Introduction of regular "minute of fame" events for players who achieved certain heights in the game

[Kyon_Rheyne]

I was inspired by this very interesting recent move by CCP

So, here is a draft of that idea taken to the greater scale.

1. First, a certain set of achievements is strictly defined. It may be a fixed set, or it may be re-drafted for each such occasion from a more broader set of possible achievements (to have more variety and wider scope). Achievements like “The shunniest carebear of the month/year” (player with the greatest ratio of hours spent grinding pve content to isk lost due to his ship blown up by other players or isk lose caused by him to another players by blowing their ships ), or “The wildest explorer of the month” (the best ratio of hacked containers to number of other player’s ships blown up by him at data/relic sights), or “Star tycoon” (sheer amount of goods produced by this player), or “The God of Destruction” (amount of citadels blown up by the player). I’m getting short of catchy names, but you can come up with tons of such achievements. It could be the greatest isks volume collected from bounties on players, or, in contrary, set on other players by somebody. Or it could be a leader of nullsec alliance which caused the most significant change of the sov map for the last 3 months, or somebody who hauled most m3 of cargo/completed most of courier contracts set by players. The main idea is that it must be sort of exceptional players in their own niche.

2. Every once in a while (once per month/3 months/half a year), for each selected achievement, one player is nominated by CCP (thus it can be several players with different backgrounds, in total)

3. Each of them is given a certificate for a “Minute of fame” right (a trade-able in-game item). The certificate must be activated within next 1-2 weeks, and upon activation can’t be traded anymore, and will last for, say, a month.

4. While certificate is active, each nominee is granted a guaranteed spotlight time throughout the game world. Ranging from in-station screens, to screens at gates, to some new small windows in the game’s launcher, to advertisements on the official site and forums, may be even to some real-time feed at the bottom of the game client’s window. All nominees submit some materials they want other players to see. It could be some textual message, images, video feeds, even sound files. Those materials are delivered using all mentioned technical means to all the Eve players, on constant basis, for the whole month. They may contain whatever each nominee wants. Yup, it’s his/her month of fame. They got a chance to talk to the whole New Eden, even to those who rarely visit forums, and share any ideas they want with them. Whine about how difficult is carebear’s life? You are welcome! Confess of his utter love for every Eve players? Totally ok! Advertise for some activity he thinks sees too little attention from other players, or talk about his long path to this day of recognition? It’s ok. Giggle, troll and mock the whole playerbase? Whatever, until it meets EULA’s requirements.

Or may be they’ll decide to sell the certificate (or their “voice”) to some powerfull block for a good sum of isks, so those crooks could use it for their corrupted goals? Should be allowed too, I guess.

The potential of this idea is… stunning. It can truly unite the whole community and serve as a strong incentive to excel in what you do in the game. It may be abused, to some extent (but if the next event’s nominations won’t be known in advance, it will be quite hard to intentionally try to meet their requirements, you’ll have to make a wild guess and spend a lot of time on useless grind perhaps), but still I believe it’s worth to be tried.

[Kyon_Rheyne]

A couple of follow-ups.

1. Though it says “may contain any content”, I still think certain limitations must be enforced, for the sake of preserving immersion. Like, definitely no real-life politic references, and as little references to the real life affairs as possible; also perhaps no touches at certain toxic and dangerous topics, like “Eve is dying”, “RMT is everywhere”, “CCP are no good” etc. There also should be requirement that whoever decided to activate certificate must present at least some bare-minimum story serving the over-all purpose of making the Eve’s virtual universe more believable. So, even if you don’t intend to use it to say something of importance, but just to have some fun trolling people, or to advertise some powerblock who bribed you, you at least must start with some simple essay related to your achievement, and tell something about yourself and your path to it. Ideally whatever you say still must be interesting and well-integrated with the game’s lore (or at least don’t contradict it too much) or political situatoin, and bear some purpose/meaningful message in it. That will be tricky task for CCP, but as they do similar work on forums daily, should be doable as well.

   Optionally, that first introductory part could be under more tight supervision of CCP, with a certain templates enforced. Like, it could be made sort of interview article, where players must answer more or less fixed set of questions. And the further opportunities for them to say something (and there should be several of them, like, they should be allowed to re-fresh the published content once per week, thus having opportunity to deliver 4 different messages in total) will be more like a talk show, or a reality show, with much more freedom and improvisation allowed.

2. Any such “distribution point” of nominees’ words must be made clickable. Depending on how each nominee will configure it, it will send you either to their persistent chat room ingame where they are granted moderator’s rights, or to a pinned topic on the forums (or will allow to choose between those 2 options; it still may be completely disabled as well if they don’t want to talk to people “in person”), so anybody who wishes to have a word with a newborn star may easily do so.

3. A new forum board should be created, dedicated to players offering their services to nominees who are not that good with words, or English, or want to show some video-feed, but don’t have required skills etc. There any Eve player proficient in creating media content can offer them help for ISK, or real money, or may be even for free (say, for a promise to deliver his own message as well, in exchange). Every nominee is directed there by link included into certificate’s description so they could get help with creating content for sure. Eventually, content should be delivered as un-changeable in-game package, so the player designed it could contract it to nominee in-game and ensure he’ll get paid, and (if it is the deal) that their words will as well be included in it.

[Old_Pervert]

I’d rather remain in the dark, myself. As I say frequently at work, there’s security in obscurity.

On the flip side, I’d know who to run a locator agent for when I’m looking for someone easy to shoot.

[Kyon_Rheyne]

@Old_Pervert

As I say frequently at work, there’s security in obscurity.

You’ll have an option of selling it to somebody then. Such opportunity to advertise somebody’s alliance or cause will be of high demand on the market. The general security concerns make sense, though. Some nominees may want to stay anonymous, yet be able to use this opportunity to speak up anyway (what is doable, I guess, as only CCP really needs to know their identity, and they know everything about you already). The others may want to completely stay under radar without drawing too much attention to their affairs - in such case the whole thing could be organized in non-mandatory manner. There could be several nominees in each category, they all get letters, and among those who’ll reply with intent of redeeming their minute of fame, the most worthy one is selected. Well, perhaps not letters, something more flashy and hard to miss/forge, like a new congratulation window appears upon logging in to Eve, with a button “Agree to participate”