EVE General Discussion

Especially in light of the whole issue with player participation the in-game RP channels, this definitely requires some attention. This appears to be a direct contradiction of previously stated policy, yet there has been no official explanation for the discrepancy. To the contrary, it has been widely avoided and ignored.

Happy that this debacle is unlikely to be repeated.

I have no issue with open, transparent gifting of items that do not have a non-trivial lasting effect on the game's PVP aspects (the market of course being a PVP aspect). I'm willing to tolerate open, transparent gifting of things like Alliance Tournament ships - despite the (secondary market value) 3+ trillion ISK prize for winning an AT being economy warping, the AT offers enough to the game for it to be worthwhile.

This incident was not open, not transparent, and provided a non-trivial effect on the market (the effective transfer of ISK from those that had previously purchased IWS's as a collectible to SOMER). Due to SOMER directors having links to CCP staff it also reeked of collusion.

As a suggestion, in future whenever gifting enough rare items that you'll increase the number in circulation by more than 1-2%, please provide the community 7 days notice of your provisional decision to do so and why the recipients deserve it. Following that would have prevented this debacle.

Also, untradeable vanity items would be excellent awards to use in future. No economic impact, no ship PVP impact.

You are misquoting me. My reply wasn't to that post as can be seen here.

There's a lot of good projects and site we have yet to cover in the Community Spotlights and we can't do everyone at once.

What we've tried to do is focus on established things over brand new ones, but we've made exceptions in special cases for example when the Brave Newbies rose fast and hard because it was just such a good story. Timing is important (again) so if there's an upcoming event by someone we have on the back burner we may pull them up a few slots. Also we try to have diversity, not write about similar things week after week etc. But the selection method isn't highly developed or scientific and for something like this I don't think it can be, or that it has to be.

I have to correct that we haven't said that SOMER Blink is a charity :). Just that they sponsor events.

Just to let you know, if you have a charity event in mind and if you are interested, you can always contact the community team and we can look at options to support it in some way. I know it's not the point of your post but I'm just putting it out there :)

With regard to the free Ishukone Scorpions given as freebies to the Somer blink staff:

1) What contributions to Eve were CCP recognising?

The bulk of staff at Somer blink, as I understand it, process deposits, hand out winnings, freighter ships/items and deal with customer service issues. For this they receive a plex per month and 90+ mil an hour (freighter pilots being paid per jump) for their 'work' for the company. What did CCP feel the need to further reward them for doing what they are there to do for their corporation.

2) If (speculating) that contribution to the community is in the sponsorship of events, why did CCP not give that recognition and reward to the people running the events, rather than those funding them via their own marketing?


With regard to the unprecedented largesse given for the Somer blink lottery

1) Was CCP aware of how Somer blink would run the lottery for the prizes they were given? Namely that instead of 1 ticket per person, customers/gamblers were heavily incentivised to put more and more money into somer blink to increase their chance of winning?

2) Was any consideration given that doing this would act as a huge promotion for Somer blink, increasing their short and long-term revenue. If not then what is CCP's thought on the enrichment of a corporation via freebies now? If it was, then why was this done?

3) Was any consideration given to the fact people would have to sign up to Somer Blink's services and participate in gambling? There are individuals who have rl gambling addiction (in fact the likelihood is that there are people in eve with gambling addiction because of somer blink) or religious probibitions against gambling.


With regard to this statement 'The IWS is a cool thing to have and that’s why we use it as a reward, not because it carries X ISK value. The price people negotiate is wholly decided between individuals and is hard for us to predict with any precision. '

1) The price of most things in the game is easily checked via assorted means, why was this not a consideration and, moreover, why was there no consideration over the economic effects of keeping the 'gifts' secret?


CCP made exceptionally bold claims about Somer, assuring their reliability, that they'd never scammed etc. They were given unprecedented largesse not once, but twice - once in public, once without disclosure. Fundamentally then we have the same corporation being given special treatment by CCP on two occasions.


Going forwards

What would YOU like to see, going forward?


Awards
Personally I think the community spotlight should be enough for most things. Likewise I'm not personally convinced someone needs to get a plex each month for running a blog on the game, but then that's a cheap marketing extra for CCP.

in game out of game, what sort?

Out of game for preference. Recognition is its own reward (the community spotlight) but t-shirts, rifter USBs etc. work as well. If not out of game then without economic or political value. Special pods that are a different colour, things that have no possible trade value, and they're lost if that character is sold.

how are they chosen?

There's no such thing as a fair metric for community recognition, because one person's excellent event is another person's 'meh' however it should be kept broad, the same company/individual shouldn't be getting rewarded twice in a short period of time as Somer was and it should take in the different facets of the game. EveMon/EveFit are indispensible tools, likewise Dotlan and Garpa. The Angel Project apparently does something to help new players (Though I doubt it's as good as Goon support for our newbies, but that's not exactly typical), someone whose name escapes me fought rifters in their nyx as part of the 10 year celebration etc. Those are all things that support the community and add value. Ohh and Goons got Eve on the BBC, so obviously we should be top of the list!

how is it kept transparent

You publish your guidelines on how people are chosen, you publish who is getting what (Why wouldn't you want people to know who CCP thinks deserves recognition, I'm frankly baffled it has been kept secret until now).

"the time was right to do stuff with them" is extremely vague. What criteria was used in this case exactly?

What was SB's great "contribution" to EVE exactly, as referenced in the OP that qualified them for rewards ?

Do you truly consider SB to be a "fansite".

I'm not sure why you dont just make more of those in-game cards you did for the NEO, I can say as a player who's names on an item in game i consider it to worth alot more than any IWS, You might be giving them billions of isk in ship, But they don't have an item in game that has their name on it, and wont ever be going away, that to me is a huge reward.

So there you go, create more "community spotlight" cards, mix them in with the NEO and give them to players through in-game and perhaps out of game events, Anyone who doesn't think that having an item in game forever with your name engraved into it is a reward that is literally priceless, probably doesn't deserve the reward imo.

We're not looking at the value of isk related to Somer's assets, we're looking at the value of isk in relation to the reset of the playerbase, a good indicator of that value is in the value of plex. 1 plex represents a noticable 'chunk' of isk because the players have determined that that much isk is worth 1 month.

Now compare the amount of isk given to Somer to the value of that chunk.

That damage.

This is what you said in that post:



That is still vague and lacks specific details.

An "overall track record" of doing what exactly?

SB's capability of doing what exactly?

If by "niche", are you referring to their organization being a RL for-profit gambling operation, as opposed to say a fansite such as eve-files.com? If not, what niche are you referring to?

Does CCP consider SB to be a "fansite"?

You said those are a few, could you please disclose some more, any that relate directly to contributing to EVE players in their entirety?