IMPORTANT: Get-Together 2024 Feedback

[wolf]

If the personality sorting is unwanted, the team sorting could be random next year without a quiz. Maybe a Game Corner or lottery theme? This would be easier to implement in Discord too.

Battle Bash:
I did enjoy battling with friends again and just chilling and watching dumb stuff happen (there was a Monotype random game where I got the entire elephant genealogy of Great Tusk, Donphan, and Iron Treads). I did not enjoy getting ladder PTSD for a meager 400 points, which ended up being worth the same as losing 20 battles to someone of my own team in a highlighted format. Despite the points system kind of needing a rework, I can see the effort you made in trying to make it more balanced, wolf. You addressed some of the issues in the prior years with banning 1v1s and same-team battling, but I'm not sure if a freestyle battling system is ever not just going to a giga grindfest (between members of the same team, I might add) given that the battling demographic isn't quite here anymore. I was going to suggest making acquiring GT points based on how many battles you played, up to a threshold, but people may not play once they pass that threshold (and the point payout may not even be able to be that high in order to be balanced with other GT events). Overall, fun event, wish we had more people battling, and wish we could have things be a bit less "I need to grind enough to beat the other guy on the other team".

I like the idea of a threshold. I assume gold/silver/bronze medals would be scrapped in that case. Instead of a hard cap, there could also be diminishing returns. E.g., winning X battles gives Y GT points, then the awarded points get halved each time the user reaches the next threshold. Eventually each threshold would only award 1 GT point at minimum. The thresholds could be team- or individual-oriented (i.e., team winning X battles gives them GT points or individual winning X battles gives their team GT points). Anyway, it has a lot of potential to be unbalanced and abused (especially without a hard cap), so the details would have to be hashed out next year.

Another idea is to try a ratio, sort of like Baton Pass. It could start with 150:150 GT points for the two teams, then the team with more wins shifts the ratio in their favor.

If I host the battling event next year, I'll just focus on simplicity and remove all point bonuses except for same/opposing team (depends on how the point system works), team-building formats, and maybe showcased formats. Only you laddered, so it's probably not worth cluttering the OP with that option. Same with the battle bot and live tournaments, since the server didn't work out. Replacing Battle Bash with Random Rumble would be simpler too, but I kind of like leaving team-building formats available just in case. If showcased formats return, I'll probably include more formats every 1-3 days because I imagine it gets boring battling in the same one over and over.

 

[5qwerty]

Year	A (Aecor, Shackled Arqueros, Apricorns, Aqua)	B (Caelum, Shadowed Guerreros, Gears, Magma)	C (Solum)
2021​	4411​	2910​	6670​
2022​	2056​	13711​
2023​	7140​	3754​
2024​	15168​	6984​

Wow Arqueros actually out-Caelum'd Caelum.

I like the idea of a threshold. I assume gold/silver/bronze medals would be scrapped in that case. Instead of a hard cap, there could also be diminishing returns. E.g., winning X battles gives Y GT points, then the awarded points get halved each time the user reaches the next threshold. Eventually each threshold would only award 1 GT point at minimum. The thresholds could be team- or individual-oriented (i.e., team winning X battles gives them GT points or individual winning X battles gives their team GT points). Anyway, it has a lot of potential to be unbalanced and abused (especially without a hard cap), so the details would have to be hashed out next year.

Another idea is to try a ratio, sort of like Baton Pass. It could start with 150:150 GT points for the two teams, then the team with more wins shifts the ratio in their favor.

If I host the battling event next year, I'll just focus on simplicity and remove all point bonuses except for same/opposing team (depends on how the point system works), team-building formats, and maybe showcased formats. Only you laddered, so it's probably not worth cluttering the OP with that option. Same with the battle bot and live tournaments, since the server didn't work out. Replacing Battle Bash with Random Rumble would be simpler too, but I kind of like leaving team-building formats available just in case. If showcased formats return, I'll probably include more formats every 1-3 days because I imagine it gets boring battling in the same one over and over.

Yeah I would think that the medals would have to be scrapped if thresholds are done. Ratio thing might be a bit weird depending on the implementation because perhaps the weaker players would be disincentivized to participate.

I thought of some ideas just now and may forget by next year. I think it may be beneficial to announce showcased format changes both in Discord and on the forums to remind people that this event is running. I forgot if this was done last year or not but this year I just kinda left Battle Bash float to the back of my head until it was time to grind things out - perhaps others just forgot about it entirely and the thread slowly moved towards the bottom of the page. Another idea is that teambuilding for certain formats may be daunting, so when showcased teambuilding formats are announced, we could include some of the sample teams for that format in the thread (and/or announcement) so that less experienced battlers have an easier time getting into things.

 

[Juno]

the 2022 chat stats 💀

As a Magma who is usually sorted into the 'loud' team in previous years, I definitely noticed a difference in the chat atmosphere and I agree, it was definitely a more reserved and chill chat than I'm used to for what it's worth, but anyway

How many events did you participate in?

Art Swap, SWC, Dress to Impress, DJ Battles, Animal Crossing costume contest, Movie Night, Pictionary, Mind Read the Room, 1 QueUp session, Archipelago, Gartic and Jackbox, so 12

- How close was this to what you planned on?

I think I hit most of my go-tos, but I always want to do more!

- Which event was your favourite?

I too always love the live events/stuff you actively play with other people, so I think I had the most fun with Pictionary, Gartic and Jackbox, and Archipelago!!!!

The latter was a very close game and I love how competitive it got in the items thread. I am personally glad we finished in about a week though, otherwise there would have been no time for me to do anything else lol

And art swap and SWC just because I love making things! I'm terrible with deadlines and I did see everybody in Aqua making fun of my 11:59 submission lmfao but it is kinda the only way I get anything done so I like having that push of a hard deadline to do things

+1 to just More of the live events, I think the Pictionary schedule was quite good but Gartic and Jackbox could have definitely used more sessions/hosts - not like a criticism or anything because I know the hosts did their best with their scheduling, I just wanted to play more!

- Which events did you not participate in, but wish you had?

I think I would have wanted to try: Baton Pass, Egg Swap, Create-a-Pokemon, Pokemon GO, PMD&D, and TCG creation if time permitted

For Egg Swap, through no fault of Kip's cause I know this is usually done with the latest main game, ScarVio just never appealed to me and remains the only main series game I do not own so I couldn't participate

- Did you feel like you had enough time to do everything you wanted to do?

never but that was on me

MISC.

+1 to time BBCode!!!!!! I actually saw this in the Art Stream thread and I couldn't figure out how it works and I was too shy to ask so I just forgot about it but yes we should absolutely all do this next year

From a host's perspective, I don't know if this is possible but it would be amazing if there is a way to schedule posts on xF - for Bingo draws and Hideout updates, I had to pick times I knew I would be at a computer and that doesn't always work for everyone.

The latter is less important for Bingo, but the way Hideout went, like Kieran said, I think a lot of people weren't able to look at the thread before most or all the tasks were already finished and I don't know what the solution to that is, since someone is always going to be missing out at some point no matter what time they go up.

My initial idea was actually to just randomly drop tasks one by one several times throughout the day and you have to keep checking the thread for it so it does actually feel like random people are putting up tasks on a request board or something, but I couldn't have time to do that and if scheduling was possible I think that could be a neat twist for next year.

And thank u all for the high praise of Hideout, definitely smashed my expectations of how into it people would be message received, bigger and more next year

Can also definitely do more categories in for Bingo!

POINTS THOUGHTS

I think this ties into what's being discussed above - I'm not familiar with Battle Bash but it sounds like a similar problem I think a few other events have

I started writing this off what Chura said but this is not just for art swap points specifically (and to preface, art swap is always going to be fun and goated and I love it regardless, this is just some thoughts I have on the points system) - I think a lot of events that could do this might benefit from awarding a smaller amount of GT points per individual action rather than using their own points system and then converting it to a lump sum of GT points to the winning team or just three people at the end.

Even if it's a very small amount of points, in the case of art swap - like 1 GT point per sketch, and up to 3-5 GT points per very nice, completely polished artwork or something still graded based on the scoring system (I did like the considerations in this new rubric with clean/rough lines color shading bg etc), I know a lot of people aren't doing this for the points but for people that do want to contribute and help the team in the event in a small way without making an ungodly amount of art, it's nice that your effort is worth something because drawing even 5, 10 pieces of art in two weeks while trying to participate in other events is a decent amount of time and effort and it does kind of suck that, for example in this year, if you did not make a minimum of like 40 pieces of art (and you didn't land one of the achievements), then everything you did was effectively worth just the same 10 participation points.

Again, I know this does not matter to a lot of people because the fun of making the art and the art they receive back is enough of a reward in and of itself, but if your goal is to scale down the pressure of having to make dozens of pieces of art for the event, I think this is something worth thinking about.

And like I said, some of the other events could do this too, like some the trivias - I think both teams work hard and we all agree the trivia questions are quite difficult, so I think a system where each question or at least each set is worth a certain amount of GT points would be a better direct representation of effort to points, like the way the Quizathlon is done.

I understand that'll be a pretty heavy reworking and rescaling of points per event and it could be more work to keep track of for EOs, and I understand this could end up making a lot of events worth way more points than they currently do if people end up doing a lot a lot for an event that theoretically has no limit like art swap, and we are all quite comfortable with the range of like 300 pts + participation pts system per event right now, but if every EO adheres to a similar effort-to-points system then I don't think it's a huge issue if, for example, we end up ending GTs with each team in the 10,000+ points range rather than 4-5k, because it would then all just be scaled relatively. I think if we do this we could even nix participation points where they are unnecessary, because the participation is already rewarded by how much you contributed to the event.

And on a personal note, even if someone goes super crazy in like art swap and gets a ton of points alone, I personally think it's fine because they earned and deserve it? Like Mersie drew a hundred pictures for art swap lol, she deserves all the points she earned and more; she did the work. My issue with how it is now is just that the person who drew, say 20-30 pieces of art ends up earning the exact same amount of points as the person who made one sketch, you know?

But I will say that all in all, I don't think things are terribly unfair as it is now and despite having lost this year I do think the points gap was not as egregious as previous years so maybe it's not something that desperately desperately needs reworking, I just think it would be a nice change where even smaller amounts of effort or like a large cumulative amount of effort will contribute to and have a scaled effect on the overall success of a team, because as it stands now in some of events, if you don't win, you lose, and I think it's because this was a system made when we had 3-4 teams and we don't anymore. There's a standard in a lot of events where the winning team or like 1st/2nd/3rd are just awarded like a fixed amount of points more than the others no matter how much they won by, in events where this is quantifiable.

Course this isn't applicable to everything, like I think most of the longforms are fine - the internal scoring makes sense with something like SWC or Create-A-Pokémon where they have their own rubrics that determine 1/2/3.

sorry kinda all over the place with this cause I'm writing this thinking about like 6 different events and their points systems lol but I hope it kinda makes sense. I'm also getting a little deja vu typing this so I think I may have brought this up already in a previous year lol so sorry if I'm rehashing something that's already been squashed

 

[Vendily]

How many events did you participate in?
All the Trivia (but mostly VG and Pokémon, I only answered a few E&M questions), Hideout, Bingo, SWC, Archipelago, Animal Crossing Fashion, Pictionary, Gartic, Arcade, and Dress to Impress (Flair).
How close was this to what you planned on?
I managed to squeeze in more events than expected, despite wonky wifi in the first week (I had to hotspot a few times for Archipelago) and a full time job. I tried to do the ones that give a few points for participating because even if I did terrible (Arcade), the fact that I tried at all still helps the team.
Which event was your favourite?
Tough one honestly. The Hideout challenges were fun (but somewhat demoralizing to find Aqua finished them before I even get the chance to open the thread... Not really a knock against the challenges themselves though.)
And Archipelago was great, I loved that. It was really tight in the end too.
Which events did you not participate in, but wish you had?
Art Swap seemed cool, but I barely had time to do Bingo cards and those were just simple scribbles in Paint.NET, not the actually rendered art that'd be somewhat expected.
None of the Jackbox sessions overlapped with when I was home either, which was a shame. The fact I got into a few Pictionary and a Gartic was more down to luck.
Did you feel like you had enough time to do everything you wanted to do?
Not really, between the job and Eevee Expo's Game Jam, there just wasn't enough hours in the day to participate more than I already did.
For newcomers or people who haven't participated in a GT for a while, what drew you in?
I haven't played in a GT since 2021. I don't really remember what made me skip out on 2022. 2023, I just stepped away from online in general. But I'm back now, even if it's with less time.

 

[Venia Silente]

There's a few specific questions we'd like people responding to fill out:

- How many events did you participate in?
- How close was this to what you planned on?
- Which event was your favourite?
- Which events did you not participate in, but wish you had?
- Did you feel like you had enough time to do everything you wanted to do?
- For newcomers or people who haven't participated in a GT for a while, what drew you in?​

Sure thing, I'm now out of Annual Anxiety Mode (aka: SWC) so I'd like to answer a survey on How Much Fun Did I Have And How Can I Be Tricked Into Having More Fun, why not.

Going in order:

- How many events did you participate in?
One majorly (SWC, BUT OF COURSE!) and three minorly (E&M, VG Trivia and Pokémon Trivia). This is pretty much unchanged from the last... like, 3 years, except that traded a bit of activity across the Trivias compared to previous years (I had lots of fun with E&M this year even if I couldn't help much).

- How close was this to what you planned on?
Eeeeehhh...

Does "about as close as expected but not the way I wanted" even help something? :p

This year's GT caught me more like as a surprise in terms of theming, the Best Teams choice was was welcome and then we also got a bit of activity from the other Teams to adjust to (Team Flair, hehehe). In exchange, I feel like it took me too much time to feel ready to participate. The event felt, to me, less announced and the particular games less "ready, set, go" than in previous years.

That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy the events and the GT as a whole, but admittedly I'm reaching the age where "earn your happy ending" is vastly overrated.

- Which event was your favourite?
The whole mpreg general thingy. No, really, this year's E&M Trivia felt pretty fun to participate in even though I didn't know much of anything! There was this feeling, like it was better organized or more receptive and energetic than Pokémon Trivia this year. Perhaps it was because also the music and bands stuff was really cool and you could feel you'd get to know and vibe with the music.

It's not that I don't like SWC, but as an event it comes up with a lot of anxiety and baggage that mean a lot of drag when running for favouriteness. Much as I like that event, it's usually going to fall 2nd or 3rd place before the one or two events that *particularly* catches my attention for hit-and-run participation in a given year.

- Which events did you not participate in, but wish you had?
I'd say, TCG and Create-a-Mon. Maaaaaybe the Egg Swap.

Create-a-Mon and events like it are pretty much tailor-designed to lure me in, but unfortunately I lack in two things that are highly relevant to participate in them: 1.- artistic (non-writing) capabilities and 2.- spare time and peace of mind (because of SWC).

Since I'm coming up with my 3rd year already of creating new Pokémon, I feel like it would be great if one of these days I can create a mon *specifically* for the GT. I can always do lore, ecological design, movelists, that kind of stuff. But I'd need someone else to do The Arts. In the meantime, what I can do is (for 3rd year in a row) offer my services as a companion in case anyone wants the lore and technicals help for creating a mon. Who knows, it might be interesting to team up with someone sometime.

Egg Swap sounds fun and community-building, but unfortunately it was severely limited this year. I'll get on that in a few.

- Did you feel like you had enough time to do everything you wanted to do?

There's never enough time for GT. Lots of stuff to do and you have to timeshare to get the good experience in the games you like - and then you are left wanting for more, even if you've already spent yourself. It's like the Olympics (thematic!). GT carries the burden of greatness.

But hey, maybe the real GT is the mpreg friends we made along the way.

Additionally, please feel free to share any other relevant feedback you have about the Get-Together. Do be mindful about the type of feedback you are giving though. Make sure the feedback you are providing is constructive and useful. An event not fitting your specific schedule isn't helpful for Event Organisers. However, if an event isn't running enough for its popularity, that might be something to consider. Remember to keep things civil. Everyone involved in making the GT happen is a volunteer who invested a lot of time and effort into making something for the community to enjoy. You don't have to have loved everything, but you shouldn't use this as a place to be vitriolic.

I'm going to get the obvious feedback out of the way right away:

I saw the mpreg. Really guys, what party did I miss out on and where do I get the number of y'all's dealer? xD Now for real... I feel like I missed out on a huge community folkore thingy and now I'm not "in" anymore...

This year the trivias, in particular E&M, felt quite entertaining even if I am usually limited to hit-and-run when it comes to E&M and can only mostly do a more proper helpful work when it comes to VG Trivia. I'm guessing at least for E&M part of this effect was the choice of stuff to trivia on: the music, the bands, it's the kind of stuff you can hum the music in your head or recall the good ol' TV series as they ran on TV cable (with ads!) and feel comfy and in-vibe with the event at large. Pokémon Trivia, by nature of what community are we in, has the same good serotonin effect.

One medium issue (as in an issue of medium :p ) for the Trivias, IMO, is that they kinda require to go waaaaaay off PC to participate to a good level. Want to be up to date with ongoing hunt for solutions? You need to fire up not only PC but also the PC Discord thread for your team and the spreadsheets on Google Docs / Drive. That's usually not too bad when they're the only thing that you are doing, but trying to keep up to these events while also doing something else (such as catching up at work, or talking to friends elsewhere) can really hog your PC's (computer, not community) resources and make line go up ventilation fans go brrrrrrr.

There's... actually nothing we're doing wrong here. A spreadsheet (or any document model that can intuitively represent tallying up) does is the best mechanism to congregate team efforts for this kind of stuff: the natural, battle-tested choice. It's a problem *long ago* solved, it's just the Internet of 2024, riddled with ads and eternally loading javascript, makes the superb solution suck when you have to keep three sites open for the same task.

At best I'd suggest giving the forum themselves a try, we do have native rich-text support for tables now that PC is migrated to Xenforo and I'm sure someone will come up with cool CSS for PC tables and if in the future we can get some sort of "see OP post in every page" feature that'd be a nifty help for event threads that see lots of activity.

(That said, if I can ever lift the idea of getting more of a service provision of our own running for our creatives, a PokéCommunity collab notes taking webapp would be just, like, One RIng fit for this)

Speaking of forums... I'm thankful for @Devalue having made the good starting posting the links in my team's forum section for example. Here's for these seeing more action in future events.

There's nothing useful that I can say about SWC that I haven't said in previous years, I think? I'd have to go re-read. SWC is stable and is pretty much made of stuff that I like. I like to write. I like the anticipation. I liked the prompt. I liked watching the number of contestants go up, line goes up makes serotonin gland happy. I liked the entries I've read so far. They also can give Nostalgia, who knew.

As for whether the prompts should be concrete or abstract, I saw some commentaries on it, I'm admittedly fine either way. Whichever is easier for the judges; but if there ever comes the want or need to try something different, how about a structural requirement instead of a word prompt? Like, say, the requirement being have the story feature a given narrative device or even a certain sequence of dialogue (requirements thematic to that year's GT I guess).

There's also achievements but hmmm I guess there's talks to be had there? I'll try to be awake around that time.

Admittedly the events that make people actually do vidya co-op stuff are alluring to me. They largely remind me of a better time. It's just, structurally they are out of my reach because more often than not they are too tied to platforms that are b*tches when it comes to online now and I where possible won't touch that with a 6 m pole.

The example that I was looking at from a distance is Egg Swap, which is something I've done before with other communities... back in the day, when 3DS online existed and was Mostly Actually Free. These days, the event is locked to the games of the Current Gen for example, which means you need the Switch plus the games ($120 for what is technically *one* game, as usual! Oh and you need the latest updates, pleb) plus a paid NSO sub. At best, an improvement would be support in PC for a community lan server like Link X-Kai... But that's a call for event organizers to make and requires more time and room for the technical set up as well.

(Frankly, that's all besides the point: The Superior Experience was the 3DS games with the PSS. Peak Online. Asks for a Level 99 Shiny Zapdos. Offers Caterpie in exchange.)

None of this is the organizers fault, to be fair: just a matter of being mindful of what markets one is trying to work with... or despite. How to solve that in the future? Well, for the most part it's up to Nintendon't if we'll have online, not to us, so rip I guess? I do would promote studying the opportunity to go with homebrew Pokémon games or with post-market networks for the legacy official games (G5, G6 for example) when we have the chance. I mean, PC is supposed to be well-known because of its romhacking and gamedev community, right? Maybe it's about time to give them more proper tools and to promote them and the tools they use.

Oh well. One can dream.

Of the events I looked at, I feel the TCG event and the Trivias (in particular VG Trivia) are the ones most polished in terms of improving and securing on prior experience. I feel they have run pretty smoothly for quite some time already, they are fun and educational to look at (and in the case of VG Trivia for me, also fun to participate) and they deliver a user experience that seems to leave little room for difficult issues. As I've gone on before, for example, VG Trivia is basically put your headphones on and adjust your reading glasses, ooooh it's Time to Nostalgia. TCG is definitively something that I would have been glued to if for some reason SWC was not a thing this year, I'd bet.

I can't opinionate on events like Animal Crossing or FFXIV Glamour except they sound fun and I'd like to be around in either of those games by around 2028. Here's hoping! VGM Sharing? I was supposed to be there but oh look, VG Trivia and E&M Trivia distracted me lol. Had far too much fun with VGM Sharing last time so I hope to not miss it next time.

On GT itself, I'd first mention that I'm thankful this continues to be a thing, and that people are commited to continue long-standing events. You do good Arceus' work. Frankly I think that's something that strengthens the "personality" of the GT: you know the time of the year comes, where you'll get to see recurring people, events and levels of activity that give off a vibe closer to that of a festival.

In what regards to timing, I could see maybe extending it up to one more week if the organizers want to consider it, to spread some events across some more, for the people who want to participate in more things; of course it comes at a cost, one more GT week is a week the organizers have to have.

edit by Aquacorde: there's also a public album for everyone to upload GT memes and memories to!
Click here to view or contribute :)​

Yeah I saw it. May the mpreg remain there for posterity. XD


That's it at a first instance. I'm still catching up to the thread to see if there's any conversation on the feedback so far that I feel I could join in. But in the end, still, it feels nice to have GT around.

 

[Arcaneum]

How many events did you participate in? 19 (Battle Bash, E&M Quizlathon, SWC, Art Swap, The Hideout, Bingo, DJ Battles, QueUp, Archipelago, Movie Nights, Dress to Impress, Gartic Telephone, Pictionary, Jackbox, Art Stream, Eevee's Arcade, PokéCommunity Stadium 2, Mind Read the Room, VGM Sharing)
How close was this to what you planned on? Pretty much!
Which event was your favourite? Archipelago
Which events did you not participate in, but wish you had? Most of the events I hosted lol.
Did you feel like you had enough time to do everything you wanted to do? For some events no (namely Baton Pass), but that was primarily due to EO responsibilities and being sick the whole GT.

General Feedback

GT Turnout

There is going to be a bit of moaning, but before that I will preface it by saying this GT has been generally very nice to participate in! I can't remember exact numbers for previous years but breaking over 200 people this year was great and it showed! Lots of good event turnouts (Movie nights having 20+ entrants from EACH TEAM this year when last year it was 20 ALTOGETHER, record amounts of people in Pictionary, Jackbox and Gartic telephone, Art Swap getting nearly 450 pieces of art and so on), generally active chats all around and the such! Was really great to see.

There were definitely areas that need a lot of improvement, but I think a lot of things otherwise felt a bit streamlined? I'm not sure, I just personally am gauging this on the fact that despite being as ill as I was throughout the whole thing, I have come out of the event feeling nowhere near as bad as I normally do! Hopefully the same energy continues either way.

Theming

There were definitely half-baked parts of this, which was primarily due to just when the discussion came up and everything, and that showed. NPC teams were just not really fully realised (and actually really pissed me off for one particular reason that will be mentioned later on) and the Olympics side could've definitely had a bit more to it, but again that's not because I think the theme sucks it was just a thing on Management's end. Pretty much all of this however was eclipsed by the Magma vs. Aqua part. This was really strong and really fun, loads of events managing to at least incorporate easily into their setups/CSS/etc. and something that was once again relatable and easy to mold to! Lots of cool nicknames coming up, people really getting into it and it was I think a loose and fun enough theme for people to be able to jump in easily.

Sorting

Okay for real can we just stop trying to sort on personalities/quirks/whatever based on teams and just go with the activity etc. stuff please. I am all for things for flavour, but I'd like it to end there. I just think that there have been a fair few times where... the quizzes just don't work when it comes to that. Granted it could be re-written in a way to avoid that... or we just have more creative freedom and not have it really matter as much? I like the idea of a game corner etc. thing that wolf mentioned! It would just save a lot of headache imo xd.

Discord vs. Forums - ditch the vs!!!

This is mostly just saying things need to be as similar as possible on Discord and the forums. As much as some people are very VERY for the forums and whatnot (I get it, PC started as a forum) like we do have a Discord server and it generally is a large platform that a lot of people use a lot more than the forums. If events and the such accommodate forum-only users, then I don't see why it can't be the other way around. Examples of all of this being:

• Schedule - why is it fully available on forums yet we were posting it daily on the server? Just have it fully available so someone isn't having to open up a whole new thing just to find it if they just wanted to know when something started the next day.
• Events - I don't think posting full event posts on the server is going to be too great just because of how text-heavy some of them are, but at least some form of events masterlist with a brief summary perhaps and a link to the forum thread for more info?
• Forums - Somehow we need to go in more with things like the team sections etc. I barely bothered with them because to be honest I didn't have a lot of time to spend but also... why would I when there was so little engagement versus a much more responsive and live team chat channel? Like if people are gunning for forum presence etc. so hard then let's embrace that.

On this note too, @TwentyExEx is there anything I've missed above, based on what you've mentioned below (I think it just cut out part of it NICE, but generally this whole part you were talking about)

Many events, I feel, are obfuscated by being reliant on both the forums and Discord. It may take more effort, but I believe the clarity of many events can be raised by giving as much information on Discord as there is on the forum posts.For example, I believe the Trivia events can gain a lot from displaying question information in a read only Discord channel rather than only a thread on the forums.I'm not calling for the erasure of the forum parts of GT, that is important to some people, but I hope that next year we can see more equity in information posted on Discord. Generally, I think we can get far more active participants and new blood into the events if we try our best to accommodate the Discord only users in as many ways as possible (team registration, event information, bingo card posting etc etc)

Scheduling

What a nightmare. Full schedule in one place with mistakes and information missing and day-by-day in another place, also with mistakes and information missing. I think the reasons have mostly been highlighted and looked at though, so my feedback is basically please can this be in one place where everyone needed (including EOs) can access and update as needed. At bare minimum, full schedule posted on both forums and discord and management improves communication with EOs to make sure any changes are implemented as soon as possible, because there were a lot of updates - including mine and yes I'm aware I'm at fault for a lot of this - which were missed.

Event Feedback

AC Fashion Event

I hadn't really taken a proper look this year, but I liked the voting idea for entries! All I can really suggest for feedback is maybe a little more promo next year - give people some more pokes throughout the GT about it!

Archipelago

Once again James manages to make my favourite event of the GT. When you first suggested doing this I was SUPER excited and the event has surpassed all expectations, despite my technical issues towards the end! It had a great turnout, everyone got involved from start to finish and the collaboration/shittalk was amazing. The addition of the GT points, items and the Pokémon for the battles was an incredible touch that made it even more exciting to take part in. And the fact it was so close was the cherry on top. Really great event that I hope makes a return in coming years. Also the inclusion of the test run and stuff was I think a great way to tackle any setup issues, as this is a hard thing to really spot any problems in until it's already underway!

My only critique is the same as everyone else - perhaps some more guidance on setup, but honestly you were on hand pretty much all of the time anyway so I can't think of any instances where not having this actually affected the event that much.

Art Streams

I managed to make it to one this year and enjoyed it! @Kitty I hear you on the music front - I THINK this is now possible again? I know that Discord's API changes and stuff caused some issues for a while and meant Discord bots couldn't pull from YouTube or something, but it's something we can definitely look into for sure, because I think it would be a really great addition for these, add some vibes and whatnot. Otherwise, really cute and fun and I especially loved the Regi idea, just adds a little unique spin to your event!

Art Swap

Another great turnout this year! Completely smashed it out of the park with the amount of entries we got, it was great! I really just love the way it literally brings the community together - we're all saying about what we've done, how much, progress updates and the such. Also I saw a lot of people that were not on board at first give it a go and the reactions have been amazing! Seeing new people come to an event and be excited for it the next GT is such a lovely thing to see. Great work again this year everyone and a really big thank you to the hosts once more for all your efforts.

Juno covered most of my concerns I think with this event and I know I saw I think Kitty already mention some things for next year. The only thing as a result I'll add is I think where possible anonymity of how many things someone has done would be great. I think Art Swap swamped a LOT of people this year and stopped them from doing other things, because it was knowledge that people were doing so much and as a result people were trying to keep up. Unsure on how to tackle that, but just wanted to highlight it for consideration.

Baton Pass

YAY IT CAME BACK. This was fun to take part in and I'm gutted I couldn't commit more than I did (although I think I did reach 10/13 segments in the end). The classes I think generally worked with no problems at all? The spreadsheets and forms really helped this year - the only thing I'd ask is if possible can we just include something that says the game? It was a bit hard navigating the sheet because as much as it had who started the save, sometimes there was a lot of information to parse and just having the option of being able to quickly track our missing Sapphire save for example would have been nice.

Otherwise, I really appreciate that we had Eleanor and EoT on hand to help with any issues and you were both very responsive. I don't know how it was for the other team, but I'd either like to see more from Janp or perhaps just not be on the list of EOs, only because there were times where the other two were not available and I honestly didn't ping you because I wasn't even sure you existed.

Battle Bash

I've always tried the battling events and I know wolf you have tried very, very hard to make things accessible to everyone whilst keeping some element of challenge and also trying to balance out the team side of things, but I am wondering whether this just needs rebuilding from the ground up or something. I'm not quite sure how which is the biggest problem. However I managed to take 1st place by joining in and just... battling two people on my team to get myself and one of them to the required amount of battles. I had no interaction or needed any interaction with someone from the opposite team and I think it took me all of about 3 hours (and that included passing out for 45 minutes) to achieve this.

Granted, a lot of time was again swamped by Art Swap and that was probably a large factor, but the event does feel a little bit like grind to win and probably going to be won by qwerty and whatever team he is on to be honest. I appreciate the inclusion of points for the laddering, but as me and qwerty realised it just... wasn't worth it when just to get to the 25 battle requirement I gained a minimum of 500 points if I just stick to the showcased format. Everything crossed we find that harmony next year!

Bingo

Banger event as always Karen! No Surge card this year but that's OK I will sob in my corner. Really great management of this, any timing issues you handled really well and despite grumpy/annoying people being rude about duplicate pulls and the such, you were on it. I appreciate that you pulled rounds that weren't around last year - I guess we could look at other Pokémon things as some people mentioned, but I don't think not including those diminishes the event in any way. I just love seeing all the great bingo cards to be honest and it's fun making silly things for it!

Create-a-TCG card

I think my only feedback is more judges please. The rubric used was really nice and providing people with the resources to start off was good. Would just be nice to see some more people judging!

Create-a-Pokemon

For this I know one of the biggest flops was providing a confusing extension/closing date! I think one thing I am going to look at are points for next year - I feel that people who go through all the effort to make something for this don't get rewarded as much and with the low participant count, I feel 150 points etc. might be a little much. Will also think of Achievements for next year too, to try and incentivise people trying different designs, teaming up and the such. TY again co-judges btw!

DJ Battles

I am overall glad with the turnout and how the event smoothed out towards the end, but I agree that it was very very messy in the beginning. For context - this is an event I have planned to do for PC anyway, but at a MUCH slower pace. As in, one pairing a week and voting being open all week. I tried to essentially condense that for this event and yeah there is a lot of work needed, But then this was me testing this out and overall happy that it turned out OK and people enjoyed it! Things I will be considering as per feedback:

• Changing themes for rounds - I will probably lose the musical etc. one for something like Pokémon. It's a bit more accessible and there were some grey areas. I also don't want to lose to the Friends theme again.
• Changing up voting - I'm unsure on how I am doing this right now, but as I have a model to at least analyse now, I can see what can be tweaked.
• Song submissions - I was initially worried about time and making people submit things in a small timeframe, but now that I have an idea of how long things take etc. I will get this set up so people aren't spending a long time submitting everything only to then just lose in the first round and feel it was a waste of time
• Points - I will be changing things so that participation for voting is rewarded more. I think the numbers speak for themselves there.

Dress to Impress

I know this was put together at the very last second, but this was fun! A very low effort (but could be big effort if you wanted) fun little event to just get people together and doing stuff based on theme. It generated a good chunk of conversation in the channels and the forums looked cute! Thankfully the technical issues were sorted AND we now know for next year!

E&M Quizlathon

Very good trivia event as always Tay! We are blessed that you have such a wide range of knowledge and take the time you do to set up your rounds. Some very hard but enjoyable trivia for sure! The scoring per day was really good and I think spurred on Team Magma to start performing much better in the later rounds for sure!

Eevee's Arcade

I know you've already mentioned what you try and do, but if possible some more research into the games picked would be appreciated. Perhaps looking at things like whether it's affected in certain browsers, is something maybe tied to your system clock and affected, things like that. We've had a few years of games just up and breaking and the problem is there's no compromise or anything for anyone involved in playing that game. It's just taken off and replaced with something else, so avoiding that would be great.

Also I'm not sure what it is, but some of the games were just... not good this year. The Ninja one this year was particularly bad - hitboxes were all over the place and it really did feel a little too RNG-reliant on where everything was. Same with the bounce game - you either just didn't encounter the bird enemies when you needed them not to, or got hoarded by them and lost. A shame, because I normally like taking part in this a lot!

Egg Swap

We touched on this briefly but I'm glad we got some more people this year! I think as time passes and more people get the games/consoles etc. I think we'll start creeping back up numbers-wise. Just glad to see you did bring it back this year Kip!

FF14 Glam Contest

TY for letting me judge again! Am glad that we got some numbers in, I think the event as it is works. Points are right, themes are right etc.

Gartic Telephone

I think, like all of the events in this umbrella, we just needed to host more where possible. Obviously things came up and stuff, but that's my only feedback really!

Jackbox & Pictionary

Jackbox - just hosting more where possible. Discuss timezones a bit more so that we try to cover all bases where we can; I think 3 sessions on the days we hosted could've been somewhat feasible and covered some times for those that couldn't join otherwise.

Pictionary - we had quite a lot of sessions and a reminder that we also want to participate in the GT, have other events and also needed to help run things so adding too much more wasn't really possible! I think next time we could maybe structure some more 'themed' rounds or something, I know we touched on that right near the end. Food for thought next time! Also anyone that does play and wants to help host, by all means please just shout when signing up!

Also, I am going to address this because it really fucked me off both as an EO and a player. Complaints about people playing the game need to stop. I'm sorry if you want people to draw the full art, or that people sometimes guess it based on the number of letters, but the aim of the game and event is to score points by guessing as quickly as possible. That's it, sorry but that is how the event works. We have SEVERAL events to showcase art and the complaining actually affected participation - people did not want to join voice channels or play because the complaining was getting quite bad. If I am hosting next year, I will be coming down on this.

PokéCommunity Stadium 2

Great event as always Deva! The addition of Aces was a nice and refreshing thing for the event. Only thing I'd say is if possible, consider seeing if you can go up to Battle Revolution next year or something? Only for something different, event is great otherwise!

Pokémon Movie Nights

It was fun joining some of these, but please can we change up the roster a little next year?

Pokemon Trivia

This actually felt a little like one of my worst years hosting this event. I think too many chiefs perhaps or something, I'm not sure. Mistakes were coming up and I think we perhaps went a little too hard with some of the things. I think I'll go back to usual hosting etc. next year and try to come up with Trivia to a similar level of the music, because I think those rounds seem to have achieved that balance? Loved doing the Super Sunday though, although might extend that duration to a full week. The sheets were helpful and as mentioned, I think next year having it for all Trivia events would be nice (Marcin I finally listened yay - also the one for this was a last minute I said about doing because of the fact there were three hosts).

Pokémon VGM Sharing

I much prefer how you did things this year 5qwerty. It felt a lot easier to take part in, although I know that we spoke about how the guessing part is just a bit iffy because it really needs a LOT of people taking part otherwise you're essentially trying to guess like who picked this song 2 times instead of 1, etc. Maybe we can look at incorporating this into DJ Battles somehow???

QueUp

This was fun! I'm glad we did something a bit more official this year with the QueUp room. The themes were fun to do, although I think we can look at making these mandatory next year (but as a result probably drop the songs required points or something) and the regulars will just need to deal with that, because I did enjoy when we were all taking part!

SWC

Event as a whole generally speaking is the same as is and that kinda works. I'm really glad I got an entry in and I am amazed I placed as high as I did - just a few things:

1. I personally am very unhappy that my 3rd place was given to one of the half-baked NPCs. I appreciate there was a tie for 2nd and that as far as I know that means placements go 1st, 2nd and then 4th, but if an NPC can get 3rd place points then that means I can get 3rd place points too.
2. Would it be worth changing up the rubric at all? I mostly say because firstly we've had our first non-fiction piece (wild) and I think the Character etc. one could really probably be split up in some fashion

The Hideout

Really enjoyed this again this year. I'm not sure which of the two formats I enjoy more... I think this one? It was so amazingly collaborative and the competition was insane once Magma started picking up. The events themselves were really fun too, a huge variety of things to do and the IRL ones I REALLY loved the inclusion of this year. It was so fun running around my garden trying to get pictures of flowers like a lunatic and rummaging for a blue sock. More of this please and thank you Karen!

Also:

luv u all xx

VG Trivia

Again, I think this was one of my worst VG Trivia as an EO! Just a lot of changes and stuff I think I did not get on with and as a result I think I didn't put as much thought into the questions. Lots of repeated games, things not checked properly, going overboard on the obscurity. Also probably won't host the Ask the Host round next year unless there is a lot of objection. Things I'll look at:

1. Bring back a variety of easy/medium/hard questions. Will probably aim for something like 3 Easy/4 Medium/3 Hard questions so everyone in the team can help out.
2. Try to limit same games/ coming up multiple times.
3. Something similar to Super Sunday
4. Internal points done differently - perhaps bring back bonus points for questions

Points I think I want to keep as they are - the setup I think is fine as it means teams still have a chance of equalising but can still come out on top with a decent lead if they try hard enough.

And I think that's it! Anything else I'll pop in here.

 

[Arcaneum]

We'll probably be looking at something else, but we'll update the thread to advise what is going on once we've decided!

Update on this - we will be allowing anyone with the GT2024 role access to gt-general and the team channels once archived I believe. Will also be doing the same for GT2021 onwards.

 

[Delta Crowned Sword]

Wanted to add for Eevee Arcade that none of the games were playable on mobiles, hence if someone is not at home or other reasons, then participating in it was not possible. Another thing is that the games there were requiring higher version of openGL even though all of those games were pretty basic in terms of graphics.



And another point; since Discord is primarily made for gaming and live streaming, hence there are some mini-games which can be played there and had been used in the event. Due to which for people who don't use Discord were left out from it. Hence if multiple mini-games based on Discord are chosen, so the effective alternative for forum users should also be there in order to provide the members from this side as well to play some games. There are some io games I think which requires browser, so could be considered but not necessary.


Or even better would be to post the schedule and related stuffs of those events on Discord only, as the Discord users will see that anyway without the need of coming here.



Even though the idea of Team vs Team was utilized, it never felt like all of these are team events. It was solely relying on individual brilliance and due to which the events about which some individuals are good were able to sweep the format, for example art-based events.

So if team vs team idea is needed to be used, then the focus on that part should be there which is more than flair alignment, otherwise the creation of team is nothing more than getting the respective badges and collection of points based on division.

 

[Arcaneum]

Even though the idea of Team vs Team was utilized, it never felt like all of these are team events. It was solely relying on individual brilliance and due to which the events about which some individuals are good were able to sweep the format, for example art-based events.

So if team vs team idea is needed to be used, then the focus on that part should be there which is more than flair alignment, otherwise the creation of team is nothing more than getting the respective badges and collection of points based on division.

It would be hard to make every single event something that the whole team has to take part in without things happening such as:

• Burnout - if we made the same number of events for example, that is a LOT of collaboration etc.
• Exclusion of users - some people join mostly for the atmosphere, or are generally a bit shy and therefore might want to just do things such as Bingo and Art Swap where you just do your thing and submit it in. Also that would mean everyone needs access to both the forums and Discord (which tbh imo it doesn't hurt anyone to use both for 2 weeks, especially Discord because you can literally hide everything but what is needed) which just isn't going to happen.

Otherwise I disagree that the GT is just about getting placements and not that there is not enough focus on the team part as a whole. However I do agree in terms of the forums and I think unfortunately that's because it is a lot easier to do some of these things (especially for some events) on Discord and therefore you kinda just miss out. Definitely something we can look at for the future though - can something be added on the forums to try and help build some camaraderie etc otherwise I can only advise people just get Discord for the weeks - get set up so you only need to interact with GT stuff and then just remove it afterwards if needed.

That said - feedback on the games is good! I wonder if there is something we could include as the like forum 'version' maybe, although I would advise if you do know then perhaps host the event yourself!

 

[Kitty]

re: time pls i am the most open to dms ever i just forget to respond like a normal person but how time works is that u use this [time](timestamp)[/time] and just replace the (timestamp) part with the timestamp you guys use for discord without the <t::x> part, alternatively i used https://www.timestamp-converter.com/ to grab the timestamp there instead

re: art swap points and anonymity that's v fair and valid, i'm thinking of definitely restructuring how it works and how we earn points (to gp's hatred) bc ik art swap is a lot and just rewarding the top 3 and the rest with participation pity points kinda feels bad and i get u, i get u a lot (and i still want to nerf sketches on top of this)

art stream bless thank u for discord music stuff i have a personal bot i use which just is hosting Red (the discord bot) on a vps and it doesn't get thru discord's systems but i think they've definitely chilled in the music bot killing spree they had earlier that i see people regularly using stuff like fredboat again

the swc 3rd place going to an npc definitely went over my head but yeah i'd agree just give it to 4th in that case i liked how u guys tried to make them "take part" but... not like that :') the fake events and fake points were neat and unobtrusive

 

[TwentyExEx]

On this note too, @TwentyExEx is there anything I've missed above, based on what you've mentioned below (I think it just cut out part of it NICE, but generally this whole part you were talking about)

Nope, didn't miss anything!

I like the idea of a summary of events in Discord with further information being available on the forums, good middle ground from what I was thinking initially.

I've never really thought of my suggestion as Discord v Forums and I don't really know how what I said could be taken that way. I think both have their place / function. I believe its worth seeing how we can maximise that function in the future.

 

[Mewtwolover]

Eevee's Arcade

I know you've already mentioned what you try and do, but if possible some more research into the games picked would be appreciated. Perhaps looking at things like whether it's affected in certain browsers, is something maybe tied to your system clock and affected, things like that.

Good ideas, I have several browsers installed so I can test the games with more than one browser.

 

[Devalue]

• How many events did you participate in? 13: Hideout, Baton Pass, Dress to Impress, Bingo, DJ Battles, Animal Crossing Fashion Contest, Eevee's Arcade, VGM Sharing, Movie Night, the three trivias, and Archipelago. Hosted PokeCommunity Stadium 2 and Mind Read the Room as well.
• How close was this to what you planned on? Participated in a little more than expected.
• Which event was your favourite? Archipelago or Baton Pass.
• Which events did you not participate in, but wish you had? None.
• Did you feel like you had enough time to do everything you wanted to do? Yes and no. Felt very pressed for time in the first week. "Finished" Baton Pass, Archipelago, and Eevee's Arcade largely at the end of week 1. Created a big time void in week 2. Spent some of that processing events, making Animal Crossing outfits, and drawing Bingo cards. Left a sizable hole still. Imagines a theoretical third (and fourth) week being pretty dull, personally.
  
  Cannot really recommend anything to fix that. Recognized the possibility of running out of playable saves in Baton Pass before going in. Cleared Archipelago sooner than expected. Hit a wall in Eevee's Arcade. Shrugs. Happens that way sometimes.

Had a great turnout this year. Clearly ought to pick a similar time next year.

Felt balanced on the scoring side of things, overall.

Liked the addition of Dress to Impress. Identified a person's team much easier. (Admittedly could have looked at the badge this year too, but shh.)

Approves of the three look format in Animal Crossing, also. Usually thought of a couple of ideas. Disliked having to decide which single idea was "best" in the previous years.

Honestly I didn't know much what I was doing lmaoo maybe if someone wants to skip the "teambuilding" aspect of it they can opt for like rental teams? E.g. here are 10 rental teams for the first 10 people who have no idea what to do; ofc it has no guarantees it'll win but that was my first thought

Seems reasonable. Demands the most time investment at the start because of teambuilding, which is when everyone has stuff going on. Mitigates that with rental teams well.

PokéCommunity Stadium 2

Great event as always Deva! The addition of Aces was a nice and refreshing thing for the event. Only thing I'd say is if possible, consider seeing if you can go up to Battle Revolution next year or something? Only for something different, event is great otherwise!

Looked into it a little more. Appears possible by poaching rentals from Battle Factory. Hoped to move to Generation 3 first and create Pokemon Stadium 3. Requires figuring out custom clauses in Showdown to do that. (Loaded up a lot of Battle Factory Pokemon with Double Team.) Offers Anything Goes for Generation 4, however. Drops all the clause restrictions.

Still needs to actually watch someone play Pokemon Battle Revolution. Decides how much to lift from that afterwards.

 

[gimmepie]

SWC

Event as a whole generally speaking is the same as is and that kinda works. I'm really glad I got an entry in and I am amazed I placed as high as I did - just a few things:

1. I personally am very unhappy that my 3rd place was given to one of the half-baked NPCs. I appreciate there was a tie for 2nd and that as far as I know that means placements go 1st, 2nd and then 4th, but if an NPC can get 3rd place points then that means I can get 3rd place points too.
2. Would it be worth changing up the rubric at all? I mostly say because firstly we've had our first non-fiction piece (wild) and I think the Character etc. one could really probably be split up in some fashion

I want to talk more about some other stuff as well, but going to get onto this one first. I gave the NPC points purely because we had the tie and at that point it was going to have no impact on the actual standings. It was mostly intended as a little humour to more integrate the NPC thing because, as established, we'd struggled to do that as much we wanted. Even if we hadn't done that, we still wouldn't have given actual 3rd place points out on account of the tie. It was flavour and nothing else. We didn't give your points to a person that doesn't exist. Sorry it didn't land the way I'd have liked.

As for the rubric, I've talked to Chase about this already and will be bringing it up with the other judges as well. I do think the rubric is due for a bit of a restructure. I find that spelling/grammar ends up being restrictive because it's very easy to score extremely high in that category with minimal effort while Character, Plot and Description comparatively is the only metric that is actually particularly challenging to score well on - the surprising difficulty with the prompt this year aside. I'm thinking we should move all the mechanical parts of the writing - spelling, grammar, the quality of the prose etc - into one section and leave the middle section about the quality of the narrative itself. We'd still have our 10/10/10 system but the categories would end up more robust allowing us to be a bit more comprehensive in our scoring. Obviously this wasn't really an issue this year, but I don't think someone should be able to win based on full scores on spelling and prompt relevance if the story is comparatively ass while someone could write something amazing and score poorly based on a handful of typos and a looser interpretation of the prompt.

 

[Cosmega]

How many events did you participate in?
Four: Eevee's Arcade, Art Swap, DJ Battles and Gartic Phone.

How close was this to what you planned on?
This is my first time participating in the GT, so I didn't really have much of a plan. I just joined in whatever I thought was cool.

Which event was your favourite?
Probably the Art Swap. It did consume much of my time, but I kinda had fun with it! It's nice to also receive other people's art and even see them like yours!

Which events did you not participate in, but wish you had?
I guess the Bingo looked fun. Probably gonna try it next year!

Did you feel like you had enough time to do everything you wanted to do?
If I had just a little bit of time left, I probably could have made an art piece to every participant in the Art Swap. And probably (probably) gotten a better score at some of the games in Eevee's Arcade. But also it could have just been poor planning from me :P

For newcomers or people who haven't participated in a GT for a while, what drew you in?
I've been a part of the PC forums for a while now, and I've always seen people having fun in the Get-Together, but never really understood how it worked nor thought that I could have time to try it out. But I decided to give it a shot this year. I guess I just saw everybody really getting into it this year and I didn't really want to be left out of the fun, so I just kinda worked up the courage to ask people how to play and then... play. I think I made the right choice.

Really enjoyed this as a first-time participant! It was so fun! I'm looking forward to trying it out next year!

Also TEAM MAGMA FOREVEEEERRRR!!!!1!!1!

 

[bobandbill]

How many events did you participate in?

The various trivia ones, GO event, DJ Battles, Dress to Impress. And co-ran SWC.

- How close was this to what you planned on?

Mostly what I figured was viable, but certainly less than I wanted. Alas, parents visiting from interstate... and work... and visa stuff...

- Which event was your favourite?

I always quite like the trivia - some parts were cetainly hard but I do enjoy checking questions and song each day. I

- Which events did you not participate in, but wish you had?

Many - Bingo looks fun, for instance - I just was always busy when it came up, especially towards the end with all the story entries to review.

- Did you feel like you had enough time to do everything you wanted to do?

No, that's life.


Some other quick thoughts:

- Glad my comments about using sheets for trivia answer submissions happened :> Really helps IMO, the stress of coordinating sending in answers, particularly in certain timezones, was never great

- DJ battles - yeah, I did get a bit annoyed at making time to make a list of songs in limited time only to be knocked out right at the start and most songs never heard. Not sure if instant knockout is the best format to go for, although groups or whatnot may not be so straightforward to plan for...
One suggestion - have DJ participants make a playlist in YT and send a link to that rather than submit songs links individually

- I liked having a motivator to change my flair. Maybe it'd be fun to have some points for judged awards like funniest flair, etc? Agreed that more colour choices would be good to have.

- GO event was fun! It lends itself well to this. I do agree that having more common spawns picked would be appreciated - does mean it's harder to plan in advance as events often get announced week or less before they actually start, so some flexibility would be necessary. But it was like having bug catching competitions so I liked that.

- Noted on the SWC comments. Open to changing the scoring, although I don't think we would expect much in the way of non-fiction entries. A bit more focus towards the story itself and use of prompt over grammar/spelling would be neat to try, although I wouldn't want to diminish the latter by too much.
More challenges would be nice to have next time too imo.

 

[kpac_xjinx]

- How many events did you participate in?
17: Art Swap, Baton Pass (2.0), PoGo Catch Contest, Dress to Impress, Battle Bash, Bingo, Eevee's Arcade, VGM Sharing, Movie Night, Art Stream, Pictionary, Stadium 2, Create a custom TCG Card, Mind Read the room, Queup, Garctic phone, Jackbox. Jack of all trades, master of none. Would also include Trivia but unlike last year, I could barely answer anything this time soooo

- How close was this to what you planned on?
Not at all close- it was far more EXCELLENT than I thought!
- Which event was your favourite?
Baton Pass! Cooperating for segments between different games with other teammates, and having to just fill spreadsheet to continue next segment instead of troubling the mods made it even better than the solo challenge. Plus it was fun in general wish it was like, atleast 15 segments per person though- instead of 13.
- Which events did you not participate in, but wish you had? Archipelago, SWC, Hideout, Create a Pokemon, Trivias. Archipelago is at the apex, for I wanted to participate so bad but didn't realise the setup deadline got over :( also wish I had drawn more in Art swap, 3 sketches are embarassing
- Did you feel like you had enough time to do everything you wanted to do? Yah, more than enough ...just that I suck at time management. Otherwise, there were times when I could have done most of the stuff that I couldn't.
- For newcomers or people who haven't participated in a GT for a while, what drew you in?
Idk, I just wanted to participate well unlike every previous GT where it was a passive thing. Also the team themes and team members were more fun



Anyway, just wanted to say the use of Spreadsheet in Baton Pass and even more importantly in Trivia was a very good decision - maybe we can have that for every trivia! Makes it less difficult to send stuff with timezones, we had trouble with this last GT

 

[Elite Overlord LeSabre™]

although I don't think we would expect much in the way of non-fiction entries

I don't know, if I'm still around next year, y'all might get another one lol

(but actually not j/k; my moving away from Pokemon in general means I'm less likely to find motivation to write Pokemon fan fiction, and I've never been one for fiction in other fandoms or original pieces, so if I enter in future years, there is a high probability that my entry will be a non-fiction entry like the one I submitted this year.)

 

[Eleanor]

Very late, oops, but here we go

- How many events did you participate in?
Baton Pass, the SWC, DJ Battles, Pokémon Go catch contest, Dress to Impress, plus a few sessions of Pictionary (and I tried to help out with the trivias but nothing substantial).
- How close was this to what you planned on?
I tried to go into this without setting my expectations too high. With more focus I could've probably participated in more events, but I'm generally happy with what I've done during this GT!
- Which event was your favourite?
Well... not to toot my own horn too much, but Baton Pass was great not just to play in, but also to spectate - it made me very happy to see that level of activity and team communication, and I was definitely impressed by the lengths some of us went to in order to finisht the challenge :) I also would like to mention the Pokémon GO contest, it felt like an interesting take on a GT event and allowed me to utilize better my commuting time despite all the problems Pokémon GO and Niantic might have, and Art Swap (even if I didn't participate) because it's just a very nice and wholesome event idea, if that makes sense!
I might just mention DJ Battles too, it was a very nice idea and I was very hyped about it, but... yeah, the execution had its issues - a lot of people already mentioned them and I generally agree with the points that were already made.
- Which events did you not participate in, but wish you had?
First one that comes to mind is Archipelago - I admit the concept turned me off initially because it was something I didn't know or wasn't used to, and I ended up not looking too much into it because I was busy with making progress on events that felt more familiar to me. But who am I to say that when my own Baton Pass challenge thread is probably the biggest wall of text in this year's GT stage?
I'd also add PMD&D and Gartic but that was more because of the schedule not being great on my end and for me generally avoiding live calls and such (mostly because my internet is still a bit unreliable).
- Did you feel like you had enough time to do everything you wanted to do?
Yes, it was more than enough given the events I was participating in. I do have to acknowledge that by the second week I was getting a little burned out and focusing too much on the competitive side of things, but... that's just me. Overall this was a very fun GT, perhaps the standout of the last 3 years here. <3

 

[Arcaneum]

Just letting everyone know the GT roles and perms should now be set up on the Discord server. You should be able to see the following for GTs 2021 onwards depending on what GT roles you have:

• team channels
• 'general' channels
• specific event channels
• voicechat channels/voice channels