just to make sure, CCP wont class this as sponsorship and somer is now guaranteed 50% of the prize, right?

Of course not, back in ur cage BP

Just clearing up CCP's rules a bit ^^

I can see how some developers are excited at the prospect of all Open teams having more ISK to put on a better show when the tournament begins. Also, the entry of EVE into e-sports is an great step to attract and introduce more users into EVE Online.

However, everyone should remember that every ticket in regular lotteries n Somer Blink has less expected value than what it costs to buy the ticket. Promotions put on by Blink only give back a fraction of the massive profits they make.

Put another way, every player that plays Blink is a loser in the long run.

I'm not sure how encouraging the taking of ISK from a huge number of players, a lot of whom do not know any better, and creating wealth for a single entity is conducive to the health of the player base in EVE Online.

I really don't think this thread is the best place for philosophical discussions on the morality of gambling sites but I will say my piece.

At the end of the day, most acts of apparent selfless kindness are of benefit to the person giving, be it soothing a guilty conscience, a publicity boost or to attempt to cover up a multitude of less than selfless acts.

However none of that really matters, all that matters is that SOMER Blink has really helped some of the teams in the tournament, and will have most definitely helped make this tournament better for everyone involved, the viewers and the competitors. So hats off to them for that, and I hope they do see an increase in site traffic and income so they sponsor the next tournament as well.

Also, a big thanx to Wunder-bet, who have provided a fantastic boost to this tournament with their Spotlight Interviews and a very useful and informative website.

I can see how some developers are excited at the prospect of all Open teams having more ISK to put on a better show when the tournament begins. Also, the entry of EVE into e-sports is an great step to attract and introduce more users into EVE Online.

However, everyone should remember that every ticket in regular lotteries n Somer Blink has less expected value than what it costs to buy the ticket. Promotions put on by Blink only give back a fraction of the massive profits they make.

Put another way, every player that plays Blink is a loser in the long run.

I'm not sure how encouraging the taking of ISK from a huge number of players, a lot of whom do not know any better, and creating wealth for a single entity is conducive to the health of the player base in EVE Online.

You mean like /any/ gambling, of any type ever, that involves a third party holding the money for the people involved?

I can see how some developers are excited at the prospect of all Open teams having more ISK to put on a better show when the tournament begins. Also, the entry of EVE into e-sports is an great step to attract and introduce more users into EVE Online.

However, everyone should remember that every ticket in regular lotteries n Somer Blink has less expected value than what it costs to buy the ticket. Promotions put on by Blink only give back a fraction of the massive profits they make.

Put another way, every player that plays Blink is a loser in the long run.

I'm not sure how encouraging the taking of ISK from a huge number of players, a lot of whom do not know any better, and creating wealth for a single entity is conducive to the health of the player base in EVE Online.

I can see how some developers are excited at the prospect of all Open teams having more ISK to put on a better show when the tournament begins. Also, the entry of EVE into e-sports is an great step to attract and introduce more users into EVE Online.

However, everyone should remember that every ticket in regular lotteries n Somer Blink has less expected value than what it costs to buy the ticket. Promotions put on by Blink only give back a fraction of the massive profits they make.

Put another way, every player that plays Blink is a loser in the long run.

I'm not sure how encouraging the taking of ISK from a huge number of players, a lot of whom do not know any better, and creating wealth for a single entity is conducive to the health of the player base in EVE Online.

I can see how some developers are excited at the prospect of all Open teams having more ISK to put on a better show when the tournament begins. Also, the entry of EVE into e-sports is an great step to attract and introduce more users into EVE Online.

However, everyone should remember that every ticket in regular lotteries n Somer Blink has less expected value than what it costs to buy the ticket. Promotions put on by Blink only give back a fraction of the massive profits they make.

Put another way, every player that plays Blink is a loser in the long run.

I'm not sure how encouraging the taking of ISK from a huge number of players, a lot of whom do not know any better, and creating wealth for a single entity is conducive to the health of the player base in EVE Online.

That aside, I've put about 2.5b into blink ... [truncated]

.

Yes this will make the Open tournament more interesting and better for the teams involved, however Somer Blink has considered the profit possible to be made off of the eve player base by having their name in the login screen news on a regular basis, and it far exceeds any "donation" that they have made to the community.

Any profit you have made off of Blink is because you are lucky. I have made a lot of money off of people like you at poker. Please keep on playing like you do.

They do not lose even when they do not win because (presumably) they had fun. You pay for EVE and make nothing off of it, it's a game, you play it for fun -- not to make money. Blink is no different.

now if people can stop meta gaming to cheat just to push the Iwin button like the alliance tournaments usualy show, this could actualy be worthwhile watching unlike the alliance tournaments because the open will then come down to char skills and player actual skills :)
so looking forward to seeing the best pvp demonstrated and shown in this :)

Unfortunately, that's not going to happen.

Well each match matters in the double elimination format so match throwing becomes much harder unless you are willing to drop out of the tournament completely. I have a looming feeling that we will see some awesome matches this tournament!

The (double) elimination format does seem to solve some of the worst metagaming problems, but even if there is no match-throwing (which may still happen, although much less likely, IMO) there's still spying and interfering with practices. Hopefully you will be able to address those issues for the next tournament by giving each team a secure location to practice.

Looking into ways to allow people to test their setups in a secure environment is absolutely worth looking into for future tournaments (and we are actually discussing ways to do this already).

Simple, move a team or teams to a seeded station then explode all the stargates :p

Removing metagaming completely might actually hurt the popularity.

In a crowded eSports community it is sometimes helpful to have something that stands out.

Having secure practice locations is going a bit too far, IMO.

Removing cheating is one thing but if a team wants to do the extra research I don't see the harm.

If you could trust people to just spy it would be fine. But there are always idiots that ruin things for the majority.

For example, people probing down your testing arena then warping in on trainings and jamming everyone. That is not doing research, that is being an *******, and its because of those type of people that teams are wanting secure training.

Is this actually happening? Last year I probed people down and went there to watch them and cloaked. They stopped practicing because of it but I didn't jam anyone.

I mean if we want the best pilots to win and make it a pure skill game why don't we just hold the competitions on SISI. That way we can remove the "metagame" of ISK from the equation. This is a serious suggestion and would make 10k an extremely attractive prize pool if you remove the in-game costs.

it has happened to us yes

Really? Who was that?

Yeah something like that. Probably not exactly that. We'll see.

Just because it gives you a way to help your team, and even if it's something that takes some effort to do, doesn't mean it's a good thing overall.

Having to evade spying makes practicing vastly more difficult and time consuming, and not in an interesting way. It ruins the fun for key people arranging the practices. I can tell you that DarkSide almost didn't run a team for AT9 because Creamster was sick of all the overhead required to run practices (avoiding spying, but also sisi uptime, availability of modules etc.), and would rather just play the game on TQ for fun.

Having a secure location to practice would make participating in tournaments a much more attractive and fun proposition.