Did you try it or are you just guessing? Did you try to create an account and subscribe it WITHOUT ever connecting to that account from a game client and it did accrue EP?
Did it start from the moment you subscribed or from the moment the 14 day trial expired?

Another interesting test would be to reset an account and NOT create any new character for a few days. Did it still accrue EP? (no guesses, answer if you know because you did it recently).

If you define money as the unit of measure of value (that's what the stick is called technically: unit of measure) than by definition any value can be expressed in terms of your currency. Therefore yes: making living on beta more convenient means giving it more value and this may be expressed in NICs.

Even the conveniency of not needing to travel there can be expressed in terms of currency. And in fact it can even be directly translated to currency: that's called renting.

But there's a big difference between giving value and giving currency.

I cannot (and most importantly do not want to) talk about what the incentives and drawbacks are in Perpetuum. Both because I'm a noob in this game and because ... the currently do not exist and I'm not a game designer for AC.

But I can tell you what some of the important ones are in EVE.

- you can manufacture stuff in 0.0 that you cannot manufacture in hisec. But the production facilities that do that are destructible and you may lose them and all the material in them if you do not defend.
- the best AFK material faucets are only accessible there. Exploiting them require you to build destructible infrastructure, maintain it and defend it. That infrastructure used to be part of the very mechanism of territorial control.
- it is inconvenient to go to the richest areas of 0.0 from hisec (and go to hisec from the richest areas of 0.0), therefore if you want to be there you'd better live there.
- faster and easier travel (thanks to destructible infrastructure) if you control the territory.
- powerful ships cannot come in hisec, can only be build in 0.0 and cannot dock.

These are some of them. NONE provides you money. In fact most of them require you to spend money. One provides material, and selling that material in hisec is one of the major ways to make the money you need for all the others.

Where did you see anyone asking for more NIC for betas? If anything the main problem in Perpetuum is that PvPers living in Betas are in self-sufficient corps that have nearly no use for the *** of NIC the make (not to mention all those that they do not make but could if they wanted).

I'm a noob in Perpetuum, therefore I may be wrong. But I've got the idea that the problems in Perpetuum (at least in terms of economy) are:

- there's nothing you can do in beta that you cannot do in alfa except pew-pew another player (good reason to go there, but not sufficient to live there as you can go there even if you live in alfa) and mine one single resource (again something you could do by going there, no need to live there). As a consequence living in beta is not a necessity. It may be a convenience because of the NIC income and better outpost facilities. But if you do not NEED the extra NIC income nor the extra industrial efficiency, there's no point in living there. It may be an advantage. But it seems it's currently neither a necessity nor a sufficiently strong advantage.

- there is no need and not even sufficient incentive (advantage) for those living in betas to sell and buy (that is trade) outside their corp. That implies no strong need for NIC. Nothing they NEED is best done on alfas in a way that is inconvenient for them to do. The only thing they "miss" is ONE resource. And they do not really miss it as they can just come mine it in on alfas.

I do not think anyone is asking for more NIC on betas. No one. They are asking for reasons to live on betas. Not for NIC. As NIC is both plentiful and nearly useless for those living on betas.

It's interesting how you interpret things the way you like.
It's not clear wether the CCP numbers are for active accounts only or fot all accounts. If they are for all accounts, than those numbers show a surprisingly low number of people in hisec. So I assume they are for active accounts only.

I know what many 0.0 and PvP players do, but I'll only speak for myself.

I have 6 active accounts with a total of 14 characters, in EvE.
- one character lives in 0.0 and spends 95% of the time in nullsec, the rest in low or hi.
- one character supports 0.0 life as a cyno and as a hauler, he lives 90% in hisec and 10% in lowsec.
- one character is a hisec pirate, he PvPs in hisec
- one character is a trader that has never left his hisec station in years, I play it only a few minutes a week, he does market PvP and earns a truckload of isks I spend in PvP with the other characters
- one character is an industrialist, he spends 99% of the time in hisec and the rest traveling to low and null moons/towers for logistics (but mostly rents logistic services from others). I also play it rarely more than a hour a week. He makes a lot of stuff I either use or sell (with the trader alt).
- the remaining 10 characters I never play them. They are in hisec. Many of them just never skilled. I sometimes use them to troll on the forums, when I do not feel like posting with the main.

In other words I'm a PvPer, mostly in nullsec but also in hisec, and if you look at the statistics of my characters about 7% of my characters will be in nullsec on average. And if I happened to fill the 4 empty character slots I have for some reason (I may fill one this summer to test the new tutorial experience, for example) that rate would go down to 5.5 percent.

I also know people with a lot of characters, all 99% of the time in hisec, that still are PvP only players (sometimes they roam nullsec or lowsec, but mostly PvP in hisec).

Not to mention the truckload of market PvPers and scam PvPers that live in hisec with all their characters. And not to mention the fact that 95% of the players I ever met in EvE, after 5 or 6 years of being there only play a few months each year and, for obvious reasons, park all their characters in hisec with +5 implants when they do not play.

There's a majority of players that do not PvP. And a majority of players that do not play beyond an year or two. But there are much more PvPers than you think.

Also there are very few that played 3+ years and did not get into PvP. PvErs play for a while and then leave. PvPers play for years, even if not continuously. That's why dumbing down EvE as they are doing now is a good short term strategy, but a bad long term one.

And the monocles are irrelevant. The pay to win specter is the problem.

I stand corrected. I just confused Tellesis with ICS.

But Tellesis is not part of the triangle, therefore I'm now wondering why Hugh was talking about Tellesis to begin with.

What's that got to do with it? I was not talking of lock back. I was talking of selecting the primary among targets you have already locked. EvE does it, but it's inconsequential to PvP in EvE because EvE lets you fire to different targets and the overview in eve visualizes your module activation not your primaring.

Edit: just to clarify, I'm not saying that the mechanic cannot be changed in a way that enhances PvE without damaging PvP. However if done the way the PvE people asked for, it would effectively damage PvP. And to do it without damaging PvP it would need to change the way PvP works right now. Therefore it's a valid example to counter your earlier statement.

Simple example from recent discussions. PvE players want targeting computer to auto-primary the next targeted enemy when the current target explodes. They see no reason not to do it. It will help PvE and you cannot get any similar effect by messing with the rats.

Liquid NIC should not be transferable. Ever.

Assets valued 1 million NIC should be transferable through the market as long as the buyer(s) pays them 1 million NIC.

Where exactly is the problems?

Also I can make 2 or 3 million NIC an hour on a subscribed account that is 18 days old, without multiboxing. And I'm very noob in Perpetuum. I'm sure someone with real skills (and I do mean player skills, not extensions) may be able to make more.

I totally do not get what you are saying here.

The markets should be the engines of the economy. You should only be able to effectively access the lowest sell order and highest buy order, per item per market (if there are separate markets). Ideally you should not even be able to SEE the other orders.

Direct selection of a specific trade offer for specific items should be a separate mechanic and not part of the market (and be inaccessible by trials).

It is possible (desirable, even, but not necessary) to severely restrict the ability to place market orders and otherwise operate on the market. But only if there is a delegation mechanic in place (if you do that, you basically make the market broker a player profession).

Sure. It can be changed in a lot of different ways. And it should teach you a lot more things about the game. But I'm sure that will come later on when the game matures.

The real point is that making a lot of trial accounts should not be exploitable. The time needed to complete the tutorial is already (even if unchanged) more than enough to limit the number of small robots you can create. If selling that robot must happen at the current market value (no access to "contract" like mechanics and no way to sell to an order you choose), there's no serious impact to the economy.

In other words if it takes you 20 minutes to do the tutorial and earn your light bot, then a regular player shall be able to earn much more than the value of a light bot in those same 20 minutes (therefore grinding trials for the bots becomes not worth doing).

Note that being able to buy stuff or transfer NIC out of the account, is more dangerous. But if it happens at market valuation in a developed economy and market, this is also not a problem. Only direct NIC transfers would always be a problem (because of money laundering and RMT).

Not sure what you mean. No limitation in direct NIC/ISK transfers are a problem because of RMT and money laundering. The interaction you can do with the game in such a limited time and with nearly no skills is not going to be a problem for the economy. The amount of faucets you can rely upon at low skill levels and in such a short time is very limited. If all you do is trading, then you are economically neutral (actually you act as a small deflationary force because of taxes and market fees). You are also somewhat inefficient.

What you can do in economy neutral terms (like trading) is never going to be a problem. In 14 days on a market like the one EVE has today, you can maybe earn a couple hundred millions ISKs if you are very very good and also pretty lucky. Even with the extended 21 days trials from the buddy program it's very very hard to be able to earn a PLEX value within the trial time. That's part of the reasons they were experimenting with the "plex for buddy": if the free month for the inviter can become a plex, sold, and isk transferred to the new account, you could basically invite someone and give him 51 days of gametime for free. In 51 days and without trial limitations a good trader could create a trading alt capable of earning well north of the value of a plex before running out of time.

So the triangle now actually works? Good. Gotta go give it a try

Except those 100 million NIC will be trapped in the trial account as long as he cannot BUY something. They cannot be given to someone else until the account is activated by a subscription.

I do not see the problem. If the account is later activated, the fact that the trade happened before it did is irrelevant. If the trial expires and the account goes dormant forever, it has effectively acted as a 100 mil NIC sink. Trials acting as an economy deflation force? Yes please.

You want to prevent NIC from leaving that account, there's no problem with NIC reaching the account or stuff leaving it.