I noticed that the wheel gives a consolation prize if you don't "win", so maybe with the contests for designing themes, there could also be a consolation prize? Like a regular wheel ticket or avatar item chest or something? People whose themes don't get selected and worked hard on their themes and spent time on them sometimes feel like their hard work was for nothing. So, I thought about this and thought it could be a good idea.

While I get where you're coming from, I can't support this because it has too much potential for abuse.

If you get a prize just for entering, one could easily go to the generator and randomize a Sylesti, make up a name, and post it in a matter of few minutes. Potentially, the site could be handing out massive quantities of participation prizes for basically no effort, simply because it's impossible to differentiate who has put effort in versus those who haven't; any means of measure would be purely subjective.

While it may not seem fair to leave people who've worked really hard on a design with nothing if they're design isn't picked, it seems even less fair in my opinion to reward people who've put essentially no work into a design at all.

which is why the admins could just not tell anyone about it?

Also, there's a safeguard. It has to be with the theme of the fest.

Entering the design contest and putting in your hard work was a choice. Nobody held a gun to your head and forced you to do it. Nobody is guaranteed a win. Nobody deserves any kind of 'prize' for doing something voluntary.

I'm with others on this point: I can't support it. Until last fest there was no prize at all for entering the design contest. The prize was pride in seeing your creation come to life. That was it. And as far as I can tell, most people were happy with that. Starting the fest before last I saw a few people, not the people who won, mind you, saying that those who won deserved to get a copy of their winning design. This seems to have been considered by Fai and Krin, and last fest they offered a free pet for each winning entry. That turned into people being upset about the same person winning too many times. Now, each person who has a theme chosen (no matter how many winning entries they have), gets one free pet.

The contest, for me, is for the fun of designing, not to get a prize, consolation or otherwise.

(also, the wheel has always had a consolation/booby prize. Paying 50-100 diamonds for a ticket and getting nothing at all for it would probably not be a good idea. The themed contest costs nothing but your time.)

edit: also, 'not telling anyone' would only last the first time. The next fest, everyone that entered the contest would expect a prize just for entering, and then we get the issue of random entries just to get a prize. Which is not what the contest is for.

The themed design contests are meant to be a community orientated "contest" (i use quotes, because it's not a competition, but it goes into that Forum). We really don't like attaching rewards to it because I think it changes the focus from a community oriented, fun, supportive activity to an actual competition. This is only the 2nd festival where a reward of some type is handed out and we'll see how it goes - we may very well not have any reward attached to it in the future.

But the main point is that these really aren't supposed to be for rewards. We hope that the players do it because A) It's fun for them to design and B) They have a chance of having their very own creation used as an official themed pet of Sylestia. That's supposed to the main "reward".