EVE General Discussion

Because "creating content" is so undefinable and unquantifiable that nobody has to be held accountable for such claims. That's why you see the worst CSM members rushing to parrot these statements. These are the same kind of people who both fall for and perpetually spew every kind of corporate buzzword in the business world, because they prefer obfuscation over clarity.

I am sorry if I will go against the popular opinion here, but - I don't see anything wrong here except the fact that CCP haven't published that they will be giving away Ishukone Scorpions to prominent community sites.

It is very nice to have a gaming company that rewards its community drivers with symbolic tokens of appreciation. In this case, Ishukone Scorpions are just that - symbolic tokens. They are just regular Scorpions with a different paintjob - BIG DEAL. Those ships do not have real measurable value except for sentimental for the owners and/or collectors.

Think about it... if you wanted to reward players of your game with something in recognition of their community driving efforts, what would you give them? And how exactly is that item that you have on your mind different from a regular ship with slightly different texture? My point exactly - it's not.

The only problem I see here is easily fixable by CCP: Just issue a devblog to announce public giveaway of Ishukone Scorpions to prominent community members at CCP's own discretion and publish the names of lucky winners in subsequent "Community spotlight" devblogs. Problem solved! This way CCP will drive the community to engage more in building a fantastic OOG environment that EVE is famous for (and pretty unique because of the vast amount of OOG tools that expand and complete this game). It will give an initiative to other potential developers of tools and services that are yet to be created which brings quality to a great number of players, regardless of their in-game faction. I know I would not have anything against EFT, EveMon, EDK (eve-kill, zkillboard), Dotlan, EOH Poker... etc. guys getting the same treatment.

Oh, and an obligatory note since I expect an avalanche of pure flame: I do not play on SomerBlink. I had an account there a long time ago, played for a bit, won some, lost some and eventually got bored since lotteries are not exactly my cup of tea. I like to have at least some control over my games, which blink lotteries do not offer. But I know many players from many different alliances that like to play it - and that is enough for me to appreciate the service Somer is providing.

I'm not going into fairness of their lottery system or whether it's rigged or not because that kind of conversation is leading only to speculation and assumptions. I just know that my RL friend tried his luck on Blink and won 10 bil ISK as a 6 months old player. I simply do not have any other information about their fairness in order to have an opinion on it, but t looks pretty simple to me: if people do not have trust in the service, they would be out of business in no time.

Overall, I support CCP's decision to reward community drivers and service providers with symbolic non-gameplay altering
tokens of appreciation and only suggest for it to go public and become regular for all that deserve it (decided on CCP's discretion but mandatory made public).

P.S.
This can not in any way, shape or form compare to gameplay altering T20 incident where obvious in-game ADVANTAGES were given to specific group of players.

That is all.

Favouritism.
The fact that everyone involved knew that this was a bad idea, and they did it anyway.

In short, the sheer incompetence and policy-breaking nature of it all.

It has nothing to do with the ship, but CCP favouring one group over all the others, an for profit group at that which encourages people to give them isk in a out of game way thus actually taking content away from the game.

"we gave this secret gift to a website and told them not to tell anyone for marketing reasons. that's the ticket, marketing, secret marketing nobody is allowed to know about."

Yes, and MINIATURE UNICORNS CAN FLY AROUND MY BEDROOM AT NIGHT. IT CAN HAPPEN.

Never heard of this thing called a conscience?

Also, for those interested, there is a feature to 'block user's posts' I recommend you use after reporting Alpheias' unacceptable behaviour.

I honestly tend to be very anti-termination rhetoric on forums, but I will agree that the people who decided that getting in bed deeper and deeper with SomerBLINK was a good idea should be retasked to something involving a little less independent thought because they've proven themselves incapable of making sound business decisions.

As for CCP's response. I expect we'll hear from Hilmar on this one as the outrage grows.

These tokens do not amount to ISK more than materials provided by reprocessing of those ships. Collectors and owners give them artificial value based on sentiment.