I'm really pleased that people liked the joker idea. It was a fairly last minute, spure of the moment thing, introduced as others here have pointed out, to get around the fact that there was otherwise no need to ditch shields in my short jump range race which made it too far too "safe" for my liking. Given more time I might have fine-tuned the 1-minute bonus as I agree it was problematic in that playing the joker was probably the only way to win. I also agree that it was deeply problematic in that, once you'd played your joker all you could then do was try another ship. That in turn caused people to save their joker (and indeed their race submissions) until the end. I didn't really have a solution for that, besides which I didn't want to mess people around by constantly changing the rules once the event had started. That it worked out as well as it did was more luck than judgement!Originally Posted by drakhyr(Source)
I'm actually a bit of a fan of the Open only thing. Level playing field and all that, plus I'm quite keen on enticing people out of solo and private groups. I used to hover in and out of Solo/Open a lot (especially after I suffered at the hands of the Leesti griefers) but since joining the fuel rats I've stuck to Open pretty much exclusively and feel that my ED experience has benefited greatly. Open really isn't as bad as many people seem to fear and especially with things like Buckyball where losing a ship or two is par for the course kinda think that cowering in Solo isn't fully entering into the spirit of the thing.
Open-only
I loved and totally "got" that EZ's bumper stickers were virtual. The introduction of actual stickers for the A* run was a really nice and very generous touch but definitely not something either the racers or the race organisers should come to expect. In the end I sent a prize to Cmdr Kliggson because I wanted to "pay forward" EZ's generosity but I always left it deliberately ambigous in the text of my event as to whether this would be an actual thing or not. I think this should continue to be down to the organisers discretion and will hopefully continue to be an unexpected surprise if and when it happens.
Prizes
I thought about doing this myself. Race duration may be an issue here. We'd need to have a race that Ed could complete (at least once) within the hour. I did wonder about re-opening the Bump'n'Grind for one night only. In theory I'd love to be a part of this but RL timing may be an issue for me. Keep me posted tho.
Registered Groups
I will be dropping an email this week to suggest that the Galactic Intern (i.e. Ed Lewis) may wish to join a BRC race at some point. If he accepts, I'm happy to take volunteers to join me in talking Ed through a race at some point - it would mean coming on teamspeak for the stream one Thursday evening (in a week we have a race, obviously!), and probably only works to have a small number of people talking on the stream - drop me a PM if you're interested.
Looking forward to the galactic rally and whatever else you guys come up with.