Jita Park Speakers Corner

Will be interesting to see what comes out of this.

One thing that I feel is important is that the support should be given as a support from individuals and groups that need the support rather than individuals and groups creating something in order to get support.

Not sure if that sounds unclear, but essentially I first of all enjoy seeing people create things for the love of the game and community, rather than creating something in order to get rewarded by CCP.

A great example is the community spotlights, something that should be used to spotlight stuff that is great, rather than having someone do something in order to get a spotlight.

As for support/rewards, they should not influence the game, so in-game rewards are overall not always super good - especially not when the group of people earns hundreds of billions or trillions from it - because things like that only encourage people to make things in order to get rewarded -> less love for the game per se.

Out of game rewards is imo the best way of doing things if you are rewarding things.

In-game support however would be nice to see, for example perhaps CCP trying to help out by moving logistics stuff for an event (assuming it's planned out well and not just bc someone wants to abuse CCP moving stuff around for them).

I'm very torn on the aspect of business-held things getting support - if the goal of said entities is purely business like.

/c

First of all thank you to Chribba for being the first to respond and set a tone for this topic. I agree with Chribba in-game rewards are probably not the best solution for CCP support.

Things I would like to see from CCP for support:

1) A single page where one can register their site/service/offering so that all players can find it. Index it, make it searchable.
2) A second page where CCP's highlighted top 10 or 20 3rd party sites and services are.

Both of these would help drive traffic to the sites and give players a way to find things. Put this in the menu bar, like the Forums are, so that it is not buried in the forums or elsewhere.

3) Provide a clear set of steps to get a Dev Blog or News Release on the Eve News service, allow people to earn the spotlight in a transparent fashion, "if you do these things" we will give you this level of coverage within Eve.

4) Offer awards at FanFest in a number of categories for third parties - for example - best Eve News site, best new player support, best 3rd party data site, etc. Bring the top 2 nominees in each category to FanFest so the winner can get the award in person.

5) Provide approval for use of Crest and other methods for data aggregation sites - for instance Eve-Central might be an approved market site under this program.

6) For 3rd parties with a track record, provide an enhanced technical support level for Crest and other tools. Provide a clear path approved for this enhanced support. Don't be afraid to raise the bar every year or so to keep the number of people being supported in this fashion reasonable.

If you provide the platform for people who support the game to get recognition and to drive traffic, they should be able to find rewards through that kind of support, rather than direct money or in-game support.

My views are that ingame rewards are OK if they are not helping gameplay. ishukone watch scorpions are quite valuable so it does seem like favoritism. Why not limit your ingame rewards to flavor items like ATX cards, fireworks, etc? Make more, e.g. 'Losing SOMER Blink Ticket - This ticket is quite tattered and dirty and is not redeemable for anything.'

I believe that three things can be taken for granted for what the community unanimously wants :

1- Transparency. It may be hard to do because there will always be someone to complain. Yet, this is not an option in a sandbox game. Especially given the fact that these rewards tend to have a high value. A lack of transparency leads to suspicion. And as much as I enjoy having CCP openly discussing with us, we all know that, in the past, there has been devs crossing the line. Showing that this past is and will remain behind us can be done in a very simple way : being transparent about the stuff given to players.

2- Support. I believe players are entierly ok with promoting or helping things created by the community. Should it be a a "fansite" or a "charity". (These are the words used by CCP Dolan to describe who CCP want to support), I repeat : fansite or charity. I do not see how blink could fit into this description, for instance. 1 & 2 explain the drama around Blink.

3- Imprevisibility. I might be wrong on this one, but I don't think that the players want any kind of reward to become "automatic", "previsible", etc... First because such system would necessarily fail to be fair, and because CCP support has to be an uncertain reward to avoid people doing something specifically to get it. In the same model, I do not think that a community incentive should be approved by a majority of the community to get a reward, that's why I disagree with people offering a voting system.


On a more debatable topic, is giving ships outside of the Alliance Tournament a good idea ? Stuff that can be exhibited like ships tends to have more value, even if playrs probably won't undock them. Also, the fact that they can be blown up turns this gift into something that you can eventually forget.

For instance, instead of giving out stuff, Blizzard creates achievements to reward people that added something to the game, even if it's something silly. See Leroy Jenkins for instance.
So, instead of giving people stuff with value, why not rewarding community incentives with the most precious gift that Eve has to offer : helping them to be remembered. CCP could create a "You lost!" blink ticket, an item that has no purpose and that would appear in the redeem system of every player at the end of the year, among with other items referencing other incentives.

In most cases I am against in-game item rewards. I think most of great feedback has already been posted all around the forums about this particular issue so it is just a matter of building a list of good and bad practises.

Support in terms of rewards will always be kind of a minefield, mostly because it boils down to a popularity contest. No matter who you choose to reward, 3 others who do the same thing will feel slighted. Making someone feel slighted is a real problem, since most anyone doing anything worth spotlighting (i.e. not gambling sites) is working on some combination of charity and pride. Last thing you'd want is to inadvertently offend someone though omission and lose their contributions.

Not to mention, the SOMER thing definitely raised some questions* as to whether or not CCP can adequately choose good representatives of 3rd parties that deserve extra recognition (spoiler: no, they can't, not even close).

Support in terms of giving developers and content creators new tools to use or new venues to potentially promote their product is a better idea. Spotlights on groups of things, like say blogs or podcats or tools, where instead of "here's the best", you have a series of offerings. To try to mitigate bias, perhaps make some of the spaces chosen by community vote.

The way I see it, it doesn't really matter what a website does or how it is used. Whether the service provided to the community is a lottery, a dice rolling program, a tool to calculate industry production times, a tool to allow people to fit ships out of game or a tool to allow people to see their character and skills out of game, it doesn't matter. No entity or player should receive in-game rewards from CCP.

In-game rewards from CCP are easy for CCP to do and they're also free for them, so I can understand why it would be appealing to CCP as a reward method. However, due to the nature of the game, in-game rewards also grant an advantage to whoever receives them in comparison to anyone else who does not. The competitive nature of EVE Online makes it that way, and it's simply the nature of the beast.

As an example (using SOMER because it's the most recent and known example), SOMER runs a lottery website. There are a number of competing lottery websites which also run microlotteries and who try to nibble at SOMER's customer base. When SOMER is given a unique ship, that only they have, it makes it that much harder for any competitors to actually compete and blocks out anyone else who would seek to contribute to the game in their own way. In this case, the reward was given to the existing top dog, harming its competition. The same would hold true had the reward been given to another microlottery site, thereby increasing its share in the market and decreasing its competitors (including SOMER). No matter how it is handled, if an in-game reward is granted to a service provider, it provides them a significant in-game advantage.

The same would hold true even with non-profit services. If the makers of EFT were given a unique ship to give away to users of their tool, that would harm any other tools that exist (like PYFA).

If CCP wants to reward a community contributor, I strongly feel that it should be only with out-of-game rewards, which have no value within EVE Online. They could give the contributor a free month of gameplay (not a PLEX), send them a USB rifter, whatever they want, as long as it cannot be transferred in game to give them an advantage over others around them.

That addresses the type of reward. As to the merit of reward, that is a bit more difficult to determine. In my own opinion, I would argue that profitless (in-game, as tracking RL ad revenue and such is difficult, and I can understand people looking to offset server cost) services merit reward more than profit-driven services. In this case, I would believe that Chribba merits a reward far more than SOMER (again, I use SOMER only as an example because I imagine that the usage of Chribba's tools and SOMER's website are somewhere close to on par) simply because he provides a service to the community without any reward for himself already, whereas SOMER nets considerable profit and reward already. The altruistic nature of the service should bear significant consideration in determining who merits a reward.

I would also say that usage should be a factor in any reward decision. A website like mine, which serves a rather limited purpose and has a much lower usage than Chribba's tools, should be considered far under Chribba's tools as far as merit is concerned simply because his tools affect, assist and provide enjoyment to far more players than mine.

Lastly, I would suggest that creativity and ingenuity should play a role. A service that is the first of its type should merit reward on a higher level than a copycat that springs up to ride its coat tails to profit or in an attempt at recognition. In this case, SOMER would merit higher than later-developed micro-lottery sites.

Sorry about the wall of text, but that's pretty much my take on it.

Can we get CREST and SSO some time soon please?

Oh, wait, not that kind of third party. Anyway, *grabby hand motions*

Getting onto the actual topic:

I have no issue with in game rewards, if they're not of a physical nature. Something that can't be traded or given away. So, something named after you, or your corp, for example. an 'Otherworld Enterprises' Strip mining laser being added to the drop tables, for example. Or a moon being named. (Everything up to the in-game benefits bit in this post. https://www.fuzzwork.co.uk/2013/10/11/game-rewards/ that final bit was a discussion point.)



Clear criteria are important, though there needs to be some wiggle room. A blog can count as a fansite, but you don't want to specify 'must have X posts per month' as A: it makes it work, and B: it then needs policed.

Transparency is important. Perhaps some kind of tier system. Tier 1 fansites get one level of support, Tier 2 gets that, and something higher, and so on. (Free account. Free account + fanfest ticket. Something like that?)



There was talk at Fanfest about a community site for fan sites. That'd be nice. Have a tier 0 where there's little vetting (just 'that looks eve related') but gains no other benefits, perhaps.

Firstly, in game rewards are bad. when you give something to some one, and not some one else that's an issue. Please don't make me explain why that's an issue, it should be obvious. Rewards, on the other hand are great. Give people a free T-shirt, make a community spotlight blog about them, send them a ticket to fanfest, send them a signed selfie of the dev team, buy them a beer, just don't give them billions of isk.

Secondly, there needs to be clarity and reason behind supporting third parties, and it needs to be public. When you start giving things out without a mention, regardless of good intentions or what ever, people get suspicious... especially when you're handing out fist fulls of isk. Also, if people see you rewarding effort with cool stuff, it might encourage them to be the next big thing so to speak.

Finally, Consider who you're backing. Imagine if everyone were doing what your chosen champion of the month or whatever are doing. I mean, lots of people started doing what Somer were doing and you soon had to change some rules because it clearly wasn't what you wanted. also see above about handing out rewards encouraging people to mimic those getting the rewards. On a personal note, i don't think a non-benevolent third party should be rewarded at all [somer donated things, but that wasn't benevolence. that was advertising], but i will admit that somer do add some thing to eve as a whole and i don't wish to take that away from them.

I like that you want to encourage and support third party initiatives. that's awesome. however, the way you initially went about it was terrible, really started out on the wrong foot.

Just to add to what's been suguested thus far, is this sort of thing possible:

If you feel that a candidate third party has went above and beyond, and want to reward them with something like a branded ship skin, or an item of in-game apparel, can you work some programming shenannigans to have it that they can only be used by that particular character, and can not be traded in any form? Is that sort of thing feasible?

It would solve the problem of essentially handing someone a boatload of ISK (they can't sell or trade thier reward), and still mean that you could hand out something akin to previous gifts, again if the candidate has done something particularly awesome. Naturally, such unique non-tradable assets would have to be different to already existing gifts, so as to avoid messing with the price of them. Unless you want to ;) Of course, that's putting more work onto other teams (Art, etc), so perhaps an in-game Jacket or medal or some such may be more workable.

I like the community nomination ideas, leading to a shout out at FF or the like, but perhaps the actual shortlisting could be done by CCP, so as to avoid block votes (which has never happened at all, ever, honest...).

The more I think on it, the more I prefer the idea of having candidates lauded before hundreds of fellow players, instead of an in-game item. I daresay the applause of the main hall at Harpa might give more of a feel-good-factor than an in-game T-Shirt.

Hal.