Originally posted by unclemo

EVE doesn't need more subscribers.

The CCP management will strongly disagree.

Originally posted by Kyleran
Generally speaking, making radical alterations to a successful MMO only serves to anger and drive off the core customer base, (and EVE fans are capable of great anger) so no, F2P is not a viable option in this case.

Does this include Miners Kyleran, if it does then if not F2P what about a new PVE server then.

" Hail ALL Goonswarm, Hail "

Originally posted by sapheroith

Originally posted by unclemo

EVE doesn't need more subscribers.

The CCP management will strongly disagree.

"need" isn't a synonym for "want".

Could EVE survive indefinitely with the current number of subscribers? I say yes I'm pretty sure it could. Of course I'd be very happy to see EVE grow further, but not at the expense of what makes EVE EVE.

Unlike Elsabolts who would be happy to see EVE turned into Generic Sharded PvE MMO #247 because apparently Generic Sharded PvE MMOs #001-246 just weren't generic or shardy or PvEy enough for him.

Thinking thinking thinking........... NO.

btw. 3 / 10

coming from a 5 year player of eve NO NO NO NO NO!!!! the game has enough morons and ID10t's we dont need more it goes f2phails I and many others will unsub and be gone.....Cant afford to play work or earn isk and play for free anyway.

No Eve should nto go f2p...

f2p is a menace on MMORPGs and should never have happened because it spawned the dreded cash shops..

Eve does not need this, its a sandbox game and not everyone will enjoy it.. the player base has ben growing slowly since release and thats fine... it does not need to be flooded by all the kids complaining how complicated the game is and that it needs to be made easier..

Originally posted by Elsabolts

Originally posted by Kyleran
Generally speaking, making radical alterations to a successful MMO only serves to anger and drive off the core customer base, (and EVE fans are capable of great anger) so no, F2P is not a viable option in this case.

Does this include Miners Kyleran, if it does then if not F2P what about a new PVE server then.

" Hail ALL Goonswarm, Hail "

Miners who favor a PVE safe environment are not the core customer base for EVE, which we've discussed previously and would only derail this thread to continue further.

Creating a PVE only server would really inflame the current player base and cost far more subs than it ever brought in.

Trust me on this, you would really be bored mining all day if there wasn't someone like the Goons to make your day more "fun"

Besides, isn't there some sort of mining simulator out there called Minecraft? 

Originally posted by Chrisbox

Never, 1. If your wealthy you can buy game time with ingame currency, 2. F2P would mean more inexperienced pilots and overall decrease the level of quality and presentation in the game world.  EVE has a clear audience, and CCP is devoted to them.

  As to #2 I thought Eve players loved new inexperienced pilots to gank? It was certainly my experience with the gankers hanging out in the newbie training area dropping loot and waiting for newbs to pick it up so they could gank them. just think of the fun you could have!

  #3 CCp is devoted to making money not their players see recent dust p2w item on sell, cash shop in Eve, and the whole monical controversy

wait a sec, eve pretty much already is free to play. join a large corp/alliance, get out in 0.0 and rat battleships for plex.

:D

I make isk in the game and buy plex so I am already playing for free.  The only difference between the Eve F2P model and the other model is that in Eve you have to have a brain to play for free.  I much prefer the CCP model.

Originally posted by Malcanis

Originally posted by sapheroith

Originally posted by unclemo

EVE doesn't need more subscribers.

The CCP management will strongly disagree.

 

"need" isn't a synonym for "want".

Could EVE survive indefinitely with the current number of subscribers? I say yes I'm pretty sure it could. Of course I'd be very happy to see EVE grow further, but not at the expense of what makes EVE EVE.

Unlike Elsabolts who would be happy to see EVE turned into Generic Sharded PvE MMO #247 because apparently Generic Sharded PvE MMOs #001-246 just weren't generic or shardy or PvEy enough for him.

Its too bad this forum doesn't give me the ability to "like" your post :)

I know! Limit free accounts to only frigates. Newbie frigates. Yeah. With the civilian miner and civilian gun.

Edit: And they cant leave anything lower than .8

Every couple of weeks somebody else comes up with this same tired idea as if they were the first person to think of it. This has be discussed, hashed, rehashed, recycled and regurgitated over and over and over and over again.

Eve's style of "free to play" IS Plex. Plex is the means by which people can either buy a boost or sell what they have made over time so that they can play for free.

The reason that Eve will never go free to play in the sense that most think of it is because the game, to its very core design, is based off time spent and a subscription model leverages that design the most effectively. What do I mean by time? You have to spend time, real time training your skills. If you want isk, you will have to either spend time farming it or you will have to pay others, by way of Plex, to spend time farming isk for you. Of course how fast you can farm isk from missions or faction warfare or what ever depends on your skills and that depends strictly on how much time you have been training and what you choose to train.

It takes time to make things, you have to spend anywhere from minutes to weeks waiting for things to be produced once you have gathered the materials and the blueprint. This is also effected by what skills you have trained.

Researching blueprints takes time and that time spent will effect how fast and how effeciently you will produce stuff.

Gathering materials to produce these things also takes time. Gathering, in terms of mining isn't about getting lucky in finding a particularly rare node and grabbing it. It is about planning and executing a mining operation and simply spending the time that it takes for you lasers to nomnom this rocks. of course you might also have to provide for your protection and arrange for transportation of your goods and so on, all of which takes time. and once again, all this depends on the time you have spent training your skills, can you drive a hulk yet? can someone drive an orca with all the gang modules attached?

Even moving things from one side of the galaxy to the other takes time and possibly planning and coordination with others. This isn't WoW where your bank inventory happens to magically be available in every big city you travel to. If you gather something some place or make something some place it is in that some place. and if you want it some where else, or your buyer is some where else then you will have to take the time to move it to some where else. Locality of goods is not a trivial design consideration for a virtual world.

Eve online will never go free to play as in no subscription because time is the ultimate resource of the game. This is why people will setup multiple accounts, So they can train a second character in a different way or so that they can multibox something like a mining operation. Remove the subscription and people will be able to train for months at a time and continue to "progress" in the game without spending anything at all. Remove the subscription and people will be able to fly whole gangs of pirates or run whole mining ops on their own and be able to increase there resource production without ever spending a dime. Other games don't scale in this same way. there is no advantage to multiboxing a game like perfect world beyond maybe a second client in which you run maybe a healer.

EVE Online will never go f2p.

If EVE were to go F2P, it should follow the model established by Entropia Universe (aka Project Entropia). Simply make money what you sell, and then take a cut of this out of the market as a way to pay for costs.

Originally posted by BigCountry

wait a sec, eve pretty much already is free to play. join a large corp/alliance, get out in 0.0 and rat battleships for plex.

:D

 

 

It takes about 6-8 hours to grind yourself a £10 PLEX this way. That's a pretty horrible hourly rate. I'd rather spend 8 hours "grinding" at work and make enough to pay for a 12 month subscription.

Most F2P games:

New players play for free and vets who play competatively at the high end spend lots of money to craft top gear and enchant it.

EVEs Plex "f2p" system:

New players pay for subs and buy plex to bank roll there new characters while vets farm isk for a few days to a week to buy a plex and play for free.

The question becomes, do you want your noobs playing for free so you can get as many warm bodies playing your game as possible or do you want your bitter old vets to be able to "earn" the opportunity to play for free.

I tend to agree with others - F2P model is perfect for some games, P2P model is perfect for others.  I am not sure Eve would flourish under a F2P .

To be honest though I'm surprised they haven't opened a cash shop, a way for players to catch up with veterans.  

Eve is doing tremendously well for such a niche game.  Going F2P would be a terrible idea.

EvE cannot be turned into a F2P-MMO, it'll destroy the game for several reasons.

First of all, EvE is all about economy and ressources. With a F2P-model there would be massive amounts of throw-away accounts doing nothing else then harvesting ressources, be it mining or ratting. The only limiting factor currently is the P2P-model and rightfully so.

Second. EvE is a competitive game in every aspect. When you turn the game into a F2P-game then you need to add some other means to generate money, aka cashshop. A cashshop in a competitive game with FFA-PvP turns the game into a P2W-MMO and this will be the sudden death of the game.

And last but not least, EvE does not need more subscriptions. EvE is highly profitable with it's current 350k subscribers. So profitable actually, that CCP can develop two other games with the money generated from EvE.

The day EvE is going F2P will be the day remembered as the day EvE died.

Originally posted by Isasis

Remember what it did for LOTRO? EQ2? I can't speak for EQ2...but LOTRO was doing rather good for subscribers. It went free to play and the popularity sky rocketed AND Turbine started earning a lot more money.

 

A lesser example is Saga of Ryzom. It is a sandbox MMO, but more PvE based. It was dead. Granted, the game still hasn't really taken off...but free to play really boosted the activity in the game. Not only that, but the community is still great as well.

 

What if EVE was free to play? It already is for people with a lot of ISK...but what if it was like that for EVERYONE? They can still charge a monthly fee for added bonuses to people who pay. People could pay others with ISK to buy things in a VANITY cash shop. Don't go pay to win of course, we all saw what happened with Allods.

 

EVE would not just be a niche MMO, but the people playing AND the subscriber count would sky rocket. Why should only senior players get to play for free, anyway? That just makes it where the best and richest players remain the 1% and everyone else has to scrounge up or try to catch up to them. And CCP could have a cash shop where there are vanity items or small bonuses, to entice people to pay. Maybe free players have limits or "debuffs" so to speak, so they don't have everything a pay to play player does.

 

Anyway, before flaming...and I know EVE is doing rather well...but think how much better it could do.

LOTRO had a slowly dieing population and was dead for Turbine because they offered lifetime subs, and EQ2 had already been dead for years.  Of course it was time for them to go P2W.  

You can just stop with the " Vanity Items Only " dream.  There has never been a " free " game that ever existed that way.  They just don't make money.