space and can’t get back in the fight. With this system they could have waves of backup pilots in the system. A gentlemen shouted abusively at CCP Rise about this so there are some tensions here. But ultimately you can do this better with an omega character with a lapsed sub that you reactivate when needed, and at that point it’s a normal player.
I don’t think the scope for abuse here is as big as people think. The real worry is there may be people who don’t need multi logins or more than battlecruisers and CCP’s bottom line could be harmed.
This will be very intresting to watch unfold. As a former player this will get me back in my ships but I don’t see this move being profitable for CCP.
I should login for giggles to see if i can play my 7 year old character. I don’t remember how many skill points he had though. He did own all the minmitar tech 1 ships up to battle cruiser.
CCP should start working on a sequel/spin-off with Valkyrie’s combat system.
Will they be able to do Planetary Interactions now? This is the EVE equivalent of farming and something many casual players would have wanted to do as alphas, but could not.
I checked for you and the new alpha skill set does not include PI or mining barges. They don’t want people to replace all of their alts with free characters that can be scaled up infinitely.
So basically just a free Trial still.
K.
The new skill set is a total of 20 million skill points and allows you to fly the battlecruiser doctrine fits used by every alliance and pirate battleships like the machariel and rattlesnake. It’s so far from a free trial that a comsiderable number of current veteran players have been saying this weekend that they’re going to cancel one or more subs when the change comes in and just play as alphas.
Calling it a trial just because they won’t let you roll out an endless fleet of covetors or infinite PI drones seems a little disingenuous. Infinite PI would be easy to manage and scale on alphas even with the login limit and it would thoroughly ruin the PI economy.
So long as they keep the Industrial skills off Alphas it’s going to be a free trial because it’s only one part of the game. You could already fly in fleets and in combat before. Expanding on that is novel and all, but it’s still only part of the game that you get to try.
Passive (largely) income systems like PI that you don’t have to actively play to generate income from are really the only kinds of systems that should be limited. However since you can’t have multiple Alphas there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to do things like Barge mining or otherwise.
Their expanded new system sounds like it’s going to cost them money with Veterans and still not be enticing for people like me to return because I refuse to come play half a game when I can literally play a colossal number of full games that I also already paid for.
Free trial but more perks towards veterans who once subbed and trained up the skills
I said it once and I’ll say it again what they need to do is sell skill packages in the PLEX store for Alpha Clones. So you start out with your basic package of skills you can train in Alpha. Then you can buy the “Battlecruiser Package” for X amount of dollars in PLEX that will let you train those skills or unlock them if already trained. This lets them sell distinct packages of skills while locking out the ones they don’t want to sell. It also lets them multi-monetize customers as someone who has a subscription might end up still buying these packages “just in case” they go idle.
However consider my scenario. I wouldn’t mind having some sort of “Industrial Package” that lets me do some mining and such. However when I’m done mining I’m going to have to haul my ore somewhere and that’s likely going to mean I’ll end up buying a PLEX to unlock my Freighter skill so I can haul my shit in one, big haul or even better I’ll end up paying someone else to do it for me thus improving player interaction and game play.
Brendan did they mention industrial skills at all, or is this still another free game trial that lets you trial some parts of the game but not actually play the game? I mean lolz Venture mining CCP plz.
I like this. Its how good F2P systems should be. You pay for what you need, not for what devs force you to. EVE itself suits really well for such model since they can introduce huge variety of packages for any needs and purses. I would most likely buy exploration package.
CCP Rise comfirmed that industrial skills are not something they want to let people scale up using free accounts, but that they are possibly considering allowing small barges and ice miners. The thing is, people can already mine in battleships if it comes down to it so allowing actual mining ships with the same yield seems like an obvious move.
I could technically mine in a Venture or technically mine in a Cruiser. They’re either going to make other ways to play than combat viable on the Alpha or it’ll just continue to be the Combat EVE Trial.
Lifeblood looks like the best EVE expansion ever
As I’m now back in lowsec (albeit as a “pirate” rather than a FW participant), I would be very tempted to drop my sub if it weren’t for the loss of all my drug skills, overheating skills, the ability to drop a cyno for shits n giggles, and the use of a JF. So looks like I’ll be keeping two subs at least (well, two paid-with-plex subs).
Will have to look into whether it’s possible to make an incursion alt for under 5m sp, and if not, how many injectors are needed to make it viable. Will probably end up hating incursions as much as ratting and exploration, but it would be something new to try at least.
Maybe it will be time to flesh out a few alphas for fw level 4 mission running and dump one in each faction. That’s always been insanely profitable.
Regardless, CCP will still be getting my subscriptions, and I’ll have a few more useful pilots under my belt for when cruiser-down PvP is slow.
That said, a lot of folks in my alliance discord (both alliance members and not) are heavily reconsidering their dedication to the subscription system with this news.
Good news, but what about T2 drones? If those are in too after December update, I’ll probably be playing again.
No word on the T2 drones, but I would expect that if they do this it will be lights and mediums only. The full list will be released in about 2 weeks apparently.
Great. As someone who plays casually I don’t think I’ll ever sub again.
I play casually these days too and I think I would miss my t3 cruisers and cloaking, but I could do a lot of what I do with battlecruisers. Perhaps this is their goal, to make it so that when your subscription lapses for whatever reason you can still play casually.
Thankfully I didn’t sell my Navy Raven.
Not just you, I plan to let 4 accounts lapse into alpha state after these changes as well, though I “may” keep one omega. This is a great change for us players, but this is gonna seriously hit CCP’s wallet. Strange that they plan to allow this.
I’ve heard a lot of players talking about how they’re going to leverage this by unsubbing accounts during EVE Vegas, which may give CCP reason to tone down the changes. They’re certainly trying to gather feedback on it over the weekend.
I always thought the best way to buff free players would be to give them normal training speed and introduce a series of one-time upgrades you buy for PLEX that turn your alpha clone into a new Beta/Delta/whatever clone state. The new tiers would unlock battlecruisers, battleships, mining barges, multi-race ships etc.
The training speed is the reason people switch to omega as early as possible rather than staying alpha, and adding new tiers would give progression outside the standard sub model while requiring free players to pay cash equivalent (PLEX) to progress.
I admit I can see the cloud in every silver lining, but I am reading many more “now I can unsub” comments than “now I or my friends can try EVE” Is that your experience as well? It feels like a revenue loss in the short term.
Yeah, everywhere at EVE Vegas I was hearing people talking about how they are going to leverage alphas now by either cancelling accounts they currently pay for or raising a load of gank alts. Not much talk about how this will actually help new players.
It seems a bit odd too that this is the reaction to most players treating the system as a trial and subbing very soon after starting or quitting. People sub quickly because the training speed difference is an opportunity cost that hurts more the longer you wait to subscribe, not because they aren’t happy with the max skill limitations. Then again, people may quit because they see how limited alphas are, I don’t have the stats to demonstrate it either way.