RCT Discussion / The New Element Spotlight & Design Race
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07-August 23
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Bluetiful_Monday
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Thank you Posix for the write-up and inspiring words. Goes without saying, I've learned so much from seeing the incredible work of everyone else on NE. I'm not sure how long I'll last in the Design race this year, but I'm already looking forward to the next big project.
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posix
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End of year conclusion
As all of 2023's competitive solo submissions have been scored, it's time to make an official summary of the two races. It's with great pleasure that I announce to you the two overall 2023 winners:
Big congratulations to you both!
And of course, we shall look at the overall standings now for both categories. We find some new old names and a sudden overturn of events.
Design Race Conclusion
Surely a similarly dramatic update as in the spotlight category would not repeat itself here. But we do find three new racers who joined towards the end of 2023.
2023 Design Race 27 Jan, 2024 - FINAL # Score Member Park 1 91.50 pants SolarWing Skyway 2 85.50 FK+Coastermind Salinity 3 83.50 Jens J. San Avaiki 4 79.00 Xeccah Charybdis and Scylla 79.00 Terry Inferno Patagon 5 78.00 SSSammy Saeiqa 6 77.50 RWE Yatagarasu 7 76.50 G Force Skyliner 8 76.00 AJ- Mato 9 74.00 MorganFan Gale of Amun-Ra 10 73.50 Congoy Raptor Run 11 72.00 ACEfanatic02 Superman: Final Flight 12 71.50 Bluetiful_Monday Apothicon Servant 13 71.25 Xtreme97 Condor 14 71.00 Suormot Wildfire 15 70.50 tabard424 T-Express Commentary
Congrats RWE for joining Bluetiful_Monday in being the only two players of the year to make it into both races. And by a mere 0.5% you would have also finished among the top 5 Design racers. Lastly, you've also finished as Germany's best player in both categories. I think the breakthrough into 80%+ territory is definitely within reach for 2024, and I know I'm not alone in wishing you best of luck for it.
So there you have it. I've enjoyed compiling these lists and commenting on individual performances. It's a bit more time consuming to get the presentation right than I would like. Thankfully Xtreme helped me update the rankings for this last race post. I do think though that the focus on NE's traditional competition with the two categories helps add some well deserved attention to those who build solo. It takes more to do 80% of a project yourself, and it allows you to make a statement for who you are as a creative showcase parkmaker. Seeing the results of this is definitely still one of my favourite aspects of the community. Congrats again to all top placing players, and I hope to speak to you about fresh new solo work of 2024 soon.
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FredD
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Thanks for the great write-up and keeping all these numbers and statistics! Definitely interesting to see. While 2023 wasn't a very productive year, I'm still glad to have released/made 2 parks (for GT) after 2 years of nothing. I hope to release some decent work this year too.
Didn't expect to see Belgium at #2 in the country breakdown. Woohoo!
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Liampie
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The country breakdown is awesome! I don't feel like I want to increase the Netherlands' ranking, we're obnoxious enough as a country, but I really hope to see my name up there in the individual list in 2024! Can't wait to see this Race idea develop over the next few years.
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Commentary
At christmas 2023, alex turns the entire spotlight race on its head and handily bags the Race Champion title, with the incredible Age of Sail. An unfathomably good park, and the inevitable sky-high score that followed: the very fact that its 97% came close to robbie92's famous 98.13% of Busch Gardens Asia was a shocker, and both parks are now the only solos to ever score above 95%. Surely a moment at NE that will be remembered always.
This then of course also meant that J K's power comback of 2023, which made him sit comfortably as the race leader for most of the year, was ruthlessly pushed down to second place.
Congratulations alex once again for the superior showing. We're running out of superlatives for you.
I'm very glad to see Ethan move up the ranks and finish among the top 5 solo builders of 2023, and in fact the best among all US players, who are the most represented nationality in the race. I find this a very deserving achievement for a player who has pushed extremely hard over the year, and whose main room for improvement might be the accessibility to his parks. I would wish for him that 2024 is the year where we'll stop hearing that his parks are "too much" and overladen, where the admiration is at the forefront and sincere. Naturally, Ethan will have to play his part in making it happen.
And then we have a place in the race that feels like it's 2010 all over again. In fact that's the year where Turtle last released solo work! #theyallcomeback is a most welcome phenomenon we are very pleased to witness, and the homecoming of Turtle did not disappoint at all. Whilst I don't know the precise details, I would assume Liam's efforts to woo Turtle into renewed RCT activity are partly to thank here. What happens is a return straight to the top 10 of the year, where Turtle finds himself comfortably in 7th place with the wonderful Dejima, at 81.00%. It's a noteworthy coincidence that the previous solo work we find when backtracking his catalogue is 2010's Myst. It scored an almost identical 81.15%, telling you that 13+ years in between, and however many meta shifts you want, mean nothing when it comes to a true great of the game who decides to lay their hands on RCT again.
Congratulations Turtle - this was a great show. And surely you cannot overlook everyone's crossed fingers that you'll do it again in 2024 (?!).
Lastly, I'd like to briefly address windflower. NE has seen participation from South Korean players, even during RCTLL days. It has always been a very welcome contribution to the landscape of parkmaking, one that we've typically found enriching, and that has enabled a different angle to see the game from. Sadly dear pierrot has been quite absent in recent years, but we find a Korean player in both the spotlight and design races for 2023. Their showings are a bit too singular to project any meaning into it, but I would very much desire to have more of it.
Closing words & Country Breakdown
I am very impressed by what the community has produced this past year. The race mechanism means that this list is fairly exclusive, with only people's best scoring solo wins of the year included. And yet we count a total of 31 names in the spotlight category. That's more than two and a half solos per month, which I honestly think is incredible. It does really make me think back to the beginnings of the site, where the spotlight was the "best park of the month", as each month saw at least 4-5 submissions. To think that in 2023, with the development the game has taken and the expontentially higher amount of effort invested into parks, we would see this many solo parks, is a seriously strong statement for the community's fertility.
Those of you who have been part of NE for a certain while know the typical nationalities represented in the community. For 2023, this is a similar picture. However, which of these fare best is usually fluctuating, depending on who counts the biggest talents and most productive players among them. So I thought because we can, let's attempt to analyse the data through a per-country lens. Needless to say some of this is a bit of a stretch, since I anticipate the score differences here would be much smaller if all groups had the same number of players as the US, but nontheless, I think it's a fun little exercise, to be taken with a pinch of salt:
(countries need at least 3 builders to form an average)
An interesting sight. The overall average accolade score of all parks inthe spotlight race was 69.21%.
My main takeaways here are that the UK keeps having some of the best RCT players NE has seen. This is certainly a result that I would expect to see repeated in past years, if we were to collect the data. I had expected a few more players from the Netherlands, as a lot of members in the community are Dutch. I'm hoping to see some more Oranje muscle here in 2024! We also see that quite a lot of US players are currently up and coming. It'll be interesting to see if some of them make a name for themselves on NE this year. I would advise to put your money on Gustav Goblin, Bluetiful_Monday and RobDedede.