Every fest I see this complaint in chat at some point, but I don't think anyone has ever put forward a formal complain/suggestion (if they have ignore that statement lol).
There's quite a widespread feeling that we have too many brown/drab-ly colored themes (particularly for certain species). I see the complaint most often for luffs, bulbs and rikkis, but I'm sure there are more. As a rikki collector, the last time I did the math, 62% of rikkis were either brown, black, white or grey for base colors. There are plenty of brown rikkis that are lovely! But there are also Far Too Many in my opinion - and it feels like they've been increasing lately. Obviously I don't mean that brown themes should be disqualified on sight by the admins when picking designs, but I feel like it might help if it could be taken into account that we have a LOT of certain colors for various species.
Also to clarify: this is in terms of all species, just used rikkis as an example as I am most familiar with those.

Feel free to post your thoughts on here ^^

I definitely agree as, again with the luffoxes because that's what I frequently collect, a lot of the themes seem to have a generic color scheme despite other unique submissions and submissions with less technical flaws based on how the traits work.

I think the idea that I'm sure has been suggested before of having split input between admins and the community could help balance out the general picking of some themes, particularly to the colors the community would like to see more of. Something like admins picking a top 5 (or a different number) and then having a community poll for the users to anonymously vote for which of the 5 they like best, majority being the one(s) that gets picked. While not all bias can be prevented as I'm sure friends talk, people post designs for criticism, and people save designs in the public generator, I feel that the initial narrowing down from the admins could help.

And again, designs having desaturated, brown, or grey colors are not always bad, however there does seem to be a lot of them and if the community generally does want more color for the themes, they'd be able to choose. And ultimately if majority of the community does choose a brown/grey design, then it'd still be the majority making that decision.

Brown Bulboris

To clarify im not going after any of these themes or designers, I still buy and collect them all the same Im simply pointing out brown/brown accented themes



Sunken Treasure Bulbori-Swamp Tree Bulbori


Fall Harvest Bulbori- Lepiota


Candle Wax Bulbori-Coconut Octopus Bulbori


Flying Fox Bulbori-Darling Deer Bulbori


Sand Rabbit Bulbori-Frosty Soil Bulbori


Stuffing Bulbori- Chocolate Bulbori (Pre-tag)


Chocolate Candy Bulbori- Forest Shadow Bulbori




Ashen Fall Bulbori- Mint Chocolate Chip Bulbori


Pumpkin Bread Bulbori- Sweet Tea Bulbori


Underground Depths Bulbori- Tundra Sunrise Bulbori

Ones that honestly teeter on the very edge for me, where theyre not particularly brown but not any particular other color either (and red doesnt count, theyre right next to eachother on the color spectrum) or theyre not just brown, but do use brown as one of the primary colors:

Mysterious Path Bulbori-Morning Sun Bulbori


Peppermint Bark- Permafrost


White chocolate - Grey Bunny

I would love to see some more vibrant themes. I did post a suggestion on voting for themes a long time ago as well, and I went to find the thread for it. https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=27541


Edit: The others in ^this thread (including Krin) explained really well why direct user voting would be a bad idea, or cause more problems than it would solve. I /really/ love chocolate themes, but there are already so many good ones to choose from.

Support for more variation in designs. There's quite the number of dull themes in existence and brighter colors would be refreshing. I am very aware it gets increasingly difficult to have entirely unique themes with each festival/event, but there are a lot of similar looking palettes that continue getting chosen.

I would not support direct voting on designs. That opens a whole can of worms in terms of player bias, and it would be incredibly difficult to ensure complete anonymity on-site, let alone offsite. In addition, not every voting player cares about all theme designs. Someone who collects certain species might not care what theme is chosen for ones they don't collect. Would a vote be mandatory for all species, forcing voters decide on all themes, including ones they won't care about? Or would it be left in the hands of whoever feels like voting - a less popular species will then be decided by fewer players and can more easily swayed by nearly unpreventable bias.

I'd like to see a method of more informal player input, such as this thread. Visible discussion in one place for a general idea of what designs are preferred by the community, final say to the admins.

In other words, a lot of players want less brown, please xD

What about something like this:

Right now, the themes for decoration are very *general*, so pretty much any color you want could be used.

So, instead, why not have either maybe having specific themes (such as winter nights, as an example, instead of just winter) in the design threads, or maybe have smaller contests that have very specific things, such as 'baking' (which would result in even more brown themes :P but just things like that)

Perhaps there could be a rule that a player can only enter a species in *one* of these contests, so if a player wanted to enter a bulb in the general winter themed one, they couldn't enter a bulb design in the specific winter nights thread. They could enter a qitari in the winter nights ,but that would disqualify any qitari theme from that player in the regular winter themed thread.

Each year the theme could be different (or we could also have multiple mini-theme contests as well as different themes per year), so next year might be 'christmas Presents'

Brown (or any 'over used' color) could still be entered, but by making the theme more focused, it would hopefully cut down on the likely hood of brown being utilized.

(I also personally sometimes like more specific challenges that can cause me to think *differently* than I normally would when given a specific theme, such as winter, I tend to go for snow, or pine trees, or colorful christmas, but one theme could be something like 'winter in the tropics' or something like that)

Edit: perhaps these could be called 'challenges' instead of theme contests, and they could also be simply 'don't use these hex codes in your designs' instead of full on themes.

Personally I'm quite fond of the earthier tones, but I see the point. I feel as though my cherry trifle rikki designs for the winter fest may fall victim to that a little bit, but as they're a bit more vibrant I'm not sure.

I guess it really just depends on the personal tastes of the designer.


^{cherry trifle designs}

Since they're lighter w/ vibrant reds and whites I think maybe it's a little different, I'd love to hear what you guys think about them as far as the basic brownness of them goes. Feel free to ping me if you want to use them as an example in your argument!

I also really like darker colors, which is why I'm surprised when I like a lighter theme as much as say, this fest's Sunset Breeze kelps >w<

Basically, what I'm trying to say is that there's no accounting for taste. Some people may prefer more natural tones, like myself, and other prefer more fantastical ones!

I intentionally stepped outside of my comfort zone with the CT rikkis. My other rikki designs typically look more like my midnight phlox rikkis-


^{midnight phlox designs}

-which definitely fall inside the browns-blacks box. I don't think either of them are better than the other, but if I had to pick which one to get I'd rather have the phlox rikkis, because they suit my aesthetic better than a cheery dessert for a cheery holiday lol.


I also included a couple more baking related designs for the winter fest-


<sup>pecan rugalach designs


chocolate babka designs</sup>

-both very, very brown ;-;
I guess brownness is just naturally the lean for designing animals, since it's the most common color in nature \_()_/ And some people like brown magic monsters, and some people prefer pastel rainow magic monsters.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk xd