Crux vs Zumari just crashed.

Got into two skirmish matches. First was lost due to 4 minny tanks. The STB boys hard at work. And the second was lost because we were outnumbered 2 to 1 for the majority of the match. I think it was worse in numbers at the start. While I didn't look I can imagine that the first match had the same poor turnout for my corp. would have been fun if the fights were even, even despite the tankfest in the first one

There should be a second and maybe third place prize or something. It seems like if you're going to offer as much as 1 million SP and ISK, there should be some drop off before just nothing.

That being said I'm somewhat biased since I'm pretty confident Minmitar won and Gallente (me) came in second.

The only thing that was different was that people really cared about winning

Never got into a single corp battle. Quit trying after a while.

anyway...there should be NO drop off IMHO. The game isn't balanced enough yet to start putting up contestable prizes. It will only hurt the desire for folks to want to keep testing and continue providing good feedback, especially when they are not allowed to pick their own Corps yet etc.

The issues seem to arise when tanks are allowed on simple team VS team clone reduction campaigns. So either disallow tanks there, or add turret emplacements that constantly change locations, and repair themselves after being blown up by tanks.

corp battles were awesome.... loved how the enemy called in the tanks against me and i prevailed it was the most fun i had on dust yet

I wouldn't call it awesome when we were just 4 people and got redlined right at the start. Royal Uhlans was a royal screwup when it came to participation

Well there should be some drop off. The whole idea of the corp battles is to win the zone for whoever is hiring you (or at least it is in theory) and showing off a little. It's still a beta so I'm not sure the 1mil ISK/SP even matters that much to be honest, I just figure if you're going to give prizes, you shouldn't give a huge prize for first and then absolutely nothing for second, etc (for the reasons you pointed out) but it also shouldn't be "everyone gets a participation prize regardless of outcome" because that's the antithesis of what Corp battles are.

When the game is live, I couldn't agree more! Right now, with how hard it is to get SP, 1mil to just the winner (as you said,) is ridiculous. During these initial tests, though, I do believe everyone deserves at least a participation prize. Winners get more, sure, but...

About the prize or bonus sp and isk to be given, seems to me that giving the sp to just the winners will just further unbalance any future tests of corp battles. They won because of skill and already being able to field better fits, another mill sp will just let them max out something else with the losers never being able to catch up and obtain parity

Don't know exactly what CCP is testing here because they haven't said. In my opinion these tests aren't very good in that they don't give any type of info except on how hard it is to get into matches with so many people in the corps. Participation from the Templars wasn't what it should have been. There was no communication pre match and no way to do that if you wanted to unless you already have a TS server and were willing to open it up to the randoms in your "corp".

The only currency that really matters in this contest is sp, the isk is irrelevant to the outcome of the matches. Maybe a sports analogy would work here. Lets say a runner wins a race by .5 seconds and as a reward in the next race he will get a 10 meter headstart. Guess which one will win the next race? Awarding sp to only the winning faction will just unbalance any future matches just like my racing analogy.

Why does it matter now? Unless CCP is going to do another wipe before any other tests of corp battles, then the uneven battles will continue and participation will decline because the matches are meaningless except to gain information for the DEVS. I could use a mill sp but I don't have to have them to be competitive. I have 11 or 12 mill isk so I don't really need the mill they are giving away. I participated to test corp battles for the DEVS and for no other reason.