EVE General Discussion

Vital?

Come off that one, please. EVE would do just fine without SOMERblink. Your fiction contest would run fine with 2, 3, 4, or even 10 plex as a prize. In fact, if you turned down SOMER prizes you might have more folks like myself included interested in donating. You may not get to 100 PLEX, but you'd have a decent prize either way.

In fact, what SOMER does is diminish the value of the PLEX and therefore make it harder for such competitions to exist - because a competition that gave away 5-10 PLEX would seem pointless in a world where 100 PLEX give-a-ways are common. Donations of 1-2 PLEX are diminished by his donations and therefore people are less likely to give.

And SOMER does all of this to get what they are getting now: a defense against violating the EULA. SOMER has bought your approval, even though you are approving of what basically constitutes a breach of the rules of the game. SOMER has bought CCP Guard's approval, CCP Navigator's approval, EVE Vegas' approval and countless others' approval. Not by bribing them outright, but through influence peddling. It is textbook marketing - I can only hope that David Reid and Hilmar and others at CCP who are a little bit more saavy at this stuff see through the "BS".

No one wants to play a game where one entity, an in game entity (especially one using your game for a business), wields that sort of influence over the game creators, who are supposed to be above the fray in that regard. But CCP was bought - not because this makes them isk (I actually do not necessarily believe SOMER's bonus increases their profits much - I think the economics of that are complicated by the demand for game time) but because SOMER has led countless devs to actually believe they are "vital" for their game when they contribute nothing in reality.

No they are not vital, SOMER just does a good job of making people believe they are, devs included, and therefore they have recruited proxys to their defense.

At least his 1 billion isk sell out has revealed to more people the truth about SOMER. CCP asks you to stop something, and your first thought is to milk it for all it is worth. The supporters are right at least in saying it is SOMER's right to do so. And at least their true nature as a BUSINESS entity is revealed. I can only hope that CCP shuts them down, because at this point that is what they deserve.

And CCP needs to educate its staff more on the various forms that bribery and influence peddling can take - so that this doesn't happen again.

lmao,

So in other words no you haven't.

So even a business as ruthless and evil such as Somer has contributed and helped player events where as you haven't

Nice

Wrong attribution.

Somer doesn't sell 300K GTCs in a week ... the right term to use is captured. Put it this way, the demand for GTC is one whole pie ... they stole a significant portion of the pie.
If Somer didn't exists, that portion would otherwise gone to other vendors/CCPdirectly.

Made wonder me if some fools at CCP thought the same way too, thinking Somer sold them a lot GTCs.

Peopel will always buy GTCs, there is a certain total demand for GTC.
By giving people an incentive to buy through SOMER they take away from other sites like dotlan who have an affiliate link but no incentive.

I would say that for the cost of a 30day GTC vs paying sub as normal there should be something for that extra $5/mo.
Using GTCs for 3 months I could have paid sub for 4 months. So I may be part of a small group that blatantly express that for my extra $5/mo I expect some sort of bonus or incentive.

And even for those times I want to pay for longer periods of subs at once, paying it directly is still cheaper than any bulk pack of GTCs could offer.

You are certainly correct about one portion of SOMER's sales... those that would have done the $>PLEX>ISK transactions with or without any gambling motivation.

Of the people who fit in that category that I know who ALSO play Blink.. I'd guess that the gambling motive had that small subset buy at least 50% more. That is a very small slice of the player base but not nearly as tiny a slice of the regular $>PLEX>ISK player-purchasers. My guess would be that the number would be 12% more plex>isk purchases.. maybe making up 1 or 2% more net income for CCP due to Blink gambling. That guess was built on guess's of ranges that might be seen from market sales etc...just a narrowing of errors but .... everyone would do that a bit differently. Only internal number crunching would give a truer number. It isn't a 0% increase. that I'm sure of.

I agree. but.. guess I'm weird but I figure it's a good idea to recognize stuff that seems true to me even if it weakens my over all desire or position.

I do think that it risks more to game play than I first thought. there is a well written post above that I "liked" that makes a good case why the influence is bad.

Seems to me I should recognize a gambling short-term increase In GTC sales even if it could decrease sales long term by a far bigger number if it hurt the game.


(it could be my RL profession as a commercial real estate broker that try's to look for the real divide between two parties (ccp and players.. not somer and ccp ) and find adjustments to the terms that don't cost either side -- a landlord will pay for a different sort of Tenant Improvement if it had more general purpose use than the one the corporate planner proposed ...or a different date taking occupancy could let that last 10 cents per square foot divide be bridged...

... it's just an instinct that what is good for me (getting paid) means getting into the minutia dividing parties and finding what less obvious parts can give without either side compromising on what means most to them.. perhaps even giving an ability to sweeten what means most for both parties !)

My motivation as a broker type problem solver would be to find a way of keeping the gambling based sales without hurting the game at large. (ironically, after considering the dangers of "ship inflation" related to the gambling makes the much maligned vanity ship give away make more sense..... I don't advocate it but it's funny to notice)