After announcing of the Winter Leaderboard themed pets there were many people who couldn't find anything good for them. Who think that there were better designs.

Of course as always, it can't be that a theme is loved by everyone or hated by everyone - there always will be people delighted with theme, and always people who don't like it...

What came to my mind (and not only mine, I remember many people said that's a good idea on the festival chat) is a voting.

First, Admins will reject themes that they can't accept, but only these. All others will be open for voting (a poll) and the users will choose the designs they would like to see.

Of course, there is a possibility that people would vote not for designs they like, but for creators. To prevent this, designs will be submitted via private message (just like Word Search game).
And maybe, if someone will beg for votes, his/her design would be deleted from voting?

Support!

I would love an anonymous voting or poll feature for reasons mentioned above. While the two Krampus themes we have this fest are pretty, I like every theme to be different. I feel a voting feature could help prevent situations like these and make the community feel even more involved.

While I would seriously love this, it would probably take a lot of work for the admins to set up.

Maybe a 'top three' options to vote for (one set of three themes per species) would be more practical since the admins generally go through all of the submissions anyway to pick their favorite. But even so Krin would have to code an entirely new feature to track the votes. This would take time, so maybe it's something they could consider after the Megazone is released and the sites demands are lowered?




I will admit that lately there are more and more 'issues' with the themed pets that are chosen. Visible traits that are invisible or barely seen is one of them that I've seen a rise in (which for me makes the theme unacceptable for projects since I breed themes for 6-vis, and I want to SEE my 6-visible results) and a lot of themed types are becoming a little cliched like "fire" and "chocolate/brown" that leave multiple themes of one species looking... well... just too similar to each other. And I understand that it's virtually impossible for every theme to be entirely different and unique from the rest, but a lot of times the beautiful and unique themed submissions are passed right up, and instead we get the 5th "this is primarily colored BROWN" theme for (insert species) (Not that I have anything specifically against brown themed colored pets, but we have dozens of them already. I'd be just as 'meh' about blue or green or any other colored themed pets if we had dozens of those, too. Brown just happens to be one of the most commonly used ones that's starting to feel... blah.)

Support! :D

Even if it was held on a 3rd party site, and it was linked to us to vote that would be cool.

"I will admit that lately there are more and more 'issues' with the themed pets that are chosen. Visible traits that are invisible or barely seen is one of them that I've seen a rise in (which for me makes the theme unacceptable for projects since I breed themes for 6-vis, and I want to SEE my 6-visible results)"

I would have normally said that this sort of thing is entirely too much work for admin.. buut.. as Xavion said, the invisable traits is becoming insanely common in themes lately. It really is making themes less enjoyable when it is a game of 'Gee I hope this pet hatches with the only gene I could potentially see out of three of them' when you're making exclusive eggs.

The winter themes were kind of.. well. I had a hard time finding anything to my tastes really. They didn't have a lot of variation going on. You can pretty much describe 90% of this set as "Dark ___ body color", be it black, dark blue, dark green, dark red. They're just about all Dark X. I like dark colors just fine, and I like brown more than it seems most people on this site do, but variety is the spice of life, as well.

I do not know if voting would ever be feasible, but I do feel if we keep getting themes that sort of all look really samey and keep having these consistent trait flaws where you cannot really see what is going on with the pet, it is going to make themes feel a lot less special. I'd honestly rather see re-releases of the earliest themes get another run, rather than see a bunch of new themes that you cannot see genes on over and over.

I can agree that that will be a lot of work for Admins, but there are sites that give the possibility to create your own poll.
What's more, it can be just a new thread with all designs that we can vote for, and people would just PM their choices (just like they will PM designs to a specific person). It can be a little messy but that way it wouldn't contain coding a totally new feature like voting poll. There are always people that would love to help with counting votes, checking if a person didn't vote twice etc. :)

>.> I don't think having people mail in their votes would be a very good idea.

Even just yesterday there were 996 active users, while the total of users that are considered 'active' is over ten thousand. I'm sure plenty of people would love the idea of helping, but going potentially through thousands of messages and cross-checking usernames for every species would be a lot of work. Even if each species was handled by only person, it would still be a lot to manage, and if one person handled all of it they'd best leave their job and/or school, forget sleep, and ignore their families for a few days, maybe a week or two. >_> As popular as themed pets are and as many players as the site has, it'd just be too much for PM's.


I do think that 'outsourcing' a poll would be a better idea for a temporary setup until such a thing could be coded, but it'd still be a lot of extra work for the admins to set up. >_>; There are still 21 (soon to be 22 with the Megazone species) species available, and even if the admins set up only 3 themes to vote on for each that would be 63 (soon to be 66) things to plug in and code - that's 126 image codes (soon to be 132) if they include one for male and one for female for each example like they normally do. And if they put up every themed pet submission, there would probably be THOUSANDS.


That's also why I think a limit of three options per species would be more reasonable ifever this was a thing. The forum pages themselves run out of room at around 50 image codes - I know this from experience after reaching a post's character limit after 52 image codes with minimal text on the post - so to post 6 per species (one male and one female per theme) it would still take about three forum posts with 126 image codes. If there were, say, 20 themes for each species, that would be 840 image codes (21 species, x2 for male and female, x20 for number of themes) which would take 16 completely full forum posts.

And that 20 is a gross underestimation for the more popular species. With the Winter Fest submissions, the Zolnixi was at more than 20 themed submissions by page 5. Out of 23 pages. I didn't want to keep counting beyond that. I'm sure by the end they were close to 100, if not over 100. >___> That'd be 4 forum posts full of nothing but Zolnixi design after Zolnixi design after Zolnixi design if both a male and female version were shown. Even if only half of those themes would be 'acceptable' (which at this point with all of the invisible traits, I really don't know what that means anymore -__-) that'd still give us 2 forum posts for 50 nixi designs.




Juuuuuust to put all of the numbers into perspective. >.>

It might be as you are saying. But I said it won't be all designs. Admins still every fest are going through ALL these designs and they have to choose some "better" and reject designs they totally can't accept.
This fest, they were 23 pages of designs submitted. Around 230 posts. There are 21 species, but most people submitted only 1-4 designs. Let's say the average of 10 designs per post, so 2300 designs.
It looks terrible, but they are going through these designs anyway and they have to choose somehow. After this stage - after rejecting most designs, there are these that are acceptable for them. That's how I think it works, can't be sure, but I think Krin was saying about process of choosing themes one day and I remember some things. That everyone from them choose some designs they think are good and then they add it up and choose only one from each species.
It would be even better with these 3 designs per species - it's not as much work and it should be enough for people who really want to choose what they think it's good.

You know, I don't want to say how it should be done, I think people involved with this (Admins) should say if it's possible, if they want this and if so, how would they like to make it work. I'm just saying that there are ways to do this without coding a whole new feature.

There are massive disadvantages (much work for Admins) but also massive advantages (for players). It don't have to be done right now, there are revamps, Megazone, a lot other stuff to do. But it can be considered? It's all up to Admins, at the end. I only show my - and others - desires and discontents :)

Maybe there is a way for the players to do it themselves? they could create the poll, or another way to organise a voting. There are some very crafty people on this place.

Krin and Fai could still apply the rules, and disqualify designs. The desgins that are left are handled by somebody or multiple other people.

They could create and out of sylestia voting. Baiscly, volunteers who can afford to spend some time on this could be taking over from krin and fai so they can focus on other things.

With their permission, somebody suited could start it up, and people could send their designs to this person. This person could then make a poll per specie and post teh links of the polls on sylestia.

Then people get a certain amount of time to vote. To prevent people posting new designs over and over, there could be a rule that people can post designs for a limited amount of time.

After that time, the polls are made, then the polls go online and get linked to Sylestia, and sylestia players vote.

Then the results get send to krin and Fai, and then they can make the final call if they are ok with the winning one and if they are, they are informer by teh volunteer(s) who the winner of the design is so he she gets his her prise pet and everyone else can collect them during the fest.

The risk is that when others handle it, they could at some point stop playing or be to busy or private life happens. So in a volunteers will handle design things situation, it probably would be best if a group of people did it so if somebody can't manage it somebody else can take over.

It's probably a lot of work for these people though, and I don't know if Krin and Fai would be comfortable with letting players handle such a thing.

But it could be an option maybe. Players are very passionate about themes, so if they are passionate enough they perhaps could also arrange their own theme design competition. And Krin and Fai would simple make the end results happen.

They have less work, and the players get the theme they want most.

But yeah, it's a bit chaotic this idea. The excecution could be neat depending on who does it and how I guess.

The alternative could be, as mentiond before by somebody else, that Krin and Fai simply pick 3 per specie instead of 1, and the players leave a vote on the remaining ones. (Species with fewer designs could be left with a final 2 instead of 3)

Players could vote by simply commenting with their preferd choices. In this case volunteers could count the votes to safe Krin and Fai some time. Krin and Fai could chose some people they trust with that task. I say some people, to lower risk of miscounting. The volenteers hand the winners over to Krin and Fai, and they proceed as per usual.


Or a combination, where Krin and Fai pick their top 3/2. And volunteers make an out of sylestia poll where people can just click to vote for a limited amount of time. Winners are handed over to Krin and Fai.

But it all comes down to if there are volunteers for something like this, and if Fai and krin would be ok with letting others help in this. I wouldn't blame them if they didn't. Sylestia is their baby after all. But perhaps they would like the help in running some of the more player oriented things, like indeed picking designs.