Bublehead

Been a while since I've been here, looks like the same old song and dance? Not much has changed and I don't think that is a good thing...

There was a time when I would have jumped at this chance, but that was when I was younger and my time meant nothing to me and the desire to be an "insider" would have made me do just about anything for them. 25 years later and I am still like a junky when new sets hit the shelves, but they only get my money these days, and my time is worth waaaaaay more to me since what I have left is dwindling down to about 15 to 20 years left on this planet.

<sarcasm mode on> Hi, this is TLG, we would like you to volunteer your time, expertise, and resources to help prop up our brand... no, no compensation, just playing on your desires to be associated with an official TLG advertising campaign... you know, something to brag about on the forums and put on your resume? Its for a good cause, you know, STEM and all, so like no story here on a big corporation leveraging user fanaticism for a brand into a marketing advantage over competition, no, we would never do that at TLG... <sarcasm mode off>

I agree, that is the fun of coming up with a new GBC module, but balancing the scoring of the mechanism, combined with the scoring of theme, color choices, piece counts, longevity, robustness, point of task, etc... could actually be a hard thing to do in a touchless competition. Successfully designed GBC modules have operating requirements that are not necessarily ingrained within the GBC rules. You need to move balls from A to B at a rate of 1 ball a second... but how many balls can your module "consume" and be called successful? Lost or dropped balls should be a factor that is measured and gauged. What is the MTBF of your module? Power requirements? How do you gauge the "cool" factor? How do you put a point scale on all these variables and then judge against them? I think a GBC competition is a great idea, but not sure how it could be judged without physically observing the modules, and testing them independently (such as placing them all under a test monitor volunteer who runs them all and collects the results) So that is my take on a GBC competition, where I think it makes sense when done at an event, but not as an online competition.

I agree, but a touchless competition is what we have to work with here... I know that if some models were more heavily scrutinized by someone picking it up, futzing with it, and inspecting it, these competitions might be more balanced. Point in case, I know I can hide a TON of "sins" in a model and you would not know it, however, if I had to give up said model for inspection, the ruse would collapse. And let's face it, would you take a video of a function "not working as designed" and include it in your presentation? So what we actually see here is "the best models that can have its weaknesses camouflaged by a good video" and any "non-purist" hacks can be hidden from prying eyes. I believe this is why we get so little comments on static MOC posts as well. Nobody wants to see a picture, they all want to see a slick video presentation... almost like every model must get the "Saturday Morning Toy commercial" treatment before it gets any real attention... again just my $0.02 opinion

I agree, they should be fun, however, without a hope of winning, I see no fun in competing. I don't have the time or resources to put together some high production quality video and photo presentation just to garner a slim chance at winning some small prize and the accolades of a handful of expert builders on a very slimly focused hobby forum. I guess the real problem is the lack of granularity in the skill level required to compete, the amount of actual bricks which can be used, and the amount of time in which to complete the contest. Almost every competition winner on here, if you go by the past winners, are users with the most time/money/skill, and if you lack one of the three, your hopes of winning plummet.

While GBC does showcase the intricacies and complexity of Technic, the real world application of this is limited to, well, moving balls around. Now I am not sure about others, but the need to move balls around is something of a non-realistic task to ask a person to engineer if you are trying to inject some STEM learning into the mix. Granted, it is limited in scope, does not have a lot of "rules" per se, just those that let the devices coexist in the same GBC world and interface between each module with the least amount of hassles. I mean this could just as well be a "mousetrap" competition to build the most elaborate method of catching a mouse, but I don't find that as challenging as making a real world machine that actually performs a task. Now in the realm of Technic, we have not seen many TLG designed machines that actually perform a real world task other than lifting, dumping, sorting, moving, or loading, along with mimicking functionality of other complex vehicles. Not too many Technic models actually float, fly, or do any actual real world work (cement mixer doesn't mix real cement, bucket wheel loader doesn't actually excavate, nor does the Liebherr. They can move around bricks that simulate these tasks) So the short answer here is, nope, not interested in a GBC competition because it will undoubtedly be another "who owns the most Technic Lego" competition combined with an "over the top" display of gee-wizardry meant to do nothing but garner votes out of shear brute force of a high part count. If I was looking to hold a GBC competition, the rules would be very simple... "with the least amount of parts possible, create a mechanism that when ganged together could move a GBC ball from point A to point B, without dropping the ball at a rate of 1 ball per second average, giving the hight of point A is X and the height of point B is Y, and the distance between A and B is Z. The model should not include any driving mechanics, a completed module, or any added parts not required to actually move the ball. This way we should only see novel ways to move a GBC ball and should not see any additional "bling" added on to help harvest votes. But that would be a very boring competition to judge and would not be entered by anyone... so the current idea will probably go forward, but since my collection of Technic Lego is not as infinite as some, the actual probability of me winning is low, so my interest is naturally as low as well.

I find too many people on EB to be just too judgmental. You can post an 8000 piece MOC and link to 50 pictures of it, and you get three comments and 2 out of three are negative and the third says "Looks cool and all, but a video would be better". I have posted MOCs on here that took 8 months to design and build and a lot of the posts on it were pure negativity. I've given up looking for praise on EB, So I'm not posting any more MOCs on here in hopes of praise, only when I want my creations ripped on for being too big, or too heavy, or wrong color choices, or uses illegal geometry, or violates some unwritten TLG stress reduction code. The feeling I get when I come here is "you are not worthy of our praise" so why even try? Until this changes, I've decided my MOCs are for me, I build them to impress myself, and sharing them is no longer something I will do often here. You can get way more praise and less negativity on FB Technic groups.

I used to NOT have a reason to buy the Flexari, now I have no excuse why NOT to!

Pokemon+Technic = Bionicle Bionicle + $5.00 - Starbucks = $0.00

Oh, and I asked Santa for a Control+ interface development application, a micro motor, and more servo based motorization. My three Brands/IP where Boston Dynamics, Bell-Boeing and SpaceX/NASA. The Bell-Boeing was a jab in the eye for canceling the V-22

This was interesting... I gave them my input and I hope it helps. It made me look up “Build for real” and that led to a interesting footnote on the marketing campaign at this link: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=&amp;ved=2ahUKEwjM16ftsIDvAhUDpVsKHbAxBkQQFjABegQIARAD&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fcaples.org%2F2019-winners-results%2F%3Fid%3D34%26cat%3DDigital%20B%20to%20C&amp;usg=AOvVaw07eN8ExXWnm6fojtdLsbiq

To be honest, the hardest set to put together is the one where you made a mistake on Step 37 but don’t figure it out until step 1092... and to top it off, you used a part in Step 37 that was 5 studs long when it should have been 7 studs long, and now on this step 1092, you are short a 5 length black beam and are wondering if TLG screwed up or if I did? Yes it happened to me on the Lamborghini so it can happen to anyone.

My MOCs, when finished, are rarely revisited. They may take a while to complete, and I do go through many iterations, but at the end, it is complete, it will only get an update when a portion of the build can be improved ONLY due to a newly released element that solves the original problem and reduces what I call a “kludge monster” construct to a stronger, more reliable, and more play worthy model

The Chromatic Regurgitation is a way of quickly identifying the parts in the big pile after ripping open the bags and pouring them out. As crusty old salts that have been building with Technic since it’s debut, we can identify parts blindfolded, and most of us presort to some extent. The Uninitiated and younger Lego users see the color differences as a plus in that color can quickly identify a piece faster than observing its shape and form. TLG is capitalizing on this to help reduce build times... which seems counterintuitive for a building/construction toy, where you would think the longer it takes to build, the more satisfaction it brings to the user, but focus groups and test market trials would reveal that a set is more well received and future sales more likely when the customer actually finishes the model, and that all the functions work. So anything TLG can do to “help” the customer finish the build is better in the long run, so they are not about to change anything just because a small dedicated fan base on a public forum are making noise, because that is not about to change anything. I find it interesting that people believe they have some kind of “voice to be heard” about things dealing with the way TLG runs their business, but this only comes from the “we complained and they listened” feeling users get when TLG changes the way they are doing something that aligns with the complaint, thus reinforcing the belief that their complaints have been heard. Other than brokered licensing deals, most decisions made at TLG come from management and are based solely on one simple principle. Make more money. Which is rule one. Any further decisions on who, what, when, how, and why need only be reminded, there is only 1 real rule, any other rules are secondary and should be used only as a backup to rule one. If you can satisfy the squeaky wheels on the forums without losing money, then Ok, but TLG has tried the “do what the customers want and the money will come” attitude before to the almost utter ruin of the company. I don’t think we will ever see that kind of response from TLG ever again.