Community Feedback Part II

[chacusha]

COMMUNITY FEEDBACK PART II
(moogle_workshop, ultima_arena, ff_minigames, & ff_eventsquare)

This is part 2/2 of the feedback polls, focusing on the big point-giving activity comms, moogle_workshop, ultima_arena, ff_minigames, and ff_eventsquare. The other part (with explanation) is over here.


[Poll #1780159]


Polls/suggestion box will be open until Tuesday September 27
If you need to change your vote, click on the "Poll #______" link at the top of the poll, then [ Fill out Poll ], then change your answers and resubmit.

Comments

[the-404-error.livejournal.com]

In regards to problematic points for entering contests: I voted for that one as sometimes they seemed imbalanced (that villain poetry contest had a very low amount of points per submission, especially in comparison to other contests, when it took much longer than many of the other 15 day challenges-- I didn't even manage to finish it on time) or even less than you could get for posting in moogle_workshop. (Most were fine in this regard, but that Five Years Later fic contest suffered from this.)

Nearly half of the points are still concentrated in ultima_arena. Having UA be the strongest does make sense, but I don't really like the idea of it containing nearly 50% of all points. If possible, perhaps more ranked awards for speed/accuracy could be given in minigames as an attempt to even it out a little?

I'll admit I was feeling burnt out by the end of the Garden Festival. I loved some of the activities *points to votes*, but overall I found myself wishing that minigames would open up again soon instead. I think my main issue is the high concentration of luck based games? I admit I probably would've liked it better if I didn't have atrocious luck/sucked at pretty much everything... XD That's probably just me being biased, though.

[chacusha]

For the Five Year Later fic, the amount stated was 25 but it was later corrected so that it gave 40 points i.e. the amount you'd get at max for posting in MWS. The villanelles were my fault, though; I just didn't have any idea how much time it would take, so I went by estimated word count (100-150 words) and calculated how much that would get in MWS.

In general, I agree UA is a bit too high still because of the placing points and the number of placings given out. I'll try to pull it down more next game, and Ari can strengthen FFMG too.

[glacialphoenix]

Ah - Tako - admittedly the villanelles were partly my fault as well, since you were using MWS for the points as is pretty standard for all the writing stuff...

I was thinking of changing it to 1 point/10 words, +2 as poetry bonus, and then for UA you can add a bit more for themed and the fact that it has a deadline? So then something like a villanelle would get maybe around 15 points in MWS and you could double that for about 20 - 30 points.

[chacusha]

That sounds pretty reasonable to me. We can try it out and see how it goes. I think the thing that made the villanelle kind of hard is that it was kind of all-or-nothing. You had to follow the somewhat long format or your entry wouldn't count. Other fic contests are more flexible in that regard (i.e. if you're short on time, you can try a different idea that can be written quicker).

[glacialphoenix]

I think the thing that made the villanelle kind of hard is that it was kind of all-or-nothing. You had to follow the somewhat long format or your entry wouldn't count.

That too. I think perhaps for UA writing contests - if you're going to tie it to MWS, which you've been doing since Game 1 - then maybe the bonus should be there for a specific fixed format: drabbles, sonnets, villanelles, etc. (Like Game 1's drabbles were worth 6 points instead of the 4 points they were back then because they were specifically 100 words each.) I didn't really participate in UA, though, so I'm really speaking in terms of a 'using MWS to balance' perspective.

[sai_salamander]

I voted for the poetry as being unbalanced - but as I can see, you've already been discussing that, so just take this as an agreement that it is. I still find the idea of scoring poetry on word count incredibly problematic, but that could be personal bias because I write a lot of shorter poems, and we were always taught to whittle away words to make the poem better. But I don't think it's working like that any more, is it?

/pointless feedback

I will say about the eventsquare, though: I found all of the games really confusing, which is why I signed up for a few and then never participated. It might just have been me? But it felt really bombardy and sort of... overwhelming? I don't know. Maybe I just preferred the slower pace of the minigames when I had less time to look over and really understand the festival games.

[chacusha]

Yeah I don't think there's a way we can not score by word count. There are similar issues with short fic too -- revising a piece repeatedly to remove words takes more time for less points, but that kind of work would vary from person to person.

And yeah I think the GF games were usually pretty complex so required a bit of reading to figure out what was going on. From the feedback so far I'm thinking it would be good to (1) tone down the complexity of the games, and (2) have fewer of them.

[arivess.livejournal.com]

Re: UA -- It's not a scheduling of UA in general, but. I found this game, I felt really rushed, what with the Garden Festival, and LJ going down, so it was a week less of time for contests, so I was kinda scrambling even with the extensions... Mind, that's more LJ's fault, but maybe we should think of some contingency plans in case things like that happen again?

RE: MG -- For minigames, I wonder if we should consolidate the points-giving more...? I mean, they're mostly even, but sometimes I look at an activity and think, "Woah what..." But I guess it'd be too hard to really do anything about it unless I want to personally go over the points for every minigame. XD;; And I guess the problem is, a game that FEELS simple might not turn out to be that easy to do.

RE: GF -- I mentioned in the other post, but. Yeah. I feel the Garden Festival was fun, BUT, it gave out such a huge amount of points in such a small amount of time that anyone who missed it took a huge hit. Plus, while I know people who were running it volunteered to do so of their own accord, but I think some of us were so tired, we barely wanted to participate in anything else. ...Er. Well. I still wanted to do EVERYTHING ANYWAY, but I was really tired at the end. XD;; And I know CT said she spent hours replying each day, so really didn't have a chance to even look at the other games until later.

I'm definitely for the idea of a festival again, but I wonder if we shouldn't make it last a little longer and less intensive instead of more? Maybe specifically ask people for low-maintenance games, like the chocobo racing, phantom rolls, hunters guild, things like that; and then run it alongside a few less intensive normal activities, too?

I also think we need to announce/publicize festival events more. I wasn't very helpful with that anyway, but. XD;; There was only ONE person I didn't already know who tried my booth. We didn't really get that many new joiners, which was one of the points...

[breyzyyin.livejournal.com]

In regards to the Garden Festival...I thought it was quite fun, but I do kind of have to agree with the view point that it perhaps felt a bit too rushed with all of the activities and the time frame for everything. Maybe either doing two Garden Festivals per game so that people don't feel too horrible if they do happen to miss one due to busy schedules might help, or the suggestion of having the Garden Festival take place over a longer span of time might work better in that regard: people won't feel the need to rush to try everything then and feel burned out in the process that way. *is unsure*

[breyzyyin.livejournal.com]

Having two Garden Festivals per game would probably be too tiring on the people running the booths though, unless the festivals themselves were significantly smaller? I do think maybe having them take over a longer time frame or possibly having multiple people work on a booth like cowturtle suggested might help with both the timing and feeling exhausted issue. /in other words, I am unhelpful! XD

[breyzyyin.livejournal.com]

Ah, yeah...I kind of thought of that about an hour after I posted the comments, lolz. Two games would be pretty time-consuming and tiring, but one that just ran longer and perhaps had more than one person working at a booth as cowturtle suggested seems like a really good approach in a way! :D

[cowturtle.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I agree with Ari about having some other, normal activities going on during any future events. In order for various people to be involved in both GF activities and normal ff_land activities, both may have to be simplified. That would probably be nice for anyone who doesn't want to participate in future GFs.

I also... see the merits of both what Ari and Vanja are saying. On one hand, it's nice to have games that are easy to run (even my game *was* easy, I just decided to do a ton of work ^_^;) but that's also not as fun for people who are looking for more than just luck-based games. I didn't participate in a lot of games, but the Battle Arena, Trading Card and Voting booths all seemed cool to me. I also liked Chocobo Racing and Chocobo Hot n' Cold (which is *kind of* luck based, but you sort of get hints too).

In future, maybe it would be beneficial to have multiple people work on one booth, which would a) mean less work for everyone, b) hopefully fewer luck-based games and more detailed games and, c) fewer people feeling overwhelmed, either by amount of work or number of games. Since people would, hopefully, be less exhausted during/at the end of the Festival, more games could go on back at ff_land and people would be able to manage running two Festivals per Game or something.

Anyways, just a thought.

[arivess.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah. The multiple people working on a booth thing would probably be really good.