This is really cool! Way easier to check if our palettes are unique :D

I think Limor's suggestion for theme discussion/critique before fests would be cool too c:

I feel like I'm hearing, "We've seen your opinions, but they're wrong so...we're not changing anything. Trust our process."

One of the reasons that submissions are waning is because talented designers get tired of seeing their fantastic designs ignored year after year. Krin and Fai don't breed or collect pets, they don't PLAY the game, and I don't see how they're better at color-picking than the players who've invested nearly a decade and hundreds of hours to basically master designing and coloration.

Krin, if you've seen all the complaints (entire threads devoted to the topics of design, your picks, and general dissatisfaction), maybe do something about it instead of telling your players that, actually, if they look closer and think harder, they're wrong.

Also...

"However, 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 - thus we state that the design belonged to them."

I wouldn't call a mere mention "generous" or "a prize".

Speaking of themed pet selection, any guess when the thread for submitting spring festival theme designs will be up?

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=102026&page=3#22 Author: Frawn Time Posted: 3/12/2022 at 12:30 PM I feel like I'm hearing, "We've seen your opinions, but they're wrong so...we're not changing anything. Trust our process." One of the reasons that submissions are waning is because talented designers get tired of seeing their fantastic designs ignored year after year. Krin and Fai don't breed or collect pets, they don't PLAY the game, and I don't see how they're better at color-picking than the players who've invested nearly a decade and hundreds of hours to basically master designing and coloration. Krin, if you've seen all the complaints (entire threads devoted to the topics of design, your picks, and general dissatisfaction), maybe do something about it instead of telling your players that, actually, if they look closer and think harder, they're wrong.

"I feel like I'm hearing, "We've seen your opinions, but they're wrong so...we're not changing anything. Trust our process.""

I am sorry that is the impression that you are getting, but that is not what we are saying. We have always greatly valued player feedback and are constantly doing everything that we can to adjust content, games, and features to meet the playerbase's expectations as best as we can in ways that we think are ideal for Sylestia's future.


"One of the reasons that submissions are waning is because talented designers get tired of seeing their fantastic designs ignored year after year."

There are numerous reasons why I personally think that participation has waned over the years. The biggest is just simply that Sylestia's active playerbase has declined from where it was a few years ago at its peak. There are numerous reasons for this, but a large one is just simply that we have greatly reduced our advertising budget. For a good portion of the year at this point, we are not advertising at all (However, that whole discussion/reasoning is an entirely different tangent here so I digress). Another major reason is that Themed Pets are not new and flashy anymore. We are nearing a decade of their existence and not a whole lot has changed with how they work. It doesn't really matter what *it* is, doing the same anything for 10 years will start to lose its excitement regardless. Faiona and I have spent a ton of time over the last couple of years trying to figure out how we can evolve the whole Themed Pet system into something more sustainable long-term. In my opinion, those are the two biggest reasons that participation has declined.

All of that said, we are planning on improving the prizes for the Themed Pet Design contests starting with the upcoming Spring Festival contest. We know players spend a ton of time designing and we want prizes to more reflect that investment. We hope this will help spur some additional participation.


"Krin and Fai don't breed or collect pets, they don't PLAY the game, and I don't see how they're better at color-picking than the players who've invested nearly a decade and hundreds of hours to basically master designing and coloration."

I definitely do not agree with this statement at all. I have invested the majority of the past 11 years of my life to Sylestia. I revolve every major holiday of my life to Sylestia. I have virtually had almost 0 vacations in the last 11 years of my life that didn't result in me tugging my laptop around and spending dozens of hours working while celebrating holidays with family. I have to decline vacation offers and get-togethers because they coincide with major real life events - such as Halloween. I have spent easily tens of thousands of hours working to build Sylestia from the ground up. And I am not alone here. Faiona and our artists have also invested thousands upon thousands upon thousands of hours to build Sylestia up. And we have zero plans to stop. We are only trying to work harder and get more things done and push the game towards more modernization. I feel like this is an extremely unfair point of view regarding our credentials to pick out and design Themed Pets.


Krin, if you've seen all the complaints (entire threads devoted to the topics of design, your picks, and general dissatisfaction), maybe do something about it instead of telling your players that, actually, if they look closer and think harder, they're wrong.

We do and are working to improve upon the process and I absolutely am not at all telling players that they are "wrong". Your post is literally in the thread announcing a brand new feature to specifically help both players and ourselves to better come up with new Themed Pet designs. Faiona and I also have been adjusting our process each and every Festival trying to do better and better at releasing unique and likeable Themed Pets. And we are going to continue doing what we can to further improve it as best as we can. We continually see Themed Pets have increased acquisition rates Festival over Festival despite a smaller active playerbase.


I wouldn't call a mere mention "generous" or "a prize".

I really do not understand what this is meaning. These players quite literally receive the full prizes from the contest as every other player does who had a design picked. If we did not give them credit for the inspiration, then they would receive nothing at all. Are you arguing that this would be a better solution?



I would like to ask that future comments regarding the specifics of Themed Pet selection be redirected to the already created thread in the Suggestion Box Forum. I will be responding with a separate post there. There is no reason to derail this announcement thread with issues not related to the Themed Pet Codex.

Thank you.

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=102026&page=3#24 Author: UntitledPrince Time Posted: 3/12/2022 at 2:43 PM Speaking of themed pet selection, any guess when the thread for submitting spring festival theme designs will be up?

It will be posted probably sometime this week.

Yay! I'm excited!

I have two main questions and several questions branching off of those.

1. Why not share who designed it? Is it to prevent hateful speech in the event where one player thinks a chosen design is trash? Or do you guys like not keep track of whose designs they are after prizes are given out?

2. Will the avatar item contest winner be posted the same day as the theme contest winners? Or do you have something else planned seeing as there are hardly any item submissions compared to themed submissions.

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=102026&page=3#28 Author: WoermOnAString Time Posted: 3/12/2022 at 6:42 PM I have two main questions and several questions branching off of those. 1. Why not share who designed it? Is it to prevent hateful speech in the event where one player thinks a chosen design is trash? Or do you guys like not keep track of whose designs they are after prizes are given out? 2. Will the avatar item contest winner be posted the same day as the theme contest winners? Or do you have something else planned seeing as there are hardly any item submissions compared to themed submissions.

For the first question, we don't want to publicly announce it for a few reasons. The first being, is that despite being a "contest", we don't really want it to be a literal competitive contest. We don't view players who had designs picked as "winners". They only receive limited prizes as reimbursement for spending the time to produce good designs. So we try to avoid publicly putting them on a pedestal. The second being, as you hinted to, is potential drama. It unfortunately already happens, where players will get upset because other players publicly bash their design - and rightfully so, I would be upset too if someone rained on my parade of work. So we would rather the general playerbase view Themed Pets as Sylestia's Themed Pets rather than as individual player's Themed Pets. Lastly, we still share the information to those who ask for it and there is almost always an unofficial thread put up with a list of all of the designers. Both Faiona and I feel that this is a fine compromise as the information is there for those who want it - but it is not forced upon those who do not care for it.

For the second question, usually the prizes for all of those contests are awarded at the end of the Festival in conjunction with the other Festival Forum Games.

I absolutely love this new feature - I look forward to seeing it develop with different ways of sorting etc. when you get the time.

Thanks so much for all your hard work, as usual :)

On the contentious issue of choosing pet designs I personally have never had a problem with it. Perhaps it would be an idea to have a new annual event where there is a voting system - a special 'Users Choose' event? Maybe between summer and fall and pets could be released for a limited time in an exising zone, like Astryl's vale? I have no idea how much work that would be - it is probably impractical to organise. As far as I am concerned the more themed pets to collect the better :P