Jita Park Speakers Corner

Third party in-game rewards should be:

a) Always declared to the entire community
b) Never of limited edition ships, except for the Alliance Tournament where the precedent is long-set and widely accepted, or for similar events. Ships only available via prizes are fine, as long as no implication is made that the ones handed out are all that will ever exist.
c) Never items that provide a lasting impact in any form of PVP (tech 2 BPOs provide a lasting impact in market PVP, 50 single-run BPCs for unique ships do not unless those unique ships are extremely hard to destroy)
d) Not have a massive inherent value (e.g. something that reprocesses into 1.3 trillion units of Tritanium)

What is needed:

Total transparency.
No in game advantage to be gained.
Apply your own terms and conditions to ALL players equally.

I believe rewards should be for contributing to the community - not to businesses - and absolutely not to gambling sites.

I would never call for a ban or sacking, however, the handling of this matter has been appalling.

Ignoring a very long thread for such a long time left people with the impression that CCP was trying to sweep the matter under the carpet.
I suggest this was extremely bad for customer relations and should not be allowed to happen again.

Community Spotlights are Great
A top 10-20 List of third party is an awesome idea.
Transparency
All Prizes Being awarded from CCP should be Vetted By the CSM panel.
ANY in-game items is a Bad Idea.

Any site that OFFERS or HINTS at anything In GAME that can be directly/indirectly tied to the purchase of GTC's Should be deemed automatically as RMT, The offending runner of the site Banned - AND IT'S MEMBERS TIED TO IT - hit with Suspensions for RMT assisting. Third Party sites selling GTC's with nothing tied to them, to help Server costs is Fine.

I am all for a community site rewards that are Out Of Game ... Say a Free Month ( NOT A PLEX) But directly a Free Month of EVE Tacked to there account using a customer service rep. Say if they do a Top 10 list the Number 1 (just the main indivual.. not his/her friends or helpers) Gets a few months free for being at the top.

EC: (lets used the most known ) Chribba's Service maintains The #1 spot all year... top community site etc.. most voted by the players - he receives Said award. Automatically Tapped To that account.

Any Third party site or operator if there worth there weight will easily get donations from Players in the game in one way or the other. Either from donations for developing a Great APP, or Profit ( no matter how small you try to BS it is). The Only Ingame prizes that should be award to these Operators - IN GAME - Should be from players directly Giving Thanks.

- Never forget SOMERgate As it was clear CCP said to suspend GTC Bonus's and all other third parties complied immediately while Somer Pushed theres to 1 Billion to cash out on the rush for Extra site credit until the deadline.

CCP, finally, Thank You.

First, I do not agree with Somer not being punished, but anyway, moving forward.


- Ideas and Thoughts.

- Guideslines of how / what rewards are given to 3rd party entities, must be created.
- Transparency is a must.
- No favouritism or any ingame advantage / benefit should be given.

- Positive contributers / creators can / should be rewarded / recongnised, with out of game stuff, and / or, if in game, only non transferable / tradable "vanity" (?) items, ( eg. Medals or something to that effect ).

- For profit, gambling / auction / lottery, sites should get NO support at all.

- Rare ingame collectables should only be obtainable through Alliance Tournaments.
- Lesser ingame collectables obtainable via, whatever CCP / Eve Community think / agree with, is fair.

- CCP endorsed auctions should be within game only and to be operated by CCP themselves.



- Issues of CCP's integrity.

- CCP's interpretation of their own TOS / EULA, especially regarding RMT, must be addresed and fixed,
( Terms and Conditions should apply equally to ALL ).

- Improving Your Customer Service and Public Relations


- Issues of CCP favouring Somer

- Is CCP spawning stuff for Somer ?
- Is CCP spawning characters for Somer ?


- Fears

- Is CCP giving up on Eve, as a game ?
- Does CCP want Eve to become a "Casino" ?


Thanks, Deka.

Total transparency is needed.

It really has to be embarrasing at this point in time that typing "MMO Dev Misconduct" into Google gives Eve-online as the top 12 results.

As regards the RMT stuff and Somer, silence is just going to lead to more theories about more miss-conduct, its blatently obivious to alot of players that t20 and somer ect are probably only the tip of a vast Iceberg of miss-conduct over the years.

At this point CCP has little to no integrity left, maybe its time for a change of policy.

I know CCP Logibro, CCP CmdrWang, CCP Falcon, CCP Eterne (even if he did spell my name wrong in the last dust community spotlight) and the rest of the Dust514 teams are helping as much as they can, but there is currently no proper way to register as a Dust site. The Team has been incredibly great in supporting us, but having parity with the eve folks, would be nice.

I firmly believe that in order to understand what actions should be acceptable going forward, you have to take a good look at what went wrong in the past. By analyzing what caused the problems before, you can better shape your actions in the future.

To that extent, I have to point out that where things first went so horribly wrong with the SOMER Blink fiasco is that one or more CCP devs forgot their role as impartial referees. That role must be sacrosanct. If you intend to continue to operate an open and competitive sandbox game, and you hope to maintain any level of trust and respect from your customers, than above all, the role of referee must be inviolate. This means that you cannot afford any action which may give even the appearance of violating that impartiality. To do so is to destroy faith in the fairness of the playing field. CCP, you should know more than anyone the difficulty of restoring lost trust. It has been many years since the t20 scandal, and you still live under its shadow. And that incident was the result of the actions of one rogue individual within CCP; how much greater would the damage be if the impropriety appears to be an officially sanctioned act?

So in light of events which called such impartiality into question, I propose the following points for consideration in shaping future policies regarding third parties:

Any gift to a third party cannot give them an in game advantage over other players. Whether an advantage is economic, military, or otherwise, it is a clear violation of impartiality.

Any gift to a third party must be given openly, with clear public announcement. The purpose of such gifts is to recognize outstanding actions; by definition, rewards given in secret are NOT recognition! Instead, such hidden rewards give the appearance of impropriety, as anything legitimate would not need to be hidden. As we have seen, it can also serve to give the recipients an unfair market advantage, as the value of rare items is heavily influenced by their rarity, and limited insider knowledge of that rarity allows price manipulation.

Any gift to a third party must come with clear and quantifiable justification. When other players come to you after the fact and ask "why was this group chosen instead of the other group, which to us appears to have done much more?", you can't respond with vague generalities; you have to be able to give a measured reason which can be clearly compared and understood. To do otherwise gives the appearance of favoritism, and it will be perceived that sucha group was chosen merely because of their relationship with individuals within CCP. This requirement necessitates the creation of clear criteria as to what qualifies an individual or group to receive such rewards. Any such criteria needs to be as objective as possible, and should never rely solely or even mostly on opinion. This criteria would also have to be established and announced before any rewards are given! In the end, if you can't justify a gift in a way that others can clearly see why it is being given, and if others in a similar situation cannot apply for and receive the same treatment, then don't give it!

No in-game entity, whether a single player or organization, should ever be used as a distribution method for prizes intended to be available to all the playerbase! This creates a situation rife with opportunities for abuse and corruption. The third party has power over who may participate in such prize selection, can require use of their services for eligibility or outright prohibit the participation of groups or individuals at their whim (something which CCP was clearly against in the instance of the RP chat channels, yet seemed to have no problem with in the EVE Vegas giveaway), or can even rig the entire giveaway to ensure that the prizes are received by their own members. Furthermore, using an in-game entity for such purposes gives them an unfair advantage over other in game entities who are in direct competition. Due to the desire to participate in such rare giveaways, the prize distributors have the power to drive traffic away from their competitors and to their own website/service. This can have an in-game impact by reducing their competitor's in-game business, as well as a real-world impact by reducing the website ad revenue that many third party fansites use to fund server costs. Plus the fact that whether intended or not, being chosen by CCP for such a task becomes a clear endorsement and declaration of trustworthiness, which again violates the referee's impartiality. Really, this one is wrong on so many levels, I can't imagine how it was considered appropriate to begin with, and it should never be considered an acceptable option again.

Most importantly, all rules must be applied to all players equally! This means that regardless of whatever relationship a player or group of players have had with CCP in the past, regardless of whatever awards or rewards they have been given, regardless of whatever endeavors they have supported or joined CCP in promoting, if they are found to have broken any rules according to the TOS, EULA, or any other agreement, then they must receive the same punishment that any other player would receive!

The sad part in all of this is that nothing I have stated here should be a major revelation. Beyond the fact that most if not all of it should be common business sense, this and much other advice has been given ad nauseum on these very forums, in the appropriate threads. If you've dismissed it before, and have to ask for it to be given again, what hope do we have that you'll actually listen to it this time? We've told you before what sort of rewards we find acceptable, and the only response was silence. If the results are similar this time around, I wouldn't expect much more patience on the part of your customers.

Well put Kirren. CCP, please take note of Kirren's post, ( in a good, positive way ).

CCP, IMHO, I beleive that this thread deserves to be in a more prominant sub-forum, or maybe anothere prominant thread needs to be created that directs users to this thread. Maybe, Please

I think this thread achieved what CCP wanted it to achieve. Barely two pages of responses, just one CSM member chiming in, no more replies from CCP and finally a quiet unsticky with no word on if/when/how this was discussed with the CSM. Topic buried successfully.