The two years I placed, I sold out and wrote very un-Magnagoran designs. Last year seeing Narynth and Krackenor place with very un-typically-pretty designs filled me with a lot of hope but it does seem that a certain aesthetic wins out, and it is unfortunate for those of us in 'darker' orgs that it isn't part of our natural in character designs.
I'd like to think my style of writing would translate across regardless the type of aesthetic used, but so far it doesn't seem so. That is why I feel a little jaded - I deliberately changed not my writing style, but went from dark/somber/perhaps macabre to light and pretty and sparkly. And it worked. I reverted afterward.
It's the one competition that is extremely blind for the competitors, there really is no way of knowing how you stack up against everyone else or even if you came close to being a challenger.
I appreciate the Charites opening this thread. I think designing/writing is much like any artwork in that it is so deeply personal, and you can't really train for it like other seals or get support and a team, you just have to pour your soul into it. And like anything so deeply personal, it's crushing to not even know if your work made it past the initial vetting process. That's where the cry for feedback comes from, and I understand it. Personally I feel if I didn't get an honourable mention then I don't want to know, and am even too embarrassed to share it on the thread because clearly it was sub-par work. There's no one to blame but myself - I can't say I didn't have support, or the enemies were targeting me, or I hadn't prepared enough before the competition...
It's a unique situation. Don't be too rough on upset designers who just want to know someone appreciated their art, even if it is not practical to get said feedback.
I'm a little surprised that there seems to be a general sense that we're not fit to judge the contest. Be assured that our esteemed staff is flush with people who work with language in the real world. I ran a writing center for several years and now work part-time as a story teller. One of my colleagues is an ESL teacher and speaks quite a few languages, fluently. Several of us currently work, or have worked in the past, in some form of higher education. We have coders, web-design masters, all manner of PhDs, brilliant MA students, and a bevy of people who are doing a hodgepodge of those things. We're definitely capable of handling a voting contest in a fantasy world.
I didn't that that sense from the thread. I mean one of the points I was talking about is how often in judging competitions judges are given a judging guide before hand. That's not to say there's anything wrong with the judges themselves its simply to give the judges a unified hymn sheet to be singing from so that they themselves know what the aim of the competition is.
It removes the whimsy aspect of the judgement. Like one pre-event judging guide for an art competition had assigned points for example you judge so many points based on the colour competition, on uniqueness etc etc. There's similar ones for writing competitions that do a similar thing and just set out what the competition is looking for in terms to the judges so that they can mark it accordingly.
A "Design x has made it to the semi-finals" and "Design x has made it to the finals" message could be nice for those who make it to the 25 mentioned and then the 12-15 mentioned.
Anyone that doesn't receive a message will know they didn't make the first cut, those that did will know which one of their designs was considered the strongest. Kinda a middle ground between nothing and the feedback idea.
It might also help if the beauty post contained some of the info in the OP here, or maybe a helpfile. There's designs I probably wouldn't have submitted with the post in mind, and others that I might have worked on more instead.
2
SylandraJoin Queue for Mafia GamesThe Last Mafia Game
The two years I placed, I sold out and wrote very un-Magnagoran designs. Last year seeing Narynth and Krackenor place with very un-typically-pretty designs filled me with a lot of hope but it does seem that a certain aesthetic wins out, and it is unfortunate for those of us in 'darker' orgs that it isn't part of our natural in character designs.
I'd like to think my style of writing would translate across regardless the type of aesthetic used, but so far it doesn't seem so. That is why I feel a little jaded - I deliberately changed not my writing style, but went from dark/somber/perhaps macabre to light and pretty and sparkly. And it worked. I reverted afterward.
It's the one competition that is extremely blind for the competitors, there really is no way of knowing how you stack up against everyone else or even if you came close to being a challenger.
I appreciate the Charites opening this thread. I think designing/writing is much like any artwork in that it is so deeply personal, and you can't really train for it like other seals or get support and a team, you just have to pour your soul into it. And like anything so deeply personal, it's crushing to not even know if your work made it past the initial vetting process. That's where the cry for feedback comes from, and I understand it. Personally I feel if I didn't get an honourable mention then I don't want to know, and am even too embarrassed to share it on the thread because clearly it was sub-par work. There's no one to blame but myself - I can't say I didn't have support, or the enemies were targeting me, or I hadn't prepared enough before the competition...
It's a unique situation. Don't be too rough on upset designers who just want to know someone appreciated their art, even if it is not practical to get said feedback.
For what it's worth, I enjoy your designs, darker and otherwise. I figure that's why we open the Beauty Submission thread, yeah? To share our designs and to be excited about them.
These things are in so many ways a numbers game. You have a 1/47th chance of winning, without taking any other factors into account. The reality is, 42 people are going to be disappointed and walk away with nothing. It's inevitable. There is no way around this. And it doesn't mean those 42 people suck, necessarily. It just means 5 people had broad enough appeal due to either their writing style, or their content, or their concept, that it propelled them to the top.
Instead of thinking that not being chosen makes you a failure, consider this: the Charites said they had a top 25. 25! That's half of the designers! That means you didn't lose because you weren't "good" but because you were against a lot of good people. Beauty is an intense competition. You happen to be one of many fierce competitors, and you've placed more than the majority of entrants ever have in this competition (even if you don't want to stand by the work you submitted). The conceptual value of the content aside, you couldn't do that if you weren't a good writer.
I know I'm coming off a bit bullheaded about this, but I'm trying to respond as someone who has been rejected a lot, to tell you don't let rejection define your self-worth as a writer. Because that way madness lies. You can do your best in a competition and still lose. I liked what I submitted this time, and it didn't place, and that's okay because I stand by my work. Please don't let losing a contest convince you to disavow your own work and your own talents. I'd really enjoy competing against you next year; your work isn't subpar to me.
"Oh yeah, you're a naughty mayor, aren't you? Misfile that Form MA631-D. Comptroller Shevat's got a nice gemstone disc for you, but yer gonna have to beg for it."
I was pretty disappointed but this was my first entry.
My frustration about it is that when a super high credit artifact is at stake and it often goes to the same types of designs, let alone the same designers, it feels as if there is a ceiling that isn't going to be broken through easily by newcomers.
I think that it might help to have a theme that is clearly stated. It might bring some sense of equal ground to the competition.
Edit: In terms of my frustration, I will freely admit that the same thing happens with all of the competitions. This is the one that newcomers actually feel they have a chance in. Also, I am not interested in opening a can of worms, simply stating my frustration and offering a possible partial solution.
0
SylandraJoin Queue for Mafia GamesThe Last Mafia Game
I was pretty disappointed but this was my first entry.
My frustration about it is that when a super high credit artifact is at stake and it often goes to the same types of designs, let alone the same designers, it feels as if there is a ceiling that isn't going to be broken through easily by newcomers.
I think that it might help to have a theme that is clearly stated. It might bring some sense of equal ground to the competition.
Edit: In terms of my frustration, I will freely admit that the same thing happens with all of the competitions. This is the one that newcomers actually feel they have a chance in. Also, I am not interested in opening a can of worms, simply stating my frustration and offering a possible partial solution.
So, funny story.
First Beauty winner was Amarysse. She was, to many people, a "newbie" at the time of her winning. Maybe 20 IG years old? There was tons of drama when she won because there was a feeling that a newbie shouldn't win Beauty, that it should go to a more established player. There was an assumption she was an alt who didn't deserve it, etc etc, but she was a complete newcomer to Lusternia. And people lost their minds over it.
Similarly, when Irillia won Beauty for the first time in 2011, she was a pretty new character. Age 25 I think? Ish? People had similar reservations. "Who's that person who won Beauty? Aren't they new? Wait, why them?"
You see where I'm going with this? There's blowback either way. But newer players have won Beauty, never fear.
"Oh yeah, you're a naughty mayor, aren't you? Misfile that Form MA631-D. Comptroller Shevat's got a nice gemstone disc for you, but yer gonna have to beg for it."
I was going to mention Amarysee, but Sylandra beat me to it.
No matter who wins, some people are going to walk away feeling not only sad, but bitter about the winner. The percentage might vary a bit, but this is Beauty. That's how the game's gone for a long while now.
I feel like attempting to give detailed feedback on each design would result in even more contention/upset in the long run, in addition to just being exhausting for the administration.
I do kind of like the idea of giving everyone a more centralised theme, though, either through a vision from the Seal or simply stated in an Announce post. That alone could help orient people a little more.
You know what I'd like to see along with/instead of a theme for beauty? Release a single new design pattern for it, tell people what it is something like 2 weeks ahead of the deadline. Gives us a steady increase in the available patterns at a (presumably) manageable rate to implement, and pairing it with beauty gives an immediate stock of designs for people to use.
Any sufficiently advanced pun is indistinguishable from comedy.
I think for me, beauty doesn't really feel like a competition but it's also potentially the hardest seal to win? You either place/get a mention or you don't. (This isn't to say that it's not one, just that it doesn't feel like one)
With the rest of the events you can kinda know how well you did, you can review and prepare for the next year. You can practice most of the other events, becoming a better influencer/basher/combatant/debater/healer, building your knowledge base of the information released over the year along with general knowledge of facts and geography. Even chaos could be practiced.
But with beauty, you kinda drop your design in and find out if you win in a few weeks, and it's another year before you get to try again. Obviously, the work involved means that running mini-beauty comps is not a thing that should happen but it does makes things more difficult.
Though, an idea that keeps rumbling around. What do people think about beauty using masterpieces instead?
The issue is that, just like Justice Seal (barring an orgmate forfeiting for a better candidate or something), Beauty and Justice are FFAs instead of org vs org. Knowledge is too, but a whole org can hold practice quizzes all year long to prepare if they wanted to. I think that's where you're seeing it being the hardest to win.
The issue is that, just like Justice Seal (barring an orgmate forfeiting for a better candidate or something), Beauty and Justice are FFAs instead of org vs org. Knowledge is too, but a whole org can hold practice quizzes all year long to prepare if they wanted to. I think that's where you're seeing it being the hardest to win.
Perhaps, there's a binary you win or lose with debates that makes it easier to practice in preparation though. Because beauty is based on the decisions of the various admin, you could replicate most of the notes the Charites have provided, but because your judges are different people you'll likely get different results.
Also, my impression is that after the initial pass to get it down to ~25 designs, you're competing against various different groups simultaneously to get one of the 12-15 "slots".
Proportional representation of orgs, in theory, pits you against your home at this point. I'm reading the variety of styles as themes and item types so you're possibly competing on that axis as well, so popular submission types are also in competition as well. But you don't really have any way to know what those are, maybe a bunch of people submitted platters this year so yours is going to have a harder chance of standing out. (might be related to the first year, I think there was three forestal tapestries.)
But for me, it's mostly the whole submitting then finding out only if you placed/got a mention. Maybe a design didn't even get into the second round, maybe it did but it didn't get through to the final round. It might just be a pat on the head, but it might feel nicer?
This is the first time I'm participating in the Beauty Seal competition. I'm satisfied with my own design because even though I didn't place, I got a new design I could use in my own shop. However, I feel like a lot of people would like it if they got some kind of response back from how well they did for their submissions.
If you don't want to restrict people's creativity by setting a theme for them to design around, is it possible to write up a new mechanic/option solely to reduce the behind-the-scenes work done by the admin as well as make players happier knowing how they did?
Perhaps, when the Beauty Seal competition comes around again, open up/add a new option that allows people to submit a design. Syntaxes for example:
DESIGN <template> FOR <cartel> BEAUTYSEAL
This will allow people to submit anonymous designs that will be tagged as a submission for the Beauty Seal competition. They can't add 'Designed by' to the template.
Trademasters will still need to send a message to the Charites to inform them who has designed the item. So only the Charites know who has designed which Beauty Seal design.
When submissions are no longer being accepted, make the syntax not work again, like "Submissions for the Beauty Seal have closed." if someone tries. And then allow the admin to look at each Beauty Seal design with DESIGN # and to vote with DESIGN # VOTE <voteweight> <comment if any> where they can score the design from 0 to 10 and leave comments for why they like the design to give it a score.
The Charites will hold the sole power to return designs that didn't make the cut/points cut-off with DESIGN # RETURN <message>. So on and so forth
Just as a snarky aside, btw, two of the main people who were complaining about Amarysse in that posted thread are known drama queens.
Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
We are going to endeavour to cover as many of your comments as we can, but as mentioned before, it is probably not possible for us to cover them all.
Regarding embedding a system for Beauty within the game itself: we are unlikely to do so for a couple of reasons. The primary one is that it would take from our coding resources, and as much as we love the Beauty Seal, an event that happens once a year (even one that is part of the 'flagship event' of Lusternia) is going to be low on the priority list for our wonderful coders. But apart from this, coding something into the game would make the Seal static. It would remove, or make prohibitively difficult, any chance of changing how things work at a later date.
Which leads us on to the notion of changing how the competition works: by including themes, by basing it around particular patterns, etc. We honestly feel that the open nature of Beauty is the best way for it to run. Closing it off by theme or similar would lead to different complaints. Picking a theme that is neutral enough to cater to all tastes would be incredibly difficult and it is likely that whatever we picked we would exclude certain types of designer even more than happens now. At least as it stands, people can design whatever they want.
As for judging, training judges, giving the judges guidelines: we think that the fact that all of our judges vote under different criteria is in fact a boon for the contest. Were we to give them guidelines we would risk making the contest static, or predictable, or pigeon-holing designs. The fact that some of the judges prefer simpler designs and some of them prefer more elaborate ones is a good thing. It means that the designs that win are the ones that have pleased judges across the whole spectrum of preferences. This is what we meant when giving the example that some of the judges do not hold the winning design to be amongst their favourites. Just as all of you are a great spectrum of designing styles, themes, similar - so are our judges representative of a wide variety of opinions. We believe this to be a positive thing.
Lastly, feedback. We would love to be able to give everyone who wants it feedback. There are designs that we agonised over because we loved them dearly but could not put them through to the finals. We would love to be able to tell you this. We would love to have the time to. Unfortunately we do not. We, just as with almost all of the Havens, are volunteers. Our time is limited and we take great delight in using that time to run this unique contest. But as much as we would love to do everything, we cannot. For that we are sorry. We know it is hard, and disheartening, and we wish it could be another way.
That said, a little more insight that we hope will give you confidence: we read through every single design you send us intricately. Every time you submit a design to us, we are incredibly excited. We check it for the mundane things - are you the Trademaster, did you use the right message format, have you submitted this design before, have you submitted from this cartel already - and then we input all of the details of your design into the database we use for managing the contest. Once that is done, we devour your design with a fervour that would rival Morgfyre's. We talk amongst ourselves, discussing designs even before the deadline has come. We adore seeing what people have come up with this year, what is in vogue and what is not, what unexpected gems lie amidst the torrent of submissions. All told, we painstakingly read every single design that is sent to us probably upwards of a dozen times.
Just because you did not place either in the top five or the finals does not mean we hated your design, or that you are terrible, or that you will never place. Just because you tried something different and it didn't work does not mean it will never work. Every time you enter the contest, you enter into a different landscape, and one that you cannot truly predict - because you do not know what every other design looks like. That is one of the most exciting things about the contest, though we appreciate also the most frustrating.
So keep trying. We will be with you all of the way, cheering you on, even if we cannot do it directly.
"Oh yeah, you're a naughty mayor, aren't you? Misfile that Form MA631-D. Comptroller Shevat's got a nice gemstone disc for you, but yer gonna have to beg for it."
It is not permitted to enter designs that were entered in previous years, even if they did not place. We appreciate that this has not been made very clear in the past and will make sure that from next year onwards it is stated plainly in the relevant announcements.
The only issue with submitting public designs to the contest is when the design does not have the designedby field filled in. This makes it a bit more difficult for us to verify the designer's identity, and is why you should always use the designedby field for any design you might wish to submit. In terms of how well you do in the contest itself, public vs cartel is irrelevant.
Is there a way we can start marking designs in the design list or cartel <blah> catalogue fields if they've already been submitted? I imagine this is harder for people who've been submitting longer, but it would be a nice change.
Sadly that would require the design system code to be tweaked, which as mentioned is not something we are easily able to do. We would advise keeping a record of what designs you submit each year so that you know for the future. In the event that you are unsure we do have records and can double check if absolutely necessary.
Comments
I'd like to think my style of writing would translate across regardless the type of aesthetic used, but so far it doesn't seem so. That is why I feel a little jaded - I deliberately changed not my writing style, but went from dark/somber/perhaps macabre to light and pretty and sparkly. And it worked. I reverted afterward.
It's the one competition that is extremely blind for the competitors, there really is no way of knowing how you stack up against everyone else or even if you came close to being a challenger.
I appreciate the Charites opening this thread. I think designing/writing is much like any artwork in that it is so deeply personal, and you can't really train for it like other seals or get support and a team, you just have to pour your soul into it. And like anything so deeply personal, it's crushing to not even know if your work made it past the initial vetting process. That's where the cry for feedback comes from, and I understand it. Personally I feel if I didn't get an honourable mention then I don't want to know, and am even too embarrassed to share it on the thread because clearly it was sub-par work. There's no one to blame but myself - I can't say I didn't have support, or the enemies were targeting me, or I hadn't prepared enough before the competition...
It's a unique situation. Don't be too rough on upset designers who just want to know someone appreciated their art, even if it is not practical to get said feedback.
It removes the whimsy aspect of the judgement. Like one pre-event judging guide for an art competition had assigned points for example you judge so many points based on the colour competition, on uniqueness etc etc. There's similar ones for writing competitions that do a similar thing and just set out what the competition is looking for in terms to the judges so that they can mark it accordingly.
Anyone that doesn't receive a message will know they didn't make the first cut, those that did will know which one of their designs was considered the strongest.
Kinda a middle ground between nothing and the feedback idea.
It might also help if the beauty post contained some of the info in the OP here, or maybe a helpfile. There's designs I probably wouldn't have submitted with the post in mind, and others that I might have worked on more instead.
For what it's worth, I enjoy your designs, darker and otherwise. I figure that's why we open the Beauty Submission thread, yeah? To share our designs and to be excited about them.
These things are in so many ways a numbers game. You have a 1/47th chance of winning, without taking any other factors into account. The reality is, 42 people are going to be disappointed and walk away with nothing. It's inevitable. There is no way around this. And it doesn't mean those 42 people suck, necessarily. It just means 5 people had broad enough appeal due to either their writing style, or their content, or their concept, that it propelled them to the top.
Instead of thinking that not being chosen makes you a failure, consider this: the Charites said they had a top 25. 25! That's half of the designers! That means you didn't lose because you weren't "good" but because you were against a lot of good people. Beauty is an intense competition. You happen to be one of many fierce competitors, and you've placed more than the majority of entrants ever have in this competition (even if you don't want to stand by the work you submitted). The conceptual value of the content aside, you couldn't do that if you weren't a good writer.
I know I'm coming off a bit bullheaded about this, but I'm trying to respond as someone who has been rejected a lot, to tell you don't let rejection define your self-worth as a writer. Because that way madness lies. You can do your best in a competition and still lose. I liked what I submitted this time, and it didn't place, and that's okay because I stand by my work. Please don't let losing a contest convince you to disavow your own work and your own talents. I'd really enjoy competing against you next year; your work isn't subpar to me.
My frustration about it is that when a super high credit artifact is at stake and it often goes to the same types of designs, let alone the same designers, it feels as if there is a ceiling that isn't going to be broken through easily by newcomers.
I think that it might help to have a theme that is clearly stated. It might bring some sense of equal ground to the competition.
Edit: In terms of my frustration, I will freely admit that the same thing happens with all of the competitions. This is the one that newcomers actually feel they have a chance in. Also, I am not interested in opening a can of worms, simply stating my frustration and offering a possible partial solution.
First Beauty winner was Amarysse. She was, to many people, a "newbie" at the time of her winning. Maybe 20 IG years old? There was tons of drama when she won because there was a feeling that a newbie shouldn't win Beauty, that it should go to a more established player. There was an assumption she was an alt who didn't deserve it, etc etc, but she was a complete newcomer to Lusternia. And people lost their minds over it.
Similarly, when Irillia won Beauty for the first time in 2011, she was a pretty new character. Age 25 I think? Ish? People had similar reservations. "Who's that person who won Beauty? Aren't they new? Wait, why them?"
You see where I'm going with this? There's blowback either way. But newer players have won Beauty, never fear.
No matter who wins, some people are going to walk away feeling not only sad, but bitter about the winner. The percentage might vary a bit, but this is Beauty. That's how the game's gone for a long while now.
I feel like attempting to give detailed feedback on each design would result in even more contention/upset in the long run, in addition to just being exhausting for the administration.
I do kind of like the idea of giving everyone a more centralised theme, though, either through a vision from the Seal or simply stated in an Announce post. That alone could help orient people a little more.
With the rest of the events you can kinda know how well you did, you can review and prepare for the next year. You can practice most of the other events, becoming a better influencer/basher/combatant/debater/healer, building your knowledge base of the information released over the year along with general knowledge of facts and geography. Even chaos could be practiced.
But with beauty, you kinda drop your design in and find out if you win in a few weeks, and it's another year before you get to try again. Obviously, the work involved means that running mini-beauty comps is not a thing that should happen but it does makes things more difficult.
Though, an idea that keeps rumbling around. What do people think about beauty using masterpieces instead?
Also, my impression is that after the initial pass to get it down to ~25 designs, you're competing against various different groups simultaneously to get one of the 12-15 "slots".
Proportional representation of orgs, in theory, pits you against your home at this point. I'm reading the variety of styles as themes and item types so you're possibly competing on that axis as well, so popular submission types are also in competition as well.
But you don't really have any way to know what those are, maybe a bunch of people submitted platters this year so yours is going to have a harder chance of standing out. (might be related to the first year, I think there was three forestal tapestries.)
But for me, it's mostly the whole submitting then finding out only if you placed/got a mention. Maybe a design didn't even get into the second round, maybe it did but it didn't get through to the final round. It might just be a pat on the head, but it might feel nicer?
If you don't want to restrict people's creativity by setting a theme for them to design around, is it possible to write up a new mechanic/option solely to reduce the behind-the-scenes work done by the admin as well as make players happier knowing how they did?
Perhaps, when the Beauty Seal competition comes around again, open up/add a new option that allows people to submit a design. Syntaxes for example:
DESIGN <template> FOR <cartel> BEAUTYSEAL
This will allow people to submit anonymous designs that will be tagged as a submission for the Beauty Seal competition. They can't add 'Designed by' to the template.
Trademasters will still need to send a message to the Charites to inform them who has designed the item. So only the Charites know who has designed which Beauty Seal design.
When submissions are no longer being accepted, make the syntax not work again, like "Submissions for the Beauty Seal have closed." if someone tries. And then allow the admin to look at each Beauty Seal design with DESIGN # and to vote with DESIGN # VOTE <voteweight> <comment if any> where they can score the design from 0 to 10 and leave comments for why they like the design to give it a score.
The Charites will hold the sole power to return designs that didn't make the cut/points cut-off with DESIGN # RETURN <message>. So on and so forth
Regarding embedding a system for Beauty within the game itself: we are unlikely to do so for a couple of reasons. The primary one is that it would take from our coding resources, and as much as we love the Beauty Seal, an event that happens once a year (even one that is part of the 'flagship event' of Lusternia) is going to be low on the priority list for our wonderful coders. But apart from this, coding something into the game would make the Seal static. It would remove, or make prohibitively difficult, any chance of changing how things work at a later date.
Which leads us on to the notion of changing how the competition works: by including themes, by basing it around particular patterns, etc. We honestly feel that the open nature of Beauty is the best way for it to run. Closing it off by theme or similar would lead to different complaints. Picking a theme that is neutral enough to cater to all tastes would be incredibly difficult and it is likely that whatever we picked we would exclude certain types of designer even more than happens now. At least as it stands, people can design whatever they want.
As for judging, training judges, giving the judges guidelines: we think that the fact that all of our judges vote under different criteria is in fact a boon for the contest. Were we to give them guidelines we would risk making the contest static, or predictable, or pigeon-holing designs. The fact that some of the judges prefer simpler designs and some of them prefer more elaborate ones is a good thing. It means that the designs that win are the ones that have pleased judges across the whole spectrum of preferences. This is what we meant when giving the example that some of the judges do not hold the winning design to be amongst their favourites. Just as all of you are a great spectrum of designing styles, themes, similar - so are our judges representative of a wide variety of opinions. We believe this to be a positive thing.
Lastly, feedback. We would love to be able to give everyone who wants it feedback. There are designs that we agonised over because we loved them dearly but could not put them through to the finals. We would love to be able to tell you this. We would love to have the time to. Unfortunately we do not. We, just as with almost all of the Havens, are volunteers. Our time is limited and we take great delight in using that time to run this unique contest. But as much as we would love to do everything, we cannot. For that we are sorry. We know it is hard, and disheartening, and we wish it could be another way.
That said, a little more insight that we hope will give you confidence: we read through every single design you send us intricately. Every time you submit a design to us, we are incredibly excited. We check it for the mundane things - are you the Trademaster, did you use the right message format, have you submitted this design before, have you submitted from this cartel already - and then we input all of the details of your design into the database we use for managing the contest. Once that is done, we devour your design with a fervour that would rival Morgfyre's. We talk amongst ourselves, discussing designs even before the deadline has come. We adore seeing what people have come up with this year, what is in vogue and what is not, what unexpected gems lie amidst the torrent of submissions. All told, we painstakingly read every single design that is sent to us probably upwards of a dozen times.
Just because you did not place either in the top five or the finals does not mean we hated your design, or that you are terrible, or that you will never place. Just because you tried something different and it didn't work does not mean it will never work. Every time you enter the contest, you enter into a different landscape, and one that you cannot truly predict - because you do not know what every other design looks like. That is one of the most exciting things about the contest, though we appreciate also the most frustrating.
So keep trying. We will be with you all of the way, cheering you on, even if we cannot do it directly.
I know they're less likely to do well, but should we not enter a design that's been entered in a previous year?
And second, does a design being listed as public hurt it in Beauty?
The only issue with submitting public designs to the contest is when the design does not have the designedby field filled in. This makes it a bit more difficult for us to verify the designer's identity, and is why you should always use the designedby field for any design you might wish to submit. In terms of how well you do in the contest itself, public vs cartel is irrelevant.
Ixion tells you, "// I don't think anyone else had a clue, amazing form."