I spent nearly a decade playing EVE online, I left after a medical accident put me into the hospital for several months, which fortunately "broke" my addiction to the game. By the end I was spending 50+ hours a week playing the game and I had established a very lucrative Freighter business for a well known PvP alliance in null-sec which generally makes people hate me out of pure association with said alliance. Having said all that, EVE is a bad game with a fantastic meta-game. The game itself is rather boring and has serious issues but the ability to interact/effect the world around you is unprecedented. I personally participated in the Early russian wars for sovereignty in Dronelands, the downfall of Band of Brothers, the collapse and subsequent revival of Goonswarm through the Northern Coalition, the Fall of IT alliance, the destruction of said Northern Coalition (I switched sides midway through), went on to spend time fighting with Pandemic Legion across eve in various conflicts alongside and against Russians and everyone and everything. I do miss the game but I am trying to avoid getting the bug again.
I played for over 8 years and logged over 18000 hours in game. Last check put my main pvp toon at about 189 mill sp in pure minmatar combat (with a strong Caldari ship bend so I could move corp ships). My indie toon was at about 150mill sp with jump freighters scattered about. Last count was 597,490,090,233.88 isk in my personal bank with 249 ships between the two characcters. CCP took my Tribal Tempest away and stuck it in a museum somewhere after i had been inactive for 5 years. I played...way too much. I dunno what it was. The numbers, the boxes.....sooooo many boxes to organize on the screen. The fun of holding a front line region (quirious? spelling on that is fuzzy. way in the south, near delve) against Goons for 2 solid years with only 30 people. I can't go back though.
Some of our more classic exploits in EVE as recorded by a good friend Delta_jax Here is when we "invaded" Providence with like 100 dudes and proceeded to fight 100+ man fleets with 10-30 people. We lose a Titan because someone thought it was a good idea to camp a gate with a Titan in Low-Sec (It's really dumb but the video is hilarious) this is from the perspective of the people killing our Titan, but if you look closely you can see my partner in Freighting stuff accross eve with his Rhea (space freighter) just get away at about 1:45. Some fantastic Goon propaganda from our fights with -A-, this fight in particular was a hilarious comedy of fails in which ultimately led to the destruction of this fleet. If people are interested I can find some more from back in the day.
Ill use the 2nd video as a good example... on tbe right hand sides of the screen is the overview panel. This gives the rough range/type/class/faction of the opposing ship... on my own i also have velocity and transversal velocity so that i can keep it tracked for my guns. There's also a broadcast panel which is utilized by the FC to call targets and if in a logo request repairs. When target locked a ships icon with show shields armor and hull which have to be chewed through to destroy it.
NOW WITH POLL I played this for almost seven years. It stopped being fun for me when I started having to do things in zero-sec space that felt like a job I wasn't getting paid for. Only way I'd go back now is if we as a group had a huge enthusiasm for it.
Hey guuuuuuyyyyyys! Guuuueeeeeesssss whaaaaat! Eve is going F2P! https://community.eveonline.com/new...tates-and-the-future-of-access-to-eve-online/ Let the mating.... Begin!!!!! Bwahahaha ha!
how? i have to admit, my biggest turn off to picking it back up was the need for a subscription; i just dont think i could play enough to warrant paying $15 a month. but playing for free just to bullshit around in small ships? that could be fun.
Alright I will defend myself for my rather blunt opinion, mostly it's coming from the perspective of someone who has played EVE to the fullest (aka PvP from frigate gangs to capitals, PvE Levels 5's, Wormholes, complexes, belt rattin, mining and logistics). Long story short they are basically allowing access to the most limited set of skills you need to play the game, you will be unable to Level V any skills whatsoever which means that you will not even be able to comfortably complete level II missions as a newbie, let alone attempt a level IV which will rip you and a dozen of your mates to bloody shreds. You will have no access to the basic Tech II equipment needed to actually utilize some of the most basic modules such as Tech II modules like Armor hardeners or even Rolled tungsten plates (which if you look closely at the given examples probably means you can only get to skill level 3 in most x4 skills and probably nothing in anything else). Now if you could easily kit out a thrasher character with T1 guns and tech two hardeners/tier 4 afterburner you could reliably make a hilarious thrasher gang, we use to call them 7 day throw away's and we actually used them to storm the Chinese server and dominate the big names their, until they locked us out with IP blocks and the great firewall was closed to us. But to make these you need some of the most basic Level IV/V skills like Hull Upgrades V which is the most common first skill in EVE (ever since learning skills were removed that is). Long story short I actually think that the 21 day trial was a much more ingenious idea to bring in new players, but CCP thinks it probably has grown stale, this might last a month but once people realize they wont be able to match a 21 day Omega clone via the trial vs a 30 day alpha clone you will see people drop. On an unrelated Note the guy who did the blog is actually an old EVE buddy of mine >.>
It always itched me to have a go at it - but indeed, I was afraid that if I liked it I couldn't afford the subscriptions which was a real concern until last year. The other issue was spending money on it in advance and then finding out that it might feel like working and not fun, I always got the vibe off of it that it was a bit like working. Could have been the best thing ever but that cost thing put the threshold too high to try it out.
To be fair, I didn't read the details. Limiting players to the smaller ships is fine with me, but you are right... not allowing them to max out necessary skills and equipment for small ships doesn't seem appropriate. It is basically stacking the odds against them if they want to compete in PvP and don't get a subscription.... and that's wrong.
I have always felt that EVE is one of the few MMO's that would never be able to go "Free 2 play" without completely destroying it's business model. Beyond Vanity items, any sort of game related bonus or action could result in a imbalance that tips the favor away from the careful market sim they have tried to create.
