MstrOfPppts

SoNE feedback thread

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First of all, I'd like to thank the organizers for creating the Shadows of Nar Eurbrikka RPG. It's been around for quite some time now, but the interest seems to be declining too fast. There's some things I've been thinking about for some time now and I decided to share them with everyone. Please don't take this thread to offensive though it might sound like that in some places so my apologies for that in advance, but this is only intended to make things better. I did some comparison with GoH which Brickdoctor already admitted SoNE is a rip-off and there's nothing wrong with that.

Firstly - I've mentioned it a couple of times but can't help saying it again that placing SoNE into OT in my opinion was not such a great decision. The Rebel vs Troopers seems a bit chewed to me and especially our side has a big lack of possibilities for creating interesting characters. Which reminds me that could've been one of the first mini challenges so not so many generic avatars were present ... Though following the story canon is a nice challenge and making as little oddities as possible is quite fun I don't think it outweighs the fact that we could be creating our own story in TOR universe or in some CW or even OT parallel time happening somewhere far in the outer rim with interesting characters that could also be Sith or Jedi, joining different fractions with different interests later along the timeline. And already the biggest blooper was creating another planet in the so well defined part of the universe. But I do know it's too late to change this now.

Secondly - I think that SoNE deserves it's own subforum. There's no problem in the junkyard at the moment but the freebuilds usually get to bottom quite fast because of people having more interest in discussing about future sets, wishful thinkings, their purchases and what not other stupidities instead of commenting creations (SoNE or not). I know I'm not much of commenter myself but I don't participate in other chit chat either. Another reason for that is now having the freebuilds separated from the episode builds and other SoNE related stuff for no particular reason. It'd also make it easier for someone in a hurry just checking if there's something new in SoNE ...

The next thing is a bit more disturbing and that is the lack of staff. I can't get rid of the feeling that SoNE has been started and it's left on it's own on a "from us to us" basis. People are like sheep and they need leaders. Guilds of Historica has a leader for each guild and they are pretty active there and quite a leading horses of the project. Brickdoctor's very active in the Heroica at the moment and has not been around since the first episode's results, except for some rules and the moderating purposes. But hey, he's not the only one. Where's Erdbeeries, Piranha and Stash2Sixx?! Also there's a few other fellows that were thanked in the introduction topic and also haven't been seen around since! My apologies again for this part, but I'm just trying to explain why I feel the current state of SoNE is a bit empty and not many new recruits are joining the fun. And I think I'm not the only one feeling this way. However I do understand that there's quite some work done behind the scenes yet still coming around just to say hello from time to time wouldn't hurt, maybe even build something even if it's out of competition!

The judging for the first episode took twice as long as it was stated but at least we were informed about the progress. This episode is taking ridiculously long despite having almost only half as many entries as the first one. I understand there's complications and real life is getting in the way sometimes but as long as we get some information on how much longer, what's happening or how things stand, the wait is so much easier. Otherwise it seems as if everyone would prefer to just forget about everything. The freebuilds judging is a bit behind too ...

Another thing I really miss is the lack of any feedback (nothing to do with this topic). I know that the judges are supposed to remain anonymous but some feedback in about 2-3 sentences would be much appreciated and a reward for the participants of an episode! As already mentioned there's not much constructive commenting going on despite Star Wars being one of the most popular themes I think here on eurobricks in general the SW forum is getting less and less attention. It's almost like pirates with no LEGO theme around at the moment ... Also it's nice to get feedback from a MOC expert or someone who knows how things are done. If Darth Vader says that you're strong with the force it means a lot more than if a 5 year old Rodian does (I know that this is a bad metaphor but it's just that and was not aimed at any particular participant)!

Also some mini challenges or quests would be nice. No rewards needed or maybe just a tag or a title, some people around here would kill to get one of those. I for one am that kind of person who finds it hard to just build something. If I have a goal then it's a lot easier. That would maybe fill the gap of freebuilds and add some more content to SoNE. Also tags are free advertisement for SoNE around the forums!

The experience gained through time was a nice idea and I think it's a step forward from the GoH but misses more content. Currently there's no difference on what you can do apart from some little guidelines what you character is capable of doing. For example in episode II 1 extra part per 5XP gained would be a brilliant idea! Maybe in some episodes players with more XP could also gain a disadvantage for others to catch up and so on ...

Further more I find the scoring rules a bit disturbing - seems that the organizers are not that good with numbers (just kidding). In the previous episode it was stated that the Empire was beaten in quantity and quality though the results don't show that. We were far superior in quality (10.5 : 10.4375). The final result rule is a bit odd here for first calculating the average and than adding the entries x 2 points. This means that even by having only one more entry the quality of the opposing team has to be superior by 2 to win, which is impossible. That results in that more entries = auto win. My suggestion would be to multiply the average scores by 10, meaning that 5 entries equals 1 point in average quality.

Also it might be considered to lower the XP gained for each episode to max 15 points after the second round. This way the difference between the players would not be so big and the top 10 could simply be caught by 2 or 3 freebuilds. Considering that the XP had a bigger meaning and that people would be more interested in climbing the ranks. The current cap of 100 is also quite low compared to the points available per episode including freebuilds. It's been a bit steady at the moment, but some of us might reach that in an episode or two - and what then? Are there more ranks more possibilities? Just a thought: characters with no XP should be removed from the player index and readded after receiving XP. Else they're just making things less readable. This way anyone wanting to be part of SoNE would at least create one freebuild.

Last but not least I think that the way SoNE is designed at the moment it misses some bigger purpose. For example there could be a big score screen in the first post of the player index Rebel : Empire. The score should include the sum of all the episodes + freebuilds + any possible mini challanges and so on. To make it more interesting maybe reset the score after a Chapter - let's say 5 episodes and reward the winning team with some virtual goods (tags, auto XP burst, rule changes, etc ).

This is a sum of some of my ideas but there's still more. There's always ways of improving things further - maybe something like a hidden subforum for each fraction in the way that pirates TOR participants get for each the red and the blue team where secret plans are discussed and so on ...

Sorry for this big wall of text but I think it was needed. I'd really like to help to improve this experience and anyone could help by stating their opinion in this thread. If that is not acceptable, mods feel free to remove this thread. I placed it here rather than in the SW forum so it gets more attention from whom it concerns.

I've seen people participating in both SoNE and GoH. There's nothing wrong with that and I must admit that I've been holding back from joining a guild for SW is still my preferred theme and I doubt I'd have time for both. However if SoNE turns to get even less entertaining things might change and we might loose more participants instead of time warping some of them Historians to our universe! :devil:

Everyone involved please take this as a constructive critic and not as an offense and keep up the good work maintaining the Shadows of Nar Eurbrikka!

:wub: :wub: :wub:

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I totally agree my friend...

I actually tore down all my SW structures and half way build MOC's to participate the fight for Nocturnus. Not because I lack interest for SW, but just because I lack time and the GoH seems a much more active community and thus much more fun to participate in.

You made your statement clear, and I agree fully. So lets act ...

or join Avalonia :laugh:

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I hope I wasn't contributing to that 'lack of interest' Uni has been getting stupidly heavy, but I do hope to be back. I agree with some of your points, but I have no experience of GoH to compare to.

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I am somewhat busy at the moment, so please excuse me for not elaborating too much or responding to everything. :D

I agree with some of the points, but not all.

For me personally, if SoNE was set exclusively in TOR or CW I wouldn't have gotten involved at all. I see your point regarding rebels vs troopers, and I know you've mentioned a third faction some time ago. I think if most episodes contained a third non-player faction it would widen the possibilities quite a bit. Ep 2 had the Black Sun which was a good idea but difficult to expand on with the part-pile limitation.

One thought could be to have episode arcs (3-5 episodes), with the setting for each arc rotating (first OT, then TOR, then CW, repeat).

I agree that more staff interaction is probably required to get the SoNE ball rolling by itself. I think Brickdoctor did an excellent job during Ep 1.

As for judging, more than two weeks is just too long for us impatient folks (for both episodes and freebuilds). One of my freebuilds took more than a month to judge, and that is a bit over the top.

The scoring system needs to be balanced and fair for sure, it should not be a number of participants game. Average score per builder is not a good measurement, especially when the top 5 in each group are scored differently from the rest. If for example only the top 5 builds in each faction was used to determine score for the overall victory at least one would compare apples to apples.

Gotta run but hopefully I'll have chance to comment some more later...

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I don´t have much (if any) influence over whats going on, I try to comment as much as I can, especially when I really like what I am seeing to encourage people to keep building new stuff and see some awesome creations, I know that doesnt mean to much compared to what an expert builder can say but many times freebuilds and so get lost if you dont keep track of the SWL forum daily.

Lately I have been way too busy even to build up my own character, regarding to what goes on with the next episodes, I have been throwing some ideas but I usually get no response and I cant afford to build up an entire set of rules for a chapter that won't be done (it requires quite a bit of time to figure out some reasonable rules and get them to be accepted by the leaders).

I also think that the idea of a SoNE sub forum would be nice but I have no idea if that would mean an entire reorganization of what has already been done or if the EB forum would support it (I hate computers :tongue: ).

Small tasks and competitions that dont involve experience are something that I totally agree, I would actually like to see even some events that dont involve building skills like a tournament or a race that could depend exclusively on luck (dice rolling or "randomized" numbers done by the judges) where the participants only have to build a little entry (a small build or a customized fig) to be part of it while the judges could randomize the numbers and set the scores (you won and will go to the next round or so).

And I also agree that the number of entries per episode should be inportant but not that important, the average of the scores of the builds per faction should also be taken into consideration and a final goal could also be great addition to the game.

The problem with the experience thing (in my humble opinion) is that if you try to level up you must have a lot of bricks (quantity and variety) and a lot of skills plus a very good camera and photograph skills (which in my opinion also has a great impact into the looks of your creation), and some may get frustrated because they see no advance on their XP meter because of one or more of these issues.

I am not a very skilled builder my self or an outstanding story teller, but I was honored to be asked to be part of the staff behind this RPG, but there is nothing I can do from my position especially on these days since I dont have an important role on the game it self (I just throw some ideas and say: that sounds good, or what about if...), and I cant spend more than a couple hours a day over here (school and work).

I think you have some great ideas and hope that they will improve the game, but remember that Brickdoctor and everybody else have a life outside, be patient, we will get to see if modifications can be done in time so this game doesnt die :cry_sad: .

Have a nice day!

Nom Carver out...

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Thanks for the comments everyone, it's good to hear some constructive feedback :classic: I've made a few comments below which might be of interest and clarify a few things:

i) Firstly, the judging for Episode II is happening at the moment, so it shouldn't be long before the results are announced!

ii) There's a small team of EB members that are trying to organise everything for SoNE, and it does take time, especially as we're scattered across the world! As you're probably aware, most of us are at Uni or have full-time jobs so there is a limited amount of time we can commit to it.

iii) Doc and the other moderators spend a considerable amount of time behind the scenes organising everything, a lot of which you won't ever see; it wasn't until I got involved with the Blog that I fully appreciated how much effort is put into the forum.

iv) We have been planning Episode III (and IV!) but we still need to finalise the details, so please be patient :wink:

v) I think it's fair to say that it's been a learning curve for us all, and there's bound to be the odd problem. We'll try to keep it as interesting as possible and are always open to cunning suggestions!

Cheers, Robin

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First of all I want to thank the mods and volunteers who have been running this contest. After a year or so of lurking, I finally joined EB so that I could participate in SoNE and it's been a lot of fun so far! Although I've also been checking the index thread daily to see if my stats are updated, I understand that the people running SoNE have real lives, and are doing this for free in their spare time.

I personally prefer building OT vs CW, just because I grew up watching the OT, but I suspect this will vary widely from builder to builder. I think LegoFjotten has a good idea re: having the setting change after a certain number of episodes, but I'd probably want the number of episodes in each "arc" to be higher, maybe 5-8, so that we could have more time to develop our characters.

Also regarding character development, I think it might be cool to tweak the XP system so that there are ranks in addition to different branches of service. Maybe at certain levels characters could advance to "Corporal," "Sergeant," etc, and have some benefit for each rank. I understand this would be more work to set-up, and it's something I'd be willing to help flesh out a bit if people are interested.

Overall, I'm really enjoying SoNE and totally understand that there are always some "bugs" to be worked out the first few times something is tried. Thanks again to the mods and volunteers for all the work they do!

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Interesting examination, personally I agree with a lot of things said.

My own thoughts about what said:

-SoNE own subforum I think it's really important for those who are already inside and for those who approach for the first time to SoNE; peoples could have a general view of all things going on without having to search pages and pages for freeebuilds, very important if you have long breaks from internet I think.

-Small challenges betwen episodes I think because as other I work better having an objective.

-Some improvements to the judging system (time and points) I thinks could be usefull; if I'm not mistaken, my last freebuild has not yet been judged. :sad:

-About switching time betwenn OT, NT, CW and others period I think it's difficult because a lot of things changes (factions, tecnologys, culture and so on)

One thought could be to have episode arcs (3-5 episodes), with the setting for each arc rotating (first OT, then TOR, then CW, repeat).

In addition, I think the same character couldn't be first in OT, then in TOR, then in CW, I think it's impossible; each character should have his own time....

....but maybe could be implemented as a "time travel" or as spin-off? :tongue::wink:

Finally I want to thanks all the people who work behind the scenes that made all the things running anyway, despite I'm not so active I enjoy all :thumbup: :thumbup:

Thanks for hearing, I hope my comment is a constructive feedback :classic:

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I do not participate, but I actually like to read the stories and watch the builds, and I have to admit that I'm one of the "no commenter guys". I think that commenting and ultimately judging builds is more appropriate for members that participate in this project, but not to me. My impression is that the rate of participation dropped by roughly 50 % from episode I to episode II, which, to me, is a pitty.

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Changing the setting to CW timeline would limit originality of the characters to a great extent, because you either be clone, which are all same, or droid, again which are all same(save for sbb and droideka). This timeline suits better, imo. But on all other things, I have to agree.

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First of all, I'm glad this debate got some interest and that my initial thoughts were confirmed. To everyone saying that they're having some busy times, no need for excuses. I too had little time this month though I find it quite funny we all were so busy at the same time. I still think that at least some would be still able to squeeze in something out if there was a bigger purpose for it (mini challenges, quests ...). Even free builds if as said XP had some higher meaning / value. Well I have a free build ready and waiting for some ordered figs to arrive ...

The inactivity of you guys replying to this is acceptable since everyone at least did something. I'd also like to hear opinions of those other guys joining either side and not having done anything yet. Did they join just for the sake of joining, were the episodes not interesting for them yet, don't they like building free builds and so on ... But the problem is also in not many new recruits are joining the fun for maybe having the feeling that SoNE might be a bit slow paced at the moment?

@Lobot: I do understand that people have things in real life and that all they do here is free and I really appreciate that. But still can't loose the bitter feeling that it was all launched prematurely? If first 3 or 4 episodes were planed prior to launch, it'd give the staff almost half a year time to think about the next ones. I don't understand how being scattered all over the world has any impact on judging - judges don't meet in RL or do they? They don't even need to look at the entries at the same time and anyway had the time to have a glimpse whilst the episode was running to get the first impression. However I still understand it might take a bit longer sometimes, but as already said, I guess we'd all like to be informed on the progress. If none of these guys even logged into EB it'd be understandable that they have other things to do. But being active all over other forums and ignoring this part of the forum in my opinion is not acceptable! I know I can't say what people can or should do, I'm just saying that this is not an exemplary way of organizing things and am asking if things could be improved in any way also by offering suggestions.

Well I already got used to the OT times and as said other universes attract me only for their bigger diversity. As some have already stated changing the setting along the time is not such a great idea for I think that getting used to or thinking of another character might take some time and people might lose interest in starting all over again. Even if after a cycle we returned to the first character I think that all this is not necessary. OT is just fine.

@Nom Carver: Making a sub forum and moving all the SoNE threads to it should not be a big problem though of course might take some time. This change I'd suggest to be the first step after episode III is launched ...

@Brickadeer, and any other non participants reading this: that I think is wrong thinking. I think that SoNE and any other similar projects or competitions here on EB is far from being there just for the participants to comment on each other's work. I think it's more of a reason for us lazier types to build something and also to meet with certain challenges the rules restrictions give us. Some just don't like building anything just for fun. It's also meant to revitalize this part of the forum. And once someone builds something it's put on display for everyone! And anyone that feels the need to say something about the MOC be it good or bad (in a nice way) should do so. I guess everyone likes feedback from anyone and not just the participants. Else we could have a secret forum and just play for ourselves or even build things without putting the images online.

Edited by MstrOfPppts

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Lots of good discussion here; I'll read through it all when I have more time. Just to clarify, though, I'm actually not that active in Heroica...or anywhere on EB right now. The posting I've been doing in Heroica is mainly just to finish up the quest I was running, which I just did. Unfortunately, the Heroica quest was supposed to be finished a couple months ago, and technical difficulties out of my control stretched it out. SoNE may have been launched before everything was perfectly in place, but that was necessary because I had to run that first episode before I went to university and, as you can see, got really really busy really really quickly. I intended for Episode II to be run primarily by the other members of the team.

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MstrofPuppets - It's easy to say that you're going to do w,x,y and z for Challenges 1, 2, 3 and 4, but it's much harder to execute it. As Challenges progress, you have to see how people approach them and change the rules as you go. Also, the builds for a Challenge post (What you see in the Challenge 1 post and Challenge 2 post done by the Regs/Mods) can also be quite time consuming, and you don't want to build all of the Challenges ahead of time because they may change, and you don't want to tie up all your bricks for 6 months. I think the Challenges will come as they are announced, and there has not been any great problem with this IMO.

In regards to the judging, 2 weeks is pretty standard, and you have to give a little leeway during holidays (for us Americans at least).

I disagree with the comments in regards to those running this forum, being active elsewhere. It is very quick and easy to respond to things in other forums for me (like this one) while I feel that I need to be caught up with EVERYTHING in GoH before I make any significant comments. This can take hours to do sometimes, and can be quite the commitment. I can make quick comments to things on other forums from work on my phone, but I need to sit down at home to post anything significant (I was actually going to respond to this thread in particular yesterday, but I never got time at my computer.) If you limit them to only commenting in here if anything is pending, you will quickly lose their participation in running this forum. It is a much more significant investment of time than you might think, and everyone has a full time job/school/kids that take up their time.

I am actually pretty disappointed in the general member involvement though. Only a few people are commenting on builds, and it was a pretty pathetic turnout for entries in the second challenge. It was a very easy, straightforward build and I really expected more. I would like to see ALL the SoNE builds showing up in this forum (or some new subforum) instead of the Challenge entries being posted here and the free build entries being posted in the general Star Wars forums. It makes it very hard to keep track of free builds.

Thanks to everyone that is running this, and keep up the good work!

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Personally I found the second challenge far too restrictive, since I had only one of the sets we were restricted to. I mean, in my collection of 35,000-ish pieces I'm sure I could have found most of them, but that's besides the point. I wanted to do something for the first challenge, but didn't have the time, energy or motivation.

But don't worry, I'm working on a free build. But given my current rate of progress, it'll probably end up scattered across the desk with the other 3 or so failed concepts.

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There are many things I could say and many ways I could respond but let me limit to just a few comments. First, I agree with much of what MstrOfPppts is saying. I understand the long time between posting and XP awards, but updates on the fact that it is being worked on would be nice. Also, I think MstrOfPppts is on to something when he (you) mentions the idea of using some planets in the outer rim where maybe we could run into a rouge Sith or Jedi. One of biggest reasons people like Star Wars is the lightsabers right? (Generalization, and not true, I know.) I'm glad this post has been started. I feel like it should have been started weeks ago.

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Update as requested:

i) Judging for Episode II is currently in the second stage (detailed scoring for the top 10 of the first stage)

ii) Episode III is almost ready and the details will be announced shortly! :wink:

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I like the general idea for this thread, having a feedback topic is a good idea, as it allows the people organizing it, to see opportunities where gameplay can be improved.

As for staff participation, I apologize if it was not clear from the character topic, we are NPC's or GM's, we oversee the entire game and do the technical work. We are not active building participants in the Episode's and freebuild's because of the gameplay and the way it is structured (similar to how we don't participate in contests of our own creation). Speaking for myself, I am also not really a MOCer, I mostly collect. For this reason I don't feel qualified to give real valuable feedback on the creations people create and how to improve them. If some things we are discussing are implemented I will happily comment in the build threads with my (non builder) impressions.

I would like to ask everyone, participant or bystander to post a list with the top 5 suggestions or modifications you would like to see SoNE incorporate. Some of these things we are already discussing but we would like to get a general feel as well. We will continue to consider and discuss them and let everyone know what happens.

Thanks to everyone for understanding, we love working on this game. :classic:

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My top 3 suggestions or modifications:

1) IMHO, the pile o' bricks is a bad idea. I don't own any of the sets or most of the parts. The rules are basically saying 'If you don't own the sets, buy them now or you can't enter'. I think this is unfair.

2) A SONE sub-forum would be a great idea.

3) As some other people have said already, the scoring system needs to be improved- otherwise whoever has the most entries will basically auto-win

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1) IMHO, the pile o' bricks is a bad idea. I don't own any of the sets or most of the parts. The rules are basically saying 'If you don't own the sets, buy them now or you can't enter'. I think this is unfair.

It wasn't unfair at all. The rules made it clear that LDD entries were perfectly acceptable & Bob spent a lot of time preparing a list of parts that could be used. LDD is readily available and free to download :classic:

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I very much agree with a lot of things that have been said in this topic. SoNE is still young, and can use some good advice to grow and become an established value on its own.

I think it should be great if SoNE got frontpaged some more. That could draw members in that usually don't hang out in the SW forum. Showing some previous builds and letting people know that you don't have to be a walking SW-encyclopaedia to participate, would help a lot. SoNE already brought some fresh MOCcing blood into this forum, and I greatly enjoy the variety of builds produced, not being the fifthiest iteration of the same scene. No offense to those MOCs (I may be a bit guilty myself), but it would be good to let people know that SW is more than building X-wings and TIE-fighters. SoNE already has made some steps in this direction, and I would greatly regret losing it.

About the pile of bricks from the last episode: In my opinion, it was a great idea. But I noticed that almost nobody used LDD (2 entries, inclusing that of myself) , and there has nevere been a digital freebuild to date. It's about time I change that... but that's another question. In a recent topic, I noticed there's still an aversion towards digital MOC's. That's a pitty, because a lot of good MOCcers get lost, just because they don't have enough bricks. Maybe this initiative would be the chance to get those people building, knowing that their builds will be just as appreciated as MOCs using huge amounts of bricks. So I don't want to lose digital MOCs in this contest/building experience. That's why I think itnshould be clear that this is a contest for everyone. Not only for SW freaks, not only for rich people.

That's why we should stay a friendly, open and supportive community. Our enthousiasm and welcoming could be the best mean to let more people feel the fun of this initiative. Because, honestly, it's al about having fun with bricks. Who doesn't like to curse that rebel scum?

A big thank you to the organization for making this all possible, and for kindly listening to those people that think they now things better. Though you may not have a lot of time right now, I believe you are visionaries. I believe we can make this thing work.

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1) IMHO, the pile o' bricks is a bad idea. I don't own any of the sets or most of the parts. The rules are basically saying 'If you don't own the sets, buy them now or you can't enter'. I think this is unfair.

I understand what you say, and it's something that was discussed before the launch of Ep. 2. We think that it's nice to have some episode that are not just a straightforward building contest. For that one, we knew not all people could participate, but to make things easier, I selected only sets that are still in stores, I provided a list of all the bricks, allowed LDD creation and provided a custom palette with only the bricks allowed.

We know some people won't be able to enter every episode due to specific rules, and we accept that fact. If you can't enter an episode, it may be a good time to do freebuilds :classic:

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Thanks for the update Lobot, though that could be posted in the thread for ep. II. :sweet:

@Dragonfire: I'm afraid I must disagree with you on the first point. The ep. II idea was very cool and I think most people enjoyed the challenge. The sets needed for the challenge were not some 100+ price point sets and every SW fan should have them anyway ( :devil: joke :devil: ). Of course no one forces anyone to buy them so there comes the LDD rule. Saying the rules were not fair is like saying being unable to participate for the lack of time / not being at home is unfair? Anyway if you checked the list I bet everyone had at least 200+ parts from the list he could use and 20 extra parts you could use in a smart way for making those 200 work together. Sometimes thinking out of the box is a good idea and might become quite an advantage when it comes to results. Also it's important to participate (even if with only 20 pieces MOC) not to win!

But on the other hand LDD for other episodes as BEAVeR suggested I don't think is such a good idea. A LDD only episode? Yes maybe, but mixing both every time and in free builds is a bit odd without any similar restrictions to ep. II. Going huge in LDD is very easy, presenting your MOC is a bit harder without additional image editing skills or some rendering. Rendered vs non rendered can also seem very different and some people automatically prefer brick built MOCs and vice versa. Comparing LDD built to real brick built has a huge subjective impact I think.

Piranha: thanks for the reply! Although I thought through a lot of things before creating this thread it seems some details were still not taken into consideration. :blush: Presuming that every member with 2k+ posts or even an admin / mod is automatically a MOCer was wrong. I was mainly a collector for two years and only recently started MOCing and I can assure you, you're missing the most fun part. :grin: Anyway, your opinion on other's work still counts even if you don't give suggestions. My top suggestions for SoNE at the moment would be:

1. SoNE subforum

2. changing the scoring system somehow, to make it more fair

I've rethought this one and my first suggestion might not work that well either. I went through ep. I results again and found out that amount of builds somehow automatically decreases the quality score. And that is for another problem I mentioned, the big difference between the points the top 10 builds receive compared to others. Also averaging things that are not on the same scale is not such a good ide (entries with max 25 and max10). I presume that in ep. II the empire side will win in quality for the fact that we won't have any entries with only max 10 points. The quantity auto win still stands though and things need to be rethought.

3. Making the XP more important in some way or another, encouraging people to be more active

4. Maybe make a higher goal of everything going on. Some scoring like GoH have in guild's money. Some R vs I score where all episodes, free builds (rated or unrated) and everything else (maybe some future challenges) are counted together in a smartly weighted way

As I already said I didn't want to be harsh and also some of my predictions were wrong. I just felt something was not right and therefore started this discussion although sometimes it's hard to point at an exact thing that makes things not feel right. As someone already said it feels as if just a bit more effort should be put into getting the ball rolling. After getting the momentum a week of inactivity would pretty sure go unnoticed ... So a big thanks to everyone posting their feedback, as well as to staff for their explanations since together we can make things better faster! In the end of the day we all want SoNE to be a success and after time the organizers will be able to look back at it proudly. And everyone will forget about that ranting guy MtrPpp ... what's his name? :laugh::tongue:

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Thanks for the update Lobot, though that could be posted in the thread for ep. II. :sweet:

Episode II was Bob's so I'll leave that to him! :wink:

Thanks again for your input, it's always interesting to hear the views of other members. I don't think that we can amend any of the core rules (and scoring) for Episode III as it's about to be unveiled, but it might be possible for the future. The scoring method did create a lot of debate when we were devising the rules for SoNE and, I think it's fair to say, we did consider a lot of options!!

Anyway, I'm hoping that Episode III will be well received; I don't want to spoil the surprise but we've made it very flexible :classic:

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It wasn't unfair at all. The rules made it clear that LDD entries were perfectly acceptable & Bob spent a lot of time preparing a list of parts that could be used. LDD is readily available and free to download :classic:

Sorry :blush: . I had no idea that LDD was free and available. Thanks for telling me :thumbup: . I take back what I said about it being unfair. If only I'd known earlier! :wall:

I understand what you say, and it's something that was discussed before the launch of Ep. 2. We think that it's nice to have some episode that are not just a straightforward building contest. For that one, we knew not all people could participate, but to make things easier, I selected only sets that are still in stores, I provided a list of all the bricks, allowed LDD creation and provided a custom palette with only the bricks allowed.

We know some people won't be able to enter every episode due to specific rules, and we accept that fact. If you can't enter an episode, it may be a good time to do freebuilds :classic:

Sorry. I appreciate the effort you've put into SoNE and should not have questioned the episode. I understand now.

@Dragonfire: I'm afraid I must disagree with you on the first point. The ep. II idea was very cool and I think most people enjoyed the challenge. The sets needed for the challenge were not some 100+ price point sets and every SW fan should have them anyway ( :devil: joke :devil: ). Of course no one forces anyone to buy them so there comes the LDD rule. Saying the rules were not fair is like saying being unable to participate for the lack of time / not being at home is unfair? Anyway if you checked the list I bet everyone had at least 200+ parts from the list he could use and 20 extra parts you could use in a smart way for making those 200 work together. Sometimes thinking out of the box is a good idea and might become quite an advantage when it comes to results. Also it's important to participate (even if with only 20 pieces MOC) not to win!

Same reply that I gave to Lobot. I didn't know about LDD really and now I do. And I realise now I do have quite a few of the required pieces- I was just being lazy and assumed I didn't have them :sceptic: .

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Thanks Lobot, looking forward to the next episode!

I think the pile-o-bricks was a nice idea, and I hope we will see it again in the future to mix things up a bit. One suggestion for future episodes using a limited set of parts is to have a separate allowance for minifigs. I must admit I was a bit irked with the rule changes since I found it a bit drastic going from (pretty much) unlimited minifigs to a maximum of 5 figs+sigfig very late in the episode.

As for LDD, it certainly makes sense to allow it for part-pile builds. For regular episodes I'm not to fond of mixing LDD and real bricks. As MstrOfPppts said it is very easy to go big, and also to make something that isn't really possible to build. I considered using LDD myself for ep.2 as it would be easy to experiment, but as a Mac user it's not trivial to get up and running with PovRay. The next time an LDD episode is in the pipeline, I think it could be a good idea to announce that LDD is allowed a few weeks before the episode starts to give people who are not familiar with LDD/PovRay a chance to get up to speed.

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