F1stzz

The best news in months I guess now the army building is saved

TLG needs to start allowing retailers to sell 10320 finally. It's been 3+ months already & EF is still LEGO Shop exclusive. Needless to say that we don't have those fancy stores worldwide in every city, lol, in my country resellers are asking ≈$400 for this set, which is quite a freaking steep jump to say the least. Well, 10210 was a part of Creator Expert line, which was not as mass produced as some other themes & it was also a LEGO Shop exclusive for the half of its production span, if I'm not mistaken (for example, 10210 has never reached most of the CIS countries, back in the day that set was as unavailable officially as 10320 is nowadays) + it just happened to be the last Pirates/Imperials release prior to PoTC licensed line, which has negatively influenced its production longevity due to 2009-2010 Pirates reboot being cut short in order to make way for the PoTC theme. So I'd say Imperial Flagship was kinda robbed of its sales in multiple ways

So technically the faceprint is new, since it was only introduced this year, but not like "brand-new"

Yeah, it's great I'm still not sure if it's a completely new one, but would be nice if it is. @exabrickslegogo_ latest report on Insta (could be seen in their Stories) states that 40597 will come free with purchase over $100. It definitely looks like a dark red, yup

@Mister Phes I'm deeply sorry about all these unfortunate circumstances you had to face initiating both of the contests & sincerely wish you a speedy recovery from the bump your mental health took after trying to organise things all by yourself. I want to thank you for everything you've managed to conduct flawlessly within the event, given all the IRL problems you had to face, & for the next time I'd suggest trying not to bite more than you can chew and actually delegating some of the responsibilities to the preemptively appointed moderators, so the whole process wouldn't be as chaotic & random as it was this time around. I guess this is the most important conclusion to be made out of everything that's been discussed so far

Not exactly the official ones, but here's an update on the box images provided on Insta by @brick_bae. The quality of those makes it somewhat possible to see the minifigure's faceprint + allows us to have a glimpse at what this set looks like from behind.

Sir, what's expected from you is to provide the final report in line with what you've been posting up to August 21st. With all the scoreboards, the detailed evaluation of each critic's work up to September 16th, you know, that sorta stuff you've started doing on August 9th & never actually finished despite some "next update" being teased. Would you like me to explain it for the fourth time or is everything finally clear at this point? ICYMI, it's October 2nd already, but you're yet to close the CC Leaderboard topic with the definitive update. Ideally, that should've been done over a week ago, but the time was wasted here instead in attempts to get the examples similar to your own summer posts from elsewhere, lol.

You're welcome Let 'em do their own thing. If they're doing it wrong — it's their problem to solve or not. If we're doing something wrong & creating specific topics to point out what is it exactly (especially if something caused drama) — then we should be working towards solving these issues. So what I'd like to mention is the quote from your August 21st update (which was a reoccurring statement in pretty much all of the prior updates): As we know, the next update never came. Those contests you've mentioned may not provide any elaborations on the final results, but there's also no evaluation being regularly provided to the public by organisers to be responsible for. You've initiated such evaluation process publicly, kept providing evaluations to the public somewhat regularly, but never finished it publicly via posting the update with the final evaluations. You're responsible for ending what you've started & this inconsistency is glaring enough to point out and ask questions about. You've stated that final report is on its way — so let's finally bring it in, make the right conclusions out of the whole situation (I rly think it's not hard to summarize all this mess in a right way) & do our best for such troubles not to be repeated moving on

Yeah, I guess so, kinda

Which ones have you used then if you've stated yourself that the last update you were able to report was the one posted on August 21st? That's kinda confusing, honestly, lots of things have happened in the following weeks, the August 21st report can't be considered the final one by any means, it's in fact an interim one. U mean there are some "unreported" updates? If that's the case — I assume they should've been finalized long ago & therefore provided, if they do exist. It's hard to imagine the situation when there's time to actually make calculations, announce the winner — but there's no time to post a detailed update on the final results publicly, for weeks at that. These processes normally go hand in hand. Well, newsflash — then it's all done fundamentally wrong. It's just a fact. One day this crucial problem would've been highlighted — guess today's the day finally. What's even more mind-blowing for me here is it turns out this is an eighth contest to be held on this forum. I wonder if there was any thorough post-contest critique whatsoever previously and if there was — was it even accounted for at all??

The biggest problem with all of this is that GENERALLY final reports are published BEFORE the winners are announced. That's an established order in any contest or competition in existence. Mentioning some obvious examples, fighter in boxing is not proclaimed the winner of a match before the scores of judges are announced publicly. Same with gymnastics, skating, fencing or any other sport, quite frankly. For our Main contest the votes were available all the time for everyone to check & count BEFORE the winners were determined. But in the case of CC contest, not only the order is opposite — it's been a week since the winner was announced, but the final report, the very thing this announcement should be based on, is still yet to arrive. And there were lots of comments posted by critics since the last update provided on August 21st & up until September 16th, therefore — a lot of data to include for the final report. The trouble started as soon as you've immediately rushed to announce the winner using the outdated calculations made on August 21st after durazno's reminder instead of replying something along the lines of "the report is getting ready to be published soon along with the winner announcement👌" & taking your time to actually construct it. What has followed in fact was you proposing me to comply the report post factum (yeah, the exact one that ideally should have been used to determine the winner in the first place) & calling durazno a "coward with a poor character" only because he chose to make an actual video review for this contest instead of generating traffic to this website each & every day for all these months (not to mention he did post lots of comments earlier, albeit not as regularly as some other participants, who, on the other hand, didn't come up with any video content). Hence why this all resulted in questioning the integrity of competition and the very purpose of CC contest's existence overall — cuz the whole situation was handled borderline disgustingly. But I hope all of us have learned this tough lesson & moving forward we won't make the same mistakes again Please, Governor, avoid replying to such important topics this early, as it seemingly doesn't do us all any favours.

Np, mate, that comment was rather about the metric system for the contest in general One entry per category sounds fine to me as well, multiple entries per category is what people have a problem with. To be fair, it'd also be easier for authorities to organise things overall as certain established amount of entries = less chaos & routine trying to compile Building Index 'n stuff. EDIT: now that I have reread your post I gotta add that spamming separate categories with your entry could easily be avoided by having a specified note in the rules. Having your digital design being physically built sure shouldn't count as a separate entry, cuz it's virtually the exact same design. Also, I believe once we have the max piece count preemptively set in the rules (preferably— per category) — there will basically be no huge difference between digital & physical builds anyway, at least amongst MOC veterans. Now what's wrong with that? If you think you are able to outshine the existing entries after analysing 'em & building something superior — go ahead Not sure how exactly it could raise your chances of winning "rapidly" tho: after all, everyone has their own tastes & likings, but yeah, there's nothing illegal in analysing the competition & thinking of ways to stand out in comparison (as long as you're not directly stealing some fundamental gimmicks like it happened in one case I've mentioned earlier, which I hope will be taken into account for the future set of rules ). In the future I'd say we need to focus solely on the latter one. In the end it's all about creativity, and I don't see much creativity in rebuilding 90s sets using modern parts selection & 21322/10320 techniques (as we basically get something like that almost weekly without any contests).

Appreciate it, man 🤜🤛 And yeah, it's quite unfortunate that you've made 9 (!) video reviews for the CC contest (something that hasn't been done by anyone, btw, & what has been noticed by the Governor, I believe), but was called a "coward" with a "poor character" only bcuz apparently you haven't generated as much traffic as others :> While that is true & the final date for critics to finalize their work was set to September 16, there was a topic created by the Governor to "critique the critics" (I guess this is how it was planned to "review" all the participants work and "provide the feedback" on it — by letting community members themselves do the job ). Few comments left in there actually make an impression of iragm bringing the most valuable critique & feedback on the entries. Perhaps his miscalculations were the same as yours, hence why he wasn't even mentioned as the runner-up in the final report 🤷🏻‍♂️ You're more than welcome Your "Islander Palace" is truly a magnificent work of art & a prime example of how entries should've been designed like in general according to the rules we've had. And as God as my witness have you succeeded Your approach to the task was second to none IMO: the way you've dived into researching a parts selection available at the time period when the Islanders were produced, how you've pulled the 1995 catalogues from your collection to make the artworks for the set as realistic as possible — all of it just screams "passion & dedication" Truly the entry that totally captured & conveyed the zeitgeist

I do remember MstrOfPppts stating he wanted to create a separate topic after the end of the event to discuss some things he finds to be iffy within the contest. I do remember myself agreeing to participate in such talks & emphasized that creation of such topic will help us all to put focus on problems as well as I remember you addressing our proposition with an approval. Also I did say "partially". So here we are, and I thank you for creating this topic & providing all of us the opportunity to have an in-depth convo on what has worked fine, what went not exactly as planned and how things could be fixed moving forward, truly appreciate that 🤝

This topic exists partially cuz me & @MstrOfPppts were the ones who suggested it in the first place. And when suggesting it, we've mentioned that several problematic points are going to be raised up. Now when these points are actually being talked loudly about — you're reacting like it's something that wasn't announced beforehand & shouldn't take place. Nah-nah. If the goal is to make future contests better — we NEED to review all the problems that occured in depth. We need not only to praise the organisers for what was perfectly done — we also need to focus on some things that got outta hand due to one reason or another. That's how you make a change — by pointing out the cons, reviewing them & making the right conclusions. Not just by "having a beer" and letting things fly. That's the main reason to complain indeed. That's not a great thing by all means when some "CP crew" is constantly mentioned in all of the official topics, but in the end of things it turns out a single person was responsible for making things work. That also means a single person is responsible for things that didn't quite work or went completely wrong way, you have to understand it. Problems caused by a single person being a ten-hand-working machine could be avoided by making the machine a ten-men-working. But it's important to highlight those problems to make the lack of staff standout & actually stimulate the resolving of this issue, otherwise it will all stay the same. As long as narrative keeps being "the Governor was all alone, but he handled things perfectly fine", other people won't see the actual need to join the crew lines — why would they, if "everything's a complete success with a single person running things"? Now, thanks to this discussion, I believe the depth of the trouble is actually coming to light. Except there's no need to. The contest in general was indeed a Pirates theme celebration, I've said it several times & I stand by it, cuz the amount of bookmarks I've made for possible future MOCs is off the charts Tho I personally wasn't rooting for this topic to be created so we can pad eachother's shoulder for a 10th time & dismiss till the next event. As I said, somebody has to be "that guy" & speak about things without trying to sugarcoat every unpleasant detail. All the positives (and there were plenty, I never said there wasn't) were mentioned zillion times in other topics — this one is a surgery room of sorts, at least it was intended to be when it was suggested. So yeah, no wonder there's some gore in a surgery room 🤷🏻‍♂️ Truly a Pirates Summer One thing tho — the first month of the mentioned three went completely without any control by organisers whatsoever. I believe the Governor has mentioned it in his initial post. I also highly doubt there was a lot of control in months that followed, cuz it took community members (including me & you) to point out the entries missing in the Building Index, the violators of the contest & voting rules (which were barely dealt with, look no further than my description of Alexu and Hun cases), the updates on CC contest that were missing 'n stuff. All of that is a problem and I believe we've outlined the solution very clearly Yeah, I also think our skirmish with Eggyslav caused some headache for the staff, but otherwise — there were none involved with the contest besides the Governor. At least that's how I'm interpreting his words: And that is indeed the biggest shortcoming. It's unfortunate that seemingly nothing could've been done to resolve it, but we're here to find a solution for the future. Sir, the topics containing the rules haven't been archived or deleted. They're still there, they have been around ALL THE TIME, perfectly accessible for everyone, ok? This ain't "a note on the fridge", this is an active web-forum, where you can access the available info any given minute. It's, once again, the lack of control & character to enforce what's written in the perfectly accessible rulebook that caused some trouble. That's not "an assumption" — that's what has actually happened. The absence of solutions to certain cases in the rules enables such actions, so no blame on those who took these loopholes. It could be considered unethical by some, but no actions could be taken for it due to obvious reasons. That is what we need to take into account while creating sets of rules for the next contests. That's an adequate demand. Excuse me? Those who established the rules have "the right" to just forget about 'em & others are "allowed" to do so as well? Such a ludicrous statement, but yeah, it's me who's "crossing the line". Yikes. I wonder why am I even wasting my time then, if no matter how great the rules could be made — everyone "has the right" to say "F the rules!" overtime. Ah, that's where all this rant is coming from. I wonder if you've actually read the disclaimer I've written. Ok, so I'll say it to you personally: I highly appreciate the time & effort you've spent here over the course of several months, mate. It's not your fault that due to the built-in contradiction in the rules for CC & the absence of any objective tool it's honestly hard to measure your (and everyone else's) subjective input accordingly to these exact rules, especially when there were lots of critics working alongside simultaneously & Governor had virtually no time at all to comply the updates, the feedback & the report on you being the winner (the latter one came after another Creative Critic's reminder). I want to congratulate you on being the most active member amongst the Creative Critics with the biggest amount of detailed posts (as it was the only obvious metric that has actually meant something after all) & deservedly winning the prize. But at the same time I have my own point of view on the whole CC competition, which was cemented during the past couple of days, and for the next time I'd like this particular part of contest to be gone completely & replaced with actual moderators to monitor the competition & enforce the law. Again — TYVM and the critical (no pun intended) flaws within the contest's structure is absolutely NOT your fault. We also didn't force him to do all this work in the first place — it was his initiative as the organiser. Now I wonder if the Governor himself was able to "do the math" & decide if he actually needed to delegate some authorities & responsibilities to his comrades on Classic Pirates instead of organising things all by himself in a rush (due to a vacation routine or a constant lack of free time in general), only to be absent for a month leaving the contest he himself initiated completely out of control. I'll repeat my point again: due to the Governor being solely in charge of basically everything during the contest he created, all things that were great happened thanks to him, all things that were messy happened because of him. That's how it works. There's time to give him his deserved flowers — and there's time to point out things that weren't executed well. And here is exactly the place & time to do the latter. Yeah. No idea whatsoever indeed. Oh, that's such a great news, sir, congrats with the baby boy 😊 I'd go as far as saying "leave it to TLG to produce the remakes". I think there should be no such option as "rebuild the 80-90s set with modern part selection", which is basically the "remake of a Classic set". New, original designs only is the way to go, IMHO, but if we decide to keep the "remake" option for the future — it 100% should be put into its own category That's an interesting thought on the voting process, dividing it into "the public favourites" & "the scores of judges" is some Eurovision type'o'stuff, if done right — that might bring a lot of excitement Totally agree, that's where the main focus should be — having a certain amount of assistants to ensure we ain't going off-road If the entry doesn't meet the requirements set in the rulebook — it shouldn't be allowed to participate. That's how contests work if they're built around the competitive element. Now, does the rulebook have to be straight & clear, so there's no way for interpreting what's said in it differently? 100%, that's why stipulations like "create something TLG would produce" (when we have NINJAGO, Dreamzzz & Bricklink program alongside, where builds are just going crazy) doesn't quite work as an effective requirement & could cause the confusion. So I'd say in the future we could start with original new playsets with a certain max piece count mentioned in the rules. And I'm sure this is also the only actually measurable component, despite how it all was described in the rules. Considering the finale of this competition, I think it's fair to say this part of the contest either needs a complete thorough revamp — or just should be scrapped in favour of the actual judges/moderators concept.

Alright, just as we're having some weird conversation about the Creative Critic contest results, I feel like now is the right moment to finally bring about things I wanted to discuss with the community. I thought I'd wait for @Mazin to reply & @MstrOfPppts to join us with his takes first, but the fact that winner of CC contest wasn't announced until @durazno33 had to actually remind about it has really just pushed dat button for me Plus Mazin's post here contains a lot of points that I'd like to progress on discussing, so here we go DISCLAIMER: ladies & gents, what I'm about to say next IS NOT an attempt to compromise the results of contest nor the effort of its participants (albeit there are some entries I'm about to mention which, IMO, shouldn't have been allowed to compete at all due to... the lack of any cohesive build at all?..). I highly admire the lvl of imagination & skill that was showcased during the event and I do consider the Return of the Classic Pirates Contest a true Pirates theme celebration What I'm about to put focus on mainly is some flaws (sometimes — critical) within the rules of contest itself and the impact those had or might've had on the event overall, so in the future those mistakes won't be made again. I encourage everyone to look through my post thoroughly & discuss everything I'm going to mention in detail, bcuz after all — that's exactly why this topic was created in the first place. 1. THE RULES & THEIR ENFORCEMENT Rules is basically the core foundation of any competition or contest in general. The more thoroughly thought through rules are — the better, that goes without saying tbh. Unfortunately, due to the reasons mentioned by @Mister Phes in The Formalities of The Return Classic Pirates Contest part of his initial post, the rules we ended up with were not quite as thoroughly thought through as they could've been — which resulted in a platter of problems within the contest itself that were slightly touched already by community members above and which I'm about to dive deep into, showcasing the examples. Totally agree. One of the biggest problems was not only the rules being kinda unclear & straight up lacking in certain areas (again, I'm gonna provide actual examples down the road) — there was basically no, let's say, "appointed regulators" to ensure the set rules are being strictly followed. There were only random cases of users pointing out the violation of rules — the most obvious one being Alexu's 6274 Caribbean Clipper Remake, which was pointed out initially by @Rogue Redcoat right when Alexu posted his entry, but it was FINALLY disqualified only 10 (!) days after the voting has started, when @Dreamweb had to put the spotlight on the violation for the second time. Other than that no actions were taken towards the rules violators whatsoever — and I gotta say, there were plenty of them. Let's finally get to the examples, shall we? The Frequently Asked Questions part of the Return of the Classic Pirates Contest rules states as follows: Pretty straightforward. But somehow, despite @Elephant Knight clearly stating (albeit only after Governor asked him directly) that his Pirate's Inn was built purely for fun — the [ENTRY] tag hasn't been taken off the topic & the build still made it to the voting. Moving on to the next point of Frequently Asked Questions, here's another quote: Well, I want everyone to look at the entries provided in the links down below and answer a simple question: taking the given FAQ statement, in your honest opinion — could these entries be considered a minifigure/parts packs & be allowed to participate in the contest or not? 1. Great Pirate Treasure by @xoona (the violation was kinda mentioned by @Mazin in his final review) 2. 6235 Variation by @CJCx3_Legos 3. The Little Ripper by @CaptainDarkNStormy Continuing on "building a new design" part, I'd like to mention those entries that barely had any design whatsoever or any specific Pirates attributes at all, but for some reason they were still allowed to compete and be a part of the voting. The question stays pretty much the same as I'm giving you links to these entries: 1. Renegade's End - Sequel to 6234 Renegade's Raft by @Johnnyopies 2. Verification dock by @Spacedude studio 3. The Lizard by @CaptainDarkNStormy (the minifigure in this one also violates the ban of licenced themes + use of non-authentic LEGO components part of the FAQ) Not to mention the fact all of the examples above basically fail to meet the requirements of the foundational rule: Speaking of "non-compliance with the foundational requirements" — here are some of the entries for you, mates, to decide if they were compliant with the previously mentioned rules or not: 1. The Golden Ship by @CaptainDarkNStormy 2. 6280 Armada Flagship Remake by @bingowaldorf 3. 6500 A Promiscuous Sailor Captain by @JopieK Unfortunately, the list of "what went wrong" doesn't end here. You see, the foundational rules also had this little nuance to them: As @Yperio_Bricks has already stated: Sums it up perfectly, unfortunately. I'm not going to try and link every single entry that violated these requirements. I'm just going to mention a couple for each category that are representing the problem the most. Some of these have made top-10 or even top-5 as a result of voting. 1. The Lost Lagoon by @The Brick Stop. First & foremost — yes, this build (like all those I'll be mentioning next) is absolutely magnificent & awe-inspiring. But guys — 2123 (!) pieces & 13 minifigs for a set, that's supposed to portray something officially released by TLG back in the 90s (the Islanders set specifically). If you check out the Bricklink items catalogue, throughout the 90s there was NOT A SINGLE LEGO PLAYSET containing minifigures with the piece count exceeding 1500 parts. Playsets with more than 900 pieces were not a thing before the latter half of the 90s. I'd like @TalonCard & @Aanchir to correct me, if I'm wrong, but that's pretty much the data Bricklink provides, or at least how I understand it. How is any other Classic entry supposed to compete against something like "The Lost Lagoon"? What @BrynnOfCastlegate is supposed to feel, when he sees that his perfectly compliant with the rules 6269 Islander Palace is being surpassed by The Brick Stop's behemoth, which, while being a truly grand & wonderful build, doesn't quite meet the given requirements? 2. Caribbean shipyard by @Cincinnati. This build is a masterpiece just like pretty much any other design this guy makes, outstanding. Now mateys, I need you to ask yourself a question and sincerely answer it: does "Caribbean shipyard" look like a legit official TLG set to me? Wanna know my honest answer to this question? My answer is "Caribbean shipyard" reminds me a whole lot more of the custom builds produced by third-party manufacturers like Medievalbricks, Mould King, Letbricks etc — but no chance this could be an official TLG product for the Pirates theme. If you've answered the question the same way I did, then this entry, unfortunately, doesn't meet the requirement of convincing everyone of the creation being an official set as well as not creating a full-blown MOC, because Cincinnati's build contains a little under 9000 (NINE THOUSAND!) pieces. 3. Imperial Trading Outpost by @aex383. Again — mesmerising build. But also the one to which you can apply everything said about the "Caribbean shipyard". Just compare this build to any other Lagoon Lock-Up/Broadside's Brig entry in the contest, including the prize-winning 6267 Lagoon Lock-Up/Soldiers’ Tavern Remake to get the point. 4. Skulls Eye Schooner remake (6286) by @Quotenotto. Astonishing build, yes — but does it meet the established requirements in comparison to other ship designs presented during the contest (like Elephant Knight's Caribbean Clipper 2015 or Cross Bone Clipper Remake, to name a couple)? I'm sorry, nope. At least Quotenotto managed to keep the piece count under 2000, that's kinda good news. There are many more builds like the aforementioned ones which made it to the voting despite clearly not going in line with what's established in the foundational rules of the contest. How was that allowed to happen? First of all, you can clearly see that some of the participants have taken the rules quite literally & followed them closely, while others seem like they didn't care as much. Second — you know, there could possibly be some problems with the entries when you read one thing in the rules, but you may find something quite different/opposite in a given list of Existing Examples. The solution to these problems is what we've been talking about earlier — cleaning things up in the rules (using the principle of "less is more" when it comes to the list of inspirational examples) & appointing the enforcers to prevent full-blown MOCs from entering the contest and ensure ALL of the competitors are taking the rules literally. IMO, Creative Critics ideally should've been delegated with authorities to do it, so their efforts could've made a particular sense, but I'll talk about the CC contest & question its usefulness later. Now it's time for the second point — the imperfections within the rules. 2. IMPERFECTIONS WITHIN THE RULES I've seen people already making some valid comments related to selection of categories, so I'm not gonna repeat it all over again. I'll only say that we've already had an opportunity to segregate the Main Building Category to "Classic Style" sets & "Modern PoBB-style" sets and give the second 10320 to the winner of one of those categories, but oh well — the CC contest has taken one of the prize spots earlier 🤷🏻‍♂️ We'll continue to discuss the category selection, guys, but for now I'd like to focus on something that went unnoticed. So, in the aforementioned Creative Critic contest there is a rule that states: Again — I'm leaving the CC competition for my next big point. But why would I immediately bring up the part of CC rules then, you might ask? See, here's a thing: for some reason, there's NO SUCH RULE created for the Return of the Classic Pirates Contest itself. You may ask "what's the point of creating such a rule in a contest, in which we have 5 Caribbean Clippers, few Lagoon Lock-Ups etc?". So here's why. On July 4th, few days after the start of the contest, @LetsBrick has posted his entry — Cutless Reach. IMO, it's one of the absolute best entries that is 100% meeting all of the established requirements. It's also the one that's fallen victim to full-blown MOCs, but we've talked about it more than enough already. IMHO, another reason why this entry was underappreciated is the fact that on August 2nd, almost a month after LetsBrick has posted his set, the Saber Island 2023 by @TomSkippy has emerged. As you all know, it went on to become a prize-winning entry... By stealing (it is what it is, lads, despite Tom giving a "shout out" to LetsBrick) the gimmick of "Cutless Reach" & applying it on literally every part of the build, starting with the form of the tower itself, insignias — hell, even the flagpole was turned into a saber According to the rules — there's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing wrong with someone taking someone else's original gimmick for a new set and straight up copy pasting it into the remake of a classic set. Thanks to a circumstance of rules not taking this possibility into account, the display model of a remade classic set took the full advantage of a gimmick presented by another competitor, who created an original new playset. Now, it's not a crime if the rules don't address plagiarism at all. But IMO, it's a VERY important lesson for the future about legal use of the loopholes provided by the existing rules. Moving on, let's also speak a word or two about what could've (& did, in fact) influenced the voting process negatively. Let's take another look at this part of the Frequently Asked Questions: I guess no explanation is needed to why this particular allowance could possibly go wrong. In fact — it kinda did go wrong in case with @MyFirstMOC-Hun entries. First of all, I'd like to mention that half of the entries he submitted were, ONCE AGAIN, not meeting the requirements set in the rules. But what's more interesting is the incident that occured during the voting process, when several new accounts were registered on Eurobricks with a single purpose of making all of their votes in favour of MyFirstMOC. Once I spotted this activity I immediately checked Hun's Insta page (he does have one, 600 followers, if I'm not mistaken) — and what do you think? Of course he has posted a promotion of his entries on September 2nd (four days before the suspicious activity started, which also makes me think if these accs were genuinely Hun's followers or...). More than that — I think @Mister Phes was completely aware of Hun's post, as he (I assume that was him) has left his reply in the comments. If that's the case, I imagine Governor could've asked MyFirstMOC about everything that's happened on Insta by sending Hun a DM there (if the latter didn't reply on Eurobricks) with a request for an explanation of some sort, as multiple community members were demanding to take measures towards Hun after all of the sus accounts failed to answer the questions they were asked on forum (some have failed to visit Eurobricks ever since). To this day the situation is not resolved, so I think next time we simply prohibit any sort of self-promotion. We're on Eurobricks, gentlemen, and Classic Pirates forum is one of if not THE biggest hub for "Adult Fans Of Pirates" in existence. I guess if there's a need to promote the contest & entries — we could organise it from the inside, hence why the question of volunteers & staff expansion was raised. I'm sure we'll continue on pointing out the flaws in the rules, I'm also looking forward to expand this convo, but for now I'd like to finally discuss the purpose of Creative Critic Contest. 3. CREATIVE CRITIC COMPETITION: WHY WAS THAT EVEN A THING? Being a nonnative English speaker you can only imagine how tired I am of typing at this point So I'll try to tell long story short here: I'm absolutely, 100% sure that the sole purpose of creating the Creative Critic contest was to try and gather a certain amount of users to constantly visit the forum & provide the activity for it — but hardly anything more than that. The offering of EF as a prize (which I find ridiculous, tbh) obviously serves as a bait for people to try their best to post messages on this forum during breakfast, lunch & dinner. Why am I so sure & why am I using such words as "bait" 'n stuff? Well, the Governor himself explains: Basically what this says is "we give away the Eldorado Fortress to someone who's registered as CC and has the biggest amount of longreads across the board". "So what's wrong with that?", you might ask? Well, the problem is there's no OBJECTIVE metric to measure someone's SUBJECTIVE opinions on the entries, apart from the sheer number of messages & their length. You may say "yeah, but come on: if the guy has lots of messages, they're all detailed — why can't we consider him a winner purely by the eyetest?". Well, mates, there's a little contradiction hidden within the rules, which doesn't allow us to "simply apply the eyetest", here it is: So just like that multiple detailed comments could mean ABSOLUTELY NOTHING if the creator of the entry chooses to ignore them, while a couple of short comments with propositions may actually be taken into account by the builder, hence become "helpful". Simply brilliant So again: how is "Eurobrick staff and CP crew" supposed to objectively measure subjective opinions, which are defined as subjective in the CC rules and are not necessary for creators to follow? What's the point of "critics" then? Well, I've explained the point of CC competition from the get go, but here's another question to ask: even without having an actual tool to rate the Creative Critics input properly — did the aforementioned "review by the Classic Pirates crew and Eurobricks staff" actually take place "between September 17 and 23"? Considering the weird conversation on the matter, which I've mentioned early on, the winner was determined only yesterday by the Governor himself based on the data he collected on August 21st, after me and @durazno33 have pointed out the absence of any reports on the results of the CC contest. Given the fact that during the convo Governor constantly complains about the lack of time & being the only one to do all the work (even asking me to do his work after the CC contest has ended), which didn't allow him "to provide the feedback as was the intention" + the absolute absence of any promised updates or reports since August 21st (while the CC contest lasted for over a couple of weeks further till September 16) & up until yesterday — I'd say the existence of the CC contest was either completely forgotten or moved so far to the background that in the last possible minute it was considered not worthy of fulfilling the obligations. My personal opinion, not necessary to agree with it — nah, it was just purely a message-farming machine to guarantee the activity during the contest, that's where all this mess is coming from. If you think about it — some of the other troubles we've been talking about all this time (such as a green light for self-promoting) may also be coming from this exact desire to buff the activity on Classic Pirates forum. Is this a bad thing? Absolutely not, but once it comes in a way of competitive integrity & general flow of the contest... Yeah, it could very possibly cause havoc, and we all see that it did. How Creative Critics could have been utilised more effectively? I've said it before: making the appointed enforcers out of them. In the future, should they be rewarded with an expensive main prize, when we have SEVERAL different categories with people actually creating something majestic? Certainly not. "Rewarding the biggest amount of subjective opinions by God knows what metric named helpfulness" shouldn't be a thing at all, especially when no one gives a flying F about actually measuring the "critics" input thoroughly from start to finish & how in the world to do it in the first place. So we either reward people with something small and nice for helping to clean the mess up & regulating the flow of a competition — or we make some people Classic Pirates moderators to do it on a regular basis. That has also been voiced previously, so let's focus on gathering the actual staff, mateys. CONCLUSION That's been a LONG read, guys. A LONG typing session for me as well. I'm aware that I've repeated some previously mentioned points several times here, but I thought someone needed to be "tHaT GuY" & provide some actual examples to what was described very generally. Conclusion is we need regulators to lay down the law & secure the commitment to it. The existing rules themselves, while being a little flawed in few spots, are generally alright. It was mainly the lack of control & character behind the decision-making that made some things real messy. Also, let's quit these "activity rush games". It rather did more harm both to Main & CC contests than benefited the platform long-term in any significant way. I'm sure I've missed tons of nuances along the way, so I'm open to continue on discussing all of it further with you, mates. Feel free to comment on every point u see being valid or not — and we'll be finding the right passage together in a conversation

Don't worry, sir — I absolutely will do it within the post-contest discussion, as I think (due to my observations) I have a proper understanding of why the Creative Critic contest was initiated in the first place

It was last updated on August 21st — 5 days before the contest has ended & the next update was promised. Nothing has changed in there ever since — no announcements nor updates. I think it'd be reasonable to summarize the results of the CC contest in the same way it's done with the Main one at least, I mean, there was basically a calendar month to check out Critiques' feedbacks & finalize their ratings accordingly — I guess there should be something to report at the end of things, right?

I pretty much agree with all of the points provided by @Mazin, albeit I think we can dive deeper into this discussion & specify some things, so by the end of it all we will have some sort of a formula for the future. I'm waiting for the Creative Critic winner to be announced, so the curtain could be called for both contests & we can focus on this conversation for real, as I'm about to bring up various things that IMO could be considered as serious flaws. Also, I think it would be fair and very informative to show the exact examples of what we consider was "meh" with the whole event, so people participating in the convo can get the full understanding of complaints & discuss 'em thoroughly. That's why I'd like @Mazin to "point fingers" & name the entry he had a tough feeling with: That'll help to make the outlines for the criterias of "what shouldn't be" much clearer

Up the mugs for the winners I rly hope all the participants will give their creations a go on Rebrickable so everyone can get a chance to be rewarded in some way

I'm spotting multiple masonry bricks in there, so I'd say not much at all

Double-checked it, both links still work fine for me and, as I can see, others — perhaps it's something on your side? So far there's only the box art in a poor quality, but I guess we'll see everything fully revealed soon as the report states that release date is set to October 13th.

I was not participating in the CC contest, mate, but thnx for the praise anyway

I was asking myself "WTH even is that cave?", as well as "where do people on Insta see sharks there??" — yeah, now I get it, lol I wonder where did the designers snag this idea from? 😏 [First_Time.GIF] ...remains being the biggest zero-Fs-giving toy company in the world

I've looked through the reports I've seen back in August and 40597 is indeed mentioned there as "40597 Halloween" + it sure does feel & look like a Halloween themed set with a pirate in it What's kinda confusing for me here is the design of a tower — it actually gives off some Fright Knights vibes, which makes the whole set look more like a combo of Pirates & Castle being put in Halloween setting, lol.