Deco Contest Takeaway

WHAT WENT RIGHT
Great work by most entries
Substantial prize
Concentrated area of decorating tricks and techniques
Players can demonstrate bugs and devs often get in a fix
Watching Starr cringe at unintended use of items

WHAT WENT WRONG
Difficult to find all the houses
Narrow voting window
Narrow voting population
Downvoting was possible
Live tour was exhausting

I'd suggest:
A week long voting window - A live stream cannot accommodate a worldwide audience or players who have other obligations.
Tokenized voting - Each account gets 100 voting tokens to distribute as they wish.
Encourage builders to present their own video tour - Contestants can emphasize story and detail that can't be accommodated in a text file.

 

Out of the three suggestions, I like this one the most It did take a very long time to see a few and I didn't (couldn't) see them all (No time) Did I see most? I don't know ~TL~

 

Why bother voting if the contestant can hand out the tokens. I for one would find 100 people who all better give me tens. If not, why would I give them a token.

It was a deco contest not a story contest. So what if the contestant had a compelling reason for decoding that way. What if the contestant doesn’t have an interesting story behind the deco use.

 

the game is free-to-play... anyone can create multiple accounts to vote... and many backers have multiple accounts already even before Free-To-Play... they need to put some kind of restriction for this to work...

@Time Lord Welcome back?

 

There's been allot of changes and added content. Atos was right to point out this time as being the right time to rediscover SOTA
I put all my other games into hibernation because they were all getting lame.
I still have never shaking confidence in our SOTA's successful future, it just suffers from it's crowd funding ways of development which are still ground breaking in the industry.

I have 3 accounts but only play the one now that multi character slots have come. I didn't vote with my extras, but I do wish we had that "100 token idea" so we could spread them around. I was looking for some quality that maybe I'd want to live in or design copy and do my own houses in. I still have everything that came with all my bundles and pledges, but if anyone ever looks inside any of my homes there's not much inside them at all, (my homes all need echo effects from all their emptiness )

Development Progress;
In many ways this contest was all about displaying allot of what any new player could look forward to achieving through what's available to be had, customized or manipulated so as not to look like every other house that everyone else has. It's one of the real strengths of the game so it's not a cookie cutter world, which is a description SOTA could easily fall into with out it's great diversity of objects and trophies to be had.

Mission Accomplished displaying what SOTA is capable of in the big world of ingame deco! I don't think in that way, that any other game can truly match it... "in that way, they just can't touch it".

So what's next to advertise the better qualities of our game ?
It's great that our development team takes such time with us all and I do hope it helps break the monotony of being alone in a room playing with yourself "We're here for you!" and "They are there for us"

But what is "best" next for showing off our game ?
I've missed allot because I'm now out of the loop having been gone so long, BUT...
I do think there's something needed (there always is) beyond the very successful live steams (me back is proof of that).

In Much Harsher Criticism of Long Run Advertising
Something I have particularly noticed is that there's so much less interaction here on our forums than there was before. The dreams seem somewhat to have subsided, those dreams which were all too common a daily event earlier in our development. I first noticed this steady decline when the guilds began forming and the idea of the "multi-guild" died due to PvP war guild and PvM guildmaster & guild ego centralized power concerns. The dream of being able to be a member of many PvM guilds at the same time was one I wish that had been adopted. That way whatever guild flag one wanted to fly it was more in line with any group that formed. Segregation is what I'm talking about here (in advertising our game concerns) as one of our games weaknesses. With the separation of all into such solitary or exclusive guilds and the rise of outside SOTA forums (guild and otherwise ie Reddit) this decentralized our advertising and community binding abilities. In some ways those outside SOTA forums were helpful, yet I believe in the long run divided what central advertising and collective community power our official forums once had. It's just plain and simple alchemy, decentralization dissolved us to the levels of forums activity we currently see. While I was away from the game I did check into the forums to see what was new from time to time. It's activity just kept dwindling to it's current level.

OMG $700,000.00+ , almost $800K! Seed Invest;
In all my time gone or recluse from the game, I have yet to have seen a single advertisement for Shroud of the Avatar outside the game and it's forums.
One could almost have afforded a televised commercial during the National SuperBowl half time! ... *rant over. I still have confidence*

It was "Atos and his live stream" that brought my attention and playtime back to our SOTA. I had always planned to have returned soon, but the call of Atos I couldn't ignore as his live streams were and are so compelling. I had no idea of the house and pet giveaway until I saw it in my account. I don't check my e-mail very much at all and just saw Portalarium's e-mail to me today.

Congratulations to all who participated, as I did see what I may attempt in my own properties
I wasn't going to say all the rant above, but I do feel that our advertising could do with some collective community brain power to see if we could do something more.
*I host or post some of Atos's live streams on my FB from time to time but I'm quite a political Jabberwocky, so I think only one side of the political spectrum actually sees them*

In Review;
1) If there were some way to re-consolidate our players back to our forums and then direct advertising attention back to our forums, I believe that would be a positive step in the right direction.
2) Live Streams are good and could somehow be better, "think about it".
*Special note; DarkStarr could do with a better microphone. He'd never make in on radio with that, "not exactly crappy but adequate mike" of his* His sound quality is like a Hover, it s#x.
3) I truly didn't see a single advertisement for our game while I was gone.
4) Wow there's allot to be proud of here in new inspiring content for both the new and old player.

Good Suggestions @Mugly Wumple !
~Time Lord~

 

I loved being a part of the contest!

Atos did absolutely everything he could to make it great and for the most part i think he succeeded quite well. Lessons were learned for future contests of this magnitude and i for one will partake in as many of them as i can.

He showed of the progress during his streams and did a true marathon for the voting. I was just watching but i burned out toward the end and missed the last 20 or so. Cant imagine actually doing the streaming for that one.

Anyway here is my small list of ideas for the next one:
Set a limit to the number of entries from the start, for huge contests like this one it should be around 50 i think.
More and firmer rules for what is allowed. A lot of entries were simply moved from another town.
Higher entry costs, 250.000 gold would be better and ONLY allow ingame gold to be used.

Voting should be split in two or three. 1. Public vote(i like the fixed amount of tokens idea), 2. Judging panel made up of experienced players, (third is more tentative) developer/GM votes. The voting sets could then be combined and from that a winner gets decided.


Again, so many <3's to Atos for the huge effort he put into this and I look forward to many more awesome contests in the future.

 

Get an outside judge that will bring their own curious audience with them. I suggest a popular Sims streamer who is good at deco, or a real interior decorator from YouTube.

You don't see the fans calling being referees at the Super Bowl, nor the team owners, and no one seriously thinks they should.

 

I think too that Chris did a great job but I also would like to add some ideas.

I would suggest creating ingame “voting boxes” where avatars can vote additionally to the possibility of the twitch-solution and to not “waste” them as just dev deco contest items they could be craftable and for general purposes like elections in a guild, opinion polls in PoTs, feedback for player made dungeons,…

Maybe the visiting process could also be automatized. E.g. while the lot decoration is taking place the devs can preset a ghost route around and inside the house for each lot. Once the event starts they start a loop that is visible for everyone following the stream. E.g. ghost1 is starting his route. If he reached the end and starting anew his 2 minute course the loop switches to ghost2 who has also just ended his 2 minutes course and also just started anew. Next is ghost3 and so on in an eternal loop of the ghosts. This way Christ could concentrate on explaining how to vote or answer questions while in the background the lots are shown by the automatic ghosts...or Chris is manually switching between the automatic ghosts.

If there are different categories maybe the participants should have to visibly display the choosen category e.g. by placing a colored cloak next to the entrance (black = most chaotic lot, red = just crafted/ingame gold purchases, green = best dance floor,…) as it is not always that visible what category they are aiming for.
Maybe the category voting’s should be even separated. Day 1 just voting for best dance floors lots, day 2 just voting for the most chaotic lot,…

The judges might be a good idea…maybe the winners of the last contest could also be added as judges in the next contest.

I think if there is someone interested in participating she or he should be able to partake and e.g. the 250 000 gold would be quite limiting as new players without a sponsor could not participate. I guess some kind of fee should stay but I bet the 100 000 gold or 1000 coto is already more than sufficient to sort out not really interested avatars.

I think too that the rules of what is possible and what not should be a little more clarified. For example I completely forgot the option to add a note…I even heard it during the stream as chris said this might be good idea but totally forgot it.