Contests / H2H Design or NE Olympics

good for them? I'm pretty sure all I said was that there were teams that didn't work out so don't get your panties in a wad. geeze. 

There are enough solo submissions, and there will be more. What is the problem?! Nobody stops you from competing with your own work. 

The community is a poor decision maker

So I wrote this earlier today. Very bluntly which was wrong and for which I apologise. But I'm still a little short on patience with the repeated accusations and the ever recurring witch hunt while I pour a significant amount of my spare time into keeping this community afloat. This is such a big allegation however that I'd like to properly explain what I meant.

I already wrote about it in the unofficial contest discussion a few months back (I think). The more voices you add to a discussion, the more sluggish the process becomes. In poll-form, there's no guarantee that the outcome is the result of careful deliberation and weighing of options and collective interests that go way beyond "I want to build cool parks with [player]". Even if everyone partaking in a poll would spend a month forming an opinion there would still be the problem of consensus. And who is going to think of how these things work behind the scenes?

We tried letting the community pick with PT4. Britain tried it with the Brexit. Direct democracy is just not a good idea. Indirect democracy is. Which is why we still hold contest polls and other referendums every now and then. In the case of the Olympics that was deemed unnecessary because a similar concept was already discussed in detail on I think BelgianGuy's initiative and that was the proof that the Olympics would be a good choice for the next contest. We did invite some members to look over the contest design before we launched it and we made some adjustments. Point is, decision making has to be centred somewhere, in a group of people, in order to be efficient. Leading up the decision making input from outside the group is welcome and useful and we always include this.

So, coming back to my initial statement about the community: I was referring to communities in general. Direct democracy rarely works as intended. I have a lot of faith in the NE community, cheating and poll skewing are rare things and people tend to be very open minded. I love that. But even in a community this great I think power needs to be centralized in a group of dedicated people, that in practice almost always extends beyond the admin team.
 

 

 

What's the point of a "fun contest" if this happens?

 

I wouldn't have a problem with just a single member changing teams, but I'm 99% it would set a precedent and more and more people would change teams and in the end nothing would be left of the contest's premise. The "Come on, it's only a game! Let's have fun!" argument is often brought up when it concerns the possiblity of breaking the rules, but games are only fun BECAUSE of the rules. Even though it can be frustrating at times. Without rules there is no game. It's not fun when two players in a football team leave the pitch injured while there are no more substitutions. It's not fun when your team is reduced to nine people facing eleven. Would you allow a fourth and fifth substitution for the team with the injuries to make the game more balanced and fun?

btw Sorry I didn't mean to open this can of worms.

Would you allow a fourth and fifth substitution for the team with the injuries to make the game more balanced and fun?

 

Yes I would, if it was possible to proof an injury. My point here is simple: We have active members on dormant teams and dormant members on active teams. That is not a great thing to happen. Why not have a second deadline where teams can "get rid of" players that didn't build anything yet and can pick up players that landed on inactive teams?

that wouldn't have been a bad idea but it's wayyy to late for that.

The points G Force makes about what is wrong with the contest are the exact reasons we didn't do them.
 
The point of the Olympics was to provide a different contest, based on an old contest format that no longer works for the site (Pro Tour). Everyone liked the prelims last time around, and everyone likes team contests, so we merged the two ideas to create this.
 
We tried to be as different from H2H as possible, because why would we want another contest exactly the same?
 
I also think we have had quality submissions for this contest. But regardless, that isn't the point of this contest, that is the point of H2H, to get the best RCT creations possible. This contest wasn't about that, this contest was about seeing how people build under imposed restrictions and guidelines and in a quick time frame.
 
Now, addressing some of the other points:
 
1) The H2H Awards. We actually didn't take forever with these. H2H6 awards took place in October/November. H2H7 awards took place in September. That's quicker, a whole 1 or 2 months quicker.
 
2) 2015 Awards voting took place 8th April. In comparison the previous years have been like this:
2014 - 9th February
2013 - 2nd March
2012 - 11th March
2011 - 7th March
2010 - 4th Feb
2009 - 21st Feb
So yes, we were a little bit later than normal. But only by 1 month, as the awards, on average, take place at the beginning of March.
 
3) The hype of this contest as if it is some great amazing thing is an unfair comment. We were excited about this contest, very much so, and we were excited to finally share it with you. How are we meant to know how the contest is going to go down or how excited people will be? What are we meant to do? Tell everyone we've got a contest but its going to be shit so don't bother getting excited about it? No. We think its going to be an amazing contest because we've put effort into trying to make it so. We don't know how its going to be, so all we can do is have hope and belief. But this is the first time we've done it, so there are going to be a lot of things wrong, and a lot of things that can be done better in the future, but for now, I see it as a success, there is a lot of participation, and we rightfully hyped it up.
 
4) Intensive contests, like H2H, burn people out. Contests like H2H are also not very inclusive. A lot of people felt burned out after H2H6 and after H2H7, its always the same, we can't run them all the time because it just isn't good for people. Also, the olympics was about being inclusive, anyone could join, from any skill level, H2H is quite restrictive, I know its not too bad down the lower end of the draft, but its still pretty exclusive. Look at this contest, what do we have? A team of relative NE and RCT newbies, doing extremely well. Do you get that in H2H style contests? No. Is it great to see? Yes.
 
6) There were more discussions than just the H2H Design idea that people were talking about, and we didn't shut any of them down, we allowed conversation and discussion, we never said don't do it, we simply said that we were working on a contest, because we are always working on contests, as soon as one finishes we are working on the next one. Also we said that if people wanted to go ahead with the community contest we would hold back on the official contest for the summer, it wasn't a threat, it was giving you all an opportunity. We are never against community contests, some can be very successful, a lot aren't, but we've never said no to them, we just didn't want to run a contest simultaneously, or straight after/before.
 
5) It isn't that we have 1000 better things to do, its that we all have jobs, degrees, businesses, relationships etc. I'd spend every moment of my time on the site and building RCT like I used to if I could, but I can't, so I devote as much of my free time (if not all of it) on doing things for the site. It's most likely that period through Winter/Fall was a period where we all had something difficult going on. I know I was out of action until March pretty much.
 
7)The lack of admin power is being addressed, it was being addressed before the contest, and after the contest it will go back to being addressed again. Most likely we'll recruit more staff members and rework the team, I'll probably step away from an active role and be advisory, like Posix is, but we are getting through the contest first.

H2H6 did end nearly a month latter than H2H7 did, basically no change there I guess in terms of time then, but that's not really important.

3) I just think you guys could of asked around to gauge what people's interest in the contest would be. No need for you 4 guys to hide everything until its officially announced. It's basically impossible for 4 people to correctly predict the community's reaction or appetite for contests or events without actually asking around.

4) I can understand the argument they aren't inclusive (although 48(?) members is still quite a lot). But NE has never really been inclusive for all skill levels, its always been an elitist community until probably the last 2-3 years. Not that I think we should exclude people, but when you lose your identity it becomes tough to stand out and survive. While we do have some newbie teams doing well, its not like any of the parks from the contest thus far have been of some great quality. Looking at everything there is possibly 1 map so far that deserves above a 70% rating.... Contrasting to H2H7 where it seemed every map got a 70%+ but maybe 4 or 5. Now is that the contest itself or are people just not as into building at this moment and creating great work? Possibly, but there is definitely a huge discrepancy between the quality of work in this contest and the previous contests. Something about this contest definitely seems to have resulted in a lower quality standard.

5)& 7) Again, I understand. Probably could of used different language than "better things" but I think you understood what I was saying. I'm glad to see there are changes in the works and again I'm always willing to help out.

6) I guess it was just bad timing, it seemed we were progressing with our Design contest idea and it was gaining steam. Then you guys stepped in and dangled this contest in front of everyone which kind of killed our idea off. Perhaps we were being a bit to ambitious, especially looking at this contest, and it probably wouldn't have worked out. I think in the future, outside of H2Hs, the community and the admin team should be more collaborative on their contest efforts. New stuff is always great but I feel bad that you guys are putting in all the effort but not getting the great returns in terms of activity and quality like we have seen in the past. Especially in a time where the administrative team seems to be busier than ever with Non-NE stuff, I'm thankful that you guys are putting the time in that you are, it just feels like we could have made it a little worthwhile if it had been handled a bit differently at the beginning.

can we just go back to letting kumba make every decision for us

 

 

in all seriousness tho this contest is so much more interesting for me than the latest h2h

This conversation sucks im enjoying my rollercoaster tycoon olympics and no confusingly intense metagame condescending whatever will convince me otherwise, every day im just thankful whatever were doing here exists in the first place

The drama here is more bullshit than all that Youtube drama shit. Admins, you're great. Parts of this community are evidently very enthusiastic and want to see NE thrive, and that's also great. But there's much better ways of getting things across than how it's being done right now. 

As a new member, the fact that this competition is inclusive is amazing. My crew's doing great! Although it's far far too late to make this suggestion it might have been a better choice than improv's disastrous bench to literally reuse an older Pro Tour bench. 

 

And need I remind you guys that H2Hs of past have not been sunshine and daisies? Even h2h5 had a forfeit in the grand finals.

I just want to clarify my earlier comment. I'm not mad or upset, my not being able to switch to another team is in the rules, so that's fine. I would have really enjoyed having a part in this contest, I think it was a great idea, bringing something fresh and new to the site. A contest with less pressure is awesome, perhaps the first of it's kind, so hats off to the admins for thinking of it, and putting it together. I've enjoyed checking out all the parks so far (or most of them, I didn't download the vertical sprint parks yet), and this will inevitably refine the skills of newer members to keep building, I'm sure we'll see some great results from this contest in the years to come. For those who want H2H, I'm sure you'll be able to scratch that itch in 2017/18.

The bigger issue here is that there wasn't a torch relay.

The bigger issue here is that there wasn't a torch relay.

 

Dr. dirt knows what's up...

 

Bigshootergill should just join our team... we've got little more than half as much manpower as everyone else.

we've got little more than half as much manpower as everyone else.

 

I wouldn't be too sure about that

The bigger issue here is that there wasn't a torch relay.

 

 

Agreed

 

and hey, at least there's no zika in these Olympics

and hey, at least there's no zika in these Olympics

 

yet