CCP Games has released a new dev blog about their upcoming plans for Alpha clones. The new devblog dovetails with other recently announced changes to Alpha clones for EVE Online. Taken together, these will change the state of alpha clones in a lot of positive ways and gives a higher quality of experience. These changes include several methods for obtaining these skill points.
CCP Games & Side Effects
Introducing new features to the game usually comes with unintended side effects. These are the moments where we as capsuleers should adapt to and in common situations beat CCP Games at it. These side effects are usually foreseen by players way ahead of the game developers.
The New Alpha State
Alpha clones will get a massive upgrade to their clones which will improve their quality of life. These changes include more skillpoints made available to them.
The buffs to new Alpha Clones
- New available skills sets for Alpha clones,
- Tech II Small and Medium Weapons,
- Ability to cross-train all four factions,
- Battlecruisers,
- Battleships,
- Pirate Faction Ships,
- Train up to 20.5 million SP.
Continuing Alpha Education
Alphas will have the ability to cross-train factions, and the ability to use battlecruisers and battleships. Achieving the larger hulls with focused training is easy. Attempting to get into the larger hulls while fully cross-training frigates and cruisers from all races is not. There is a price tag attached to achieving all these skill sets and being able to train further then 5M SP. From the day you hit 5 million skill points the only way to train further as an Alpha is to inject SP. In addition to the normal injectors and small injectors, Alpha clones will now be able to buy Daily Alpha Injectors from the market or PLEX store.
Alpha vs Omega
Running a quick calculator over game time for omega of 30 days is roughly 54 million ISK a day. When realizing it is rather more expensive than training an Alpha character. Alpha characters beyond 5 million skill points costs roughly 62 million for an injector. These calculations are from the current market prizes, and obviously subject to change in market fluctuations
Daily Alpha Injectors
The new blog deals entirely with ‘Daily Alpha Injectors’. These injectors can only be used by Alpha clones, and cannot be used by Omegas. CCP Games have mentioned that the unallocated skill points won’t work on Omega skills, unless the account is upgraded to Omega status first. Alpha clones can use only one per day per character. This ‘per day’ resets each day at downtime. These injectors are not restricted per account since you can use them one day per character. As a result, they could be used by all three characters on an Alpha account.
Obtaining Daily Alpha Injectors
CCP Games have set the price-point for the Daily Injectors at 20 PLEX. To get them you will need to go through the out-of-game account management site, or use the in-game New Eden Store. These injectors are saleable on the regular market in-game.
Conclusion
These changes will create massive improvements for Alpha Clones. Purchasing skill points with PLEX (for Alpha Clones) is some thing many players will likely need to get used to. These changes to Alphas will bring many other changes further along in the game, and will hopefully attract more players to EVE Online.
Freelancer117
We (sic) are planning to sell Daily Alpha Injectors for 20 PLEX each in the New Eden Store and directly on secure.eveonline.com in a range of packages with pricing to come at release.
Selling 50k unallocated skill points for 20 plex without the use of skill extractors.
Ccpgames spawning sp for $$$ out of thin air.
What happened to us ?!
EA won.
November 15, 2017 at 12:19 PMNicola Arman Freelancer117
#sadbro #unsubbingtoenjoythealphalifemaybeprobablynot
November 15, 2017 at 1:16 PMJurius Doctor Nicola Arman
The thing that stands out from this for me is that it’s actually an incentive for Alphas to subscribe as Omega, as Arrendis points out above.
You can spend between $11-20 (I’m Canadian) a month for a subscription, or you can spend $24 a month for daily skill injectors – which you have to remember to use daily, and queue up your skills daily – to the same effect.
It’s more than twice as expensive than if you just subbed for a year. $130 CAD vs $288 CAD.
Why wouldn’t you subscribe?
November 15, 2017 at 7:19 PMFreelancer117 Nicola Arman
https://imgur.com/a/Nh9Ln
November 15, 2017 at 8:58 PMLekly Freelancer117
I would say this is an issue, but ever since injectors came out, there are just farms of characters for the sole purpose of extracting. The $$$ for SP ship sailed a while ago.
November 15, 2017 at 3:00 PMFreelancer117 Lekly
http://massivelyop.com/2016/02/15/eve-player-uses-28000-of-skill-injectors-to-create-max-character/
Yep it has been awhile now, one day capsuleers will fly in new eden without getting any of the shakes, coz ea/ccp killed all the consequences, GG.
November 15, 2017 at 9:02 PMArrendis Freelancer117
As CCP indicated in the devblog, they’re aware of this concern, but net effect is that if you inject one of these every day, you’re going to get fewer SP than if you’d subscribed, for 20% higher cost (600 PLEX). At that point… it’s really not something that’ll cause problems.
Besides: you get more SP from being subscribed than you do not being subscribed. Isn’t that ‘spawning sp for $$$ out of thin air’, too?
November 15, 2017 at 3:55 PMFreelancer117 Arrendis
SP sold on the market was at least extracted from someone’s head because the premise was that CONSEQUENCES matter.
November 15, 2017 at 8:57 PMArrendis Freelancer117
So? I have an alpha clone account. It gets X SP/hr.
I have an omega account. It gets 2X SP/hr. Twice the skill points per hour. Why? Because $$$.
SP for $$$ out of thin air. Now, you can say ‘no, it’s because of the TIME’, but… you can only use one of these per day, and they give *less* than you’d have gotten if you were an Omega for that day. So using these is paying 20% more $$ for less SP/24hr period.
SP sold on the market is most likely extracted from the head of someone who’s running that account as an SP farm. The character never undocks. Never does anything. All it does is convert ISK -> PLEX -> SP -> Injector -> ISK -> PLEX -> SP -> Injector.
Wow, dem CONSEQUENCES, yo.
November 15, 2017 at 11:20 PMbeargrueti
Nice just when i want to return as an alpha.
November 26, 2017 at 11:58 AM