Jita Park Speakers Corner

throwing an additional 30 into the sandbox secretly, while everyone else believes there are only around 90, is something that was only in CCP's control. naturally, the increase in supply would drop the price per unit, so CCP devalued the item for everyone else when they did this. somer understood, that's why they had their employees selling them quietly, for ~6 weeks.

That isn't necessarily true. I doubt there would be a terribly significant price difference between 90 and 120 units in existence.

Edit: In actuality, I'd expect the drama from the revelation, and it's resulting reminder that the ships are still being issued for various purposes is having a far greater effect on the value than the actual increase in number in game.

It's true that we don't know the criteria, but any criteria which result in ingame competitive for-profit organizations getting handed significant ingame valuables are bantha poodoo.

I don't know why the AT is used so often as a comparison, it doesn't fit at all. The ruleset of the AT is created in advance and it's open to everyone. It's not fundamentally different from e.g. mission running or almost any other activity in the game. The significant difference to the giveaways we're discussing here is that CCP doesn't pick the winner.

Please don't nitpick on words, items and ISK are interchangeable. Somer had the chance to sell the ships for ISK, they even could sell them for inflated prices for almost 2 months cause nobody except them knew that there were more of the ships.

Your doubt is purely speculative.

Honestly, I can't really say that I care much about this. Those are very rare, yeah. They're theoretically worth a lot. They might as not be capable of undocking at all for fear of getting ganked.

Hence, they are basically money in the event that you sell them, or prestige in the event that you don't. SOMER already has more money than they could ever spend. Drop in the bucket.

"Oh, but it's the principle!" No it's not. Think about what effect it actually has. They're promoting something they think is a positive point in the community. While I don't much like them, I even signed the "boycott" thread (mostly because I prefer poker) I do recognize SOMER as being the most visible symbol of something EVE has that other MMOs do not. Gambling.

I can't gamble in World of Warcraft, or Guild Wars 2, or any of those other nonsense themepark games. There's nothing in those games that doesn't happen on rails. In EVE, however, not only is making a player sponsored gambling site a possibility, but it's a reality. The existence of such a thing at all is a hallmark of EVE.

This is little different than CCP giving prizes for tournaments. It's their discretion to give out promotional items to, you know, promote aspects of the game they like. The timing and the method they handled it with was probably a mistake.

But it's worth rolling my eyes at their awful PR skills, nothing else.

I'm not going to bother to read this train wreck of a thread.

Even Jester is telling people in the comments that they are completely over reacting... and he's correct.

You can agree with, or at least not strongly object to, something CCP does without falling into the category of CCP shill.

They can, and certainly will, give away more rare ships for a variety of reasons in the future... it's not only their right, it's part of their job. You'd likely be hard pressed to find a game company anywhere that doesn't do give aways to people they consider beneficial to their community, whether those people make a profit (or do well) in their game world or not.

Time to get a grip.

You can have one of two things.

Either you arbitrarily (i.e. without set criteria) hand out stuff to player corps,

or you have a sandbox universe built and run by combined efforts of players.

If CCP wants to go with the former, they should stop advertising their game as the latter.

This would mean the only content CCP can reward is non-sandbox content (alliance tournament and other arbitrarily constricted events). That seems rather counter intuitive to the nature of the game. I do not believe the 2 are as wholly incompatible as you state.

They can reward whatever they want, as long as there are clear, publicly available rules about it. Not on the basis of "we like you" and behind closed doors.

You can run a sand box game.

You can give away cool items to people who in your opinion contribute a lot of content to your sand box game.

These two things are not mutually exclusive, especially when you consider who built and gave borders to that sand box to begin with.

You might also consider two other things.

1: Blinks "competitors" are not going to suffer in any way from this. A person that gambles with Blink is just as likely to throw ISK at their competitors for other goods the very next day. There will be other rare ships and items, and people in this game have more ISK than you can shake a stick at. Frankly the trade in normal ships and modules far out strips any occasional income made from rare items. Nobody in the "competition" is going to go out of business because of this.

2: Blink, you, I, and everyone else don't own anything in game. It's not our property to own, it's not real. Not the ships, not the ISK that could be made, none of it. We don't own Gold Magnates, we don't own the Watch Scorpions, we don't own Alliance tournament prize ships. They are pixels that are owned completely by CCP, we are just allowed to use them.

This was handled in a clumsy fashion, but that is the only sin committed here.

Again, take a step back and get a grip.

Funny thing, your reasoning here:Suggests that AT rewards would not be allowed as they would still potentially distort economic parity between to competing entities. When referees don't interfere, they don't interfere. The AT is an interference to the sandbox as are it's rewards.

Any reward not earned in game with participation available to all entities in game under the full set of game rules (and freedoms) is a distortion of the sandbox. So why are some permissible and others not?