Cheating? I suppose that would depend on how you define cheating. I am not aware of any rule forbidding this type of activity. I am not aware of any game mechanic designed to prevent this sort of activity. In fact, This type of activity occurs all the time. You admit to calling on [EMS] for repairs. One character repairing another character appears to be the intended game mechanic. Are you cheating? How is the game to differentiate between two characters being played by two players, vs being played by one, and even if it could, should it? And how are any of the rest of us to know if you are in fact playing both the [EMS] character, and the character being repaired? And should we care? You appear to be bringing some preconceived notions that are not only not supported by any game rules or mechanics, but beyond the ability of an online game to enforce. If I pay for two accounts, I would expect to be able to play two characters at once. You may consider this cheating, but to the best of my knowledge, that is strictly your interpretation in general, with no specific relation to VO.

Business models, ESPECIALLY modern software/IT/copyright supported ones are almost entirely revolving around or relying upon artificially increasing the difficulty with which to achieve something (i.e. creating the need) and then charging to provide the tools to solve that need.

If we adopt your model we are tweaking our business model away from the established profitable one. The trial system is eloquent, it gives a trial of the game to entice, creates a need, imposes an artificial restriction (8 hours) and then charges to alleviate the restriction.

So I accept and acknowledge that you are not suggesting we *remove* the restriction per se; you're suggesting that we sort of structure the restriction in a way that makes it clearly transparent to the end user that it's a completely acceptable choice not to proceed to purchase.

Yes, I fully understand what you are saying, now understand what I'm saying:

It's stupid.

If they were going to spend the effort restructuring the business model, there are a bazillion other ways that are more profitable and more creative to do it. You don't get points for suggesting a minor change, not when VO has 100,000 minor changes that could drastically improve the gameplay.

WOW the ignorance of sales and promotion is abound.
The short sightedness of the players who know nothing about promotion and sales is amazing. Yet they walk around talking about how dumb everyone else is as if they were all knowing about the subject.

So you can't see the benefit to paying customers OK.
The benefit to paying customers is simple. MORE paying customers and free players(aka potential paying customers) to play with.
And that is exactly the point.

Let people play for free with a much harder grind toward their game goals.
Lower level of earned XP, / faction sanding / credits etc.

Let people play for free and make it a long grind like these other free games out there.
There will be huge numbers of players of which a percentage will be paying customers.
Of those paying customers you offer additional goods such as Trident components or avalons, furies etc.
Or if you want to put up the cash a fully built Trident to buy.

You can benefit as a paying customer over the none paying customers but the most important thing is player activity.
WALA instant players activity and increased sales/customer base with little to NO extra programming at all.
Simply letting people play for free with harder to grind levels of xp / faction / creds etc.
And as a paying customer you can continue to benefit even more as new items are added for which you may potentially purchase if you don't feel like grinding.

Another subject that might help is more grinding for everyone.
There should be crew onboard which you need to earn skill levels as XP is earned you could apply the XP toward additional research points or crew skill levels.

This will add to the grind and also the desire to spend more money to purchase fully trained crew or additional extra crew skill like engineer that can enhance your radar range.
I think the radar range currently is too far and should be limited without having these extra crew skills and abilities.

Of course that part would take some more programming but would be worth is.
Crew skills could be things like targeting accuracy, power management, computer and ship movement, radar range etc.

But back to free players.
Paying customers would already have a much higher level of XP / faction / and credits that are earned. Nothing would really change for them except that free players would be everywhere and likely spending money too.

To assume that people will not pay because something is free is lame.
Especially since this is already happening and paying more then a subscription would pay.

I can testify that as I interact with other free game players many of them spend $50-$200 in one month buying junk they could have grinded for.
I myself have spent $60 this month on WOT and considering doing the same on WOWP, and also considering buying a Mech on MechWarrior if I even have time to take on another game right now.

We can't sweep the facts under the rug that free to play games attract massive players and also more money per paying customer then the average subscriber.
It's actually the free players that attract the paying customers too.

Having a large advertising budget would help but if you don't have that then you have to attract customers and potential customers.

(Potential customers is the key)
I think focusing on direct sales to attract direct customers is not going to work unless you have a huge advertising budget to get it done

Or the next best thing that works is to offer affiliate and advertising commissions and/or network marketing scheme which also has the built in growth and advertising budget built in.
Although I'm not interested in partaking in that myself, I do know it's popular and many people do it and make a lot of money from these mini commissions etc.
So they would be interested in network marketing a game which they would also likely be playing as an affiliate as well.

The pool of proven and successful advertising ideas to get things rolling is so broad but all things should be on the table if there is an actual time frame in which they can say definitively that on this date we plan to add ???? number of new players etc.

New players won't happen on accident or simply because the game sells itself as some people think.

You have to make it happen.

Now having said that if you can't give it away for free how can it ever be sold that's another subject all together.

It would be good to know if you could even give it away for free before moving to marketing budget topics as well.

But I'll keep the light on anyhow

This actually bring up another subject about free to play

If they offered some level of free to play or even a free subscription to everyone or to lets say 200 people for a 90 free trial.

If they or the VO community can't get massive players to play it even for free, then it's a much bigger problem that no one is aware of; and advertising methods or budgets will make no difference at all.

At the very minimum this would give some more insite on things.

I remember they had a few hundred 2-week keys somewhere a couple years ago.

You can't add PVP to the training sector or we'd have all you Pirates and Griefers hang out there in new characters just to kill the new players.. I'm sure they'd just love to sub after being blasted over and over on the trial....

So what you're saying is it will be an accurate representation of what things are like in regular VO then?