Score Breakdown + Alliances

[arivess.livejournal.com]

Hello everyone~! I hope you enjoyed the results. Here are the score breakdowns courtesy of sunflower_mynah:

SORTING



CONTESTS



FANWORKS



MINIGAMES



GF








SORTING

BLACK MAGES: 22.1% [1st]
DRAGOONS: 11.1% [5th]
MONKS: 9.8% [6th]
SOLDIERS: 16.1% [4th]
THIEVES: 20.9% [2nd]
WHITE MAGES: 20.1% [3rd]

CONTEST (UA)

BLACK MAGES: 20% [2nd]
DRAGOONS: 10.8% [5th]
MONKS: 4.1% [6th]
SOLDIERS: 18.7% [3rd]
THIEVES: 33.8% [1st]
WHITE MAGES: 12.7% [4th]

FANWORKS (MWS)

BLACK MAGES: 8.2% [5th]
DRAGOONS: 6.1% [6th]
MONKS: 12.4% [4th]
SOLDIERS: 28% [1st]
THIEVES: 23.9% [2nd]
WHITE MAGES: 21.5% [3rd]

MINIGAMES (FFMG)

BLACK MAGES: 27.1% [1st]
DRAGOONS: 8.7% [6th]
MONKS: 9.4% [5th]
SOLDIERS: 18.5% [3rd]
THIEVES: 19.4% [2nd]
WHITE MAGES: 16.8% [4th]

GARDEN FESTIVAL (FFES)

BLACK MAGES: 43% [1st]
DRAGOONS: 4.7% [6th]
MONKS: 10.2% [4th]
SOLDIERS: 19.5% [2nd]
THIEVES: 9.3% [5th]
WHITE MAGES: 13.4% [2nd]

And that brings us to our second topic -- alliances. We need to decide them before Game 4 can start, of course. I'll list the strengths and weaknesses of each team (as far as I know them), and a short description of the proposed alliances, and you guys can have a vote.

We're going to do something different this time around. Since we have 4 really strong teams, we've decided it's nearly impossible to have 3 alliances of 2 teams, because one of the alliances will automatically be way stronger than the other two, which kind of makes having a competition pointless. So for this game at least, most of the proposed alliances will be two alliances of 3 competing against each other. Like a final boss fight, I think someone told me.

BLACK MAGES
Strengths: High level of participation in everything (except fanworks this time, it seems), one of the teams with the highest active/semi-active members count
Weaknesses: Not as strong as everyone keeps thinking, as most of their presence is social and just... presence. They're still mainly big in minigames and sorting, although they do win a decent number of contests.

DRAGOONS
Strengths: The few members there are still fairly steady and participate in most things
Weaknesses: There are very few members, and their previously most active member is going to be too busy

MONKS
Strengths: Similar to dragoons, participation, though low, is fairly steady and well-rounded. May have more active members than dragoons, though they didn't answer the feedback poll.
Weaknesses: Again, similarly, there are very few members, and some previously active members will be too busy

SOLDIERS
Strengths: Amazing levels of participation in everything. Their non-MVPs scored about as much as the other teams' MVPs.
Weaknesses: The absolute smallest team. They got to 2nd place through an enormous amount of effort, which would be unfair to force them to uphold, although they probably still will. Problem is, however, while a bigger team can potentially score more, they can't really do too much more than they already have.

THIEVES
Strengths: Generally strong and active team, with mid/high participation from a fair amount of members.
Weaknesses: I am leaving the team, which, if it had happened in game 3, would have put thieves in 3rd place, so... uh. Plus, thieves have mainly iconists. My leaving does leave them with only one writer (I think?), and no artists.

WHITE MAGES
Strengths: A lot of MWS-ing, which isn't restricted by the activities going on.
Weaknesses: Aside from the two MVPs, most other members only participate occasionally, although there are a lot of them. Also, has no really strong iconists to compete in graphics challenges; whole team is mostly writers.

Also, a small analysis of which teams make which types of fanworks. Note that I'm going by regular UA entries here, not MWS, because for MWS, as long as you're making some kind of fanwork, you'd get points, but in UA, if all the people for one type of fanwork goes on one alliance, there isn't much to compete for.

Graphics: Mainly thieves, with a couple black mages and one soldier.
Art: One soldier, one black mage, now, since I'm out?
Writing: Mainly white mages, but with a couple from each team, still.

And with that, the alliance options:

Thief+Soldier+Monk vs. BM+WM+Dragoon: A Thief+Soldier combo might be too strong, plus monks will likely have more active members than dragoons
Thief+Soldier+Dragoon vs. BM+WM+Monk: Slightly more balanced, but Thief+Soldier might still be too strong?
Thief+BM+Monk vs. Soldier+WM+Dragoon: Might actually be fairly balanced. If you take out my score, these three would have been about even for game 3, with S/W/D having slightly more. Problem with this is, Thieves and BMs have almost all the iconists.
Thief+BM+Dragoon vs. Soldier+WM+Monk: Same as previous
Thief+WM+Monk vs. Soldier+BM+Dragoon: Possibly the most balanced? This largely depends on how active the WMs who didn't vote in the poll are, though.
Thief+WM+Dragoon vs. Soldier+BM+Monk: Similar to previous, but I think S/B would have more activity than T/W, so giving Thief/WM the Monks might be a little more balancing
Thief vs. Soldier vs. Black Mage vs. White Mage vs. Dragoon+Monk: I'm most worried about White Mages for this one... The other bigger teams can probably perform about the same, and putting Dragoons and Monks together this game would have given them about the same as White Mages.

And the poll! Which... I hope... posts from here... haha...

[Poll #1837853]

I just tried to post two polls in one post, and it really Did Not Work, so, uh, please see following post regarding stamping question changes.

Comments

[sai_salamander]

I... don't think I agree with the Thieves section either. We might only have one writer (me), but my FF participation will be high this time, since there's ff_exchange and me and Mysti have a drabble project planned (at least 10 each). Not to mention that I will be joining any UA contests that catch my eye, as well as the crack meme that we've got planned.

I really don't think it's fair to discount "just iconists", considering we have the H-twins as well as katy_111 (and that's not counting me as well), all three of whom post large batches of icons at a time. Very large batches. And don't forget, all of us iconists entered and cleaned up last game. Completely cleaned up. Having one artist doesn't make up for all the points we get from the regular iconists, and with my writing as well? I just don't see how it's going to be as negative for us as you're predicting.

Not only that, but if the minigames are gonna go as you're saying (ie: with a lot less focus on logic/numbers games), then Thieves will be getting me back as a regular and consistent minigame participant (anomalous last game results, as people said: I physically cannot do logic/numbers puzzles, which is what most of them seemed to be, so I just didn't participate.)

[arivess.livejournal.com]

I think one thing is, Mysti said you might have misread the "one writer (I think?)" as I'm not sure if you count as a writer or not. To clarify, I more meant I don't know whether or not any of the others write. Also, I do know you write very well (you're honestly one of my favourite writers from the comm), but while you may say you'll join any UA contests that catch your eye, but to date, you haven't joined that many, so I haven't counted it in my assessment.

I also know Thieves cleaned up the icon contests, but what I'm trying to say is, that's... the problem, kind of? Not that they do well at icons, but that most of the Thief points came thus far from icon wins, and if they don't win, then they'll be in a little bit of trouble. Plus, as V stated above, she and Vanja were largely inactive this time, and both of them give Thieves a fair bit of competition for icons usually.

I do agree that Thieves have generally good participation, though, and my trying to steer towards less logic puzzles for minigames will help. There'll still be some, but not as many.

By all means, I don't think Thieves are going to be weak without me. However, I think we're both disagreeing on my contribution. I don't want to wave numbers around and sound even more arrogant than I am, but Mysti said she'll go explain to you why I'm upset on that account.