As you're probably aware if you're reading this post we are fond of competitions in this part of the forum :) We ran a Class Creation Competition which ended yesterday and we also run the Weekly Design Competition where users get to design their own Hearthstone cards.
But! It would be nice to know what you think about the format of the competitions, what we mods do well, what we could improve etc. It can be hard to find feedback on our work in the discussion topics of the WDC and the now finished CCC, therefor I thought it would be a good idea to make a thread like this. I'm not sure this thread will stay around for a very long time so write a post while you can!
Have folks leave off the mana cost of their cards. Leave a zero placeholder instead.
Why? I think folks are getting rewarded for having OP cards instead of penalized. I'd like to change that. Leaving the cost blank means that the card would be judged on it's other design merits besides power. I would let folks write a proposed mana cost with justification below the card if they wished though.
Is this really a problem though? I think so. For instance, there was recently a card on the page I was on that was winning, after amassing a sizable lead they upped the cost of the card by 2. So, it was at least OP by 2 mana for a good measure of the competition garnering lots of votes from folks that vote for power over balance, but, before moving on to the finals round it had it's cost moved to a more balanced position to please the voters there that are a little more picky about balance.
That bothers me.
I'm not sure there would be any downside to leaving the cost blank, and if you wanted it could even be included for the finals. I don't think cards get rewarded for being OP nearly as much there. And I do believe there would be some upside.
All I can say is that I've always had my doubts about the merit of community voters. They were confirmed after the "cat class" which showed no cards made it into the top 10 for a decently long period of time, and continued to get a few votes after all of the images were gone and it was disqualified. The wild card system is nice and helps to combat this a little, but were there a solution to fix this problem it would undermine the entire purpose of the competition.
I really enjoyed this competition though and I'm looking forward to having another one of these longer ones that are different from the WDC. Maybe adventure competition next? Who knows.
[Also, I've been wanting to turn my Lich submission into an actual forum thread, could it be unlocked or at least allowed for me to edit so that I don't have to re-format everything?]
[Also, I've been wanting to turn my Lich submission into an actual forum thread, could it be unlocked or at least allowed for me to edit so that I don't have to re-format everything?]
Done :)
And, about the cat class: Several people probably remembered at least a few of the cards/and or knew they liked the class but then voted later.
I dont like the idea of leaving the mana cost blank, the mana cost is basicly what makes that card good/bad/balanced/unbalanced in the end.
The problem that might have to be adressed is overlly editing your post/card in submission thread. Im afraid this is not in forums capabilities, but it would be cool, if posts could be edited like for max one or two days after they were posted, so someone cant "drasticly" change it to more balanced card right before he knows he is gona get to finals, so he will have better chances to win the whole thing.
If that variant would not be possible to implement, mby we could try one week to not be able to edit our posts at all, sure it would be somewhat unfair, but ppl have option to post in the discussion thread first and fine tune their card and then they would have to also be careful what r they posting, typos and stuff, so like i said, it can be one week experiment and see how it goes.
I like how u try to control the submission thread, deleting illegible posts and "bringing back" deleted submissions, thats a good thing and since u leave it there for all to see, we can see your hard work and ofc how many ppl actually broke the rules.
The problem of people voting for cards that aren't necessarily balanced is one that can't really be fixed due to the entire structure of the competition. The community votes for their favorite, and if the favorite is a little OP, then that's just how it's going to go. You also can't really remove mana costs, as that's removing a major part of the cards identity. Just think back to the drawback week, where the entire theme was one of cheaper minions with a drawback. I think the formula you guys use is very good, and the wild cards are proving to be very effective. (One of the top three last week was a wild card). All in all, I think you guys are doing about as good a job as you can do without completely changing the identity of the competition. In terms of bigger competetions, I'm all for some sort of adventure design (even though it would be a nightmare to balance). The Class design was a lot of fun, and I really look forward to another chance to crank out that many ideas.
Oh, and about the Cat. I voted for the cat, even after I found out it was disqualified, simply because I had already seen the class before hand. Not because It was a cat or because it was trolly, but because I legitimately thought it was one of the best ideas on the thread. I'm sure many shared my view.
I'm new, and I was wondering if a link to the basics sticky could be provided in the WDC submission thread? I kind of fumbled my way into a submission this week, and THEN found the sticky - which is my fault, but it'd add about 1 line to the header post, and could just be copy/pasted between weeks.
The problem of people voting for cards that aren't necessarily balanced is one that can't really be fixed due to the entire structure of the competition. The community votes for their favorite, and if the favorite is a little OP, then that's just how it's going to go. You also can't really remove mana costs, as that's removing a major part of the cards identity. Just think back to the drawback week, where the entire theme was one of cheaper minions with a drawback. I think the formula you guys use is very good, and the wild cards are proving to be very effective. (One of the top three last week was a wild card). All in all, I think you guys are doing about as good a job as you can do without completely changing the identity of the competition.
Yes, agree here. It can be frustrating when the winner of the competition is the card that is "most crowd-pleasing" rather than "best designed" or "best suited for the game" or "best balanced", but at the same time, it's up to the community who they want to win and there's no rule that says "you must vote according to THESE standards", it just says "vote for your favorites." Different people vote for different cards for different reasons, which in some cases mean that people vote for flavor rather than design. But that's just how the world works, and trying to change that would destroy the purpose of the competition as a community event.
I'm new, and I was wondering if a link to the basics sticky could be provided in the WDC submission thread? I kind of fumbled my way into a submission this week, and THEN found the sticky - which is my fault, but it'd add about 1 line to the header post, and could just be copy/pasted between weeks.
I dont think we need to clog up submission post with more of this info, if u werent so lazy, u could have easily go to "Fan Creation" forum and found all sticky topics with guids how to create fan cards and more.
In the weekly card creation competition, I feel that cards get more or less votes depending on their location in the thread.
That is not rly an issue, since the formula for advancing card to the finals takes this into an account, votes are weighted throught all pages and against submissions on same page, just look it up in 1st post of submission thread.
Firstly, thank you to all the mod that have hosted these events!! Seriously, I've only missed joining one of them and it's because I was on my honeymoon :D
I definitely second the idea that there should be a distinct "rubric" as to what each week is voted for. Creativity? Novelty? Effectiveness? Usefulness is X deck type? Balance? Most cards win based on creativity, but many of them always make it into the finals based on being a weird mechanic.
Also, please keep finalist votes secret during the voting phase. I regularly see good cards lose votes because people remove their votes after seeing it gain a lead on their own cards.
Also, please keep finalist votes secret during the voting phase. I regularly see good cards lose votes because people remove their votes after seeing it gain a lead on their own cards.
Yeah, i can second that. Wonder why they r not hidden already, it would be more healthier i think ;-)
Yeah, i can second that. Wonder why they r not hidden already, it would be more healthier i think ;-)
I don't understand why you're allowed to change your vote at all. If someone screws up and votes for the wrong card, tough.
To be fair, the polls r bugged as hell in this forum or at least for me they r. Every week i vote in the finals and at least once my votes are reseted and i have to vote again. I can confirm this, cause i tried to vote for the one i 100% knew i didnt vote for before, so i would see results, then i voted "again" for the one i 100% knew i did vote and the vote number increased meaning my previous vote was gone ...
On the whole I think you guys do a great job and the competitions are great for the participants and the community as a whole. As some people mentioned it might help if during voting you can't see the results. I don't know if it happens but it does make me wonder if people decide not to vote at all or change votes based on which cards are already winning or losing. Obviously it would be super sweet if there were some other kind of metrics involved than just picking your favorite, but that would require a panel of say specific judges that know the rules and wouldn't involve the community as much, at least if you wanted it to be reasonable to judge.
I would certainly be nice to see other design ideas, or even just a modified single card competition that used a different judging system. I know that for example Magic has done a few, "You Make the Card" multi-phase things where we slowly as a community decide on and then finally design 1 card. Either way, you guys are doing awesome work, so keep it up!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of the women.
I think you guys are doing a great job. I would like to see a collaborative community card design thing though? Where the end result gets sent to Blizzard for consideration. :P
And also, any plans for another class design competition (sometime in the future of course)?
Overall, the Weekly Design Competitions are amazing, props to you guys. My only concern would be that, and I've stated this before is this; cards that have profound, specific and really cool effects tend to get more votes than cards that would legitimately have a very positive impact on the game. That also ties in with a problem that I have seen someone complain about, with a lot of people making Legendaries when they get the chance, because they can have those OP and profound effects.
I was a huge fan of the class design competition; even though I didn't even make it past round 1 (which is understandable, my class sucked), I think long-term fan design competitions are a great idea. If you intend to do another one, I would suggest an adventure competition or a themed expansion for one existing class.
Hello there!
As you're probably aware if you're reading this post we are fond of competitions in this part of the forum :) We ran a Class Creation Competition which ended yesterday and we also run the Weekly Design Competition where users get to design their own Hearthstone cards.
But! It would be nice to know what you think about the format of the competitions, what we mods do well, what we could improve etc. It can be hard to find feedback on our work in the discussion topics of the WDC and the now finished CCC, therefor I thought it would be a good idea to make a thread like this. I'm not sure this thread will stay around for a very long time so write a post while you can!
I'll put my latest suggestion here.
Have folks leave off the mana cost of their cards. Leave a zero placeholder instead.
Why? I think folks are getting rewarded for having OP cards instead of penalized. I'd like to change that. Leaving the cost blank means that the card would be judged on it's other design merits besides power. I would let folks write a proposed mana cost with justification below the card if they wished though.
Is this really a problem though? I think so. For instance, there was recently a card on the page I was on that was winning, after amassing a sizable lead they upped the cost of the card by 2. So, it was at least OP by 2 mana for a good measure of the competition garnering lots of votes from folks that vote for power over balance, but, before moving on to the finals round it had it's cost moved to a more balanced position to please the voters there that are a little more picky about balance.
That bothers me.
I'm not sure there would be any downside to leaving the cost blank, and if you wanted it could even be included for the finals. I don't think cards get rewarded for being OP nearly as much there. And I do believe there would be some upside.
It's a suggestion anyway.
Galavant Animation
All I can say is that I've always had my doubts about the merit of community voters. They were confirmed after the "cat class" which showed no cards made it into the top 10 for a decently long period of time, and continued to get a few votes after all of the images were gone and it was disqualified. The wild card system is nice and helps to combat this a little, but were there a solution to fix this problem it would undermine the entire purpose of the competition.
I really enjoyed this competition though and I'm looking forward to having another one of these longer ones that are different from the WDC. Maybe adventure competition next? Who knows.
[Also, I've been wanting to turn my Lich submission into an actual forum thread, could it be unlocked or at least allowed for me to edit so that I don't have to re-format everything?]
Done :)
And, about the cat class: Several people probably remembered at least a few of the cards/and or knew they liked the class but then voted later.
I dont like the idea of leaving the mana cost blank, the mana cost is basicly what makes that card good/bad/balanced/unbalanced in the end.
The problem that might have to be adressed is overlly editing your post/card in submission thread. Im afraid this is not in forums capabilities, but it would be cool, if posts could be edited like for max one or two days after they were posted, so someone cant "drasticly" change it to more balanced card right before he knows he is gona get to finals, so he will have better chances to win the whole thing.
If that variant would not be possible to implement, mby we could try one week to not be able to edit our posts at all, sure it would be somewhat unfair, but ppl have option to post in the discussion thread first and fine tune their card and then they would have to also be careful what r they posting, typos and stuff, so like i said, it can be one week experiment and see how it goes.
I like how u try to control the submission thread, deleting illegible posts and "bringing back" deleted submissions, thats a good thing and since u leave it there for all to see, we can see your hard work and ofc how many ppl actually broke the rules.
- Click Here To Join Us On Discord! -
The problem of people voting for cards that aren't necessarily balanced is one that can't really be fixed due to the entire structure of the competition. The community votes for their favorite, and if the favorite is a little OP, then that's just how it's going to go. You also can't really remove mana costs, as that's removing a major part of the cards identity. Just think back to the drawback week, where the entire theme was one of cheaper minions with a drawback. I think the formula you guys use is very good, and the wild cards are proving to be very effective. (One of the top three last week was a wild card). All in all, I think you guys are doing about as good a job as you can do without completely changing the identity of the competition. In terms of bigger competetions, I'm all for some sort of adventure design (even though it would be a nightmare to balance). The Class design was a lot of fun, and I really look forward to another chance to crank out that many ideas.
Oh, and about the Cat. I voted for the cat, even after I found out it was disqualified, simply because I had already seen the class before hand. Not because It was a cat or because it was trolly, but because I legitimately thought it was one of the best ideas on the thread. I'm sure many shared my view.
I'm new, and I was wondering if a link to the basics sticky could be provided in the WDC submission thread? I kind of fumbled my way into a submission this week, and THEN found the sticky - which is my fault, but it'd add about 1 line to the header post, and could just be copy/pasted between weeks.
Yes, agree here. It can be frustrating when the winner of the competition is the card that is "most crowd-pleasing" rather than "best designed" or "best suited for the game" or "best balanced", but at the same time, it's up to the community who they want to win and there's no rule that says "you must vote according to THESE standards", it just says "vote for your favorites." Different people vote for different cards for different reasons, which in some cases mean that people vote for flavor rather than design. But that's just how the world works, and trying to change that would destroy the purpose of the competition as a community event.
I dont think we need to clog up submission post with more of this info, if u werent so lazy, u could have easily go to "Fan Creation" forum and found all sticky topics with guids how to create fan cards and more.
That is not rly an issue, since the formula for advancing card to the finals takes this into an account, votes are weighted throught all pages and against submissions on same page, just look it up in 1st post of submission thread.
- Click Here To Join Us On Discord! -
Firstly, thank you to all the mod that have hosted these events!! Seriously, I've only missed joining one of them and it's because I was on my honeymoon :D
I definitely second the idea that there should be a distinct "rubric" as to what each week is voted for. Creativity? Novelty? Effectiveness? Usefulness is X deck type? Balance? Most cards win based on creativity, but many of them always make it into the finals based on being a weird mechanic.
Also, please keep finalist votes secret during the voting phase. I regularly see good cards lose votes because people remove their votes after seeing it gain a lead on their own cards.
All in all, great job, keep it up!
Building Quirky Decks Every Week, Loving Life at Rank 15!
Yeah, i can second that. Wonder why they r not hidden already, it would be more healthier i think ;-)
- Click Here To Join Us On Discord! -
I don't understand why you're allowed to change your vote at all. If someone screws up and votes for the wrong card, tough.
To be fair, the polls r bugged as hell in this forum or at least for me they r. Every week i vote in the finals and at least once my votes are reseted and i have to vote again. I can confirm this, cause i tried to vote for the one i 100% knew i didnt vote for before, so i would see results, then i voted "again" for the one i 100% knew i did vote and the vote number increased meaning my previous vote was gone ...
- Click Here To Join Us On Discord! -
On the whole I think you guys do a great job and the competitions are great for the participants and the community as a whole. As some people mentioned it might help if during voting you can't see the results. I don't know if it happens but it does make me wonder if people decide not to vote at all or change votes based on which cards are already winning or losing. Obviously it would be super sweet if there were some other kind of metrics involved than just picking your favorite, but that would require a panel of say specific judges that know the rules and wouldn't involve the community as much, at least if you wanted it to be reasonable to judge.
I would certainly be nice to see other design ideas, or even just a modified single card competition that used a different judging system. I know that for example Magic has done a few, "You Make the Card" multi-phase things where we slowly as a community decide on and then finally design 1 card. Either way, you guys are doing awesome work, so keep it up!
To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of the women.
I think you guys are doing a great job. I would like to see a collaborative community card design thing though? Where the end result gets sent to Blizzard for consideration. :P
And also, any plans for another class design competition (sometime in the future of course)?
please consider voting for my custom class in the fan creations competition :]
• TRIALS IN AUCHINDOUN - A Custom Hearthstone Adventure (4th Wing!) • New and Interesting Hearthstone Mechanics (by me!) •
Possibly we can have a Brawl Mode Creation Competition?
THERE IS NO GAME.
Overall, the Weekly Design Competitions are amazing, props to you guys. My only concern would be that, and I've stated this before is this; cards that have profound, specific and really cool effects tend to get more votes than cards that would legitimately have a very positive impact on the game. That also ties in with a problem that I have seen someone complain about, with a lot of people making Legendaries when they get the chance, because they can have those OP and profound effects.
.
Create an Adventure contest when??
I was a huge fan of the class design competition; even though I didn't even make it past round 1 (which is understandable, my class sucked), I think long-term fan design competitions are a great idea. If you intend to do another one, I would suggest an adventure competition or a themed expansion for one existing class.
Look at this... or else: http://www.hearthpwn.com/forums/hearthstone-general/fan-creations/43518-coilfang-reservoir-a-hearthstone-adventure
Doesn't seem very realistic, all current Hearthstone expansions are across the board and bring about new mechanics. Focusing on one class is very odd.