EisenKreutzer wrote:
One of your votes, is mine, dude. I am totally digging your concept, since I have a huge soft spot for the Roman empire and anything related to it.

Us romans have got to stick together, after all.

Rudest wrote:
Thanks for the votes guys. It's a great confidence boost to know my concept resonates with some people! The Maskari are something of a fantasy adaptation of a homegrown scifi concept largerly inspired by the Darloks of Masters of Orion 2.



We have lots of great entries here. Personally I'm rooting for Cultists of the Eternal End. I love a good holy war >.>

Yeah, I loved Maskari concept and voted for them even though devs seem to be planning doppleganger assassin/spy faction anyway. At least judging by "Replicants".



The person who did Neireids is probably jumping with joy. But I can't help to feel like they are among top three because they are literally final one in the poll... I know from psychology classes that when there are large amount of choices in popularity polls, people tend to vote first or/and the last -_-; Though to be fair, if they win it wouldn't be that bad since they are among ideas that actually do more with minor factions than just resource bonuses.

Psychology is an interesting topic. >.> Knowing how people work is an essential skill to master for the socially awkward.

Thank you for your vote, Res! The Replicants do kind of feel like a second chance to have that Darlok-feel! I hope anyway hehe.

My take on the poll (putting advertising on hold here for a minute):



Is the poll biased towards the first and last entries? Sure. But that's just kinda how it goes. If you have a list, somebody's going to be first. Somebody's going to be last.



The leading entries, as me writing this, are:



Nos and his doomsday cult at #1, 48 votes

the Nereides at 2nd place, 38 votes

3rd, Mesaima and their subliminal messaging with 33

4th, coming stealthily out of nowhere are the Maskari with 30

and a 3 way tie for 5th with the Legion, the Star Dreamers, and the Cievers with 26 votes



So why are they, at least for now, on top?



I see a couple of reasons for it:



-First off, like I said already, the Cult of the End and the Neirides get a boost from being first and last. It might not be fair but that's what it is.



-Two, Nos's Cult really is a good faction (and is actually the only one that really fits nicely with the lore). The Neirides, good too. The Mesaima are very unique, and honestly oddly alluring. I don't particularly like the Maskari, but I suppose they have a lot going for them too.



-Third, let's look at the three-way tie: the Legion has a very strong base of supporters, being a proposed faction in the works for Endless Space for a good long while; the Cievers bring something unique to the table, whether or not water cities will actually work in EL; and the Star Dreamers are just plain cool (I mean, floating cities. How can you beat that?).





So if you're thinking about complaining that this contest isn't fair, well, it's not. But it's a little contest, on a forum, about who gets their imagined nation into a video game. For some of you that might be really important. But please, don't lose sleep over this.

I agree with that Nos' faction is cool idea, but I wouldn't say its ONLY one that actually fits the lore Its lore that fits ES lore and by extension EL yes, but EL is more about fantasy-ish factions and natives of Auriga who believe that dust is magic and how they will eventually deal with the fact that their planet is dying. And I agree with that all winning factions are good ideas and would be great if they won. That doesn't change existence of my self esteem problems and the fact I'm not in good control of my emotions and that I feel growing urge to start campaigning my idea held back by my social awkwardness. Like I said, I don't actually care as much as about winning as much about doing badly. I can't prove it because I'm doing badly, but I would criticize this poll even if I was doing well because I see it as being done in really simple way for sake of fast results. The devs could have at least bothered to check that all factions actually are allowed by rules. Ultimately it doesn't matter since all winners you pointed out so far are awesome and fit the opening's posts info, but I feel like I should start promoting my idea since otherwise the work I did feels more pointless. Its hard to describe the feeling, but its like I feel like I own it to my idea to attempt to make it do better. Does that make sense? I'd be happy with any of those you mentioned winning since they all stood out among major factions in the game, but I just don't want to have idea I came to like in proceed of making it to die quietly.



I don't think winners are winning by luck or any stupid crap like that. Only reason I pointed out Neireid is that while they are a very cool idea, there were many cool ideas in middle of the poll as well and I can't see other reason why they stood out among them and are being second one in the poll in comparison to all other ideas. Nos' idea I on other hand could see being in top 10 even if it was in middle of the poll. Does that make sense either?

Yeah, yeah you make sense.



When I say Nos's faction is the only one fits the lore, I mean that it's the only one that really goes along pretty much exactly with the whole story of dust and the endless and all that; it's the only one that sounds like the devs could've made it. But you're right, in EL fitting in well with the Endless Space crowd isn't all that important. Which is why I don't like all those robo-factions. Just saying.



It's true that the devs...might not have spent as much time organizing this as they could have. I think that's the most polite way of saying it. Of course, they might have been going for a more "hands off" approach, hoping that we would pick the best choice all by ourselves. Whether or not that will work, we'll see.

Anyway, no need to worry about my tone I keep having <_< I'm gonna get over it as soon as poll is over. I've done that in the past where I'm stressing about thing then when thing happens I instantly get rid of stress. And I think this will ultimately be good learning experience, I plan to study game design if possible and if I want career in that industry, its good to get used to disappointments early on. The feeling when you realize that people don't share your passion is crushing, but its gonna happen a lot in that career xD Funnily enough, this is first this type of competition I take part in because I have been too afraid of failure (and people mocking my ideas) to take part in them before...



Ironically, I think I actually would feel better if more people would actually say that my idea is bad(assuming they would say why) xD Since that means I could learn what I did wrong and improve next time I try. But since everyone who I ask says they think gameplay idea is interesting(while lore might not be as much, that has gotten much more different replies but they still range from "Eh." to good.), I feel like I've either gotten unlucky or that its my massive lack of charisma and lack of presence which makes people ignore my idea which are skills I don't feel like I can actually improve. I think being socially awkward as hell is something I can't really get rid off since I feel like thats probably part of my personality. It feels much better when it feels like failure is your own fault rather than fault of bad luck since it means you can take control of situation if you really learn and try...

Think that this would be an interesting social experiment to conduct later on: whether or not the order of entries in an internet poll affects voter choices. You could have multiple entries that are fundamentally the same within a larger, more varied pool, but one of these may garner more votes than the others based solely on it coming earlier or later on the roster. Or the exact opposite could occur, and you might see people picking at almost random. Other things to consider would be a visible tally vs. and invisible tally, whether given more or less votes would change a voter's choice, or if there is a bias towards certain number ranks in general.



All this theorizing aside, I'm happy to see that the Factions with the most votes as they stand right now are so different from one another. It'll make it MUCH more fun later on down the line if there's three drastically different Factions for the G2G vote.



(Also, as an aside, big thanks to all you that have already voted for my faction! Any encouragement is good encouragement! )

Phew... Hey, I think I'm now actually feeling pretty good ._. Wow, seems like venting out helped. Its not even 14th day and I don't mind anymore doing badly!(still going to try to get few votes by campaigning. I'm aiming to reach at least 20 hehe) Besides, I have this feeling going that one of 15 minor factions might get a competition as well



Anyway, is part 2 design contest? As in we need to submit drawings or 3d models or something? Well... Thats hard for me... I have to practice in advantage! If there are no radical changes and winners are Cult of the end, Mesaima and Nereids, who would you vote for? I'm gonna try practice my attempt in designing them so I know before hand whether I can improve my drawings enough to have a point in taking part of the part 2

Idealy next time Amplitude will go at this the other way round:

Have people suggest traits. Organize those in categories. Vote on the categorized traits. Have the results combine into an avian, diplomatic, symbiotic race of dust addicts. Then have the community write a background based on the result. Vote on the background.

Wow this started so fast! Can't say my and gnouman's entries are doing so well but it was fun designing and doing illustrations for them. I think a very broad spectrum of interactions with the minor factions are featured so far which is very nice. My only qualm with the contest is I hoped that somehow amplitude would have trimmed the list beforehand, removing suggestions that districts didn't fit the theme or the mechanics of EL



---



If you're interested with the idea of picking file units and heroes among the minor factions instead of enslaving / absorbing /exploiting them, please check out the Helios (#65)

How did some of the factions in this competition get from 0 to 33 in a few hours. I checked the numbers 3am and when I woke up and I checked them again, they had gone from 0 to 33. In that time some factions which were leading had earned about 10 new votes. So how did those few guys got from 0 to 33 in a few hours when everyone else got so few?

melkathi wrote:
Idealy next time Amplitude will go at this the other way round:

Have people suggest traits. Organize those in categories. Vote on the categorized traits. Have the results combine into an avian, diplomatic, symbiotic race of dust addicts. Then have the community write a background based on the result. Vote on the background.

I see what you did there

But I cannot agree anyway. Voting for traits is relatively boring and might end up producing a ridiculously dodgy faction with a mix of traits that make no sense when combined together. Also, while traits alone allow for some creativity, they cannot be compared to entire factions. I had fun reading the lore of our current submissions. They prove that there are endless supplies of imagination on these forums, just waiting to be discovered.



Three things that could've been done differently though, in order of how difficult they would be to implement:

1) Stealth voting (or w/e it's called). I bet that the ability to know about the votes altered the decisions of some people. It's just psychology. Imagine this line of thinking: "Oh, I'm competing and this other guy is barely winning so I won't vote for him even though I love his idea because I want my faction to win". Or: "Oh, this faction has no votes so I won't vote for it either since there's no point". Publicly visible votes don't help anybody. I'm happy I was too dumb to realise that I can view the results before voting lol

2) Random positions on the list. It's the internet, we could have the list set up differently for each user. One could see #124 as #1 and someone else would see #376 as #1 (using fake numbers obviously but you get the point). This would somewhat remove the "first/last item on the list" bias. Sadly, I don't even know if these forums support this kind of solution. Probably not. But you could still use external sites.

3) Devs reading all the entries before putting them on the list Now, I know that they are VERY busy and I don't blame them for not monitoring the entries and not moderating the ones that break the rules and/or are not related to minor factions at all. But if they did do it, this would get rid of a lot of confusion. For example, having a confiramtion that flying/swimming cities are implementable code-wise would be nice. What happens if one of those ideas wins and then devs go like "Oh, we can't have floating cities so we'll have to change your entry completely to make it work"? As someone pointed out earlier, this would no longer be a faction that we voted for.

dreamwalker wrote:
Yeah, yeah you make sense.



When I say Nos's faction is the only one fits the lore, I mean that it's the only one that really goes along pretty much exactly with the whole story of dust and the endless and all that; it's the only one that sounds like the devs could've made it. But you're right, in EL fitting in well with the Endless Space crowd isn't all that important. Which is why I don't like all those robo-factions. Just saying.



It's true that the devs...might not have spent as much time organizing this as they could have. I think that's the most polite way of saying it. Of course, they might have been going for a more "hands off" approach, hoping that we would pick the best choice all by ourselves. Whether or not that will work, we'll see.

Well, Nos' faction fits well into the ES, just like the Vaulters or the Necrophages. But the Broken Lords and the Wild Walkers don't seem to fit into the ES universe, having nothing to do with the Endless. I think that half of the races should have something to do with the Endless, and half are just there, representing purely fantasy races. The same way as in ES: Some races, like the Pilgrims and the Sowers, were tied with the Endless, and some races, like Hissho and UE, had nothing to do with the Endless.



Also, All races now in Endless Legend are either military (the Broken Lords, the Necrophages) or economy / science (the Vaulters, the Wild Walkers) focused. I think the game needs at least a couple of more peaceful races, less we have 8 factions bend to destroy each other at the very beginning, making diplomacy useless (like in Alpha now). I don't want to play 8 different purely military or "military through economy" factions.

Well, just one small statistical heads up. If you click the "show results" button or have voted already, you can see the number of voters. Should you choose to look at the poll widget in the dev blog, though, you will see the number of total votes issued.

So it's relatively easy to estimate the average number of votes issued per person: ~4.6

That's the main reason that a lot of entries don't get much love. People are being very careful in choosing only a small selection.

Personally, I voted for the full 10 different entries, but it's everyones own choice.

Vote for the CIEVERS, they are awesome!!

PANCZASU wrote:
I see what you did there

But I cannot agree anyway. Voting for traits is relatively boring and might end up producing a ridiculously dodgy faction with a mix of traits that make no sense when combined together. Also, while traits alone allow for some creativity, they cannot be compared to entire factions. I had fun reading the lore of our current submissions. They prove that there are endless supplies of imagination on these forums, just waiting to be discovered.

Creativity is not limited by limitations. Absurd as it may sound, but it is through limitations that people's capacity to create realy shines. If you believe that all these people could not come up with fresh and unique ideas when given some initial building blocks to work with, you are selling them short

On top of that, ff certain guidelines and qualities were established beforehand by the community, then a lot of the current problems would not exist. There would be no wondering if certain faction fit the theme if the theme had been established.

But most importantly, it would allow for true collaboration of the community. Right now we have a simple popularity contest for one idea, and then people will fine-tune based on one person's idea. This may mean that a person will watch a labour of love turned into something meh. It may mean that we get far less people interested in later stages as they feel disconnected from the further vote. I can say for myself, there are a couple of factions in the top 6 that should they win, I'll simply skip on Quests 2 and 3 alltogether, as they are ideas that leave me completly cold.

Of course everything can turn out awesome



But for example I deffinitly prefer the community created hero for Dungeon of the Endless over the old necrophage hero vote. But had it been even more interactive for the community, then it could have been even more awesome.





Then again, you know, I do not believe in G2G (even though I participate occasionally). I find the systemic interaction with community creativity counterproductive





edit:

Obviously I agree with your other points. My votes may have turned out differently had I not known the leading submissions (used one vote to boost my favourite in the top scores, while using all my other votes for ideas I like but that don't do so well (yes I voted for the Throng))

dreamwalker wrote:
Yeah, yeah you make sense.



When I say Nos's faction is the only one fits the lore, I mean that it's the only one that really goes along pretty much exactly with the whole story of dust and the endless and all that; it's the only one that sounds like the devs could've made it. But you're right, in EL fitting in well with the Endless Space crowd isn't all that important. Which is why I don't like all those robo-factions. Just saying.



It's true that the devs...might not have spent as much time organizing this as they could have. I think that's the most polite way of saying it. Of course, they might have been going for a more "hands off" approach, hoping that we would pick the best choice all by ourselves. Whether or not that will work, we'll see.

Try #90 the Gras. It's a fit with scope to improve and merge the story line with ES if needed. Also has a nice tie in between Vaulter, Delvers and the Vaulters mysterious robot (Faction Quest is written from this units perspective giving a secondary storyline on the unit itself) to the new Minor Faction that has been uplifted by the Gras and come as a merged whole.

melkathi wrote:
Creativity is not limited by limitations.

PANCZASU wrote:
Also, while traits alone allow for some creativity, they cannot be compared to entire factions.

It's simply a difference in scope. I wouldn't expect people to write extensive lore about traits or provide in-depth explanation on the trait's psychological, biological and technological impact on aliens (though I would probably do something of the sort but I still don't think that it would make as much sense or be as interesting as just sticking to designing factions).

On top of that, ff certain guidelines and qualities were established beforehand by the community, then a lot of the current problems would not exist. There would be no wondering if certain faction fit the theme if the theme had been established.

Well, there WERE certain guidelines established by the devs. And we still have this issue. I don't see how community guidelines would fix that. Who would be in charge of these guidelines, who would design them? Who would moderate entries that are not following said guidelines? Sorry, but I would only trust the devs with such task.

But most importantly, it would allow for true collaboration of the community.

How?

I just don't see how a "custom trait competition" would fix the problems of a "custom faction competition". Yes, the end result would be a mix of multiple smaller creations of other people (rather then just one person). But I seriously doubt that the process of designing traits and voting for them would look any different. I don't expect that everyone would suddenly go like "oh, this already posted idea is really cool so I'll make my own that fits it". And even if that was the case, we would still end up with an absolute mess. There's no way everyone would vote on ideas that work well together because different people like different ideas. So, let's say that ideas 1, 2 and 3 work well together but don't work with ideas 4, 5 and 6 (which work fine together but don't fit the previous trio). In the end, we would get a faction with ideas 2, 6 and 13 - all of which being completely different, not fitting each other at all and making devs cry as they have to figure out how to merge them into a faction.

Donern wrote:
Vote for the CIEVERS, they are awesome!!

Thanks man