Thank goodness.
I'm actually not all that impressed with the tournament organization. Especially the entry fee. Twenty plex minimum.
What bothers me the most is that Own3D is putting up the $10000 prize money. So the fact that CCP is trying to pull enough plex out of the system, equalling $10000+ dollars, is quite annoying to me. Sure, CCP will have costs. Employee overtime, the folks in front of the cameras and the folks behind the cameras. Fifteen employees total, I'm guessing, to run the show. Then the alterations to the previous Alliance Tournament set (safe assumption that they aren't going to build an entirely new set.) Costs associated with the stream (though it's only a single stream to Own3D, who will then deal with the much larger bandwidth issues of serving it out to the 10k+ viewers.)
It annoys me that the costs are so minimal, when taking into account CCP's annual revenue, that they feel the need to have players cover their costs at all. The players didn't beg for this tournament. It actually came as a bit of a surprise. This is simply a case of CCP seeing eSports as an effective advertising venue, but unwilling to foot that advertising cost themselves.
I understand the need to collect plex to ensure that serious teams enter the tournament. But I disagree with the premise that players should directly cover the costs of the tournament. CCP should write the tournament costs off as a marketing expense, because the tournament is advertising. Any plex CCP collects as entrance fees should be re-inserted back into the tournament as additional prizes.
Which is why I'd love to see a boycott of the tournament. Will it happen? Probably not. Not sure enough people really care. Not even sure if that's a shame or not.
It would be a LOL worthy event, if only four or five teams entered the auction. Then to watch the mad scrambling afterwards by CCP, all the back-pedalling to change the entrance requirements, try to save the tournament, get an additional 28 teams to join. I'd imagine cancelling the event would be a last resort.
It's a tournament for Pete's sake. Get over yourself. Do your really think that you have to have something to say about everything. Go harass Susan...
ReplyDeleteThis just in, CCP needs to pay its staff...news at 11
ReplyDeleteI think any guy who want the $$$ want your idea to works ; less teams = more chance to get the prize.
ReplyDeleteSo... well it can't work, you should know that, we're not talking metagame here, we're talking real money ;)
This just in, 10k is chump change in marketing costs.
ReplyDeleteA few PLEX to make sure teams are serious is one thing, $400 is another.
Odds are this project has zero support (read financial support) from CCP's upper management and some ambitious employees are going it alone.
$400 is not a lot of money, especially for a team of 8 people. Boycott the tournament, seriously? Instead of wasting your time whining about how poor you are, go out and make some money so you can enter the tournament.
ReplyDeleteEvery year my friends and I enter an international BBQ tournament, which all things considered is just a socially acceptable adult reason to spend an entire weekend terrifically smashed since the number of entrants and rules make it unlikely we'll even place in any given event. As a team we annually spend over 10k in food, alcohol, application fees, rental fees, equipment, and misc stuff for the weekend. And we're just one team of hundreds. But it's fun, and there is a shared sense of comradery in competing.
ReplyDeleteSo 400 bucks to enter isn't that big of deal when put into perspective with real life competitive events. It's an absolute steal.
Meh
ReplyDeleteJust because your company makes a solid profit doesn't mean you now can start handing out candy for free. That won't help you to keep your solid stand. And we all know that CCP has potential to grow. There are still 20% stuff kicked out a few month ago. If they get a decent profit (and advertisement) with this sort of E-Sports it's fine for me because it helps to develop eve faster if the budged is right.
ReplyDeleteAnd if you take a look at the alliance level... they are stacking billions of isk in their wallet. they can easily afford 20 plex. Even 1 Plex per team member would be an easy way.
I think if you're going to take a stand on principle it needs to come first. You seem to be saying we were going to participate but after realising we weren't that fussed I've decided to take a stand on principle. That's not really how principles work :)
ReplyDeleteThe comment above me is correct.
ReplyDeleteHipocracy.
ReplyDeleteThe target of your proposed boycott would be those groups that intend to participate. When your group was a potential participant, you refrained from trying to inspire a boycott. Only at that point were you a member of your target audience, yet unwilling to boycott.
CCP Sreegs basically flat-out said the entry fee was to ensure groups participating are serious about it. I wouldn't read much more into it than that.
ReplyDeleteThat said, this was always going to be a rich player's tournament... basically the EVE version of polo. If memory serves, the Malices that PL put up against us in the group stage were the only tourney ships we saw in AT10. But I'd bet almost anything that we're going to see LOTS of tourney ships in this thing. On that scale, what I expect to be a 40 PLEXes or so cost of entry is pretty small beer.
I thought you were gonna call for a boycott because of the Thanksgiving holiday. I know I won't be participating in this tournament because of that, nor will pretty much any other Rote Kapelle pilot. I'd be surprised if that wasn't the case for a lot of Americans.
I'm Canadian. I've already had Thanksgiving. We're civilized, we don't force our citizens to eat turkey twice in a one month period. :)
DeleteThe entry isn't $400, it's 11-12bil ISK.
ReplyDelete11-12bil ISK is very affordable for something as "important" as a tournament for the top 100-200 alliances or so.
It's one thing to try to think of in-game amounts in real money terms, and something very else to make out that CCP are asking the participants to pay their entrance fees in hard cash.
When you think about it, paying for a tournament by moving some virtual assets out of your virtual economy is pretty cool, all told.