Get-Together 2023 Feedback

[wolf]

Thanks to the management and event organizers! This GT went well.

Date range: I think the chosen dates were still too late, similar to last year. Some people are starting school during late August. June or July seems to be the ideal time.

Team balancing: Maybe people could be asked in the quiz how active they plan to be. For each user that intends to be really active, the sorting algorithm could try to keep them even between the teams. While this could be abused by pretending to be less active then going ham, GT management could keep an eye on everyone's activity values. If there's a major outlier, they could change the user's value to affect the remaining quiz results. This idea might be too high maintenance and complex, but it's worth considering.

Running Out of Time challenge: I liked the personalized rules. My only complaint is that I couldn't speedrun through multiple segments when I had time to do so, because I had to wait on the next rule. It'd be cool if the rule selection was automated somehow, like if there was a list of all the rules and people could use an RNG to choose one. Maybe a Discord bot that provides a random number in a challenge channel so that the rule selection is public and can't be abused.

Battling events: I didn't like that losing to one of your team members provides zero points. While I could've asked for battles more, 5qwerty was the only one available during two times that I did for FC. He had a much better team, so after both times I wasn't able to improve my team at all. Maybe the points could be 75 W / 50 L for opposing teams and 50 W / 25 L for same teams, then inflate the costs a bit to account for that (e.g., 50 to RNG a new Pokemon). Also, I really liked the Random Rumble's highlighted format and how often it changed.

Escape the Lab: This was my favorite new event! I just wish it was longer, but I understand a lot of work goes into making this.

 

[Alex_Among_Foxes]

For anyone who wanted to see all the outfits, I've made a post in the ACFC thread with them all listed! Enjoy!

 

[Cherrim]

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.

Well, the reason FFXIV points got nerfed was more about game accessibility than because it never gets many participants but then also I just looked at past years and the feedback for AC/XIV has always been the same so idk why one event gets the nerf when the other doesn't. I guess AC is a little more accessible by nature of opening up to all games this year but you still need to be established in a game with access to it/the console the same way XIV is. The only really comparable Pokémon event is I guess egg swap where ostensibly you need an official game and the console to play it on in order to trade with each other, but of course more people on the Pokemon forum are more likely to own and play Pokémon games so even that's not a perfect comparison. This was like... a really big point of contention two years ago even tho that time both events had a healthy number of participants (7 and 8 respectively for AC and XIV). A lot of people were quite upset that they just couldn't do some events that ended up being big points winners. (Granted I think this was also when more people really felt the need to do e v e r y event whereas I think now most people have just plain chilled out and will happily pick a handful of events to go hard at and maaaybe toss in a participation in some others.) I guess another problem is when there are fewer people, it's more likely some of them will end up on the same team and sweep--when the event isn't accessible, it means even if one team wants to even the odds, they can't. Still feels relevant, but reducing the points was supposed to be the concession for that level of inaccessibility. u_u

To the point of a sliding scale, I guess I just figured that if one of these "inaccessible" events only gets a few people and there's a big distribution discrepancy (like apricorns almost sweeping both events because it was 3:1 participants for both), it's not as upsetting a number that goes toward the scores. @_@

Personally I think when there's a whole bunch of events, it doesn't matter so much if a handful of them are more niche. Like, we also have stuff like speed art where it was basically just faf and I this year, but no one bats an eye at that. Just because something is accessible doesn't mean people will participate and I think it's also important to celebrate little subcommunities on PC too—the Get-Together is about celebrating PC, after all! And at least for me the group of XIV players has been an important part of my time here for a few years now and it's nice to be able to integrate that into the GT. I said in my 2021 feedback, "Not every person needs to be able to do every event—some of the beauty of this is that it's a whole team working together to cover all the bases" and I think that counts here too.

But honestly, with XIV I just like making an outfit to submit based on whatever the theme/requirements are. I'd happily use GT as an excuse to do that even if our points were basically nothing for it. (Although that said, the point you make about effort for people entering the contests is valid—I probably spent more time preparing my XIV contest submission than I did for all of bingo lol.)

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

Yes, please! I think the lack of participation this year was largely because of the times for it being middle of the day which almost no one could make it for and after that it was hard to tell what the times were gonna be. This is part of why I had a suggestion in my original post here about having "primetime" slots that people can sign up for, so you wouldn't have to worry about overlapping with other events as much and you'd have a better idea of when people would be available for a good hour-long span. But I always look forward to this event and after missing it last year (iirc) I was really happy I could attend this time!

Btw in terms of speed art feedback, I really liked this year's format! I think the fusions are really fun. My one worry was if we got some of the themes I saw on the wheel... Faf and I happily went with Final Fantasy but if we'd gotten some of those other game ones I really wouldn't have known what to do. I think for themes you should stick to broader things like seasons or general ideas (like school, etc.). It makes it more likely people will be familiar enough to do something with it. :)

 

[Aldo]

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.

Next time I might make a poll before starting. As it is though, the 24h/48h for Describe/Paint would make it impossible to finish the event in time if they were fully used, so I was lucky that most submissions were sent very early

EDIT: Or go with 36h for drawing and 12h for descriptions like a previous year?

 

[Sammi]

I really loved Bingo and Escape the Room this year. Please do them again!!
For Escape the Room, I preferred the format of the last room with all the clues and actions until we hit 2 mistakes. But I'm also biased because I was on Gears, so there wasn't as many of us to submit investigations. It felt bad to pick out a dud for your daily investigation knowing that there aren't as many people to pick up the slack (rip me checking the potted plant).

As someone who is really bad at Pokemon Trivia and couldn't help with it, I'm still glad y'all reduced it partway through. With 10/15 questions on VG/E&M, having even more from Pokemon Trivia on top of it was a little too much. Difficulty of the questions felt fine though!

+1 to GT being at a bad time of year. The second week was the first week at the local university, so I was a lot busier at work. I imagine anyone college-aged or working at one in the US was probably in a similar boat.

This is probably super nitpicky of me in regards to the Animal Crossing contest. So like, my submission is posted now, and it's... almost Aquacorde's but in pink and different shoes/headpiece. I obviously had no way of knowing this but it's still awkward. And please don't take this as "I'm mad I lost" because I'm not -- you absolutely made the correct decision, mine was the worse one and I would have judged it the same.
If someone submits something that's super close to what someone else has done, I think it's maybe worth telling the second submitter "hey we've got something similar to this already" if it's not a last second submission, especially when there are so few participants and with a "submit as many as you want and the last is counted" rule. I actually had a different outfit I didn't like as much and could have swapped out before the deadline (behold, "I searched 80s fashion trends on Google"). I'd much rather get 10 points for an outfit that doesn't look like a cheap copy of someone else's.

To the point of a sliding scale, I guess I just figured that if one of these "inaccessible" events only gets a few people and there's a big distribution discrepancy (like apricorns almost sweeping both events because it was 3:1 participants for both), it's not as upsetting a number that goes toward the scores. @_@

As the person submitting for Gears on both contests, tbh it was brutal. Especially on AC for reasons I elaborated above.
Also, I'm pretty sure AC already had a rule for "use past games" in other GTs. I remember discussion about Pocket Camp... I want to say last year?, since I used to play, and being like "I don't play it anymore".

I don't think it helped that GT was slow this year. Towards the end it felt like major burnout on the Gears side in our Discord channel (or maybe I'm just projecting because I've been struggling irl). Like... GT is about fun competition, but after a certain point it's like "Apricorns is winning at Everything because they have more people" and you have people asking in chat for participation in events to make up points, that starts to get a little unfun.

I'm not sure what I'd suggest for balancing.
We had a brief discussion a few days into GT in the Gears channel, and I still don't think manual sorting is the best solution due to the extra workload on GT organizers.
Wolf's suggestion of "how active will you be?" might be a decent fit, but "active" is also open-ended. Like, I can do some long-form things and contribute to trivia, but other stuff like Jackbox or movies happens when I'm at work, and I've no interest at all in battling or writing or forum games. So if it was just the single question of "how active will you be", I wouldn't even know what to pick. It also still risks unbalancing teams because you could get some "active" people who are only good at some events and stack for that certain event. "Pick X events you're interested in" might work, but I also don't know if that's actually possible with how you balance the quiz, and it might be a bit of a drain on the vibes of an otherwise cutesy quiz.

The real solution is not to be on my team. First Caelum, now Gears...

 

[Alex_Among_Foxes]

This is probably super nitpicky of me in regards to the Animal Crossing contest. So like, my submission is posted now, and it's... almost Aquacorde's but in pink and different shoes/headpiece. I obviously had no way of knowing this but it's still awkward. And please don't take this as "I'm mad I lost" because I'm not -- you absolutely made the correct decision, mine was the worse one and I would have judged it the same.
If someone submits something that's super close to what someone else has done, I think it's maybe worth telling the second submitter "hey we've got something similar to this already" if it's not a last second submission, especially when there are so few participants and with a "submit as many as you want and the last is counted" rule. I actually had a different outfit I didn't like as much and could have swapped out before the deadline (behold, "I searched 80s fashion trends on Google"). I'd much rather get 10 points for an outfit that doesn't look like a cheap copy of someone else's.

I'm just gonna go ahead and say that neither of us think you're upset about getting 4th. But in the defence of Piplup and myself regarding "hey we've got something similar to this already", This was my first ever GT, and Piplup has been extremely busy with IRL stuff for most if not all the event. We can fix things like this for the next one however, if we have a 'submit as much as you like and we'll pick the best of the lot' rule .

I'm not sure what I'd suggest for balancing.
We had a brief discussion a few days into GT in the Gears channel, and I still don't think manual sorting is the best solution due to the extra workload on GT organizers.
Wolf's suggestion of "how active will you be?" might be a decent fit, but "active" is also open-ended. Like, I can do some long-form things and contribute to trivia, but other stuff like Jackbox or movies happens when I'm at work, and I've no interest at all in battling or writing or forum games. So if it was just the single question of "how active will you be", I wouldn't even know what to pick. It also still risks unbalancing teams because you could get some "active" people who are only good at some events and stack for that certain event. "Pick X events you're interested in" might work, but I also don't know if that's actually possible with how you balance the quiz, and it might be a bit of a drain on the vibes of an otherwise cutesy quiz.

I still believe a third team made just for the people who'd rather just play some of the games for fun, or don't really have time to go whole hog on events is a good answer to this. That way people who do have the time and dedication to win can be matched with (mostly) only other people who have that same determination and time. It might not be a pefect fix, but I'm pretty dang sure it will help out a lot, and the competitive teams can still be randomly sorted like they were this year.

 

[Kitty]

sammi against the world????? ez

Overall GT

• The fact we kept it simple and relatively lighthearted in terms of preparation for the lore is nice. Good that we reused old assets too like the quiz (and even finding the "cheat" for the quiz with the PMD questions haha).
• New people have joined and stepped up their GT game! There were more funky faces in the fray and they were all hyped for things like Bingo, Art, Jackbox, etc.
• There's some key events that I have managed to join in due to them being on Euro time. More like that would be nice. :) (Not a huge issue, I just like being able to play haha)
• The points and achievement system feel like they don't need rebalancing tbh which is wild compared to last year. Public achievements work wonders for funky strats. :D That said do agree with the points mentioned above and maybe the achievements system itself might need something to make it better.. ill prompt this next year though jksdhf
• The first week was a blast to play in.
• Length seemed to be too long, even though this is our usual. People have burned out after the first week. Might also be because the events this year have been quite interactive?
• August seems to also not be the week for most people; I think it's better to just bump it back to October? It looks like that's the case anyway. Or alternatively we can aim for a different month again and see what's up. :D
• There's some... commitments in general that haven't been fulfilled and that could have made things from good to great. Nonetheless, we've managed to adapt and adjust.
• Not a lot of long-term events (that are more SWC-like than Trivia-like) this GT.
• Terrible RNG with most of the activity being in Apricorns. Couldn't be helped. :'D
• Grand Oak doesn't get enough love unlike Laventon; it's probably because we only know him from Pokemon HOME 😂 To keep it safe and relevant best to use mainstream characters-
• Maybe next time we'll add a disclaimer that yes there will be tons (like, tons) of pings in the GT? As it sounds like a problem some people have (where they just vibe).
• Is it just me or was there a specific lack of chill calls this GT? Maybe it's just my timezone but I didn't notice much of it. I think it's just my timezone.

Specific Events: Art Swap

• The participation of everyone involved in Art Swap! For a competitive, chill event, this is amazing. :D I love seeing everyone's art and some people went hard. My god.
• Points system was workable and it was simple enough to not be confusing.
• My excel sheet was pretty nice. B)
• I have to admit me and GP did not exactly have the same idea of a "fully rendered" piece of work. We've had debates throughout GT on why x piece of art is a full render and y piece of art isn't. I think next year I definitely have to make that clear. Maybe provide examples on what we do recognize as full rendered pieces. :]
• Points scoring could have been done from the user side to promote honesty and self evaluation. While it's something that we could double check on our end, every other Art event I know does this format and it's worked out for them. Maybe even have an effort bonus score when u just feel super proud of that one piece too!! Hmm
• RE-ADD the Art Vibe calls for this one specifically!! We had the prompts for it, we can just add bonus participation points for that too. I think it would be neat just hanging out for an hour and drawing?

Specific Events: PMD&D: Paradox Stuff

• I think instead of tailoring moves to specific Pokemon it would be neat instead to have a "databank" of moves under specific types; each Pokemon to have an allocation of particular moves they would like provided that it falls under stuff they learned (or since you aren't exactly following the BST aside from typings; said Pokemon can only learn said types?) IK Lycan was suffering when Shak decided to go for Iron Moth instead of Flutter Mane, haha.
• Having only three people might make it weird tbh (3 is not a comfy number- 4 is the comfy number); glad that I got paired with Shak bc it was relatively comfy with us already knowing each other and just playing off quips but if it were me with someone I didn't already know it might have gone either way (rly good or rly bad bc I'm an awkward person).
• (8/28) We didn't even get to play :'D So definitely something to note for next year please I don't think having a S0 in hopes for just 3 people is a vibe

Specific Events: Paint and Describe

• The 48h window for Painters is a godsend I swear
• The prompt I do not know it yet but it sounds so creative and something similar to what's done in past events like this (looking at you meowth dinner table meme)
• I think keeping us updated on how's it going would be good too :')

Specific Events: Escape the Lab

• It's a super neat concept and I absolutely adore escape sim-like games.
• The little flavor text and pixel art aesthetic is adorable I love her aaaaa
• LIFE IS LIKE A HIGHWAY-
• It heavily depends on activity (1 person = 1 investigation) which wouldn't work for Gears XD It's not bad as in it's the event's fault but it's definitely something that made us trickle down from it.
• (8/23) With the changes made recently and the clues already given; it's less of the activity piece and more big brain solving and it's great! Still relies on people being there that time to think about it but it's so much better <3

Specific Events: Small Writing Contest

• The prompt is vague enough to make so much out of it while exact enough not to get lost (ha) in writing. Definitely felt easier to just write something in here.
• I don't write good which is a me problem again XD
• Not sure on the alliteration achievement like I did think about putting it in there somehow but I suppose more tiny writing achievements like that could be cute? Doesn't have to all be achievable too. (e.g. Write only in Second Person, Write without describing the main character at all, etc.) Optional rules to make things neat. :)

 

[gimmepie]

I still believe a third team made just for the people who'd rather just play some of the games for fun, or don't really have time to go whole hog on events is a good answer to this. That way people who do have the time and dedication to win can be matched with (mostly) only other people who have that same determination and time. It might not be a pefect fix, but I'm pretty dang sure it will help out a lot, and the competitive teams can still be randomly sorted like they were this year.

The competition helps engage most people, but it's also secondary. If you're not having fun just because your team is losing, I feel like you (not necessarily you) are the one hyper-focusing on competition. Just have fun with the events.

The strange thing to me is that for most of the GT, Gears were not that far behind. Apricorns had the lead, but we absolutely had to actually work to maintain it. It wasn't until the very end the gap shot up and that's because Apricorns people joined the longform events in greater numbers.

As for the sliding scale idea... I don't agree with this at all. This was the most balanced our scoring has ever been. The issue wasn't with the scoring system, the issue was that one team was much more active and involved themselves more in the longform events. I quite like Alex's solution of including an intended activity question in the quiz as a second sorting parameter as a solution to prevent that happening again. God knows we've tried everything else. But I do not agree at all with devaluing the efforts of people who put hours of work into the arcade, SWC, Art Swap etc because the team with less active people feels bad that their lesser activity produces less points.

 

[Alex_Among_Foxes]

The competition helps engage most people, but it's also secondary. If you're not having fun just because your team is losing, I feel like you (not necessarily you) are the one hyper-focusing on competition. Just have fun with the events.

I know you didn't necessarily mean me, but you're also the second person to mention not having fun because of being on the losing team, so I feel I need to clarify the fact that any part of at least myself not having fun had nothing to do with the points at all. I personally could not care less about the competition factor of the GT, I only wanted to play some fun games and chat with others. My issue comes from anyone feeling like they are letting their team down if they don't participate in as many events as possible, even if they don't have an interest in some of them.

 

[Megan]

At the start of the GT I kinda had a hunch that one team would be lagging behind by a lot. Later I looked at whom I would compete in the the events that I participated in. And that basically confirmed my suspicion as most of them always happened to be from the opposing team (Apricorn).
I'm not sure how one would address these things, though. I do wanna say, though, that I've never been a fan of the competitiveness. It's just no fun for me period. And even trying to ignore that aspect usually leads to me trying too hard in the end, anyway.
For example: I don't actually like the Pokemon Trivia & Forum Games Spotlight event. Last year I didn't have fun with it. And this year I mostly just participated because I'm active in Forum Games, anyway. I started with only doing few posts but still somehow ended up being roped into doing the full quota. Obviously, there's no chance to beat those who are at the top. Unless they purposely decided to stop, which of course didn't happen.

I can't really say much about how to improve the team experience. I am, however, wondering if it really needs to be a competitive event. Like, why not try out focusing on cooperation, instead? Have only one team but everyone can still contribute in some different way to reach anoverarching goal. Maybe instead of two teams trying to beat each other there could be an arbitrary amount of total points that need to be reached? And there can still be a quiz and all. But instead of different teams you could get different roles that contribute in a different way to the total amount of points the team gains? (this is just a very basic idea, I have nothing concrete).

Otherwise: I liked the art contests I participated in. Art Swap was fun. And I've never managed to put out so many different drawings in a two week time frame.

EDIT: Or go with 36h for drawing and 12h for descriptions like a previous year?

I think I kinda lucked out with getting my prompt on a friday. I don't know how I would have fared during the work week. My time is pretty limited in. In that regard I still prefer 48h over e.g. 36 hours.

I think the worst experience this year was Create-A-Pokemon for me. I wanted to participate but due to time shenanigans I only had like a tiny window right before the end of submissions for the drawing. So, I ended up not participating. Fortunately, my partner could still make something of their own.


Escape the Lab: This sounded fun at first. But I felt overwhelmed pretty quickly which is why I dropped out really early. ^^"

Mind Read the Room: I liked it better than last year. Because I got more points. :3


I still think overall I quite enjoyed the experience. Though, the art part really made it for me this time. xD

 

[gimmepie]

I am, however, wondering if it really needs to be a competitive event. Like, why not try out focusing on cooperation, instead? Have only one team but everyone can still contribute in some different way to reach anoverarching goal. Maybe instead of two teams trying to beat each other there could be an arbitrary amount of total points that need to be reached? And there can still be a quiz and all. But instead of different teams you could get different roles that contribute in a different way to the total amount of points the team gains? (this is just a very basic idea, I have nothing concrete).

The really old Get-Togethers weren't split into teams or competitive at all as far as I'm aware. But at some point we experimented with this setup and found it got people much more engaged and invested.

As for your suggestion, we actually have done this (relatively) recently! We did a Get-Together where we had two Detective teams - Eevee and Pikachu - who needed to unlock different clues to solve a mystery together. It was honestly one of the least successful of the more modern Get-Togethers. Admittedly, not entirely because of the set-up itself, but I would say it definitely played a part.

Would I personally rule out a non-competitive GT attempt again? Not necessarily. But it probably wouldn't be my first recommendation either.

 

[5qwerty]

OK actual post for me kinda? I'm still relegated to mobile so I'll just have to make do.

Timing and Teams
OK so doesn't matter too much for me personally but I can definitely understand the sentiment of wanting it not during this time period due to school starting, etc. Being on vacation myself this year, I do feel like perhaps August is not the most optimal time. However, if I had a vote I would vote NOT October, it is just a less good time for me due to job stuff.

Teams were kinda unbalanced in a way? Obviously while Apricorns were only ahead by a fixed amount for the majority of gt (due to movie night as well), I'm sure many people on Gears dreaded the results of the long-form events while Apricorns perhaps felt assured. Yes, the truth is that Apricorns got the majority of what are considered the "degenerates", except Aaron. That does compound as well, since activity and morale can snowball themselves - I mean that in a way of high activity and morale breed more high activity and morale, and the same is true for lower activity and morale.

I think the issue was exacerbated in more ways than one for Gears this year. Morale was perhaps low from the beginning because all the "degens" were on the other team and its kinda doomed. Apricorns also got to an early lead with their higher amount of activity with the movie night (basically the point difference was just the movie night for the majority of gt). Both of these can be demoralizing and just make people not want to try. However, I don't think these can be excuses as to not try in certain cases. Aaron was on Gears and this dude legit did every event and was burning himself out, is it that hard to rally behind him?

Ok I guess the point I'm trying to make is that there are times where teams are "unbalanced", but no one is inherently a degenerate/goblin - you can still be a difference maker yourself. Of course, things were a bit unlucky this year with the general activity levels of the members on Gears.

(An aside: I wonder what statistics we would arrive at if we tallied the points earned by each user. It would be interesting to see but I don't think we should be balancing around this)

Oh another thing regarding balancing and the sorting algorithm. I do agree with wolf, I was also wondering if there was a way to just somehow get some sort of activity data for users and then assign weight. No algorithm is perfect and there will be outliers, but perhaps this would work a bit better? I also don't agree with the sorting algorithm this year, where basically every second person's team is essentially determined by the person who took the quiz before them. Perhaps the difference threshold could be larger? It just feels weird this way tbh. Though the other thing I would like to say is that the unbalance in the teams this year (if you're only counting by degens) is an outlier, so I don't think we necessarily have to manually sort people?

Points
Can someone do a comparison of points for each event from last year to this year? I feel like it's mostly the same for each year, perhaps the balance has become marginally better this year? But to be honest, I really don't think it's that balanced and it's been an issue for years that gt management just haven't really addressed too well. (edit: ok I admit this year is better than last year cuz we didn't have the giga inflated events, so I do agree that it's been better than it has been before but there are still inherent unbalances that I think have been brought up in prior years)

Points for events that require participants really do need to be looked at. I think people (myself included) feel like there are events that inherently require more effort than others, but yield the same number of points. It's not like those other events can't require more effort, it's just that it happened that there were < 5 participants for multiple events this year, which is why people are suggesting having the points scale with the number of participants. It doesn't feel fair that the first place finisher for swc gets the same number of points as someone who swapped eggs like 5 times or someone who battled in fc like 7 times. Obviously if swc had lower participation then the average effort required to get first place would be lower because you'd have to beat less people, and the opposite is true for the other events - if there were more participants then it would require more effort to get 1st place. Perhaps people would feel that getting the same number of points this way would be more fair because everyone all spent a respectable amount of time on getting 1st place. I think lowering the point cashouts for certain events that "require less effort" also works for cases such as this year's gt because swc requires more effort and other events don't. But I think the general case needs some kind of adjustment. What if there are 100 egg swappers and it's super competitive? The winner might feel cheesed because they night have spent all their time trying to beat the other egg swappers only to get 50 points. What if in that same year, swc has 2 participants and they all write utter garbage and 1st place gets 150 points? That would feel extra cuck to me. Of course, this case is extremely unlikely, but I'm just saying that it's better to be fair to all cases when considering balancing.

The other thing with points is the long events that award points to each team. I think gt challenge does a decent job of doing this because the points are "normalized" with an internal point system. But if you think about something like Pokémon trivia, it's legit just a net +50 to one team for winning. Whether that's fair or not is up for discussion, I personally feel like the winning team should get more for winning. The 150/100 is just kinda fake in this case because it seems like a lot but isn't because it doesn't really give you an edge over the other team. There's no multiplicative factors in any of the events so you could give 9000/8950 and it's the same thing.

Events
Ok I'm running out of time and my signal is getting weaker. All events were generally good, especially bingo and art swap. I don't have super strong feelings on any event in particular and most of what I would have wanted to say has already been covered by others.

I know the adjustments that I have to make for my event(s) so thank you everyone for your participation and patience and we'll come back stronger next year.

 

[Cherrim]

If someone submits something that's super close to what someone else has done, I think it's maybe worth telling the second submitter "hey we've got something similar to this already" if it's not a last second submission, especially when there are so few participants and with a "submit as many as you want and the last is counted" rule. I actually had a different outfit I didn't like as much and could have swapped out before the deadline (behold, "I searched 80s fashion trends on Google"). I'd much rather get 10 points for an outfit that doesn't look like a cheap copy of someone else's.

Actually... to this point... how do people feel about not having secret submissions for contests like this? The first time we did an Animal Crossing contest (and I think maybe even for the first XIV glam contest?) we just posted our entries right in the thread, so everyone knew what everyone else's submissions were. You'd still have the problem of everyone submitting last minute but at least you'd also be able to pivot last minute.

Like I guess if someone goes seriously all out, it would spoil the surprise, but I feel like I wouldn't mind? I feel like it also drums up excitement in the events to see some entries get posted because otherwise the threads just look so dead and lonely all GT until suddenly there's results. u_u

 

[5qwerty]

OK my signal is back and I wanted to add that pictionary was always a very nice chill event to have and I would love to see it return in the future. Though, this year Bingo filled the hole in my heart where the pictionary event usually fills, so idk how things will be if both are running. I always liked the super chill vibing events and those are always better if they're less competitive cuz I can just chill and do dumb stuff.

 

[Aquacorde]

i really do think the points system as a whole is good & functional; as with everything there is always room for some improvement but the SYSTEM is doing just fine. ultimately the 2 issues are 1) one team did not take a lot of long-form events and 2) some specific events need point adjustment. 1 is solved by, yknow, doing a thing next year. 2 is trickier but i genuinely do not believe that EVERY long form event is unbalanced, nor that every long form event needs to adjust in the same way in order to be fair. like, SWC and Create-a-Pokémon and GT Challenge and Art Swap should always have high point values, because even if theres only two participants - the effort that goes into a whole ass story, a custom Pokémon, playing a whole Pokémon game, and putting out multiple full art pieces is a LOT.

like, I spent a total of about 2hrs in AC and that was mostly wandering around my island. i spent the entire two weeks thinking about and writing my entry for SWC. if AC had 12 entries and SWC had 3, and i got top three in both, it would feel like absolute shit to win fewer points for something I truly crafted.

if we have any events that should be adjusted on a sliding scale it would have to be the ones that require several users to run well. egg swap, i see the point. battling events. any future event that needs similar participation. because in that case the amount of participants is a modifier for the amount of effort needed. people who write for swc or play gt challenge are putting their whole asses in no matter how many others are doing it. it's not really the same, even if the current point awards are all in the "long-form" category.

re: public submissions for costume- i like drumming up the activity and all. i think people should be able to change their submission up until the deadline still and have their final submission be the one that counts bc i can see potential for people changing their mind or being inspired to be more competitive after seeing other submissions. also potentially demotivating if someone posts something really good and people dont think they can compete? idk. not a No, just thoughts

 

[Aldo]

Specific Events: Paint and Describe

• I think keeping us updated on how's it going would be good too :')

I usually updated the chain post whenever someone sent me a submission. Might make note of that in the OP too

 

[Mewtwolover]

I still believe a third team made just for the people who'd rather just play some of the games for fun, or don't really have time to go whole hog on events is a good answer to this. That way people who do have the time and dedication to win can be matched with (mostly) only other people who have that same determination and time. It might not be a pefect fix, but I'm pretty dang sure it will help out a lot, and the competitive teams can still be randomly sorted like they were this year.

I agree with you, a third team like that would be nice. Of course you can just ignore teams and stay neutral like I did in this GT.

 

[Kitty]

I usually updated the chain post whenever someone sent me a submission. Might make note of that in the OP too

yeah i only noticed it at the end just before you posted the first piece!!! I think it's bc there was no ping nor bold title in the thread saying that there was an update haha

 

[gimmepie]

Specific Events: Art Swap

• The participation of everyone involved in Art Swap! For a competitive, chill event, this is amazing. :D I love seeing everyone's art and some people went hard. My god.
• Points system was workable and it was simple enough to not be confusing.
• My excel sheet was pretty nice. B)
• I have to admit me and GP did not exactly have the same idea of a "fully rendered" piece of work. We've had debates throughout GT on why x piece of art is a full render and y piece of art isn't. I think next year I definitely have to make that clear. Maybe provide examples on what we do recognize as full rendered pieces. :]
• Points scoring could have been done from the user side to promote honesty and self evaluation. While it's something that we could double check on our end, every other Art event I know does this format and it's worked out for them. Maybe even have an effort bonus score when u just feel super proud of that one piece too!! Hmm
• RE-ADD the Art Vibe calls for this one specifically!! We had the prompts for it, we can just add bonus participation points for that too. I think it would be neat just hanging out for an hour and drawing?

I couldn't be much happier with how Art Swap went. The activity and the effort people put in were nuts and it felt great to see it all coming in and see how hype people were during the reveal. I admit though, I also kinda missed the chill art calls we had last year. I don't think we even need to add prompts since peoples' requests are already that. It'd just be nice to have the art vibes sometimes.

As for scoring, I don't particularly like the idea of letting participants score themselves and would rather we had a uniform set of rules to keep things fair. That said though, yeah, we definitely had some different ideas of what should score in what category and I think going forwards we should definitely go into the next one with a clearer idea of what should score what.

Specific Events: PMD&D: Paradox Stuff

• I think instead of tailoring moves to specific Pokemon it would be neat instead to have a "databank" of moves under specific types; each Pokemon to have an allocation of particular moves they would like provided that it falls under stuff they learned (or since you aren't exactly following the BST aside from typings; said Pokemon can only learn said types?) IK Lycan was suffering when Shak decided to go for Iron Moth instead of Flutter Mane, haha.
• Having only three people might make it weird tbh (3 is not a comfy number- 4 is the comfy number); glad that I got paired with Shak bc it was relatively comfy with us already knowing each other and just playing off quips but if it were me with someone I didn't already know it might have gone either way (rly good or rly bad bc I'm an awkward person).
• (8/28) We didn't even get to play :'D So definitely something to note for next year please I don't think having a S0 in hopes for just 3 people is a vibe

I am actively working on a move compendium as part of the finalised sourcebook/rules document we're hoping to have ready for anyone to use soon. Once that is done, we won't have to tailer moves to Pokemon each time anymore necessarily because we'll have that readily available to reference.

A session can work fine with three people, but I do agree it was really unfortunate what happened with your group. It's difficult to guarantee a group of four with people having different timezones and commitments though, so we'll have to see what happens with next year.

Snip

Snop

To continue the talk of sliding points and build on what Anna is saying, I really do not like the idea of a sliding scale for events like the ones Anna mentioned that require a lot of time and effort from a participant regardless of what other people are doing. Anna talked about her time spent on the SWC as an example, so I'll throw in some Art Swap numbers. I sent in 20 art pieces for the Art Swap. The quickest of those took me about 1.5 hours to complete. The longest sometimes took 3-4 hours. Honestly, the cursed Cradily!Ditto might actually have taken 5 in the end. Even if I split the difference and assume 2-2.5 hours per drawing/painting/animation/whatever, that's 40-50 hours of effort spent on that event that would have been the same regardless of how many people participated. I just would have drawn more stuff for less people because drawing lots was the whole point. That was me. Erica completed 31 drawings. I don't know how fast Erica draws, and her submissions ranged from sketches to very detailed renders and included one animation too. So I'd assume that she spent at least as much time as me if not more. Even people who drew much less still typically would have contributed several hours of effort.

If we take a look at the Pokemon challenge, according to Google, Scarlet and Violet have an estimated play time of about 31 hours. HGSS has an estimated play time of about 40 hours before factoring in Kanto. Challenge runs, by virtue of all the extra rules and requirements and the grinding that necessitates, extend that time even further. That time does not change if fewer people join.

Events like that should absolutely not devalue the work of each individual based on the participation (or lack thereof) of others. That isn't even remotely fair to the people who put in those hours of effort.

For events based on interactivity between participants, I'm more open to the idea though. Doing a handful of FC battles in the final days should not be able to net you the same kind of points as the aforementioned 30+ hours of work. I don't know if I'm a fan of making scoring overly in-depth or complex, but I do agree that something should be in place here to stop that. Whether it's a daily requirement for number of X or a different set of scoring rules for Y, I don't know. But I do agree with the notion that people shouldn't be able to cheese "easier" events to end up scoring the same amount of points as people who worked their asses off to create something special or who grinded hours of a challenge run.

One last thing for the moment because this is getting long, but I want to say one final thing about the idea of a neutral team that has been floated. That is that if you really don't care about the competitive element (assuming there is one next year), then you're not going to be bothered if you aren't netting your team many points. So I don't know if I really buy that the same people who want a neutral team are also the people who don't care about the competitive side. But even ignoring that like... the competition is already secondary to just doing the events you like and having fun. Just doing what you enjoy doing is already passively adding to your team's score, so there's no reason to be hyper-fixated on "am I contributing?" And nobody is going to force you to do events you don't want to do. At most people are going to post trying to drum up activity in general which is something you can easily ignore/say no to. I think a problem is being manufactured here that doesn't actually exist.

 

[Explorer of Time]

I only really participated in four events, and I wasn't really interested in the whole points aspect. I'll give a rundown below, for my thoughts on each event.

Eevee's Arcade: This was pretty fun, if mildly annoying how multiple games ended up having to be replaced because of infinite-score bugs.

Mind Read the Room: This was easy to do, and was a nice low-effort (on my part) activity to do when I was busy with other stuff.

Pokemon VGM Sharing: I loved this, and I definitely wanted to see this again next year. I loved seeing what music everyone else liked, and got to share my own favorites.

Running out of time - GT 2023 Pokémon Challenge: Lastly, we have the Challenge Run, which took up most of my time this get-together and I still only made it halfway through. Part of this is on me for giving the challenge-runners a blank check to pick my game and give me a relatively harder one, but the real issue came from all the team change-ups I had to do because of all the rule changes.

Blaze Black 2 Redux thankfully has a very good selection of Pokemon and each segment was fun in its own way, but having to switch out my entire team twice, and the two partial team-switches I made (one to get some earlier team-members back + train a shiny, the other to score extra points at the end of the challenge because I had no hope of making it to the end), made it really really time consuming in real time.

If we ever do this again, I'd recommend either extending the get-together challenge to a month or so, or having a challenge that doesn't necessitate complete team overhauls so frequently.

I'm glad the mods will let me continue it, though, since it's quite fun now that I'm playing at my own pace and not worrying about real-time deadlines anymore.