Get-Together 2023 Feedback

[Kitty]

Get-Together 2023 Feedback Thread

Hello!! Welcome to our yearly Get-Together Feedback Thread.

This is the space we'll be using for the next few days to talk about the Get-Together. What were the things you found good about it? Things that need improvement? Whether it's a specific event or just generally how it's handled, it can be pushed here for discussion.

Be mindful that this is to be posting stuff regarding things in the Get-Together - posting about things like an event not fitting your specific schedule for example doesn't really offer much advice to the Event Organiser other than you couldn't make it. If it's an issue across the board though then that's a different matter and something that would need to be a consideration for next year.

As always, try to be as civil as you can when providing feedback/critique. Remember that the people that helped organise the Get-Together spent a fair amount of time and energy doing so, coming in all guns blazing saying everything sucked, with no definitive and constructive reason why, ain't it chief and your post will just be removed.

This thread will be around until around the 1st of September. Thank you all for participating and helping with this Get-Together, it's been amazing!

 

[Aquacorde]

hiiii

General

- Points seemed the most balanced they've ever been! Did we finally figure it out?!

- It kind of sucks that we basically did a Past/Future theme last year as well lmao but! This was fun lore and everything was pretty well tied together. :)

- I didn't get to be around as much as I wanted, and certainly not at a computer for most of it- had an IRL event or multiple events every weekend of GT. D: Honestly, I had more ability to participate in October last year. Maybe I want October GTs. Or at least not end of August, this was kinda rancid timing.

- Because of that, I'm not sure if it was my own inattentiveness that made it seem like GT was pretty quiet or if it actually was. I know several others were just busy as all get out as well.

- It is SO funny how stacked Apricorns was even with this year's sorting system. Sorry, Gears. But! We absolutely felt the need to fight, so I think that was better than prior years. Like, what else at this point can be done to even the playing field besides manually distributing some of the GT powerhouses?

- Achievements are still cool and good additions but need some refining yet. I think some of them felt weirdly distributed or didn't match the event as well as they should have.

- I'm still sad that I was not in a good place to be able to do all the back-end work for GT that I really wanted to. :(

Specifics

Animal Crossing Dress-Up
- I appreciated the theme even thought it made me mad lmao. I know too much about historical fashion to be satisfied with most of the ideas I had.

- There are a lot of points on the line for submitting exactly one outfit. I realize that it does take longer if people are doing custom designs or staging but have we gotten much of that? It would have been cool if we had been challenged to submit three outfits- one past, one present, one future- and then were judged on the entire set. That idea could be brought forward in any way- meeting multiple themes, creating a fashion book based on one theme, idk- as long as multiple creations are involved. :)

Art Swap
- OH MY GOD I wish I could have participated. The amount of art made is CRAZY and all of them are AMAZING and I'm so proud of all our artists and happy to see them show their skills!!

Battling
- I love Random Rumble! I hate building teams lmao and I think randomizers are so fun. I wish I could have played more.

- Fortune Cup… I'm falling out of it ngl. I've never been good lmao but… something isn't hitting. How to make that more interesting?

- I don't know if having two battle events is great for splitting attention. Random Rumble is far more accessible and I would keep that over FC as it is now.

Bingo
- Surprise star of the GT!

- Made me draw more than I have all year. I make good choices.

- Karen, we talked about this already ik ik. The times for draws were great & the little bursts of activity in the chat following them was super cute. Everyone being Extra about the cards was fun! More achievements, yeah, more in line with how we ended up participating, all of that. Really, really excellent event though- it could be run exactly the same without concern!

Create-a-Pokémon
- I think the entire entry should be posted along with judges' commentary! I felt (as an audience member) that I was missing a lot of the story.

Daily Puzzles
- I like puzzles. What happened over here?

Escape the Lab
- omg this was super fun!! I like puzzles. How many times am I gonna say it in this post? Karen you did a great job with the maps and the clues and everything! I know you're already thinking and adjusting the ideas so like, keep on doing. <3

Mind Read the Room
- I did much better this year lmao. Two surveys worked well & I like this game! i mean it's basically a puzzle, so

Pokémon Movie Night
- I wish I could have attended! Maybe more hosts are needed next year to fill a few more slots? also let's watch some memey shit as a bonus feature

SWC
- pair sweep!!!! <3

- I'm always so happy for people to turn out and write, it's so important to me <3 everyone go read the entries posted in FFW

Trivia
- I can't decide if I liked having all trivia due at the same time. On one hand, easy to remember. On the other hand, scrambling to make sure three different sheets are filled and submitted about ten minutes before due.

- E&M: I liked the picture-puzzle rounds. The album cover ID round was fun! The sports people connections round was um… impossible? Our team didn't know any but the absolutely most famous names and still had no idea what would connect them. I missed having more audio rounds. Movie scores/composers, famous lines, more music… idk. I think the famous movies anagram round had a bit of a loose definition of "famous". E&M is such a broad category with so much variety; even in 14 rounds it's hard to hit everything! I'm impressed at how many categories you do manage to cover haha. This year's was really hard, and I believe in that, but maybe the achievement criteria needs to be scaled back as well.

- VG: Half music and half questions was def better than two different events for each, but I personally feel like there was too much music? Maybe I'd like to try to identify sound effects or voice acting or something too, for audio rounds. I mean, I wouldn't know anything, but I like variety. More image rounds would also be fun? idk

- PT: The only miss for me was the portmanteaus and idr who said it on Discord but that would have been super solved by giving us one of the words to build from. The music was a little iffy imo but I'm also TRASH at music (see: VGM sharing) so can I be a trusted opinion here? Maybe not. I hate Squirdle. The only real clue is BST and there ain't many people knowing that off the tops of heads, are there? I think 10 questions was right to have so I was a little disappointed when y'all cut it down. They mighta been a little too rough though. The crosswords were AMAZING. FANTASTIC. I loved them SO MUCH. More of that, thank you.

- Maybe I just like puzzles more than trivia lmao. I mean, a lot of trivia that I do IRL or that even you see on Jeopardy is like- there's multiple ways to find the answer, you know? I feel like in a lot of the straight question portions of these, there wasn't much to think about or build off- you just knew it or you didn't. Maybe this is nothing. idk.

VGM Sharing
- Very neat idea tbh & I think you've already identified the main issues- it was just a LOT for the second and third rounds. I know you're workin' on it already. :)

Conclusion

As much as I wish I'd had time for more events and more just hanging out, I'm happy with how much I DID get to participate and had a lot of fun! Thank you to everyone who put this together, everyone who hosted, and everyone who participated!

 

[Cherrim]

I really enjoyed this year!

To get the elephant out of the room, I will say I definitely found myself holding back from participating in things I'd normally check out because I could tell Apricorns was already so far ahead and I knew most people on the team would be spreading into as many events as possible for participation points and I didn't want to make things snowball even further. So stuff like arcade, forum games/trivia, and other events that I'd normally have made some effort in, I just didn't even look at. That said I know we tried even harder this year to make the teams more even but who goes where is still at the whim of the sorting mechanism and how/when people sign up to an extent. Maybe we have to take a more manual approach to it next time to make sure the people who get really into GT don't all end up on the same team next year. I don't know that a decision like that would be popular but I think the GT is always more fun when everyone can apply that competitiveness to GT without feeling bad that the points are getting so uneven. (And maybe some people don't feel bad but I do lmao.)

My favourite events this year were art swap and bingo, which surprised me! I signed up for both on a whim and now at 1am every day I will feel like something is missing in my life because there won't be a bingo draw. I loved seeing everyone's cards for each round and the thrill of stamping things off was great. And art swap was just fun! I haven't drawn so much in ages. :D So much for holding back like I said above huh? The anticipation of seeing what everyone drew was lots of fun and then waking up to all the art was like Christmas.

For events like FFXIV/Animal Crossing contests, I think it might be good to have some sort of sliding scale of points. It was pretty unfair that one of these gave 150/100/50 + 10 participation and the other gave 50/25/10 + 5 participation when in the end they had the same number of competitors. And especially since the competitors for both contests skewed Apricorns, it gave an unfair advantage in terms of points for one of them to be so stacked. I know XIV got nerfed after this same thing happened last year but it's arguably more accessible than Animal Crossing so it just kinda felt bad to see AC get all those points and XIV get nothing in comparison. (Not that it would have helped the points dichotomy between the teams either way lol.) I think for events like this where gaming devices beyond just a normal computer or phone are required (ex: a ps4 or a switch or a computer that isn't a potato), maybe we could look into scaling points? So like if there's <5 people who participate, the points are on the lower end because it probably means the event is relatively inaccessible to wider audiences. But if for some reason it really pops off, like if Animal Crossing had a big resurgence in popularity next year and ended up with 10 entrants, we could give it the bigger point amounts. I know we like to be clear upfront about how many points an event will give because I think that helps some people determine what events to prioritize, but for contests like these, I think the people who participate are usually just people who like the game and just want to do something creative in it, so it's less about the points anyway - they'd be participating either way.

Oh also for contests like the above where people submit everything privately to the judges, please showcase everyone at the end, not just the winners! I wanna see what everyone did!!

I think my only other suggestion is maybe for future GTs, maybe it would be a good idea to set up some timeslots before the start of the GT that signify more primetime slots and let people sign up for them. (For most of this I am going to be talking EST.) So like, maybe a morning/afternoon/evening slot on weekends and one or two evening slots on weekdays. This might give event runners a bit of guidance for live events as to when more people are likely to be available and might help tamp down on overlap between events. We could still have things happen at the same time like for longer events (ex: a movie that takes a couple hours to watch or the amiibo thing which I think was a few hours per stream?) but I think it might make it easier for people in other timezones to visualize when primetime for PC is and ensure more synergy between scheduling. I think maybe I'm mostly thinking about speed art here where it was kinda awkward to find a time that worked for everyone that didn't also overlap with other events and as a result it was mostly just me and faf who could show up. :(

Anyway!

I am continually impressed by how much work goes into this every year. Everyone involved in running deserves a huge pat on the back. Thank you to all the judges of the creative competitions for your thoughtful and timely decisions. Thank you to the trivia runners who year after year come up with at least a dozen engaging question sets. To every single Event Organizer, we literally could not do this without you all volunteering your time and effort to make great events for everyone to participate in.

And a big big thank you to our management team this year (Arcaneum, gimmepie, Kitty, Tsutarja), you guys did a great job bringing everything together and keeping it running smoothly. I didn't get the impression this year that one single person was shouldering all of it through planning and/or once the event started. I think the workload was a lot better distributed this time and communication throughout seemed good. :) Proud of you all!

 

[apro]

As always, the GT has been the best thing that happened to me this year. I enjoyed all the events and took part in almost all of them, though with there only being 24 hours in a day, I feel that I couldn't put in enough effort to some of them. Its great we had so much stuff to choose from. However as always, we're lacking in organizers. This could be seen in a few events, most notably the Daily Puzzle event which started a bit late and then was just discontinued in the middle due to Aldo not being able to handle organizing so much stuff by himself. Last year I swore that this year I'll be taking part as a co-organizer at least, but I'm not very active on Pokecommunity otherwise and completely missed the sign up phase, it'd be helpful if there was a ping next time.

 

[Celèste1]

Even though this was only my second time participating in the GT, I had a lot of fun (Even if I didn't have as much time as I wished I did). Honestly all the events are well made and the organizers put a lot of effort in them, even if I can't participate in some of them due to specific reasons. I also realized that the GT brings out my more social side with other people, usually I'm very introverted and prefer to keep to myself.

 

[Panda280]

This is also my second GT. I had a lot of fun. I can't believe I like playing bingo. Create a fakemon was also super fun.

Pokemon Unite event needs some tuning. It would be nice to put how many hours the event would take. I thought it'll take at most 2h, but it took about 4h. To be fair, there were some problems finding my team member (apricorns). If there are no other team member within 5mn, just add a bot member. It would be unfair to the team, but it'll take quicker. However, if the event takes 4h, then we can wait. Still, I enjoyed the Pokemon Unite event. It was super fun!
(Noted, I only played round 1, so maybe round 2 is quicker.)

Also, maybe adds 1.15× multiplyer to group with least member. I'm not sure if team apricorn has higher members than team gears or not, but the point difference was a lot.

Thanks you so much to all the organisers! You're all amazing!

 

[gimmepie]

Battling
- I love Random Rumble! I hate building teams lmao and I think randomizers are so fun. I wish I could have played more.

- Fortune Cup… I'm falling out of it ngl. I've never been good lmao but… something isn't hitting. How to make that more interesting?

- I don't know if having two battle events is great for splitting attention. Random Rumble is far more accessible and I would keep that over FC as it is now.

As far as making Fortune Cup more interesting, a lot of stuff has been added to it over its various iterations. Ultimately though, adding much more would start making it more and more complex and start taking away from what it's actually meant to be. Sort of. I'll address this a bit more below because I do have an idea for something inspired by Fortune Cup without being Fortune Cup.

But, before getting to that, I want to address your third point. Because I think ultimately this was a big issue for FC. Having two battling events going on at the same time definitely hurt both and while I don't think Fortune Cup has nearly as a high a bar to entry as a proper competitive event, it definitely has a much higher bar than actual random battles. So, naturally, people would gravitate more to the first option.

That being said though, people started to burn out on Random Rumble after the first week too. Some of that was just bad luck with scheduling, but I don't think that was all of it because we historically see something very similar to this happen with the tournaments every year - it was just more extreme this year. People get tired of the grind and drop off for most of week two and then make a last push in the last few days for the points.

I don't think this is an issue exclusive to the battling events either though. Any event with a grind to it risks having this be an issue. Personally, I very much get burned out on the trivia by week two because there's mountains of it. We had three different types of trivia happening simultaneously and also VGM Sharing which sits in a pretty similar ballpark.

I think one of my biggest takeaways from all this is that I feel like things would run smoother and there'd be less burnout if we broke them up more. Which might also help with the scheduling issue Erica noted above as well. That is, I think running the GT more in general like how we ended up running the Create-a-Pokemon event where it was effectively two competitions split across two weeks. Obviously not every event should be split up. Stuff like SWC needs the whole GT's length to run, as an example. But I think splitting up battling events so one was one week and another the next would end up being more fun and be better for activity since it deals with a lot of issues. And, personally, I think I'd like to see that applied to some other stuff to - like the trivia - since that was really dense. I feel like that helps with scheduling, burnout and also just time management for participants.

Now, back to Fortune Cup specifically. I love Fortune Cup. That's why I started running it when Shawn started to move away from the competitive stuff. The reality though is that PC has less and less people who are interested in competitive battling (even I've gone off of it for my own reasons) and team building. Between that and all the aforementioned stuff I talked about before, I think it's possibly just had its time. I still really like the idea of having to use points/coins to put your team together though. So I'm thinking that I might do something more akin to what Fortune Cup actually ended up being where instead you get given a budget to spend on tiers of Pokemon at the beginning, with you getting a RNGd mon with a pre-generated meta build ready to go for the tier you invest in. For example, if you had 50 points remaining and two team slots left to fill with OU being worth 50 points and UU 25, then you could RNG two UU mon with pre-generated builds but wouldn't have enough to finish your team if you went for something more expensive. I'd need to fiddle with the idea, maybe allow attempts to swap stuff out at certain points like with the adventure raids in SwSh, but that's the gist. I think something like that keeps the spirit of FC alive but has a way lower bar to clear for entry. Ideally, I'd probably run that one week and an ordinary randbat tournament the second.

I'll probably have more thoughts on stuff later, but I wanted to respond to this specifically because I definitely think you're correct.

 

[apro]

Also, maybe adds 1.15× multiplyer to group with least member. I'm not sure if team apricorn has higher members than team gears or not, but the point difference was a lot.

The teams were quite even when it comes to member count, the difference was in activity as some users like me try to take part in everything and bring a lot of points for their teams while some just sign up and end up doing nothing. Its not an issue that can be solved but the organizers are always trying their best to keep teams fair and balanced. I cant speak about Apricorns, but Gears sometimes felt like the chat has died and theres only one or two person who does Trivia so we got 0 points when they were busy.

(Also the 2nd round of Unite was even longer and we had to stop before reaching its end due to everyone being too tired)

 

[Jbsundown]

My feedback's pretty simple. I had an amazing time!

The variety and quality of all the events were great. I wish I'd been able to participate in more of them, but it wasn't meant to be. For example, the battling sounded really cool but I have never done competitive battling ever so didn't know where to start. I vow that next GT I'll be more prepared for this and able to participate for my team. Speaking of prepared, I think more could have been done to alert people to the fact the GT was happening.
For example, some more pings in the discord hyping people up way before it begun, a ping there as well to call for Helpers as well. I only knew it was going to happen due to logging onto the forums after a hiatus 2 weeks before it started and seeing a post asking for helpers, I had expected it would be in October as the previous one was so I nearly missed this one! Then I didn't know exactly how or when it was going to start, though I think that was all explained clearly on release but I think more could have been done to explain how it will work to people before the start of the GT. As a first time GT participant, I had absolutely no idea what to expect at all which was great for me! But I think other people could have found it a bit scary?

I loved the trivia rounds. I think the difficulty was perfect. It had the perfect balance of needing a team of people to cover so many different aspects of pokemon, vg and e&m while still having instances where not all answers were answered, if that makes sense. I just wanted to reassure the trivia masters that they did an excellent job as some were worried they had gone too overboard on the difficulty. I think they did it perfectly. I just wish I recognised more music! But thankfully others in my team could and that's what made it an amazing experience, the team work!

It was great seeing the forums have so much activity over the last 2 weeks, hopefully some of the people that only hop on for the GT will stick around a bit more!

Thanks again to everyone involved in making this so much fun!

 

[Alex_Among_Foxes]

Wow... GT's already over... Funny how it felt like it went on for ages while it was going on, but after it ends it feels like it flew by... Anyway, to the feedback.

My feelings on the GT (do note that this was my first) are mixed. On the one hand, I had a great time with some of the events, on the other, I do think there are at least some changes that could be made. To start off, I'll get to the biggest point of my issue, I wasn't a fan of the fact that it became all about points and winning. Even to the point that people were not having a good time. I personally think that the GT should have 2 random teams for those who want to be competitive, and a third team for anyone who just wants to play some games and have a good time. I liken it to competitive vs casual matches in Smash Bros, the 2 main teams can compete for points, while the third would be 'just for fun'. That way, if someone only wants to do a couple of events, or if they know they will be busy, they won't have to worry about letting their team down. Or, if they'd rather play games with friends, they can do that as well, since the casual team would be joinable by anyone not already on a competitive team. It would really streamline the issue of one team getting all the active players and the other team only getting a few, because anyone joining those teams would know they wanted to win above all. I truly think this would help with some of the problems faced with this GT.

Now onto the individual event breakdown:

BINGO!
I loved the Bingo event, 10/10. But really though, Bingo was great! It gave both teams a reason to chat and meme with each other in GT General. Always a plus!

Paint & Describe
This was an event that felt very 'background' to me, but seeing the results of it was hillarious! I think having shorter lists of people and multiple rounds could make the event a bit more interesting over the course of the GT, rather than just one big reveal at the end, but I liked it a lot either way!

The Egg Swap
One of the events that a serial trader such as myself was really egg-sited about, but wound up being hardly used at all by most of the other GT participants unfortunately... That may have been due to the fact that it was mostly set up for Gen 9, but even when that was relaxed to be any Gen possible, (7-9) it still didn't draw any more swappers beyond those already interested... If the event is held next GT, I'll still jump in with both feet anyway, cause I like to egg!

Animal Crossing Fashion Contest
Ah, the event I was co-running with Piplup! (well, it was her event, I just wanted to help out 👍) I feel like I need to address the previous posts instead of just reviewing an event I couldn't even take part in. I agree that the amount of points per entry was super off, but there was no way to tell ahead of time just how many people were actually interested in joining, and altering the points mid-event seemed wrong, at least to me. As for the barrier to enter, ANY AC game was allowed, not just New Horizons. And to specifically address Aquacorde's point about having multiple rounds or required outfit submissions, we were open for the whole of the GT, and only got 4 submissions. So if most other people were too busy, uninterested, or unable to enter for some other reason, why would needing multiple outfits for judging even matter that much? I personally thought that we were only going to get 1 entry for a while there, so even if things could have been changed mid-event to account for some of the problems, no one reached out to us about any issues, despite me making several announcement posts reminding people that it even existed at all. I can talk to Piplup about a point scale for the next GT, because I do believe that would help out quite a bit.

Eevee's Arcade
I loved that rocket game so much. Truly a highlight of the GT for me. Snek game was alright, and the rest were fine enough, but the most fun thing for me personally, was watching Devalue absolutely smash them to bits! I don't need to be winning a game to have a good time watching them get broken lol. Arcade gets a 7/10. Deva's incredible skill however, gets a 1337/10 lol. (why does the arcade only get a 7? because I had a tough time playing some of the games, my laptop would lag like hell while trying to play them lol, but I'd still happily take part in the arcade next GT anyway!)

PokeCommunity Stadium 2
Another one of my favorite events! (I love to gamble when there are no actual stakes lol) Even though I was really unlucky, I still had a great time setting up my teams, then watching them get owned because RNG lol. I'm already signed up for the next one I liked it so much. 11/10.

Daily Puzzles
?????????? But for real though, this event had a lot of promise, it's a shame that it- well, I'm not really sure what happened with it. If it comes back next GT though, I'm still interested because I also love puzzles! ???/10.

Mind Read the Room
Another event that I was really looking forward to! I love stuff like this, and had a really good time filling out the questionnaire and reading everyone else's responses! Easy 10/10.

Pokémon Movie Night
I'll be honest, I'm not a fan of the anime. Pretty much at all. The only reason I'm putting this here is because I do love to watch movies with people! So if it gets OK'd, I'd love to host some non-Pokemon related movies next GT for the fun and community building aspects! (not for points though, just for fun) 10/10 event, even if I'm personally not an anime fan.

Escape the Lab
I would say that this was a fun event in practice, but for someone who doesn't follow the spreadsheets and such, I found myself easily ran over. Like, I'd come back the next day, and the room would already be solved. I did really like the way the third room was done though, as it allowed a team to properly communicate and see (almost) instant results. I'd say it could use a bit of adjustment, but overall it was a fun event, and I'd happily join in again next GT, even if it stays exactly the same. (what can I say? I love puzzles lol) Had to hurt the doggo, 7.5/10.

Pokémon Challenge
For full disclosure, there was a minor issue with communication between myself and the event's hosts, leading to me almost dropping out. But said communication problem was sorted out, and everything went perfectly from then on. It made me play a game I know well in a completely different way, and ended up being my second favorite event of the GT, so much so that I would happily join up next time, and I'd say that because of the previously mentioned problem, I found myself communicating with the people on the Discord much more than I would have had it not happened, so it turned out even better than it would have normally. As for a small critique, the map was very confusing, and was made even more so with the time I spent in limbo, to the point where I completely gave up on it. I think having a list of interactables available could remedy any future confusion about what's left to do on the map. If it wasn't for how awesome the event's hosts were, I'd have given it a 4/10, but because of how understanding they were with me, and because the actual 'challenge' part of the event was increadibly fun, it easily gets a 10/10.

Amiibo Casino
My favorite event of the GT by a mile. Not only does it combine gamba and group watching, but it also has the random nature of the PCS-2 event. It's literally all of my favorite events 'smashed' together! I have only one issue with this event, and it's that it wasn't ran nearly enough. (for me anyway lol) 100/10.

Closing
Lastly, a probably pretty unpopular opinion... I honestly think that there was a bit too much trivia. How much too much you ask? I honestly don't know, I gave up participating in it because it seemed like anything I did know, someone else already did, plus more than even I knew about. I felt rather useless on this front, all I know is that I saw multiple people talking about all the trivia. Even to the point where some answers weren't even getting sent in... Beyond the way teams were done, I'd say the large amount of trivia was the only other thing that was a true negative, for me at least.

 

[Mewtwolover]

Fun GT once again, thanks to every EO and the event management for good job.

GT Challenge
Participated only to this event and it was fun. The map needs technical improvement, updates were done by editing CSS which is slow and there's even problems with it. The solution is to put placeholder divs into the map for players' sprites, this allows updating the map by simpy copy-pasting code which is notably faster. Use div ids so you can easily separate placeholder divs from active divs.

Example of an invisible placeholder div. Placeholder image is empty 32x32px image with transparent background. Number 3 in the div id tells that this placeholder is in room 3. Letter in the div id is used to separate placeholders that are in the same room from each other.

<div id="Placeholder 3A" style="width:5%;min-width:20px;position:relative;left:30%;top:-1%"><img src="URL of placeholder image" border="0" alt=""></div>

Example of an active div.

<div id="Mewtwolover" style="filter:drop-shadow(0px 0px 5px green);width:5%;min-width:20px;position:relative;left:30%;top:-1%"><div class="float active"><img src="https://archives.bulbagarden.net/media/upload/f/f9/Lance_IV_OD.png" border="0" alt=""><div class="hoverpop active">⚙️ Mewtwolover</div></div></div>

Pokémon Trivia
Didn't participated to this but I still have to give one tip for the future, ask co-host to reveal the answers if you can't do it yourself. Revealing the answers is important part of the event because it makes it transparent.

 

[Aquacorde]

And to specifically address Aquacorde's point about having multiple rounds or required outfit submissions, we were open for the whole of the GT, and only got 4 submissions. So if most other people were too busy, uninterested, or unable to enter for some other reason, why would needing multiple outfits for judging even matter that much? I personally thought that we were only going to get 1 entry for a while there, so even if things could have been changed mid-event to account for some of the problems, no one reached out to us about any issues, despite me making several announcement posts reminding people that it even existed at all. I can talk to Piplup about a point scale for the next GT, because I do believe that would help out quite a bit.

I'd like to clarify that my point here was that the event's primary issue in my mind is not participation- it's the Amount of Effort vs the Amount of Points, especially when compared to other long-form events like SWC and Art Swap. My thought was to increase the required effort to make the points more reasonable (and let people play around more!) but the thought to simply decrease the point award also solves the problem. :) I don't think I agree with a scale based on participation, though, as having many entries still doesn't mean the individual effort is worth that amount of points.

 

[_confused_piplup_]

Hi! Well, I have to say this is my second GT and this time I couldn't participate as much as I wanted because I have been a little busy. I decided to host an event and I am glad I did because it was fun anyway, thanks also to Alex, who has been really HELPFUL.

My overall GT experience has been limited and it was mainly focused on the AC GT event, so I'll talk about that.

I participated to Mind Read the Room and there's nothing to say. It's always a fun one!

The second one in which I participated the most is Daily Puzzles, but I am not sure what happened. It was indeed a great idea, not only because it was fun but also because it allows you to complete the puzzles even if you don't really have much time.

Now, let's talk about the Animal Crossing Fashion Contest and I am quoting the main things said about the event. Notice that I am not really writing this to defend my choices, but rather to explain why those happened. It's honestly the first time for me hosting an event in the GT, so I am surely looking for ways to improve, especially because in the end it seems like there actually were people interested in our Animal Crossing event lol. So, I am definitely considering doing more of those.

Let's get to the point.

Animal Crossing Dress-Up
- I appreciated the theme even thought it made me mad lmao. I know too much about historical fashion to be satisfied with most of the ideas I had.

- There are a lot of points on the line for submitting exactly one outfit. I realize that it does take longer if people are doing custom designs or staging but have we gotten much of that? It would have been cool if we had been challenged to submit three outfits- one past, one present, one future- and then were judged on the entire set. That idea could be brought forward in any way- meeting multiple themes, creating a fashion book based on one theme, idk- as long as multiple creations are involved. :)

I just want to say that we actually thought about asking people to an outfit for each era, and, actually, I think it was one of the first things Alex proposed. However, like he has already mentioned we have decided to "ask less" and give more freedom of choice to the contestants, because we were really afraid that very few people would participate lol. I had only hosted another Animal Crossing Contest before and I had 2 only participants lol. So yeah, I wasn't expecting many more people to take part to the event, but I decided to make it less demanding, so that more people could participate. But again, I like getting feedback, so the fact that you would have liked to get multiple outfits is an important thing to consider and we'd gladly include that in some way in the next events. It could work as a bonus for points, maybe. But I am now just throwing away some random ideas lol.

I also want to add that Alex and I have already decided that if we're doing this event again, we'll probably make better use of discord, even just to get more entries, if that was one of the reasons of few participants. Lastly, I just want to point out that next time we'll probably be stricter or anyway clearer on the multiple pics/multiple styles thing, because I think that it caused a lot of confusion at first. I am sorry for that!

For events like FFXIV/Animal Crossing contests, I think it might be good to have some sort of sliding scale of points. It was pretty unfair that one of these gave 150/100/50 + 10 participation and the other gave 50/25/10 + 5 participation when in the end they had the same number of competitors. And especially since the competitors for both contests skewed Apricorns, it gave an unfair advantage in terms of points for one of them to be so stacked. I know XIV got nerfed after this same thing happened last year but it's arguably more accessible than Animal Crossing so it just kinda felt bad to see AC get all those points and XIV get nothing in comparison. (Not that it would have helped the points dichotomy between the teams either way lol.) I think for events like this where gaming devices beyond just a normal computer or phone are required (ex: a ps4 or a switch or a computer that isn't a potato), maybe we could look into scaling points? So like if there's <5 people who participate, the points are on the lower end because it probably means the event is relatively inaccessible to wider audiences. But if for some reason it really pops off, like if Animal Crossing had a big resurgence in popularity next year and ended up with 10 entrants, we could give it the bigger point amounts. I know we like to be clear upfront about how many points an event will give because I think that helps some people determine what events to prioritize, but for contests like these, I think the people who participate are usually just people who like the game and just want to do something creative in it, so it's less about the points anyway - they'd be participating either way.

Oh also for contests like the above where people submit everything privately to the judges, please showcase everyone at the end, not just the winners! I wanna see what everyone did!!

This is extremely true lol. When I had to input the scores, I was like "oh...". Unfortunately, there were only 4 participants and 3 of them were from Team Apri, so there wasn't much to do, especially because we honestly judged the outfits. So yeah, scaling the points for the event is something needed. The idea of showcasing everyone is a really good one too!

I avoid to quote Aquacorde's last post because I kinda have said everything already!

 

[5qwerty]

Don't have the time or means to type up a full response atm but I wanted to chime in on certain items that have been more discussed in this thread.

I agree with many of the points made about the scoring/scaling with participants. The whole issue comes down to how many points we decide to award for perceived effort required to participate in that event. The 150/100/50 scaling is the largest scaling we have and when I think about this, I think about events like SWC.

I definitely think it's perhaps "unfair" in a way to award certain events with 150/100/50 spreads because the effort required to get higher placements isn't "as much" as the effort required for SWC, in most cases at least. If not for the activity in the last 2 days, Fortune Cup would have awarded me (a single participant) 150 points for doing 4 battles which is not a lot of effort! More on this later.

In a similar vein, I think certain judging events (say AC, FFXIV) should scale their points with number of participants and also probably have the number of points reduced in relation to SWC. However I think it's not completely fair to require of other events what is not required of SWC. Even though the correaponding situation is rare, I think SWC should also scale with participants. In the rare case there are 4 participants as well (and all of them are stories akin to Journey to the Center of Poopoo Island), would it really be fair to award 150/100/50? Of course this is a super rare case but perhaps that failsafe should be put in as well.

Another thing about points is that Trivia and Pokémon Trivia are both 150 for winning this huge event that requires 14 days of grueling trivia crap, and that is PER TEAM. Obviously it's a point differential system and it basically 50 points for the winning team. But it is still kind of weird when you put into perspective the amount of points given.

One thing about the battling events this year (and this is a problem I've had with fc since its inception in Shawn's mind and posted in the Competitive mod section) is that these events are uncompetitive by nature. Or rather, the way to win these events is not even to be good at the event, but just to have higher activity. There is no reason why I can grind Random Rumble for 2 hours with Anna on a phone on a car ride and still come close to getting the highest score. I think there should at least be some sort of cap on the number of battles one can play and count as points per day, akin to the forum games event.

 

[budube]

General feedback

Ok so, I think it was well overall, even if we somehow ended with the 5 most active gt ppl in the same team again despite everything lmao. But yea, even if Apricorns were winning during most of the event, Gears wasn't that far behind. Until they weren't which happened the final day with the long term event scores.

I'm gonna agree with ppl that say late August isn't the time for it, though. There's a lot of stuff going on during this time of the year, so I think like mid or late July is the appropriate time for that.

Bingo!

This was by far one of the best events thks year even if user Juno forgot drawing the stuff I needed to win. Watching everyone meme cards out or straight up drawing all of their entries was pretty cool.

Get Together Challenge

I did like the challenge, but honestly I can't imagine just how exhausting just editing the map was for both EOs. I think it was necessary for the map to be initially made in CSS before, back when u had to click the sprite to access the rules, but since we had a list of players now for that, it felt a bit unnecessary and I think just having a single image file in photoshop/illustrator/whatever for both of you to externally edit and then post again would have made things less stressful for y'all.

Small Writing Competition

5q's entry deserved a full score.

Fortune Cup on Pokémon Showdown

Ok so in general I slept big time with every battling event here bc I had other things to do, for Fortune Cup however, I also kinda didn't feel like it in the end? I think it has to do a bit with how now we get 0 points when losing to someone from the same team, which I know is to encourage ppl to play against other team members, but also at times there's no one around, and if I get not very good Pokémon in the first draw aside from the guaranteed OU/UU tiers ones, then I kinda don't feel like playing later since I need more coins to get stuff or just keep losing to get new Pokémon. Like, my entire first draw was weak to Breloom except for Centiskorch and Pawmi and I couldn't Terastalize to save myself either at first, so I could just do nothing against 5q lmao, so why bother in the end.

I think the 0 coins for losing to someone from the same team rule could be balanced back so players that lost 3 times got like 5 or 10 coins aside from the new Pokémon. Or maybe the chance to reroll at least 2 Pokémon from the first draw could be nice? Just an idea though idk.

It also doesn't help much that there's a second, more accessible battle event to take all the attention. Maybe finding a way to combine both events or redefine how the scores are given in both events would help?

Pocket Monster United for the Nintendo Switch and Mobile Devices

This was a fun event I'm ngl, I had fun. However, there were a few issues here and there that I think were brought up during the event regardless. For one, the event needed its own role instead of making global pings for each session. Secondly, and the main problem is that the games took too long, I think everyone that participated can agree best out of 3 or best out of 5 would've been a much better and quicker way to get through it.

Animal Crossing for the Nintendo Switch

Post all the entries!! :femmeangy: I wanted to see what everyone did, it's the fun part of the event. Idk if this happened in FFXIV too I haven't checked yet, but in case it did, post all the entries there as well :femme2:

Create-a-Pokemon

Seeing the Pokémon everyone created was cool, but much like the event above, I feel seeing the whole entries would've been poggers and epic and appropriate as well :femme:

 

[Aquacorde]

ngl I am REALLY not understanding the scale-by-participants logic for events. We have participation points for that already, yeah? Why should a full story or 20-30 pieces of art be worth significantly less just because there are fewer total participants? Maybe this works for events that rely on having more people to make it run well- Egg Swap, battling, idk- but ones that are based on solo effort seem fine imo. If it's really a big deal, banking points down to maybe 100/75/50 with participation still at 10 seems totally viable.

Is Trivia very tiring/stressful/intense for people? I personally do not get tired of trivia ever lmao but I also don't have anything to contribute for VG ever.

eta: i forgot to say that yeah trivia points in perspective are a little weird aint they

 

[faf]

Animal Crossing for the Nintendo Switch

Post all the entries!! :femmeangy: I wanted to see what everyone did, it's the fun part of the event. Idk if this happened in FFXIV too I haven't checked yet, but in case it did, post all the entries there as well :femme2:

I posted everything in FFXIV glam contest!!!! :femmeangry: I cannot believe you are missing out on John screenshots!!!! :femmeangry:

But ya, I def agree with the Animal Crossing scaling. Think I was a bit baffled when my event had to be 50/25/10 but the AC was like 150/100/50. But if it's a first event, it's okay! I remember when I first hosted Jackbox and the points there were arguably more inflated hahaha.

For the FFXIV event, I'm glad the Fashion Report aspect was well received and can be considered again if hosted again! Also, did you know you can play the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV with a free trial up to level 70 and includes the award winning expansion Heavensward and the lukewarm expansion Stormblood with no restrictions on playtime starting in October?

As for Jackbox, I'll consider doing those sessions on peak times if I do host it again but late August is extremely tough even if I'm out of school.

As for Pokémon Trivia, I'm actually glad the questions were cut in half because doing 10 questions, 10 music clips, 5 mons, AND a Squirdle felt a lot esp when stacked with EM trivia and VG trivia. Maybe the Pokémon Trivia can be similar to how E&M and VG trivia are like, namely one day can be Pokémon cries, one day is Who's that Pokémon, etc.

Art Swap is epic and please, please, please bring it back again and maybe a suggestion that was brought up before would be to add more clarity for what is considered full renders.

I loved Paint and Describe but I wonder if the time limit can be cut in half so it's a 12 hour limit for text and 24 hour limit for drawing. I feel it can go faster and possibly encourage more participants. Food for thought.

Bingo was also epic but I feel bad for not participating in that much. Just a lot on my plate ig.

PMD&D was amazing and smoothly ran except my CPU decided the die on me twice during that session. ;)

As for Speed Art, I did love the format of 1 Pokémon, another Pokémon, and then a fusion but I do wish I could have done more 15/15/30's instead of 5/5/10. I do understand why we did the latter more because of IRL stuff tho!

I might have more but just what I thought!

 

[budube]

I posted everything in FFXIV glam contest!!!! :femmeangry: I cannot believe you are missing out on John screenshots!!!! :femmeangry:

I already saw :femmeangy: don't yell at me :femmeangy:

 

[Chr. Draco]

Hello everyone

-This GT was fun even though I was not able to participate much. But still I find most events completely fine so i don't think I can add anything more that everyone have said so far.

-The time for the GT would have been nice around July I guess, not only because I'm used to it being around july but also because I have seen more activity during that time of the year.

-Art swap was a nice event i would have liked to participate more and the pokemon challenge looked really fun. Shame I was not able to participate more.

-Movie nights good as always.

-Arcade good as always.

-Jackbox good as always.

-Amiibo Casino: Looks fun as always.

For my own events:

-PU - definitely change a couple of stuff. It's different having things on paper than actual practice. Plus there were not much participant anyways. And I apologize for the inconvenience and fatigue it may have caused.

-Speed Art - Should I still host this event? All I can say is thank you cherrim and faf for keeping alive the event.

Other stuff:

-Spot the difference and who's that pokemon were nice events own their own and i would have liked them to return.
-- I know some were added as trivia but i didn't feel it the same and since it was one answer entry per team they will mostly be completed in no time.

Maybe that's all I can say for now since I was not able to participate or watch all events to make a good comparisson between last year and this year.

But in summary, it was a fun and nice GT, the EO did a nice job and I hope they can continue hosting their events in the future.

 

[Juno]

nothing quite showcases the aging of this community like the popularity of bingo this GT

Jokes aside, I had a lot of fun this GT even if it was a bit quieter as previously mentioned - it's the first time in years I've hosted anything, and it made me remember my love/hate relationship with hosting because it takes me away from participation a little, but I think that can be mitigated next year with better pre-opening preparation lol, I've just gotten so used to just turning up for events without worrying about anything else it was a bit of an adjustment. Really happy with the turnout for both my events, but especially of course Bingo!

A suggestion/something that I think would be really nice - to whomever runs the management team next year, I think it should be made mandatory for hosts to make a role for each of their events and use that to ping participants rather than pinging everybody in the GT. I know we had the option to create our own role as EOs and a good number of us took advantage of this for our events, but for future GTs I think this should not be optional and EOs should only ping for events that participants have opted in to. Maybe put more of an emphasis on the roles available for opting into on a landing page for GT or something if EOs are worried that participants might not see that they can choose roles for the events they want to be notified about.

Annd feedback for individual events:

Longform/ongoing

SWC - the kick in the pants every year I need to start writing again, thank you for being a good motivator and way to bring writers together. I love bemoaning our lack of time and perpetual procrastination every year with my fellow writers and reading whatever the hell qwerty wrote

ROoT - I didn't finish my challenge only due to how busy I got and how preoccupied I was with other longform events like SWC and art swap, but I had fun with it when I played and I thought it was a great concept! I agree with user Cubeth about the map situation, at least that seemed to be what stressed Loomie out the most when Janp was busy, and I think barring a few overlapping rules that just needed a little clarification, the event really was quite a success and lots of people had fun with it.

Art swap - definitely a highlight for me, very recommended event for everybody to join in the future, even if your art level is MS Paint mouse sketch. If I have any suggestions, I think point scaling/adjustments could be made, but I don't really think it's that big of an issue because I think the main draw for pretty much everybody was the art itself, but just seeing the effort everybody put in to their art I think revamping the system a bit to award GT points per art rather than just for the top 3 could be nice. But again, I don't think it's a necessity and the overall scoring + achievements were fair enough, plus the art we received at the end was plenty rewarding already.

Paint & Describe - fun, simple event as always. I actually like that it overlaps with Gartic so that those who could not participate in the live event could still participate in something kind of similar.

Trivias - my head is empty and I have no thoughts so I am personally not a trivia person; it's not really something I get super into but I can appreciate how it brings people together and makes people discuss questions. I think events like these that really make people collaborate are really integral to GT!

Is Trivia very tiring/stressful/intense for people? I personally do not get tired of trivia ever lmao but I also don't have anything to contribute for VG ever.

I don't know if you are supposed to ponder trivia questions but for me, it's kind of a "I know it off the top of my head or I don't" kind of thing so it's not something I see myself spending a lot of time on, unless it's something like Squirdle or a crossword or something you can work out. But for the typical trivia questions, I don't find listening to a snippet of a song over and over again helps me remember anything if I didn't already know it immediately, nor does looking at a question more than once help jog my memory - I think my brain just doesn't store trivial information enough for me to be able to like, search my memory for answers lol like I don't even remember Minecraft crafting recipes aside from the bare basics and I play a lot of Minecraft

Animal Crossing - I always have fun with these! Whether it's outfits or decorating a room, I just really like Animal Crossing and it's always nice to kind of play together and then share your creations.

Also whether it's writing, drawing or Animal Crossing I procrastinate everything to the last minute and I imagine a lot of people do as well so don't worry too much before the actual deadline for longform stuff. There is dwindling interest for Animal Crossing since it's an older game now and the community is not as thriving, so a drop in participation is to be expected, but there will always be a dedicated few for stuff like this.

Discord/live

I barely joined any live events this year - they just weren't at a good time for me since they always occurred when I was at work (Gartic, Speed Art and Jackbox come to mind) or just when I was asleep/busy, which is a shame since I do enjoy those, but that is to be expected with such a diverse community from all over the world, I know it's super hard to host at a time that works for everybody.

Movie Night was great! Fun and simple event, really enjoyed watching movies together. Love the Pokemon movies, of course, but I think Anna's idea of watching other movies could be fun as well, and I'd definitely be up for hosting something like that next year outside of Kip's Pokémon ones if I find the time for it!

Amiibo Casino - always have fun with this one, too! James is a great commentator, and I think it's a similar vibe to movie night, where friends just get together and watch a thing and hang out. Good fun.