73 replies to this topic

[Sirens-of-Titan]

Hello Guild Members!

Well it's been over six months since the Guilds of Historica began their trial run and we want to know what you think so far! It's been an incredible process, with hundreds of talented builders and creations gracing these pages, making for one of the best MOC'er online communities yet!

SURVEY TIME:




Do you like the Guilds? Do you feel they can be improved? This is your chance to let us know how you feel about the whole project!  

Please take the survey and comment below in the following format:


example:

• Hello I'm from (Guild)
  
  
• I am (Active Builder and Member/Member/Past Member/Not affiliated with Guilds) Pick one  
  
  
• Comment on what you like about GoH.
  
  
• Comment on things that could be improved.

This survey will help us figure out the best way to keep improving the Guilds, Challenges and making EB the most fun and exciting AFOL community out there!  

If you've left the guilds tell us why. Be brutally honest; we can take it! Or we can blame it on one of the other guild leaders  

[soccerkid6]

Hello I'm from Mitgardia
I am Active Builder and Member
I really like the community of GoH, and the feedback given by the judges    I also like that it has promoted a lot more building!
I am actually very happy with the way it works right now    The only thing I might change would be to have a few more smaller prizes for each challenge, so that 2nd and 3rd place could each receive a small prize as well.

[Brickdoctor]

I'm an Avalonian, and the half-finished Albion building on my LEGO table says I'm technically active, even if my posting probably doesn't show it.   I think the guilds have been a great addition that have really improved my building, though other things (mainly Heroica) have gotten in the way of my participating in the last two challenges. I'd love to see this continue, and I wouldn't mind seeing it applied to another theme, though Castle's already my favorite of the non-licensed themes. (and I don't think this concept would work nearly as well with a licensed theme that already has an established universe, storyline, and canon objects)

[Hersbrucker]

Hi there from Nocturus
I'm one of the active builder from our guild.

It makes me happy to work with so excellent builders around the world.
My skills improved so much the last months, it's fantastic.

For the future, maybe you can give us more transparent to the Guild points.
Maybe you can put a button/picture on everybodys first post of MOC's, that shows this build is ratet with XXX Points for Guild XXX.

I don't know how you funded this presents for our challenges, but I think it is not necessary.
The fun and the honor of every person here should be enough for us crazy LEGO fans.

[Niku]

Hello I'm Niku from Avalonia.

I am an active builder and member, currently building for challenge 3 and some free builds.

Comment on what you like about GoH. I like the chance to improve my skills. I have learned many techniques over the various challenges, I also like the sense of a story and the rivalry between factions. And that you have a fun time too.  

Comment on things that could be improved. Give continuity about some things as maps - stories developments, and maybe small prizes to be given for 2nd and 3rd and perhaps a random one.

[Rolli]

Hail from Avalonia. Active builder for sure though i have to manage building for Avalonia and normal life quite a bit which currently results in less builds.

Feedback is great, also the inspiration i can draw from GoH. As a designer having such a amount of creative people in one place is great. I'm hoping that GoH continues as this is currently my only lego project and the main reason for visiting eb everyday. GoH is also responsible that i started building again which is also a great plus. Despite posting very few things i feel quite included.

I think transparency is a great point. I would love to see my points f.e. in the official topic of my build when i'm building for a challenge. Or a Top5 which is definitely more encouraging than just knowing who came in first. It may discourage people that get very few points but i think it would also improve various skills as you can differ which things are great and which not.
I also would love to see a contribution to the challenges from the leaders, maybe outside of the official competition. I think that would encourage many people though i understand that it's very time consuming to have a life, build other things, lead a guild, ect..

As Hersbrucker says, the prizes are great and are a great bait but for me, it's the community and not the prizes why i love this project. To finance possible future prizes you  could for example open an account where people could send money to in case of wanting to support GoH. I think that should not be underestimated and many builders would take part in this.

Its 3am so i definitely have to go to bed, hope i could help. Good night and best regards!

[Legonardo]

1Lord Legonardo of Glevum, Avalonia.
2I am an active builder (apart from this month as I'm trying to enter the jolly roger III) and member
3 ...everything...
4What I think could be improved is mini challenges with smaller prizes for in-between the main challenges (not just in-guild ones)
=legonardo=

[Hyler Talliwell]

Hello, I am from Nocturnus
I feel as though I am a fairly active builder in this, although my time has been taken up lately by school.
I really enjoy the feel of crushing my enemies. I also enjoy seeing how people learn from each others ideas and encourage their guild members.
I feel like the only thing that could be improved would be more people commenting on the added creations, for some people get discouraged. But that is individual choice and cannot be solved by the guild leaders. To you all, great job.

[Erynlasgalen]

Hello,

I am an active builder from Kaliphlin.

-I  like the community feel that GOH has even though I don't post much I am always reading up and what everyone is doing.
-For me, GOH has pushed me to build outside of what I normally do. The challenges have definitely made me more creative in the way I build.

My recommendations and thoughts:

-The prizes are great, but when I build I am not building to win a prize. I liked in the beginning that we were building to help bring our guild to the top. Your guild at the top was the prize to work for.  

- Personally I would like to have more than one challenge at a time running. I get burned out when I have just one thing to do, especially when the challenge is huge like the third one. I know I can do free builds, but the challenges are more fun for me. I think having to many things to build for is better than one thing and then waiting for a new one to come along.

-More smaller challenges that span all the guilds. For me I cringed when I saw challenge three had no build size limit. To me that always means the biggest is going to win, just because the size is impressive. I think it may discourage people who's collections are not as big. With more than one challenge going on, people with all size collections can feel comfortable building. For example on challenge three, we could have the main challenge with the treasure room and guardian and story the whole works. But then maybe there could be a smaller challenge to go along with it, like making just the guardian. That way people with less time and bricks can still participate and not feel like they have to wait till the next challenge rolls around.

-I would love to see the top five or so builds that rank for each group challenge for each guild. It is great to know who came out on top, but I would also like to see if I came anywhere in the top five. I don't need to know or see the score, but just a ranking. Gives you more to work for when you know exactly where you placed. Some of the leaders have stated we can message them to find out how we did, but I think that adds on to their already very full and busy plates.

-We have a lot of sticky posts, but I would love to see one where everyone's characters can interact with one another. Maybe a centralized tavern where anyone can travel through to rest and banter with the other citizens of GOH?

[Hersbrucker]

Quote

If the GoH concept was applied to another Theme would you participate?

I think the new theme "Monsterfighters" will be a good option for those guild concept.
One Guild for the Monsters and one for the Fighters.

My Wife and I looking forward for these Sets.

But this will be off Topic here.

[Tazmaniac]

I'm a local Nocturian.

I'm a very active builder/member of our guild.

I love the diversity amongst the four guilds and all the great creations hitting these pages. I also really enjoy the challenges, it's always good to have a reason to build.

What would I change/ improve....I don't know all seems pretty spot on to me.

Keep up the great work ISC, DC, SI, and Sirens.

[Fred Daniel Yam]

Hi! I'm Avalonian.
Pretty active I guess.
I like the whole Spirit of this project and its great to learn more stuff.
If this was implemented in another theme, it would be fine except for Star Wars. Keep up the great work Guild Leaders!

[glenpinpat]

Glenpinpat from mitgardia
I hope I am an active member though I joined only after challenge 2, so my posts have been few.
I have learned alot from GoH. and like it as we can use multiple races.
I would like to see more mini build challenges and smaller ones like viniettes(spelling?)
As mentioned keep up the great work.

[NiceMarmot]

Erynlasgalen, on 09 April 2012 - 03:58 AM, said:

-We have a lot of sticky posts, but I would love to see one where everyone's characters can interact with one another. Maybe a centralized tavern where anyone can travel through to rest and banter with the other citizens of GOH?

I think this is a great idea!  I second the motion!  I think the community is probably the best part of GoH, and I'm disappointed whenever I check EB and there haven't been any GoH updates. Our guild topics are good for intra-guild chatter, but a place for inter-guild in-character chats would be great.

On to the questions:  Gex Marmota, (fairly) active builder, and member of the Kaliphlin Guild.

In general, I think Historica is going very well. I'm very happy with the community. I think the rivalry between guilds just about has the perfect tone -- there's a nice rivalry going, and some good trash-talking and teasing, but fairly friendly so far. The challenges and builds have been good and motivating so far. I was a fairly inactive poster before GoH, and didn't really post my MOCs at all. So the guild has really gotten me to build more, and definitely to post more. It has also caused me to stretch my building techniques a lot (still a lot more to go).

As for things to improve, maybe just some minor stuff:

• It would be great to get more detailed feedback and scoring on builds, but I realize this would be a huge burden on the leaders and staff. I don't really care about my score, but do appreciate hearing more details on what was good and what could be improved.  The score would only be nice to realize how far I have to go before I really get to be an MOC expert.
  
• More mini-challenges would be great.  (Even though I missed the last Kaliphlin mini-challenge)  Between work and family, I'm fairly tight on building time, so having a nice little challenge that I could knock off in an evening or two or building would be great.
  
• Perhaps some mini-challenges organized by technique would be fun too. For instance, we're all going to do something with a round wall, or using Derfel Cadarn's 1x1 round plate technique...
  
• We could also have some ongoing mini-challenge series that focus on particular areas of interest for people. These would always be running concurrently with the big GoH-wide challenges. For instance, a series of ship/boat/sea challenges for those interested in those type of MOCs. Or a series of trading challenges for those view their characters as merchants and traders. Or a series of battle challenges for the warlike ones amongst us. Then there's always something going on for people that are interested in that subject. Otherwise they'd be waiting for their guild to do sea-oriented mini-challenge, and might get bored in the meantime.
  
• The all-guild community chat thread that Erynlasgalen suggested above.

As for the challenge prizes, just knowing I was first (or second) is prize enough for me. I'm lucky to be at a point in my life where if I really want a Joust set, I'll go buy it. But I realize that to a lot of (especially younger) builders, prizes are a real motivator.

I'm a bit worried about GoH getting to be a burden on the guild-leaders eventually. So feel free to reach out the guild-members for assistance. Not everyone has the time or inclination to help, but probably a lot of us would help out fairly regularly to keep things running smoothly.

ISC, SoT, SIm, and DC -- keep up the great work, and thanks for all your efforts!

[mephistopheles]

Helo!

I am from Avalonia. I am an active builder. I have joined GoH and Avalonia because both people (Derfel Cadarn and maydayartist) that made me start building with LEGO are in this guild, but there are many other excellent builders here as well as in other guilds.

My only complaint is the slow response time to my in-guild title builds. For example: I've posted a vignette for the Prince of the Forest title 4 days ago and yet got no response if the build is good enough for this title. On the other hand I know I am not patient and very needy, so mea culpa.

Because LEGO is very expensive I prefer mini-challenges were you can build small vigs for it.

[de Gothia]

Hi, de Gothia from Avalonia!


I´m a pretty active members with boths mocs and posting in the other threads.

I really like the whole atmosphere in GoH! I think I´ve improved a lot in these months and learned new techniques aswell!

I don´t have anything to complain about I think. This whole Guild thing is really cool and I liked how it have turned out!

Great job all guild leaders!!

[I Scream Chazzwazzer]

mephistopheles, on 09 April 2012 - 07:21 AM, said:

My only complaint is the slow response time to my in-guild title builds. For example: I've posted a vignette for the Prince of the Forest title 4 days ago and yet got no response if the build is good enough for this title. On the other hand I know I am not patient and very needy, so mea culpa.

Your guild leader has been on holidays IRL for a week or so, I am sure he will catch up soon.

Great feedback so far guys, much appreciated, we will pour over all the ideas, but expect some mini challenges to turn up for sure!

[mephistopheles]

I Scream Clone, on 09 April 2012 - 10:20 AM, said:

Your guild leader has been on holidays IRL for a week or so, I am sure he will catch up soon.

Great feedback so far guys, much appreciated, we will pour over all the ideas, but expect some mini challenges to turn up for sure!

Yeah, I totally understand. I am not blaming anyone. Actually I regret making that previous post.

[Ecclesiastes]

•Hello I'm proud to say I'm from the mighty Mitgardia

•I am very active Builder and Member and hoping to stay that for as long as possible!

•Comment on what you like about GoH;
I like all the the stories off the different guilds and all the challenges that come with it. And that you can be part of that. You can be a part of making/creating how the guild is this day. The best part that comes a long with that, is that it pushes everyone to improve their buildingskills(what is more important!). Important is also to get feedback and compliments and give feedback and compliments. This is what makes the guilds come so alive.

•Comment on things that could be improved;

First of all great to give us the change for giving feedback on this great community!

A lot of members asked for seeing the score of all the free-builds. I think it won't hurt if there would be something like a scoreboard. I know the score of my embassy, But I also like to know how my free-builds did and I made quite some off those. No feedback, just knowing the score would be great. And than you also have a better view of how the total score came to be for a guild. Because it's hard to face, but Mitgardia didn't do that well this last round. And seeing why based on score would explane a lot!

About the prizes. Let's face it, altough titles and nice comments can be enough for some of us. Prizes are needed for keeping people building. I think it's also a sort off appreciation if you win. And that works better when you're able to give out some more but smaller prizes. It's great to win a joust, but only one can win. To have more winners like in round one is/will be much more motivating.

And about the motivation of building challenge three I totally agree with Erynlasgalen. No size limit, will be a giant turn off for a lot of builderds. I know bigger isn't always better, but is moslty more impressive. And building more scenes for one challenge... it doesn't feel right to me. But that is just my opinion, because to me it feels like entering with more mocs is entering more than once. Although it's nice to tell a story that way.
About the time to build, two months is really fine. This challenge takes a lot of my time next to a job so keep it that way And to keep people building, a lot smaller challenges given out be guild leaders will help to keep te guild building because nog everyone can come up with a "free"build.

And like NiceMarmot, some help for guild-leaders is a good idea. For example Derfel is on vacation now and it would help if someone could take over a bit of his tasks. Like making someone a right-hand of the guild-leader. Also because the guild-leaders also don't have all the time of the world.

About the judging. I like the way it's going now. Because, I trust that the guild-leaders give out points also on how someone did build. Did he/she try to put a lot of effort in the moc and judge also that. If you go for public voting, mostly the most votes go to the most impressive one. And afols who just start building will be dissapointing because they can see they haven't got a vote yetor much lesser votes!

-If the GoH concept was applied to another Theme would you participate? Other than castle/fantasy? I think not. But I'm not sure what to expect: GoH goes Star Wars?!

In our guild I noticed a lot of inactive members, I don't now for sure other guilds also have that problem. But isn't this also because of LCC?! For I know that's also a growing community.

This is all for now I think, if I come up with something I will edit this post!

Edited by Ecclesiastes, 09 April 2012 - 12:16 PM.

[Trent]

I can see that since I've voted, there are 19 people who aren't affiliated with a guild - but none of them seem to have replied; so I will:

I'm not in a guild and I'll be totally honest - I had no idea this was going on (sometimes I'm here all day long, other times I don't log on for a couple of weeks).  I was browsing the new topics and saw a flurry of brilliant builds in the Historic forum.  After I'd read a few of the topics, it became obvious that they were all part of a bigger theme and my interest was piqued.  

I saw that the issue of attempting this elsewhere in the forums was raised in the Pirate forum and I think it's a fantastic idea which gives structure to the forums, makes people feel part of a community and you can see how everyone else tackles the same ideas from a different angle.  

I'll say this to be honest, because I realise an awful lot of work has gone into the background of the guilds but from a non-active member, so much of it goes flying over my head.  I'm a huge reader, but I don't read fantasy partly because I'm put off by the complicated names - and understandably, the guilds draw from that...so I find myself totally lost when trying to work out what the relevance of certain things are - it's a bit difficult for an outsider who isn't involved in the guilds (and doesn't really understand / want to know about the basics of fantasy, e.g. the difference between elves and dwarfs) to keep up.  

I absolutely love the idea of having a map with plots marked out and then each person in the guild builds something for the plot.  I love the free builds that have come out of the guilds and the way that everyone has a set criteria - e.g. Avalonia has a 'lush, earthly feel', so all of the builds for Avalonia could conceivably come from the same region.  

Some of the larger builds have been absolutely astonishing in their quality; I'm amazed at how quickly some of the builders get them up and I feel that I've learnt an awful lot just by looking at the pictures.  Similarly, you can see that less experienced builders have been brought on by working alongside other builders and learning their techniques.  It might be nice, as someone else suggested, to have some challenges for less experienced builders so that they're not disheartened - sometimes it's easy to look at something fantastic and be disincentivised...not through anyone else's fault, but through thinking you'll never make it to that stage yourself / you won't have enough bricks to do something marvellous etc.  Maybe occasionally splitting the guild into experience could result in some great contests between builders of certain levels.

This whole concept has been incredible and huge congratulations to the people who came up with the concept, the guild leaders who have run it and all of the members who have taken part.  I have loved every second of looking at your buildings and your interpretations - it's been highly enjoyable.  I had a friend around my house the other week who isn't into Lego and whilst we were discussing my collection, I had to load up this site and show her what you'd been doing - we both thought it was fantastic...a real community achievement which pulls the posters on the site together and has some of the best creations I've ever seen.  

An incredible idea, wonderfully executed.  

[Blaze]

I'm Blaze from Mitgardia and a decent active member, mostly by posting though, I only entered one free build and challenge 3 will be my first challenge Moc.

I like the community and the members of GoH. Everyone is very helpfull and the comments/advice/tips etc are always great. The feedback from the Guild Leaders (or in this case Sirens, cause I have not had contact with any of the others) is also good, on multiple occasions he helped me out or did his best to hand out advice and inspiration.

Some of the things I would approve are allready stated by other members (mini challenges for all the guilds would be nice! and the Inn idea I read somewhere, where you can talk in-character with the members would also be fun I guess). I think you guys are doing a great job and I hope this will continue for a long time and that members stay active, I know how hard it is to combine work/life/lego, but I hope everyone finds his/her good balance.

edit: and maybe GoH would work in a different setting, maybe pirates or in the very far future, with mechs and spacefighters etc.

Edited by Blaze, 09 April 2012 - 12:41 PM.

[Skalldyr]

* Hello I'm from Avalonia

    * I am a Member, but hadn't time to build something yet...

    * I really like the storys that are going on and the Fanatsy/Castle feel! Plus the Community aspect is great.

    * Don't know... Maybe I can improve my activity in GoH?

[Basiliscus]

Greetings from Kaliphlin!

I am an active member and builder, having entered the watchtower challenge and a free build so far. I am also hoping to enter challenge 3.

What do I like about GoH?

• First of all, the concept is brilliant. A community build really does add value to the community - before GoH I used to only post when I had a new MOC (as I am not much into set discussions). This has really gave me something to discuss and I have enjoyed getting to know many other members of EB.
  
• I love the challenges. So far there has been good variety in the challenges which has been good to see. This has given me a good incentive to build!
  
• GoH has been very well organised and the judges have been very open, listening to feedback and structuring things well. I like the separate threads for each guild.
  
• The prizes have been fantastic. A real incentive to build!

What do I think could be done better?

• For me, the one thing that stands out is the level of participation from the guild leaders has been variable at best. I realise there is a lot of admin work going on behind the scenes, but it would have been nice to see a little more participation from those in charge. This applies to posting as well as MOCs.
  
• Although the prizes have been great and are a real incentive, I feel that more smaller prizes would encourage more participation than one huge prize. The joust set is fantastic    but only one person will win it. This might put some people off. As an aside, the prizes aren't really a huge incentive for me personally because like NiceMarmot I am lucky enough to be able to buy a set if I want it.
  
• I would also like to admit a fault of my own...I original suggested that challenge 3 should have no size limit but now I am wondering how clever that was! For some challenges, no size limit is appropriate but I would suggest in future that most of the remaining challenges are 32x64 or 48x48 like they do for the CCC.
  
• I would say that more transparency for scoring would be good. Not the individual judges scores, but the score for each challenge entry or free build should be made available and that way everyone could be aware of their own personal score tally.

Although I have put a few things for improvement, if I had to rate the GoH experience so far I would say 8 out of 10. Considering this is the first of these type of events, and it has been emulated on EB and other sites, I think that is really testament to the vision of those who started it.

Finally, I would say that once the year is up then GoH should end. Although I love building castle, I don't exclusively build in one theme, therefore I would like to see this applied to another theme. My suggestions would be Pirates (e.g. the four groups could be Imperials, Pirates, Armada, Islanders) or Sci-fi (but please not Star Wars! I would prefer a generic set up so people use their imagination to create a world). I even think it would work with Town - you could have 4 cities who compete (although whether including Modern Military would be appropriate for EB's ethos remains to be seen). I think if GoH continued for a second year I would need to terminate my involvement because there are so many things from other themes I would like to build!

Thank you for giving me the chance to comment on things so far. I hope this constructive feedback is helpful. The main thing is: keep up the good work!

Edited by Basiliscus, 09 April 2012 - 02:25 PM.

[Kayne]

I belong to the Kaliphlin Guild!

I am a member and an active builder.

What I really like about GoH:  I was seeing MOC's pop up on Flickr and MOCpages referring to Mitgardia and Avalonia, etc...I was not a member of EB at that time, and this is what drew me to join this site.  I am glad I did, because there is a lot to offer all around this site, not just on GoH.  As a newer AFOL, I had not heard of EB before this.  

In addition, the challenges have driven me to build in some ideas I hadn't thought of before, and the time limit of course forces me to work within time constraints.  (That's a good thing!)  The ability to see all of the different interpretations of the challenges and environments has expanded my technique immensely in the few months that I have been here.

I think the Guild Leaders have done an amazing job in organizing all of this.  Obviously in Kaliphlin, most of my interaction has been with SI.  He has been available to offer critique and suggestions via PM's, etc. and that has helped me to flesh out some ideas and adjust style where needed.  The sheer time constraints on those 4 must be huge, and for you all to take the time to coordinate, respond, and create ideas is very much appreciated.

Suggestions:  I really like the idea of the in-character Inn or Tavern thread.  Also, some more mini-challenges that can go cross guilds sounds very promising.  I agree with what I've read about more transparency to scoring.  While I think that getting feedback on every build is unrealistic, I think that seeing some scores for each would be beneficial in just encouraging when we see improvement.  For individual feedback, that could probably fall on the builder seeking it from his/her Guild Leader.  That is how I found out some good feedback on my Embassy build from SI.

As for prizes, I think that it is fantastic that prizes are offered.  I joined the GoH just to build, compete and get better.  When I found out that prizes were offered, that was like a nice little bonus.  While I would love to win a prize, I realize that they have to come from somewhere, and the Guild Leaders have already donated so much time and effort that for them to continue to donate money as well seems like a lot to ask!  That being said, with the prize system set up as it is, I think some more quantity at smaller scale in the prizes would be beneficial.  Not to the point that we all get a 'trophy' like in T-ball, but so that at least the top performer in each Guild got a smaller prize from a challenge, rather than just the one Joust set.  Of course I'm sure the winner of the Joust will not complain, and neither would I!

All in all, keep up the great work!  I am not burned out with GoH and definitely would like to see it keep going.  As for building in other themes, I am torn.  I build castles.  That defines me as an AFOL.  I'd like to expand my horizons, but I'm not sure if the interest would be as intense for me.  Pirates would be similar and I'm pretty sure that I would participate in that.  As for Sci-Fi, that is a theme that I really love and would like to participate.  I have not dabbled in that though, so there is the discomfort factor there.  But as I type here, I am picturing a GoH format for Sci-Fi that includes Futuron and Blacktron with Mechs and space stations and I am getting myself kind of hyped up!  So, I guess the answer is yes I would participate in another genre of this type of group challenge.  With the limited time alloted between work and 4 kids, I would probably only be able to really be active with one type of GoH style group at a time.  Which means, unless GoH ends I would have to make the choice of which I was active in, and the Castle theme would probably win.

[robuko]

Hello I'm from Kaliphlin.

    I am an Active Builder and Member.

    What I like most after a few months is the community aspect.  I think I am lucky in that Kaliphlin is a particularly thoughtful guild, with a lot of good members.  See Erynlasgalen, NiceMarmot, Basiliscus and Kayne`s posts here, for instance - I agree with all of you on almost everything guys !  I haven`t really done any MOCs before Historica, it got me to organize some of my bricks and start building.  And, I just bought Photoshop so I hope I will learn a new skill there.  I have definitely learned from builders in other guilds too, in building and presentation techniques.  I like it that the guild leaders make an effort and post in other guild forums, we have had some interesting debates in the Kaliphlin thread sparked by happenings in other guilds and members of other guilds have joined in very easily.  The mini challenges have all been fun, and quite varied too, especially the variety in Mitgardia with Navy and Micro.  I have had very high quality feedback from 2 of the guild leaders when I asked for it, which I really appreciated.

    Things I think could be improved - I think the competition building has become overdominant, which gives a lot of the reward to those with the time, bricks, and skill to put together big super builds. I feel that given 3 or 4 insanely talented builders in each guild, it`s hard for us mortals to make a good contribution.  The time element is most demanding for me, so I would prefer size or brick limits.  I end up spending all of my time on the competition build of the day, when I would like to do more free builds - I guess I do it because I feel that is the incentive structure we have at the moment.  Concurrent contests is good, and so is the "badge" system in Avalonia of having individual build challenges with no time limit.  I think we have a number of relative newbies to MOCing in GoH, and if we can find a way to encourage those of us with less experience, that would be good.  I think the Albion build has been a really successful way to incentivise a bunch of smallish MOCs (except the gatehouse!). There has been talk of a University in Petraea to show off building techniques, and guest interviews, I think these are both good ideas.  For me, as I value the community aspect and don`t really care about the conflict bit, I would prefer more mini community builds - but I know there will be plenty of sensible opposing views to that.  We have quite an exhaustive list of unbuilt stuff on our first page!  We have a decent chance to do something with Classic Castle, I would like to hear more about that.  I voted for the Watchtower as the best challenge because of the greater degrees of freedom around that build compared to the other 2, and I am surprised it is currently the most popular as the general quality of building is obviously getting better.

I would like GoH to keep going as long as it`s fresh.  I think the concept would work perfectly in sci fi.  Probably as a concept it would work beautifully in pirates too, but I can`t really distinguish one boat from another, so I would be less interested in that. I think pirates would struggle to pull in new builders, and as Kayne said, many of us have time for at most one thing.

PS Trent, or any other interested non-members, you are very welcome to join any of the guilds at any time.  You don`t have to do any fantasy stuff at all, in fact I think most builders haven`t.

Edited by robuko, 09 April 2012 - 02:47 PM.