Dual Character Training

Dear alt-loving capsuleers,

Many of us here have been playing EVE long before we started working at CCP. As such, a lot of ideas and improvements come from our own experience and (sometimes) frustrations with EVE. Alt accounts play a large role in EVE so training and keeping them shouldn't be a hassle. Take these two cases for example: 

• Case 1: You have an alt and you just need a few days or weeks of training but you can't be bothered with logging into your main, pausing the skill training, logging out and then back in again to resume training on your alt. That or you simply don't want your +5 implanted, carefully EVEMon-planned main character to stop training. 

• Case 2: You need an alt, you create a new account, pay a signup fee, a month, two or three, then train the alt. After all requirements are met for the alt to do it's new job efficiently, you transfer it to your main account, i.e. consolidate, and pay a transfer fee. Sooner or later you're facing Case 1 because after all, your industry alt will need to invent new things, your market alt will need higher order capacity and your cyno alt could be turned into a covert cyno alt. Then later a covert recon cyno alt... then later, well you know where this is going.  

A simple solution to this is to offer users to enable secondary training slots on their accounts using PLEX. Changes made to subscriptions need to be taken seriously so we in Research and Statistics teamed up with Team Game of Drones to analyse the feasibility of such a solution and shipping it with Odyssey on June 4th.  The research on our part involved detailed scenario analysis of the effects on the in-game PLEX market, subscription changes due changing payment patterns, and needless to say, effects on our revenue. After we had conclusive results that this did not pose any serious operational risks to CCP or the EVE economy we finally ran the idea through the CSM and got really positive feedback from them. Team Game of Drones took the ball from there, did careful analysis on different scenarios, edge-cases and estimated the total implementation work needed to be done on their end. Soon after they were ready with an implementation, so this feature will ship with Odyssey! 

Now over to CCP Ytterbium of Team Game of Drones for details on the implementation itself. 

How to enable Dual Character in Training?

There are several ways to activate this feature. The first, and most obvious one is to right-click any PLEX you have in your account possession and select “Activate Dual Character Training”. Dual Character Training is account based, not bound to an individual character, so there is no harm enabling it from any character so long as you are sure this is the account you want to apply it for. Just remember time will count down as soon as it is enabled.

If you don’t have a PLEX as an item available in-game, another option is to go to the EVE Online “Account Management” website, log in and activate the service from there, with the same particularities as mentioned above.

Alternatively, attempting to start skill training on an account´s second character will cause a notification to appear. This message states if you wish to enable Dual Character Training by using a PLEX you already have, or by acquiring one from the EVE Market or account management.

How does Dual Character in Training actually work?

Activating Dual Character Training on your account allows two characters to be trained at the same time for 30 full days. However, an important point to note down remains the system doesn’t care which individual characters are trained, as long as the simultaneous limit is not reached.

• For instance, you could have 3 characters named A, B and C on the same account; activating Dual Character Training allows any combination of A+B, A+C, B+C to be trained at the same time. This provides extra flexibility for the user wishing to train up several alternate characters.

Is Dual Character Training Time the same as my account main game time?

No, and this is a crucial detail to keep in mind. Buying 30 days of Dual Character Training will not extend your account expiration date at all – it will just enable this extra functionality during the specified period. If your account main game time expires while this new feature is running, Dual Character Training remaining time will be paused, so nothing will be lost until your account is re-activated again.

• As an example, if you activated 30 days of Second Character Training while 13 days of regular account game time is left, you would have 17 days remaining of this feature paused when your account expires.

Which character training do we prioritize when Dual Character Training time expires?

By default, we always favor the most experienced character. That means in the event Dual Character Training time expires, the character with the least skill points available will be stopped. We advise you to plan accordingly.

Can Dual Character Training time be purchased several time at once and stack?

For being a new and somewhat experimental feature coming out for Odyssey, we did not wish to allow Dual Character Training time to stack up indefinitely for now. In practical term, that means that for the time being, it is not possible to renew Dual Character Training on an account until you have 7 or less days remaining for it. This may be changed in the future if and when we feel comfortable enough with this feature to allow full queuing.

For improved visibility, please note that activated and remaining Dual Character Training time may be seen at any time in the Account Management page.

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