EVE General Discussion

Definitely one route we can take! And it's a cool one. Doesn't have to be the only one though. Also since we discussed "soulbound" items (heh I said this word on the EVE forums), medals for example are essentially that by default. Again...not the only thing we should look at. We should look at a lot of different things.

What most people seem to misunderstand about this issue is that our grievance here predominantly lies not in the nature of the gift itself, nor in the recipient. The most significant problem with what has happened here is twofold:

First, CCP's awarding of these gifts to SOMER Blink was in complete secrecy. While this may not have been CCP's intent, they certainly never made any effort to tell anyone else that they did this. Considering the nature of the gifts involved this amounted to a substantial amount of ISK directly in the wallets of SOMER's employees.

Second, there was (and still is) no defined criteria for reward selection. CCP has stated previously that they wish to reward players and player groups for excellent community services rendered. Nobody disputes that CCP has a right to reward anyone they wish, for whatever reason. However, picking a massively profitable lottery site (yes, with some philanthropic contributions) over the vast number of other groups that have rendered significantly more popular and useful services (Chribba, EFT, EVE-kill, EVEMon/Battleclinic, etc.) suggests that the criteria used in this case was little more than "we like Blink a lot. We should give them stuff."

While this is less important than the other two points, I strongly urge CCP to look into creating items that have significant sentimental value, but not necessarily the kinds of items that can be sold on market or that would have particularly high ISK value. This may have been what CCP intended when they repurposed the SIW, but they should have carefully noted market values and realized just how much ISK they were handing Blink when they gave them the SIWs. But I'm thinking more along the lines of statues that the awardee could have placed in a certain location, much like the monument in Jita originally intended as a tribute to the winners of a riddle challenge several years ago.

Long story short: most dissenters are likely to agree that we would all prefer that any items given away have reasonable ISK value or cannot be sold for ISK, that CCP should create and publish a set of well defined criteria for such rewards, and that when CCP selects a certain group or person to receive such rewards they make an announcement detailing why this person or group deserves these rewards

PLEX is a pretty safe and stable straight gift, especially given the total existing PLEX vs. the rate of gift giving, it would have no measurable or detectable impact on in-game economy and also represents a pretty predictable and comprehensible value, even if players openly brag about it. "It's just a plex, big deal, anyone can get one".

But if you want something really clearly visible, such as a skinned ship, I would suggest one of two things. Either you make the ships unsellable, or (my preference) you make the skin an effect that appears on a normal ship, attached to the player, with their option to disable it if they want. So the dudes flying around in BRIGHT SHINY GOLD MYRMIDONS or something, everyone can see right away that they got recognition, but, otherwise it's just another ship-in-game. The side benefit is the player won't be afraid to actually fly that ship since the effect could show up for any new replacement they had to buy as well.

I can almost guarantee SOMER is looking at this thread and scratching his head wondering if the player base can count. If somebody hacked his account and stole "just" 100 IWSs worth of ISK he probably wouldn't notice for a long time, if at all. That's how far outclassed our wallets are by him. It's a non-factor. He hit the ludicrous ISK mark a long time ago. If he even does it for the ISK anymore it's only to see how crazy "crazy" can get.

tl;dr; what damage?

PS: When did we start looking to themittani.com as a source of credible space journalism? Jesus H Christ.

Yet it is still a good thing, unless you are saying that the 100 of billions isk they have used in sponsoring player driven events was worthless and that they should stop?

Why SOMER? Well, they are really popular and they have supported a ton of events so we wanted to explore what we could do with them. Their influence in the community is significant for the same reason that they are space rich - because they're good at what they do.

I've answered this but I can clarify. It had to do with timing, our impression of their overall track record and capability, their niche, and habit of sponsoring events...to name a few. This mixed into a feeling that we should contact them and do stuff with them around EVE Vegas and upcoming tournaments. One thing we are doing more of and looking to do more of is E-sports and online tournaments and if you look at any team sport today you see a lot of betting sites doing sponsorship as that makes sense in sports...so it's just a relationship that we wanted to explore and which we will continue exploring. Doesn't take away from anything other people are doing that is totally different and brings a different kind of value to our universe.

No, that was not the express purpose for why the IWS was created. As was stated in the first post, the IWS was created to be sold on the NeX store. I've seen several statements from CCP saying that community giveaways was the reason for the ship to exist all along. Is almost as if CCP is hoping that lie being told enough will make it become true.

When was the purpose of the IWS changed? If CCP had announced the change in purpose for the IWS ship ahead of being released in larger quantities, the price for the ship would never have been as high as it was nor do I think the outrage would have been as big. People were paying 30b from the start under the false assumption few additional ships would be added . If people knew CCP was planning on releasing 100's of the ship, the price would never have gotten over 10b.