EVE General Discussion

pineapple and anchovy, best pizza combo

I'm taking a dinner break. Going home for pizza and then I'll check in again! Thanks for the responses so far.

First off , Somer Blink didnt get these ships, the individuals who work for SB did ... that doesnt mean that is ISK in SB pocket..

Second .. they do contribute to the EVE community by backing almost every single contest or competition that people do..

Third.. I like the idea that CCP gives away something cool , even an ingame item... somethign not everyone has.. No where does it say CCP is obligated to maintain the value of "rare" items.. especially for an item they previously stated for an item that would be gifted to people as thank you items...

Fourth ... Haters and Cry Babbies , most people wanna cry about how much somer makes, what about the cost of running their site?? what about allll the free stuff they give away not only on their site , but to other people who run events and what not ...
SB makes the money they do , cuz they are smart and found a way to make money, while letting people gamble and basicly get ships for less then they could ingame, with a chance...

What about those of us who have played for many many years without breaks in our subscription.........where's our special rare items? We've spent years generating real content in the form of battles and participation in your game and we dont even get a thanjs. All sb does is rake in isk through controling a lottery with stacked odds in favor of fake/alt characters. And now they've been given even more isk. Sad ccp just sad.

What is the differents between those items and a IWS?

Edit - Removed my post.

Thanks for the statement. However, it doesn't particularly address the glaring fact that SOMER received free trips to Fanfest and unique ships for a "fair" contest "for the community" that CCP has no control over or audit power for. Further, the contest is inherently biased toward people who blow billions of isk playing blinks, giving them a disproportionate amount of entries for unique ships only obtainable through this medium (not to mention making SOMER even more isk), as well as giving a player-run, for-profit corporation the ability to decide who can even have a chance at winning it, considering SOMER Blink solely and unilaterally has the power to ban accounts at will.

The fact that you guys earlier compared SOMER Blink to a charity is shocking, off-putting and shows a deep disconnection between what CCP believes "a community service" is and what the players do. Many players believe that "a community service" is something that actually enriches the game or provides content to it. SOMER Blink is a third party website created solely to print isk for its founder. They provide no services in game. At all. (This doesn't even to speak to the fact that serious concerns exist for many players to the legitimacy of the SOMER Blink lottery system. For example, how is it that the player with the most blinks won, Replacement 234, doesn't appear in the most blinks played? Is Replacement 234, with an win rate at a minimum of 32.7%+ simply luckier than the next-highest winner, Featious who has a 28.8% win rate? Or the highest winner (with over 9 TRILLION isk more than Replacement 234) doesn't even appear to have played or won the most blinks?)

The difference in your example of "go to game trade show, get swag" and the SOMERgate fiasco is that as players we can choose to attend game trade show--at our wills--and get swag. We don't, however, have the luxury of playing blinks if the account is banned. Further, you're not limiting the prize pool to players attending EVE Vegas, as your trade show example would indicate. It is open to anyone willing to blow billions of isk on blinks. Even then, they would still have an inequitable chance of winning against other players who have a disproportionate amount of tickets. Your basic example of simply playing a promo blink and having an entry is pedantic at best and deceitful at worst, considering that everyone knows that blink players will have hundreds or thousands of tickets entered.

It's good that you've put future plans on hold for hopefully a better process. It's unfortunate, though, that you decided to stop recognizing community sites short of providing rewards to meaningful providers of content in the game, instead opting to enrich a for-profit corp's wallet instead. The fact that you haven't pulled the unique rewards, given the glaring deficiencies in using SOMER Blink as the provider of the contest, shows me that CCP has only a passing concern to the legitimate grievances we players have. CCP owes nothing to SOMER Blink, and if this were believed by CCP, it would have pulled the unique and fantastical prizes in favor of something more traditional like PLEX packs or Collector's Editions.

no, he's right with respect to handing out plex as rewards. whether scorpions, or a stack of plex; ccp are still giving players a fist full of isk and that fucks with the sandbox.

on the other hand, people buying and selling plex isn't an issue.

here's why; plex spawned by CCP and given out is a resource that has no limit and provides wealth in conjunction with the pilots day to day activities. plex purchased by your average joe eve player is limited to the cash in their bank account; and you can either earn money at work to turn plex in to isk, or play eve (don't argue that you can do both, because you're either going to get fired or make **** isk/hour to the point of irrelevance) and hence in some capacity plex via that method is limited.

however this really isn't about how plex works and lets shut up now please?

Should we stick to out-of-game things only? Create non-transferrable in-game items as rewards? Give no personal rewards and only prizes? Only items below a certain expected ISK value? Always give out tons of stuff at once so early recipients can’t cash out? List all rewards publicly?