We are planning on changing that. They will be able to see them, but not access them.

Again...

While allowing well intentioned trial players to buy items off the market would be a good idea, there's no way to tell if its a good player or a bad player.

One of the things the restrictions are there to prevent is NIC from trial accounts being transferred to other permanent accounts. Bad players are sneaky, and will eventually find ways to use 10 or 20 trial accounts to make NIC, which they will then find a way to sneak into a permant account.

Any counter is counter-counterable by these sneaky people. Maybe at some point when the market and the game is more mature they can lift the restriction, but for now if there's a way - someone or many someones - will find a way to abuse it.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Please feel free to continue to post ways in which it could work though, maybe someone will think of a great solution.

Karbon - It's possible, at least until they nerf transport missions, to open 10 (20,50,100) trial accounts and run the triangle from day 1, and earn about 1 M NIC/hour/account. AC of course is not worried about the average player, just those out to abuse the system. Even after the transport change, there will simply be another 'best' way to make large volumes of nic with free accounts. Typically this person is going to be selling the NIC in RMT, so they have an actual incentive to find and exploit ways to make free NIC. In case you didn't know, it's possible to trade items in containers outside the outpost, so the trial accounts could buy a 8 M NIC riveler, then hand it back to the 'real acccount' so nothing of value ends up on the trial account, and they are just abandonded afet 15 days. Put a cap on it, no problem the accounts are free, so they earn the cap, xfer the NIC and open a dozen more.

For me, buying and selling is a huge part of an MMO,  and I know it is for Eve players..

so restricting this, to me, is kinda dumb!

Its like saying.. yea you can walk around in your bot and check out the scenery but you cant shoot anything!

If the trial was only like 5 days or someting.. hmm, maybe.. but players are supposed to try the game for a whole 15 days without market access?

Really, there isnt a market at the moment, and alowing free trials to tinker with it is not gona hurt anything, if anything, will encourage more trading.

  Well thats a very sad perspective you have there.

I Have two accounts with over 400'000 EP between them, so I certainly cant be accused of wanting 'free stuff'

But I think your horribly mistaken.  Free Trials  do work.. and they've worked for all products since commerce was born.

Its not that people want something for free.. its because they want to test it before commiting money.   You might be fianancially secure and can look down and scoff at people who struggle with money but its very arrogant and self centred.

Granted, the market game on PO isnt very glorious, but I run a sales-based business in real life and wether it be virtual or actual, I always get a buzz from buying something cheap and selling it for a profit.. its addictive,  and its a shame that PO Devs feel they need to prevent trial players from sampling this addiction in their product.

Its almost like sampling coffee without the caffeine... yea, it takes like coffee, but if the hit isnt there its kinda flat.

why not?

Whats the difference between an account thats paid for using stolen credit card details to an account that has not made a payment?

Yes.  Why cant NIC activity from on trial account be traced, as it can be with a regular account?  Whats the difference.

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.

The difference is that there is a limit to the number of accounts you can activate with a stolen credit card (also it's illegal IRL and you end up being traced if you keep using it).

Unsubbed trial accounts are unlimited. You could easily create thousands of them in a very short time with a script.

1. Make the tutorial longer, which is actually Good™
2. Fix the broken mechanic that let you select from which market order you want to buy/sell, which you'll have to do anyway or the market will never work as an economy driving market.
3. Accept that noobbots and lights are worth peanuts, which is what will emerge anyway when the economy and market will develop and mature.

In fact, once you fix point 2, the only reason to keep the limitation on buying stuff is that the economy and the market are not yet well developed. When they manage to balance not only the combat abilities of the items and bots but also the economical forces (which are totally broken at the moment) thus enabling a self regulating market driven economy to develop, that restriction will also become moot.

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.

Funny, WoW does it just fine. In fact they shut down RMT traders whiten seconds and often take the money they just mailed away from the recipient.

You aren't WoW devs, you aren't that good, but you should at least try.