f13.net

Well this certainly caught my attention -

http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/08/31/eve-online-going-free-to-play-after-13-years (http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/08/31/eve-online-going-free-to-play-after-13-years)

So will older character be able to come in and be targets enjoy the thrilling gameplay and rancid spectacular playerbase of eve? What happens if you are in space in a more advanced ship when you log in as a Free To Get Ganked Play player?

If the best a free to play player can do is use T1 cruisers then this whole thing is nothing but a publicity stunt to get people to try the game. And that's fine. They'll probably get some new subscribers out of it.

That's probably when most people stop playing to begin with, once they realize the investment required to move past cruisers and such. I'll probably give it a go when it happens just to see where my character stands in the grand scheme of things.

They have not decided if the multiple client login restrictions that Trial Accounts have will also be applied to Alpha State. Are you an insane multiboxer who can't be bothered to mine asteroid fields dry to subscribe your fleet of mining barges? Gank some freighters in Thoraxes without worrying about bills for a bit!

People who can find even a few others to play with will benefit from this, since there will certainly be enjoyment when some alpha cloners blow up someone flying something expensive. It will be interesting to see fleet doctrines that try to get some fleet cohesion out of the racial ship restrictions.

I haven't played in forever, how decent of a Drone Cruiser could you setup using a Alpha clone?

An ok Vexor.

Did they ever fix the actual drone types across factions? I remember you never ever EVER used the Amarr ones because of how bad they were.


-edit-

Is the Amarr version of the Vexor within the same skill limits?

FYI, there's no such thing as an alpha clone anymore.  Tiered clone costs have been done away with entirely.

It's what they are calling the F2P option. Subs are Omega Clones.

If they let free players pilot moderately capable fleet ships it could be quite a change. It would make a group of end-game players in T3 cruisers the 'elites' they are meant to represent while explaining why fleets may still include a far more humble ship as the 'rump' of the fleet. And Eve probably does need to refresh its player base. I can't really see CCP going that far with it though, they'd be terrified of devaluing the subscription that keeps them afloat and the broad interest in free-eve is probably not that great.... it's still more fun to read about than play.

If it allows you to fly faction ships, then it could be interesting.

They give a list of the ships and skills allowed in the dev blog.  General intent is "ONE race's ships, up to and including T1 cruiser, with T1 weapons."

It's a shift from setting limits per skill ("this skill cannot be trained on trial accounts") to just setting an index of allowed capabilities (on the character).  In the future, this index can probably be modified for each character (I'm guessing in the future they'll let us pay to unlock individual ships, if we so desire).

It also allows veterans to "go back to trial"; right now we can't, once we upgrade to subscription, canceling the subscription means we can't play.  

It's also a way to keep the vets interested:  you still have access to some basic ships, can fly around and use your character, get invested in the game and feel the peer pressure.  Whereas before, we only came back to the game if there was some big war in the news or some feature patched in that piqued people's interest.

Is this a desperation move?  How have player populations been lately?

Not good:

(http://jestertrek.com/eve/players/eve-players-2016.png)

There's also the need to be able to generate some ISK which takes ships and skills that may not mesh with PvP. I'm sure they'll keep it sufficiently restrictive that it's not really that tempting.

On isk generation, I could tun Level 3 missions with my Navy Omen and Navy Auguror without a problem. Level 4s probably not, though I never actually tried. That was with T2 Gear though.

Faction ships won't be available, according to the blog.

Just as a random question: Has anyone read Empires of EVE: A History of the Great Wars of EVE Online (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01DONPR0M/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)?

I'm kind of wondering if it's work 10 bucks to pick up on Kindle.

I picked up the hardcover and wasn't disappointed with it.  I think it makes a great coffee table book as it's really well designed, but the text is pretty good as well.

There's a new trailer hyping the game to tie in with the move to a free-to-play model and it makes Eve look really exciting!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQciMy_Pr0Q

I cant wait for the Spurge version of that.  :awesome_for_real:

For those who are interested, f13's very own Bat Country corp, now sitting atop the game in Pandemic Legion, will be going back to our roots and setting up an alpha clones corp for us to fuck about in with relative anonymity in disposable T1 ships on drunk roams on weekends.  We're working out doctrines, fits, skill plans etc but this will be totally open to any of you who don't want to play the ~xxXX-420n0sc0p3-XXxx~ p33v33p33 elite game that is entailed with life in PL (or who nobody knows and therefore couldn't get a vouch) but who do fancy fucking around a bit and having weekend, no-consequence fun.

Edit: we might put it in FW, might not.  We'll see.

Some of my friends are messing around with the trial and fairly quickly running into the quite low ceiling.

... It did make me wonder though, what did happen with the goonswarm collapse out of Deklein. I can see they still have systems and pilots so how did that conflict end? Not that it matters much to -BAT- obviously.

They left for Delve - which they should have done a month earlier - and are recruiting like madmen.  They're quite safe there and the tmc guys are rapidly regrowing their clickfarm for their website/twitch stream.

I'm very tempted.  Should I message you in game?

For now just set up an alpha clone account* and train a gallente clone towards a vexor.  We'll work out the details soon.

*Be sure to invite yourself with the link that - I think - should be on your browser.  You can use the same email address and stuff.  If you do it on an invite you get 250k extra skill points, which is a huge start.  I gather you can get another 80 or 90 thousand by doing the first quarter an hour or so of the tutorial but lawl no thanks so I dunno.

I logged in after like 3 years for this post.

I am this |-| close to reinstalling eve.

"Nope"....spyin' since 2010!

This alpha clones corp business ever get off the ground/still going?

We didn't get a huge response from outside the corp, so it seemed to make sense just to keep flying on the hundred-million SP characters for now...  A bunch of us did train alphas, though (I have an almost-maxed-in-combat-skills gallente and an increasingly useful caldari simmering away).