I don't know if I have a whole lot to add to this, unfortunately, but I do just want to say that my favorite species, the Faelora, also suffers from a case of the browns:


Now, I get it. They're deer, deer are brown. But they're also based on plants and flowers, which are very diverse and colorful. I'd like to see more of those themes.
I'll have to go through the themes and find if any look nearly identical, though. I'm not sure if Faes have examples of that.

Edit: I do like some of these themes, and I realize some of them are quite different shades. But it's not just about the brown themes; it seems like Fae themes lately have not been very colorful. Now it's just matter of personal taste, but I couldn't get excited about having two gray Zone Faelora themes to choose from last fest. Although I do like the Silver Bells theme.
I understand, though, that this is just my issue, not an objective one.

I'm also a designer whose design was species-swapped. My Rainforest Trail Qitari became the Rainforest Zolnixi.

Now, I don't have the strongest feelings about this, but I do know that if I'd designed the same theme from scratch myself for the Zolnixi, I would have designed it differently. The swapped version with a few changes does lose something in translation.

Edit: However, maybe it just needs to be looked at as an inspiration for the Zolnixi theme.

Not everyone has the same tastes, but I see designs I love get passed over for designs I honestly feel are rather dull, or not as well-designed in trait interaction.
And I did feel that this fest, with all the admin designs, was surprising. You enter the contest (I always thought they were contests) with the idea there are a certain number of slots to fill, and then apparently the slot can simply not be won by anyone's design at all? No-one this fest that designed a Lighira had theirs chosen.

Edit: I think I would mostly like to know more details at the time of the themed threads what the admins are looking for. I can understand none of the submitted designs quite fitting, but I would like to know what criteria we're trying to fulfill.

I love this site, and I love designing themes, and I would like there to be a good way for the players, the collectors, the designers, and the admins to all be happy with theme choices.

I have noticed a trend with less popular species getting stuck with more browns - and I remember that zol, sticks out to me as one of the design mucked up badly by admins in the recent past

so much I want to say ;o; here's my essay

There's been a lot of disappointment regarding recent festivals' themes. I've heard there may be potential new limitations on future theme design threads. [For anyone who wasn't in chat at the time, earlier today there was mention that restricted traits may be disallowed in upcoming contests.] I doubt there's a shortage of good designs submitted and I think further unnecessary restrictions aren't going to help. It's the current decision-making system that hasn't been working. My proposal is to have an official forum for discussion before themes are finalized for a festival. Following species revamps, there are often multiple iterations of admin changes with players allowed to share their input. I'd argue it's just as important to have new themes undergo this/a similar form of review. I would disagree with the idea of direct poll voting for several reasons. As I've said in another thread: 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 be swayed by nearly unpreventable bias. While there's still going to be bias and some form of discontent if discussion threads are implemented, the final decision remains in the hands of the admins and it leaves room for actual suggestions in words rather than a click in a poll. I think it'd be nice to have some insight as to why changes are made to designs. In some festivals I've been PMing Krin and making suggestions on designs of mine that had alterations :U For some, a little discussion led to an improvement from both my submissions and the admin decisions. Here's the progression of the Lucid Dreams Nephini:
Original - initial admin changes - proposed - final


I was satisfied with this end result, but some other admin changes... it isn't that species swaps can't be done well. Several of my themes started out as designs on other species and I'm still proud of them in their own right.

Original Nephini -> Evening Skies Draeyl

Original Aurleon -> Magical Starling Nytekrie

Original Morkko -> Rhinoceros Hornbill Luffox

(just a note, Volcanic Fissure Ferrikki would also fall here but I must've deleted the original Morkko at some point)

It's an issue when a lot of them simply don't look good or weren't designed with the new species in mind. Can confirm I was quite unhappy to see what happened with my Arctic Expedition design. Another species swap I disliked was the Kelp Forest Zolnixi. The lime-to-green fade seen on the Lune body is entirely lost since Zolnixi G1s don't draw from accents, resulting in a much more unpleasant looking green and brown combination.


And while taste in colors is subjective, that wasn't the only issue - this design was full of technical flaws. On a Lunemara, G3 traits affect the wings and layer over M3 colors. On a Zolnixi, G3 is on the body and layers over C1. The dark G3 that worked on the Lunemara is practically invisible on the Zolnixi.


I later made my own version of the Kelp Forest nixi when the summer theme list was out. I ended up deleting it because they were pretty significant changes and I didn't want to be a bother. but while I had it and showed it to other players, nearly everyone agreed it was an improvement from the murky colors of the official theme.

Another note, display traits could also use some work. There's an overwhelming amount of themes displayed with certain showcase traits - namely Lost Grove restricted. For most festivals they aren't a possibility on any themed pet (nor has there been much mention of extraction any time soon). Not only is this misleading and confusing, LG traits often aren't the best choice to show on the themes, either.

For example: Polar Bloom Nyte with the list traits vs. a few I picked out. The fairy traits are unobtainable and don't even look great :x

Glacial Aurora Kelpari - the hand-picked display traits (one of which is, again, unobtainable) look considerably worse than the randomly generated traits of an undisrupted 3v.

Adding on to that, I was informed the changes initially made to the Lucid Dreams Nephini above were done in order to improve Elven Armor. Obtainable traits were sacrificed to improve an unobtainable one which is :/

On similar looking themes, both tamed Sylvorpas available in Winter 2021 have very similar base colors. And a lot of them, as wild tamed, don't have any visibles.

I thought there were better options in the thread. CthuwuKrak3n's, Ksng's, and Ley's vorpa designs were some of my favorites.


I can't really say I understand why they've gone back two years to choose designs when there were many from the current thread that were good. The Shifting Canopy Luffox from Spring 2021 was also an older submission that was species swapped. I don't think the designer, WingsOfAmber, was active at the time it was chosen - they didn't submit any designs for the actual Spring 2021 contest - and may have missed out on the chance for a 2v of choice during that festival. That's another thing to worry about

I'm aware there has been mention of plans for this in the future: an official themed codex to view all currently existing designs would do wonders for both designers and admins to ensure more unique additions. Although the plans for finalizing the Ancient Temple and revamping the outdated hatchery and breeding grounds are exciting, I admittedly was a little disappointed to see in the anniversary post that an official themed list was not a priority for upcoming updates in 2022. For me - and many other players, I'm sure - themed pets are a significant part of the game. Whether it's designing, collecting, breeding, or selling, there's so much that revolves around them. There have been attempts made by players to record them. Xavion's reference pages are difficult to upkeep. Shadowized's guide is sorted chronologically, making it difficult to see themes for a singular species all at once. It's also missing information that only the admins can access: some designers remain unknown; some of the images are not the precise official colors. I really wish we could have a comprehensive catalog sooner than later.

Considering themed pets are such a critical part of the game, I just think something needs to change because of how much dissatisfaction there is in recent festivals.

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=101232&page=1#10 Author: Aphelion Time Posted: 12/23/2021 at 5:02 AM I'd like to add, if I may, that it would be helpful to have more transparency in the process with which themes are chosen. I've looked around a little and couldn't find any thread or post detailing how themes are chosen; maybe there exists one, but even if that's the case, it isn't made clear and easy to access for players who are curious and want to know more. As Shadowized mentioned, it does seem like a lot of themes each fest are created by the same handful of designers, and while I agree that their designs are gorgeous, I believe there are many other pretty designs out there; it raises the question of whether or not the process is fair. Especially when designs from past years are being picked - it's hard to believe that out of all the submissions for the present year, there isn't one that is decent enough for a species.

Hi, I'm probably one of the people you see getting chosen pretty often :U One thing I found useful was having someone else look over my designs - if you'd like another set of eyes and an honest critique my PMs are open.

As far as getting picked goes, rest assured that there hasn't been foul play on my part - I've never been able to spend money on the site :B

Improving designs primarily comes from experience. I make no exaggeration when I say I spend hours on every themed contest. I've sat in the generator for so long I can identify a good deal of traits by sight (name, trait slot, letter, and which color slots they draw from). it just takes a lot of practice

Hi!

I definitely didn't mean to imply that there was something going on, or that you specifically were benefitting from the hypothetical bias. I really apologise on my part; I must have miscommunicated pretty badly if that was what it seemed like.

I meant to say something along the lines of: because there is this phenomenon, people may question the process, and therefore it would be good to have some more transparency. My point still stands for designs chosen from previous years.

There are a lot of various discussions going on in this thread and I will do my best to address them with my response. If players have specific questions that they would like to be addressed, please respond with them and I, or Faiona, will answer them as best as we can. But it is hard to respond specifically to large open-ended walls of text about things.


Regarding "too many < blank > colored Themed Pets"

To be honest, a lot of the examples provided I do not agree with - for a couple of reasons. Firstly, a few posts in this thread are listing only the base colors of a Themed Pet with no Traits and then categorizing it as simply one generalized color, such as "brown", or "blue". These examples are also referencing species that have very few visible colors on their bases, such as the Bulbori or Sylvorpa. I feel like that is a moot point and one must look at each design with Traits visible to actually see what the Themed Pet looks like. I am not aware of anyone who invests into breeding projects of pets that are Trait-less.

Secondly, I do not agree with a lot of the categorization. This has also been pointed out by others in some of these posts. Such as these two posts: Post #22 and Post 23. In Post #23, I would definitely not consider all five of those Bulbori as just simply "brown". Another example would be in Post #41. Even disregarding that they are displayed as Trait-less, I do not even consider all ten of those to be "brown". Point being, I think there is a lot of over generalization going on here in some of these case examples that are over exaggerating the point trying to be made.

Thirdly, I think the emphasis on "too many brown" or "too many blue" issue is being way over exaggerated, for a few reasons. Specifically regarding brown, brown is basically the most common color. Mix any couple colors and you end up with a shade of brown. Brown also has a massive footprint on the color wheel. It also is a very common color for real life animals in nature, of which many of our Themed Pets are based upon. It is also the color of many food items, like chocolate, that many of our Themed Pets are based upon. And, even considering all of this, the percentage of Themed Pets that are considered to be "brown" are not that far off from an equal distribution if you divided every main color up equally. Many colors deemed brown are just simply shades of yellow, red, or orange - yet in arguments here, yellow, red, and orange are appearing as separate categories. I would argue that many of the designs being called "brown" should be in the yellow, red, or orange categories instead. Additionally, even light browns are being categorized as brown instead of as "white" and dark browns are being categorized as brown instead of as "black". Yet, again, even despite this, each species ends up with about 15-20% of its designs as "brown". If you accept Limor's color breakdown (which I don't fully agree with personally as I think the categories should be moreso about 8 or 9 colors) it's 11. If you take 100% divided by 11, you get a little over 9%. If "browns" account for 15% of the pie for a species instead of 9%, that's not really that big of a chunk as some of these posts are making it sound - and again, that's completely ignoring everything else that I just said in this paragraph.


Regarding "transparency"

Faiona and I have always been very transparent in regards to the process for selecting Themed Pets. Whenever anyone has ever asked us what our process is, we always divulge the entire process - this has also been done publicly in chats and on the Forums numerous times over the years. I am not really sure why we are now being questioned regarding our transparency. However, I will restate the process once again here.

Obviously, we begin with the official Themed Pet Design contest that is publicly posted and any player can participate in. I see arguments about wanting more community input into the process, but quite literally, the community is the one designing the vast majority of Themed Pets. We do not make any changes to the vast majority of Themed Pets put into the game... they are 100% direct from the community.

Once the contest has ended, Faiona goes through every single post and every single design and compiles a list of all of the ones that she feels are well designed and meet the criteria that we are looking for. This criteria, at this point, are just general things such as:

Does this design showcase a good spread of colors across the Traits?
Does this design match the theme of the contest (Fall, Winter, etc)?
Does she think the design looks nice and would be well received by the playerbase?

This list ends up being about 15-30 designs for each species. Once this process is done, Faiona and I then meet up and go through each species and each design one by one. We narrow this list down to our actual selections or a handful of potential candidates. Sometimes, we are unable to agree on the required amount of picked designs, so then we look at recent contests or past year's contests to see if there were any that we liked but did not pick (because sometimes we may like 4 or 5, but can only pick 2). If we still are unable to fill the requirements, we will then design our own. This sometimes will include taking other designs we like and changing it to a different species. The criteria, at this point, is as follows:

Do both Faiona and I like the design and are in agreeance that it would fit well with the purpose?
Is the design of a unique palette/concept for its species?
Does the design look good when viewed with different Traits and not just the ones showcased?
Does the design fill a specific gap that we are looking for (This is only sometimes. Sometimes, we specifically are looking for designs that are green-ish... or designs that are not brown... or designs that are of a certain description, like enchanted, etc. This varies per festival and per species)?
Have we released too many recent Themed Pets of a similar palette for this species recently?

These are all examples of the various criteria that we look for when narrowing down our selections for the Themed Pets. The entire process usually takes 20+ hours from start to finish. We also generally are unaware of who's design we are picking until we pick it and go to write it down. The names on our sheet are blacked out and, quite honestly, we just aren't concerned with who we are picking until it is time to hand the prizes out. We have absolutely zero bias or favoritism towards anyone's designs. We are entirely neutral and have nothing to benefit or gain by picking one person over another. We are solely interested in releasing the best designs that we can in order to generate the most in-game interest for collectors. We benefit by releasing good Themed Pets and we suffer the consequences of releasing unfavorable Themed Pets.


Regarding "a player voting system"

As stated the other day in my announcement post, we feel that this would be quite ineffective for really solving any problems at all. If we were to implement such a system, it would obviously be anonymous on the site itself. However, it'd be very easy for players to share privately, or off-site, which designs belong to who. And most likely, in a lot of cases, players would vote for their friend's designs (or specifically not vote for other players' designs) rather than unbiasly picking the best designs. Additionally, every vote would count equal. There are a lot of players who would vote who probably won't ever collect that actual Themed Pet. All in all, the vast majority of the data from this polling would have to be taken with a huge grain of salt and in the end, Faiona and I would still be ultimately deciding which Themed Pets to go with. It really would not help much.

I actually started creating a feature like this. However, I quickly realized that it is a major task and would take a considerable investment of my time to create a fully operational feature of this sort. Since we felt that the benefit of such a feature would be very limited, we abandoned this idea.


Regarding "a player committee to choose Themed Pets"

This is something that we would never do. I do not see how this could ever work out in a positive way. This would do nothing but just cause drama from those already upset with the system unless they, themselves, were part of this committee. We value all player's designs equally and do not feel that we should be giving extra privilege to some players over others when it comes to deciding Themed Pets. There literally is no way to go this route without causing drama.

Even ignoring the committee selection issue, we know from experience that it is exceptionally difficult to get even a small group of players to agree on design changes to Themed Pets. It would absolutely be the "too many cooks in the kitchen" fallacy.


Regarding "a pre-selected announcement post"

The biggest hurdle to this is just the added time required to make it all happen. It would just add additional hours to the selection process and would force us to change up our scheduling to accommodate. Additionally, often times some Themed Pets are not decided upon until the very last minute as we are waiting for artwork to be finished up or figuring out what all features will be implemented for the event. We also would have to be aware of posting our selections and, say, others say, "I don't like that Faelora, why did you pick it?" Whoever is the designer of that Faelora is probably not going to feel so good about reading that.

We will discuss our options regarding this suggestion moving forward. I am not saying it's impossible, but it's not as simple as it sounds and there are multiple complications that we have to consider.


Regarding Player Conduct

Lastly, I would like to remind players that our Terms of Service states, "When playing on the Site, you are expected to be respectful and courteous to both Staff and other players at all times." There are several remarks in this thread and in other recent threads that are directed towards Faiona and I that are not something that I consider to be actual feedback, but instead just direct rude attacks against us. This is something that we have been tolerating, but it has started to become an ongoing occurrence now in several recent threads. If you cannot post feedback that is constructive in manner anymore, we will remove it.

Attacking our personal judgment, abilities, or ambitions in an attempt to demean us will not be tolerated and, quite frankly, only diminishes any valid arguments trying to be legitimately made about in-game concerns.

While I've kept up with this thread and read everyone's thoughts and opinions on the matter, I haven't yet added my own as I didn't feel I had a lot that was constructive to say. Every fest I submit designs to the contest, and every so often I get a design chosen (so far it's averaging about one per year). I do my best to submit colourful designs that aren't too similar to other designs that already exist (and the new codex should help that to continue), but they are rarely picked.

I have found out, once or twice, that a design of mine made it to final consideration and just didn't make it, and honestly that made me feel pretty proud. Just knowing that my efforts were noticed, even if they didn't ultimately become a design that fest, helped me want to continue to submit designs. I know if I hadn't been able to remind myself of those instances, as well as the seven themes in eight years that have been picked, I likely would have given up designing and submitting. This being the case, even if it isn't for the purposes of helping pick a themed design, having a post showing the top five or so designs that weren't ultimately picked might help designers that haven't had many (or any) designs actually make it, feel like they're not wasting their time in putting together submissions for the contest. Knowing that their designs were part of the final considerations, and were good enough, might help out with the overall morale and desire to keep trying in the contests.

And yes, this still might end up in a 'why did Krin and Fai choose this design over x design', but that honestly already happens. We all have aesthetics we like, and aesthetics we're not fond of. There are fests where I am literally trying to collect 8 - 10 different themes for projects, and actively stopping myself from trying out designs for more because I don't have the space or gold for more. There are also fests where I look at the chosen themes and go 'eh, maybe I'll collect one or two if something looks good when I try different traits'. Last fest I barely participated at all because there were no themes I was interested in. At the last second I decided to go for one particular sculpting theme, and I think I only ended up building three, and none got the traits I wanted, and I didn't do anything to try and buy/trade for the traits I did. I just wasn't that invested in it. And that's fine, because I know there were others who really liked the themes last fest. Again, personal aesthetics. Sorry, my point got away from me: regardless of people stating their opinions on which design would have been 'better', I still think that knowing you got a theme into the decision ring could be a great morale boost.

On the topic of species swapped theme palettes: I have had one such design myself. I submitted a northern lights inspired lupora design. It was swapped onto the Galactic Plum Qitaris with one colour placement swap. Because it looked so different on the qitaris, and prizes aren't handed out until the end of the fest (after all of the fest game play is over), I didn't even know I had a design picked in that fest until it was too late to collect it (I always collect as many of 'my' designs as I can). However, my issue is paltry compared to some: there are species that really do swap well between each other with little change needed. Lupora and qitari are a good example. Zolnixi and sylvorpa are another (I have species swapped my own designs between those two species before), but there are some that just don't work very well just because of the way the traits interact and where colours are pulled from on the various species. Most designers agonize over getting the colour placements and interactions with traits for a specific species as perfect as they can before submitting. And when that palette is swapped, some of those very subtle and beautiful interactions are lost, or worse become awful, on the new species.

For argument's sake, let's look at a submission I've made a few times (now tweaked for about the fourth time), the Beltane Beauty Griffi:



Griffis have two body genes and one wing gene. Should swap well onto a lupora, right? Two body genes, one mane gene:


I was able to make two fairly nice 6v designs, but scrolling through most of the traits, you could tell this palette was not meant for a lupora. For instance, that bright magenta in G2 was meant to go on the blue M3 colour of the griffi's wings, not the yellow C3 colour of the lupora's mane. It looks so bright and jarring for most G2 traits. And because there is no blue on the Lupora's main body, unlike the wings and tail on the griffi, the bright cyan of G3 looks out of place on the lupora unless there is a mutation showcasing the blues to go with it.

And forget swapping it to a qitari! Getting these two designs I moderately liked was difficult. I would honestly be embarrassed of this design if it were implemented because it interacts so poorly with the colour slots of the species. It could be fixed with hours of tweaking to fit the qitari properly, but a straight species swap does not work out well:


I have seen both types of species swaps in recent fests: those that port over fairly well and are fine, and those that just don't really work on the new species - you can tell they weren't meant for that species and the specific ways their colour slots interact.

The best way to deal with this....? I don't know. I mean, every fest I see players make lists of their favourite submitted designs, and I can't think of a fest where at least two of each species wasn't chosen as a favourite. That tells me there isn't a dearth of lovely designs for each species every fest. And yes, those designs might not fit the 'secret criteria' of the choices that fest, but they are beautiful, and it really confuses the player base when they are passed over to have a badly implemented species swap chosen instead. My best suggestion is either relax those secret criteria ("Does the design fill a specific gap that we are looking for (This is only sometimes. Sometimes, we specifically are looking for designs that are green-ish... or designs that are not brown... or designs that are of a certain description, like enchanted, etc. This varies per festival and per species)?"), or, if you really want to species swap, contact the original designer and ask if they might be willing to tweak the design for the species you have in mind. That way the design will fit the species as best as possible (even if the designer isn't familiar with the species, they can ask the community for help from designers and breeders who *are* familiar with that species), and the designer can be proud of their theme, rather than possibly feeling embarrassed that their beautiful design lost something in translation, or just doesn't look as good as some of the other submissions that were actually meant for that species.

On a somewhat related note: the going back to submissions of years past. This..... I don't know about this. As said above, I have tweaked that griffi design at least four times to make sure it looks nice with new traits, or implementation of new colour slots, or even just adjusting it to make current traits pop a little more. There are, however, submissions I have left behind along the way because I'm either not a big fan of them anymore, or they were just too flawed for me to want to spend the time to fix them. They might look great on the selection of traits I chose, and even on a majority of the other traits, but I just don't want to submit them, for one reason or another. If one of those designs were chosen a year or two after I submitted, especially if I submitted a different design for that species that year..... I don't know how I'd feel. Would probably depend on the species. But the feeling for the people whose designs weren't chosen, and were overlooked for last year's designs instead? Even if it was to fulfill one of those secret criteria.... it really leaves a feeling of 'nothing was good enough this year, so we had to go back to last year', and that is really disheartening.

How to get around this? Honestly? Just don't do it. And maybe clue us in if there's something you're particularly looking for. Tell us 'we're looking for something enchanting for the griffis, and something fairy tale-esque for the morkkos, and something pastel for the aurleons. Everything else - just generally spring', and then you'll have more for whatever you're looking for, rather than looking at a bunch of gorgeous designs that have to be passed over because they're just not what you were envisioning for this fest. And maybe this, combined with the posting of the top five not selected will have those pretty designs from last year resubmitted, because the designer sees that they almost made it last time, or that design fits really well with the specific request this year, and you'll no longer be passing things over for last year's designs because they were resubmitted and available this year.

Okay, so, this got kind of long and ramble-y, and I hope it didn't come off as rude or unhelpful (really, I'm trying to be helpful and look at this from all sides). Also, not sure if everything I said ended up making sense, or if I even said everything I wanted to say, but.... that's where I'm at XD Thanks for reading this very, very long post lol!

Thank you Krin and Fai for your patience and detailed response!

I came into this thread mostly concerned with the issue of transparency, and I'm more or less satisfied with the response given. One thing I noticed is that it's mentioned how themed choice has been talked about multiple times across chats and forums, yet I would like to reiterate I haven't seen any of that discussion before, so maybe it's still a bit obscure and hard to find.

Maybe a thread can be created with what you've just told us, and link to it on the design submissions thread? It'll make things clearer for people and it's better than copy pasting huge blocks of text into the submissions thread itself.

That being said, I still think it would be better to focus on designs in whatever current submission thread there is. It would motivate people to come up with new designs each time, or if they liked an old design, resubmit it, and there could be a sustained, if not increased, level of participation. As for not being able to find what you're looking for, perhaps have a handful of keywords or concepts beforehand, and put them at the top of the thread? That way people know what to focus their designs toward. It's been done before, if I remember correctly; there was a fest where the submission thread was specifically beach themed or something, or the other submission thread where users were required to link an inspiration picture.

Very excited to see the new Codex! I love seeing all the themes together and it'll definitely be a huge help designing from here :D


Thank you for the information about the selection process as well - I have further questions about it though

"This list ends up being about 15-30 designs for each species...If we still are unable to fill the requirements, we will then design our own."
I'm a little confused because the selections as of late don't quite seem to line up with my understanding of this description given for the process. In the most recent festival, Winter 2021, there were 45 new themes. 13 of those were designed by admin. So there were 15-30 designs per species to choose from, and yet none of them at all that suited the requirements for nearly a third of themes?

"When Themed Pet designs are compared with Traits actually visible, almost all of the "these are all brown"-type examples no longer hold up."
I do agree there's a rather wide range of colors that can be interpreted as "brown" which results in people thinking there's a lot of brown themes. For some, they do look different with traits. For others, not so much. The similarities in these are almost more obvious when compared with traits.





"When we do [species swaps], we always adjust the design to fit the new destination species, if applicable."


Reposting the before/after species swap comparison. I can't help but question whether it was really adjusted to suit the Zolnixi. I find that a bit hard to believe, considering the unchanged G3 hex is nearly invisible on the design's destination species. Same goes for the Arctic Expedition Sylvorpa with its difficult-to-see traits.


"since we used a player's design as the initial inspiration, we want to be generous and still award them a prize for having their design picked"
I'd like to note, prizes have a maximum and it's possible a species swap doesn't give players any reward.

One of my concerns regarding picking from previous years is that players may not be active at the time of that festival. Lordgarmadon57 had designs from Summer 2020 that were chosen as Colorful Reef Nephini and Buried Treasure Vulnyx in Summer 2021, and this player hasn't been online in nearly a year and a half. Shifting Canopy Luffox and Haunted Harvest Nephini are two more instances of themes chosen while the original designer was inactive - WingsofAmber and Lenore hadn't submitted any designs in Spring/Fall 2021, when those were selected. So a player may take a break and come back to find that a design of theirs was chosen - not only have they lost the chance to claim the prize, there's also a good chance they don't get the opportunity to collect their theme. Is that something that has been considered?

"I am not saying it's impossible, but it's not as simple as it sounds and there are multiple complications that we have to consider."
Definitely fair - though if prereleased discussion threads aren't going to be a thing for the time being, do you mind the PMs I send on suggestions for selected designs of mine? Admittedly, one of the main reasons I'd like a discussion thread is for the peace of mind that I'm not being a huge bother when I request changes :P