Katia wrote on 2017-05-24:
Seraph was a kick starter exclusive and I respect that. However by paying that money they were guaranteed that they would get to design a gene, quite likely with an FR artists help.
However this contest doesn't guarantee that any one person and their design will win so it's not the same as the kickstarter reward in that respect. Secondly, couldn't you technically say that the people who came up with the ideas of cherub, glimmer and runes also designed a gene?
Actually, there was no guarantee that FR would even take off (let alone be as popular as it is). So the kickstarter was also risking not getting the gene s/he designed made into reality.
And to the latter part, no, because the staff did their own thing. A shiny underbelly was often suggested by many people, but no one made it look like Glimmer.
This is just a bad suggestion all around because it disrespects the Kickstarter, favors artists, would become a popularity contest, has a ton of problems with offsite promotions, and would be difficult to have any type of vote.
What I mean by the latter is consider how Subeta and Neopets have to do their art contest votes. If they show all the images on one page, it takes forever to load. So they often result to multiple pages. But most users aren't going to sit through 100 pages of art submissions to vote. They'll go through a dozen, get bored, click their favorite, and move on without seeing many viable entries. This means that either a) everyone who enters the contest early has an advantage because their entries are on the first few pages or b) the entries are randomized every time which makes it harder for the voters to go back through where the left off AND some artists might just be hated by the RNG with their entries barely coming up at all through no fault of their own. Even with all the images on a single page, it's difficult to scroll through them all without your eyes swimming.
PLUS, FR does not have an on-site voting mechanic, which means they would have to take it to poal or strawpoll or wherever. The problem with this is, as I have seen on the retired items thread, people accuse others of rigging the vote. Off-site polling isn't infallible, and apparently there's ways to cheat it. So let's say there's 100 entries. That dilutes the votes a lot. So all it would take is one artist who figures out how to rig poal and vote for his/her entry several dozen times. Conversely, one entry wins and everyone accuses that artist of cheating even though s/he didn't. That leads to resentment all around.
There's also a problem with votes that have more than two options. The majority doesn't win; only the highest minority. And this causes drama since the majority are unhappy with the results.
What I mean is this. Imagine a poll of:
a) Starburst gene - 12 votes
b) Frost gene - 15 votes
c) Calico gene - 37 votes
d) Robot gene - 6 votes
e) Celtic gene - 22 votes
f) Sunspot gene - 8 votes
In this scenario, Calico wins with 37 votes. However, that means
63 people are unhappy because the gene they want to see didn't make it. And the closer the votes are together (like, say if Calico only won by 3 votes), then the more negative feelings it creates. Such a vote winds up with the majority of the playerbase unhappy.
So no support for a gene contest--even if the staff had the final say without any user votes at all, it still favors artists too much and disrespects the Kickstarter. Artists already have the festival contests every single month (except December) as well as the ability to buy blueprints and make more content at any time. Artists have such a huge advantage on site to earn gems and prestige. Writers get a little bit here and there with the rare item description contests. But players with other talents? Coders, singers, handicraft makers, mathematicians, etc? SOL.
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If writers are supposed to "show not tell," why are we called "storytellers" and not "storyshow-ers"?
