Too tired to fly...and additional thoughts

NO

 

Before we get ahead of ourselves, lets get the dueling event off the ground first.
So far Waffles was the only one who volunteered to host the event and wanted to work out the set of rules or rather guidelines.

The idea of donations is great but we don't want to make people feel like they have contribute. $5 is nothing to me but to some its money. Notice how not everyone's got their premium and there is a good reason for it. By putting some money together and offering prizes is an awesome idea, but some people may feel like if they haven't contributed any, they shouldn't be there to take a shot at collecting it. We'll discuss this at a later date and I will also talk to Jaamaw as to how to approach this correctly without hurting anyone's internet feelings.

 

I was just being me... I mean a wiseass is all.

But yeah I really believe we should start off smaller first before we start doing things like this that can potentially piss people off.

 

Not as impressive as when I do it...

 

If you're going to do donations, it's best to make the pot as accessible as possible. The duels aren't the most accessible thing right now and may not be in the near future or perhaps even ever. You would also need to have multiple winners as well as win limits -- if you win a pot, you cannot win next week or whatever the frequency would be.

Since this game does require lots of skill to be very good, some people would have a very unfair advantage if chances of winning were purely skill-based. To make things fair, perhaps have a skill-based pot (à la duels) and a luck-based pot (drawing). There should be entry limitations: be a full member of NNG, flies with other members regularly, uses TS. Entries themselves could be based on other factors as well; a normal entry may be gained by flying with us on Friday or Saturday, but you could get a second entry in the drawing for joining a lesson flight or for helping out a new or potential member.

Now as far as making donations a mandatory thing, I don't think that's a good idea if said donation is always monetary based. As Nraged pointed out, to some people five dollars is a crucial amount of money in their monthly budget. I think you could, however, have a member who cannot afford to donate money donate other things -- time teaching new people, recruiting, promoting the squadron and helping to raise our profile. This would especially be good if we're talking about people with multimedia skills. Such a person could perhaps make personalized or special avatars or banners for people that would be part of the prize.

Lastly, you could also pool monies for larger, highly infrequent prizes -- gaming mouse, HoTaS, video card -- that would be rewards for events that we build up to over several months -- duels, tournaments.