Mysteries of the Beauty Seal Revealed

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  • LavinyaLavinya Queen of Snark Australia
    The two years I placed, I sold out and wrote very un-Magnagoran designs. Last year seeing Narynth and Krackenor place with very un-typically-pretty designs filled me with a lot of hope but it does seem that a certain aesthetic wins out, and it is unfortunate for those of us in 'darker' orgs that it isn't part of our natural in character designs.

    I'd like to think my style of writing would translate across regardless the type of aesthetic used, but so far it doesn't seem so. That is why I feel a little jaded - I deliberately changed not my writing style, but went from dark/somber/perhaps macabre to light and pretty and sparkly. And it worked. I reverted afterward.

    It's the one competition that is extremely blind for the competitors, there really is no way of knowing how you stack up against everyone else or even if you came close to being a challenger.

    I appreciate the Charites opening this thread. I think designing/writing is much like any artwork in that it is so deeply personal, and you can't really train for it like other seals or get support and a team, you just have to pour your soul into it. And like anything so deeply personal, it's crushing to not even know if your work made it past the initial vetting process. That's where the cry for feedback comes from, and I understand it. Personally I feel if I didn't get an honourable mention then I don't want to know, and am even too embarrassed to share it on the thread because clearly it was sub-par work. There's no one to blame but myself - I can't say I didn't have support, or the enemies were targeting me, or I hadn't prepared enough before the competition...

    It's a unique situation. Don't be too rough on upset designers who just want to know someone appreciated their art, even if it is not practical to get said feedback.



  • Lisaera said:


    I'm a little surprised that there seems to be a general sense that we're not fit to judge the contest. Be assured that our esteemed staff is flush with people who work with language in the real world. I ran a writing center for several years and now work part-time as a story teller. One of my colleagues is an ESL teacher and speaks quite a few languages, fluently. Several of us currently work, or have worked in the past, in some form of higher education. We have coders, web-design masters, all manner of PhDs, brilliant MA students, and a bevy of people who are doing a hodgepodge of those things. We're definitely capable of handling a voting contest in a fantasy world.
    I didn't that that sense from the thread. I mean one of the points I was talking about is how often in judging competitions judges are given a judging guide before hand. That's not to say there's anything wrong with the judges themselves its simply to give the judges a unified hymn sheet to be singing from so that they themselves know what the aim of the competition is.

    It removes the whimsy aspect of the judgement. Like one pre-event judging guide for an art competition had assigned points for example you judge so many points based on the colour competition, on uniqueness etc etc. There's similar ones for writing competitions that do a similar thing and just set out what the competition is looking for in terms to the judges so that they can mark it accordingly. 

     
  • edited February 2017
    A "Design x has made it to the semi-finals" and  "Design x has made it to the finals" message could be nice for those who make it to the 25 mentioned and then the 12-15 mentioned.

    Anyone that doesn't receive a message will know they didn't make the first cut, those that did will know which one of their designs was considered the strongest.
    Kinda a middle ground between nothing and the feedback idea.


    It might also help if the beauty post contained some of the info in the OP here, or maybe a helpfile. There's designs I probably wouldn't have submitted with the post in mind, and others that I might have worked on more instead.
  • SylandraSylandra Join Queue for Mafia Games The Last Mafia Game

    Lavinya said:
    The two years I placed, I sold out and wrote very un-Magnagoran designs. Last year seeing Narynth and Krackenor place with very un-typically-pretty designs filled me with a lot of hope but it does seem that a certain aesthetic wins out, and it is unfortunate for those of us in 'darker' orgs that it isn't part of our natural in character designs.

    I'd like to think my style of writing would translate across regardless the type of aesthetic used, but so far it doesn't seem so. That is why I feel a little jaded - I deliberately changed not my writing style, but went from dark/somber/perhaps macabre to light and pretty and sparkly. And it worked. I reverted afterward.

    It's the one competition that is extremely blind for the competitors, there really is no way of knowing how you stack up against everyone else or even if you came close to being a challenger.

    I appreciate the Charites opening this thread. I think designing/writing is much like any artwork in that it is so deeply personal, and you can't really train for it like other seals or get support and a team, you just have to pour your soul into it. And like anything so deeply personal, it's crushing to not even know if your work made it past the initial vetting process. That's where the cry for feedback comes from, and I understand it. Personally I feel if I didn't get an honourable mention then I don't want to know, and am even too embarrassed to share it on the thread because clearly it was sub-par work. There's no one to blame but myself - I can't say I didn't have support, or the enemies were targeting me, or I hadn't prepared enough before the competition...

    It's a unique situation. Don't be too rough on upset designers who just want to know someone appreciated their art, even if it is not practical to get said feedback.
    For what it's worth, I enjoy your designs, darker and otherwise. I figure that's why we open the Beauty Submission thread, yeah? To share our designs and to be excited about them.

    These things are in so many ways a numbers game. You have a 1/47th chance of winning, without taking any other factors into account. The reality is, 42 people are going to be disappointed and walk away with nothing. It's inevitable. There is no way around this. And it doesn't mean those 42 people suck, necessarily. It just means 5 people had broad enough appeal due to either their writing style, or their content, or their concept, that it propelled them to the top.

    Instead of thinking that not being chosen makes you a failure, consider this: the Charites said they had a top 25. 25! That's half of the designers! That means you didn't lose because you weren't "good" but because you were against a lot of good people. Beauty is an intense competition. You happen to be one of many fierce competitors, and you've placed more than the majority of entrants ever have in this competition (even if you don't want to stand by the work you submitted). The conceptual value of the content aside, you couldn't do that if you weren't a good writer.

    I know I'm coming off a bit bullheaded about this, but I'm trying to respond as someone who has been rejected a lot, to tell you don't let rejection define your self-worth as a writer. Because that way madness lies. You can do your best in a competition and still lose. I liked what I submitted this time, and it didn't place, and that's okay because I stand by my work. Please don't let losing a contest convince you to disavow your own work and your own talents. I'd really enjoy competing against you next year; your work isn't subpar to me.
    Daraius said:
    "Oh yeah, you're a naughty mayor, aren't you? Misfile that Form MA631-D. Comptroller Shevat's got a nice gemstone disc for you, but yer gonna have to beg for it."
  • edited February 2017
    I was pretty disappointed but this was my first entry.

    My frustration about it is that when a super high credit artifact is at stake and it often goes to the same types of designs, let alone the same designers, it feels as if there is a ceiling that isn't going to be broken through easily by newcomers. 

    I think that it might help to have a theme that is clearly stated. It might bring some sense of equal ground to the competition.

    Edit: In terms of my frustration, I will freely admit that the same thing happens with all of the competitions. This is the one that newcomers actually feel they have a chance in. Also, I am not interested in opening a can of worms, simply stating my frustration and offering a possible partial solution. 
  • edited February 2017
    I think for me, beauty doesn't really feel like a competition but it's also potentially the hardest seal to win? You either place/get a mention or you don't. (This isn't to say that it's not one, just that it doesn't feel like one)
      
    With the rest of the events you can kinda know how well you did, you can review and prepare for the next year. You can practice most of the other events, becoming a better influencer/basher/combatant/debater/healer, building your knowledge base of the information released over the year along with general knowledge of facts and geography. Even chaos could be practiced. 

    But with beauty, you kinda drop your design in and find out if you win in a few weeks, and it's another year before you get to try again. Obviously, the work involved means that running mini-beauty comps is not a thing that should happen but it does makes things more difficult.


    Though, an idea that keeps rumbling around. What do people think about beauty using masterpieces instead? 
  • MaligornMaligorn Windborne
    edited February 2017
    The issue is that, just like Justice Seal (barring an orgmate forfeiting for a better candidate or something), Beauty and Justice are FFAs instead of org vs org. Knowledge is too, but a whole org can hold practice quizzes all year long to prepare if they wanted to. I think that's where you're seeing it being the hardest to win.

    image
  • Maligorn said:
    The issue is that, just like Justice Seal (barring an orgmate forfeiting for a better candidate or something), Beauty and Justice are FFAs instead of org vs org. Knowledge is too, but a whole org can hold practice quizzes all year long to prepare if they wanted to. I think that's where you're seeing it being the hardest to win.
    Perhaps, there's a binary you win or lose with debates that makes it easier to practice in preparation though. Because beauty is based on the decisions of the various admin, you could replicate most of the notes the Charites have provided, but because your judges are different people you'll likely get different results.

    Also, my impression is that after the initial pass to get it down to ~25 designs, you're competing against various different groups simultaneously to get one of the 12-15 "slots".

    Proportional representation of orgs, in theory, pits you against your home at this point. I'm reading the variety of styles as themes and item types so you're possibly competing on that axis as well, so popular submission types are also in competition as well.
    But you don't really have any way to know what those are, maybe a bunch of people submitted platters this year so yours is going to have a harder chance of standing out. (might be related to the first year, I think there was three forestal tapestries.)


    But for me, it's mostly the whole submitting then finding out only if you placed/got a mention. Maybe a design didn't even get into the second round, maybe it did but it didn't get through to the final round. It might just be a pat on the head, but it might feel nicer?
  • This is the first time I'm participating in the Beauty Seal competition. I'm satisfied with my own design because even though I didn't place, I got a new design I could use in my own shop. However, I feel like a lot of people would like it if they got some kind of response back from how well they did for their submissions.

    If you don't want to restrict people's creativity by setting a theme for them to design around, is it possible to write up a new mechanic/option solely to reduce the behind-the-scenes work done by the admin as well as make players happier knowing how they did?

    Perhaps, when the Beauty Seal competition comes around again, open up/add a new option that allows people to submit a design. Syntaxes for example:

    DESIGN <template> FOR <cartel> BEAUTYSEAL

    This will allow people to submit anonymous designs that will be tagged as a submission for the Beauty Seal competition. They can't add 'Designed by' to the template.

    Trademasters will still need to send a message to the Charites to inform them who has designed the item. So only the Charites know who has designed which Beauty Seal design.

    When submissions are no longer being accepted, make the syntax not work again, like "Submissions for the Beauty Seal have closed." if someone tries. And then allow the admin to look at each Beauty Seal design with DESIGN # and to vote with DESIGN # VOTE <voteweight> <comment if any> where they can score the design from 0 to 10 and leave comments for why they like the design to give it a score.

    The Charites will hold the sole power to return designs that didn't make the cut/points cut-off with DESIGN # RETURN <message>. So on and so forth

  • ShaddusShaddus , the Leper Messiah Outside your window.
    Just as a snarky aside, btw, two of the main people who were complaining about Amarysse in that posted thread are known drama queens. 
    Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
  • LuceLuce Fox Populi
    Actually, that raised a couple questions. Mechanical questions:

    I know they're less likely to do well, but should we not enter a design that's been entered in a previous year?

    And second, does a design being listed as public hurt it in Beauty?
  • SylandraSylandra Join Queue for Mafia Games The Last Mafia Game
    Luce said:

    And second, does a design being listed as public hurt it in Beauty?
    Irillia won in 2011 with a public design. Xeii placed this year with a public one as well. So my guess is no. :D
    Daraius said:
    "Oh yeah, you're a naughty mayor, aren't you? Misfile that Form MA631-D. Comptroller Shevat's got a nice gemstone disc for you, but yer gonna have to beg for it."
  • It is not permitted to enter designs that were entered in previous years, even if they did not place. We appreciate that this has not been made very clear in the past and will make sure that from next year onwards it is stated plainly in the relevant announcements.

    The only issue with submitting public designs to the contest is when the design does not have the designedby field filled in. This makes it a bit more difficult for us to verify the designer's identity, and is why you should always use the designedby field for any design you might wish to submit. In terms of how well you do in the contest itself, public vs cartel is irrelevant.
  • TremulaTremula Banished Quasiroyal
    Is there a way we can start marking designs in the design list or cartel <blah> catalogue fields if they've already been submitted? I imagine this is harder for people who've been submitting longer, but it would be a nice change.
                          * * * WRACK AND ROLL AND DEATH AND PAIN * * *
                                         * * * LET'S FEEL THE FEAR OF DEATH AGAIN * * *
              * * * WE'LL KILL AND SLAUGHTER, EAT THE SLAIN * * *
      * * * IN RAVAGING WE'LL ENTERTAIN * * *

    Ixion tells you, "// I don't think anyone else had a clue, amazing form."
  • Sadly that would require the design system code to be tweaked, which as mentioned is not something we are easily able to do. We would advise keeping a record of what designs you submit each year so that you know for the future. In the event that you are unsure we do have records and can double check if absolutely necessary.
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