I agree with what has been said here and give my support. The current system is very flawed in many ways, and one of the big ones in my opinion is the lack of an officially updated list of entries. In the original contests on the old platform, entries were always listed once the deadline for votes beginning came upon us. This gave us a list to look through that was readily available in a single post with voting and information at our immediate fingertips. However without a pinned list or some similar system, we are forced to pour through page after page of forum posts, which results in boredom and dis-satisfaction towards voting as a whole. If something like this were at least added then we woud see somewhat of an improvement, but then there's the score/upvote system. This system is inherently unfair towards newcomers and people who don't have the money to buy all the dlc and such, as their scores will forever remain low. Whereas people who pre-ordered the games and buy all the dlc are at an advantage due to their much higher scores, allowing them to technically control who gets selected by coordinating. I'm not saying this is happening, I'm just saying that it is a possibility, and that scares me. A one vote per person system like the old one would work much better and, honestly, would be more fun as well. Bravo Hinin and friends for making this thread and bringing this issue to a place where everyone can see and discuss it.

electronben wrote:

Perhaps some kind of restriction needed to be in place for eligibility? For example, active accounts need to have the first "survivor" badge (survived 1 week) before being eligible?

Or, as others have suggested, randomize the entries and/or prevent voting until the submission date has ended.

Biased response, as I am a 'new' member as far registering here goes, but I do own both Endless Space & Endless Legend and have followed progress on EL2 since it was announced. I usually just read rather then comment.

If there is to be a restriction, a linked steam account with either Endless game should be present. to show that that person has at least a vested interest in the series.

Otherwise, I would agree that entries should be read-only until the submission period has ended, after which voting should take place.

A point of criticism though: I would like to have had an example template for all participants to adhere to, current submissions are more-or-less all over the place with how they present their idea, it would make judging the various entries more fair to all involved.

I know there's the rules and guidelines, but there's some room for interpretation as to what else you can include in your submission.

Not sure how to better handle it myself, but it does seem rather flawed the way it is now, yes. I support the idea of addressing the problems.

I agree with many of the points raised! 

Glad to see so many are sharing the same concerns!  

Perhaps the dev's should take the top 10-15 submissions, hold another round of voting on them then take the top  3 and proceed normally from there?

I agree with most posts on this thread. Older system was better, and if you want to change it, you could have done in another way (very good suggestions on this thread)

I hope Amplitude respond to this thread. I'm curious at what will happen next.

If I were them, there's no way I'd respond in this thread.  It's a minefield.  However, I would absolutely take the suggestions into account for future contests.  There are a lot of good ideas here.

I'm only going to answer specific points, insofar as I've mentioned in the main contest thread that we're looking into the situation.

At lot of the proposed solutions that ease up the voting process by making us vouch or pre-select entries are contradictory with our vision for such contests: these are about allowing players to make their choices, not about us effectively making the choice for them by saying "would you prefer faction A or faction B (repeat with n+)" and pretending that you've been given a choice altogether.

Moreover, having us pre-approve entries also means basically riveting several team members to the forums to provide the necessary feedback and approval process. We might have grown as a studio, but we're yet to reach the stage where we have that kind of manpower.

Similarly, having the Amplicrew summarizing all entries with a line or two is a recipe for disaster. What if you are unsatisfied with the way you've faction has been summarized? If you think a faction has received a description that is way too catchy? Basically, opening up to editorializing by our team gives entirely too much agency over entries altogether.

electronben wrote:

I participated in the last few contests (both on the old site and on the new site) - I will use the most recent contest as the example.

I did not enter this current contest (to give someone else the opportunity to win is only fair and the right thing to do) - but it would have been nice to know "Hey, you can enter these MINOR contests, but if you win you wont be eligible for this super secret MAJOR contest coming up." It's a VERY minor gripe, but one nonetheless.

You're allowed to take part in the contest. Restrictions on participation were just meant for the previous line of contests, which is now over. I'm not sure where you got the impression you weren't eligible.

As for the differential in voting power, this is something we're fine with. We've always wanted to reward players for being involved in our games, owning them, and for participating in the life of our community. 

BlackBird1696 wrote:

Not to mention that this entire vote has honestly been started far to early, though that just might be SEGA riding up Amplitude's rear being the money grubbers they seem to be these days. trying to get them to push the game out earlier than they had planned or something.

I'm gonna stop you right there: we went full steam with this contest because of production constraints, and only those. If we want the faction to be ready by the date it is currently scheduled for (that is, in the last weeks or months of the early access period), the faction needs to have ships, which are what takes longest to do. These ships will be up to 8 different models (3 small, 2 medium, 1 big, 1 bomber & 1 fighter), with in some case a possibly huge amount of detail going on. Once you're done with the models, you need to make sure SFX and VFX are implemented. Nothing in this contest has anything to do with Sega, and if anything they've always been advocating that we take all the time we need to ensure early access is as high quality as we can make it.

Troy_Costisick wrote:

If I were them, there's no way I'd respond in this thread.  It's a minefield.  However, I would absolutely take the suggestions into account for future contests.  There are a lot of good ideas here.

We're more in the business of owning up to our mistakes.  As you put it, while we may not be able to fix them entirely for this part of the vote, we can at least try to find a satisfactory compromise, and try and find better methodology going forward.

Thank you to all of you for taking the time to not only express your feelings on the matter, but also to offer potential solutions. As mentioned at the start of this post, we're looking into ways to make things better. It won't be perfect, because we're operating with limited dev resources at the moment, but it'll hopefully be better than this.

To be honest, I'm just happy that we're even having the contest in the first place. It's good to know that the community will have some foothold in the game. 

Thanks Frogsquadron for your prompt and courteous response!

If there's one thing I've learned from you guys at Amplitude, it's that you listen to your user base. Other devs might just say "too bad" and wait for things to blow over. Again, another reason why I love you guys.

You're allowed to take part in the contest. Restrictions on participation were just meant for the previous line of contests, which is now over. I'm not sure where you got the impression you weren't eligible. 

First off, it's no worries at all. I'm grateful that I was given the opportunity in the past contests. I've already had a successful win - I'd rather have someone else have a chance to spotlight their creativity rather than try to be greedy and sneaky. In regards to participation, there was no indication about eligibility on either the forum posts or the official rules. Therefore, I figured it was only right to assume that this contest would have the same rules as previous ones:

You cannot participate if you have already won the previous Event creation contest. Let somebody else win for a change! 

I did scour the rules to see if there was a clause such as this in there, but I did not find them. But, as I said, I already won one, and I would have just entered a faction for fun.

 we went full steam with this contest because of production constraints, and only those.

Which we all can probably understand. However, as myself and others have mentioned, this contest really did come on fast and out of the blue. Perhaps for future contest series you can do something similar to unlocking the badges:

Knowing how many contests are upcoming, and to an extent whether they are Major or Minor, gives a little more stability and incentive to those people. And, just like the badges, you can put a bunch of ???? in the upcoming contests, so that at least users will know that they're potentially more chances to win down the pike.

We might have grown as a studio, but we're yet to reach the stage where we have that kind of manpower.

So...

Are you hiring?

Thanks Amplitude for taking the time to listen to our concerns. This is why we love you guys.

Thanks for the reply and acknowledgement! IMO, the G2G point system is great. Also, some of the extra work people are proposing the Amplicrew do (like summarize and/or sort each submission) is too much to ask, and more importantly, weakens the the community's voice if we are heard through a filter. So I'm glad you recognize the downsides to those suggestions. The main issue is how the format of this contest was woefully unprepared to handle the great volume of submissions submitted, and I'm glad you recognize this issue.

You are a great team, and us in the community are glad you let us be a part of it. Keep it up!