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 Posted: Sat Jan 07, 2017 9:01 pm
Overall– it's been a lovely and fun event! 10/10 would want to see again. Lovely, fun idea that encourages giving and gives artists flexibility in expression!
I just find it strange that people who received three plush conversions in December are able to quest for more with the January events when not everyone has received a plush, nor can latecomers enter in any way now that the thread is closed.
It's disproportionately favouring people who had large numbers of plushes– I, myself, would be not comfortable entering for a fourth plush knowing that someone else may not receive one at all despite having entered in December.
Specifically, the problem I have with it is that there is ostensibly no more cap for the people who had already maxed, but also a barrier to entering (no newcomers* and people who were only gifted one plush to convert have an effective cap of one).
Either of these, individually, if there had been provisions to prevent the other, would not have felt problematic to me (ex: raising the cap, but promising everyone in the original thread who didn't win one would be rolled for at least one, or not allowing newcomer* access, but not raising the cap).
* Newcomer: I'm using this to mean "people who didn't/couldn't participate in the December event". <3
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Posted: Sat Jan 07, 2017 10:42 pm
Thank you for the feedback! Personally, I do not know the reasons behind removing the cap for the Jan bonus conversions. This is due to me being a new hire haha. I will alert other staff who might know more about this point. Your other parts I can address, though! Newcomers/Newbies - Are you referring to the newbie raffle? This raffle still falls under the rules of all the other conversion games: Plushies must have been submitted/added to the plushie thread before the event ended on Jan 1st. So, at the very least, those who are entering into that particular thread had to have had minimal participation in the event. The raised cap does not allow them to participate either - as a newbie is defined as someone with less than 3 characters. So if they got maxxed in the conversion thread, they are no longer a newbie. (Ah! I misread. The raised cap does allow them to get an extra conversion. However, I still feel like what I say below pertains.) As we are always trying to grow the community and be inclusive, I do not feel that having a special newbie only raffle is a bad thing. It does not detract from other folks other chances to win. Could you perhaps explain to me why you think this is problematic? Looking through the threads, I did happen to see the 0 Conversions Game, which does state "Those gifted someone else's conversion cannot enter this game, as they've received a conversion in some way. This is to help those who got absolutely nothing get a kid!" - So that's awesome! While it's not guaranteed that those who enter into that game will get a conversion, the combo of the 0 conversion game, Itsie/Ghastly combo conversions, the two dice games, and the personality game give those who did not get a conversion a pretty good chance at getting a kiddo. <3
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Eco-friendly Shapeshifter
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Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2017 1:37 am
Hi, Magi! Thank you so much for the prompt response to my thread. I was using "Newcomers" to refer to newcomers to the event! People who did not have an opportunity, for one reason or another, to get a plush and enter for conversion in December, or to have been given more than one plush to be converted, and are therefore unable to enter into any of the events because they have no more valid plushes in the December Conversion Thread.
It makes a month's (January) worth of mini-event only be applicable for people who were part of an event a month prior (newbies who were not gifted plushes/around did not join, and given that this was not announced prior to the thread being closed to my knowledge, they were not given an opportunity to be gifted for this extension to the event).
Instead of allowing some way for more people to get a chance at getting something, it prevents new people from getting something, and allows people who have already gotten the cap to get more.
I absolutely wasn't intending to imply anything negative about the newbie only or 0 conversions raffles– quite the opposite, in fact! I'm super pro both of those, because they're giving opportunities to people who've had less shared with them in the shop so far! I was rather trying to communicate that I feel that the structuring of the event has made it far easier for people who had already benefited most in the event to win even more (people with the max number of wins, for example) than for people who have won nothing (people who entered but got zero conversions, who have no explicit guarantee to get a conversion, or people who were only gifted a single plush or two plushes, who can no longer gather plushes to have an opportunity at a third or fourth, for example.)
Lemme try to summarize what made me "???": Letting 20ish people who have three conversions get opportunities for more plushes isn't bad or wrong! It's awesome that the staff's willing to give more to those people, and of course to everyone else as well! But it seems unfair when the 8 people who got nothing in the locked thread have to enter again for a chance at getting a conversion that they're disqualified from entering if they've even been gifted a conversion (which was never warned against beforehand) and on top of that, there is at least one new shop regular that I can think of who has no plushes in the locked thread and is therefore effectively barred from the event, as well as potentially people who were sick/involved with family/on hiatus from the shop coming back this month who will be similarily barred on the basis that they were not given a plush.
I feel like it would encourage people who were active and lucky in the event to participate in the event! Which is good. But it also looks like it might be discouraging to people who weren't around in December or weren't as lucky with being gifted plushies, or just plain had bad luck with the conversion rolls, given that the lucky/maxed group has a chance to get more when they, at least right now, have none, or maybe even have no chance of getting any.
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Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2017 2:27 am
Oh man, as I mentioned to you on discord, I completely misread one of your main points. ; I'm sorry about that. I had read barrier as in a wish to have newcomers and the cap issue as wanting to be there. XD; so I'm sure my response didn't make a lot of sense. One thing to note about no warnings (on gifting conversions or the locked thread)- This event wasn't preplanned. So the lack of communication was not because of anything bad, but just the nature of how his mini-event came to be! Like an unexpected Xmas in January haha So with the new understanding of what you meant by newbies, I will definitely bring that up to the others. I do not know why the decision was made, but if I had to guess it was something in line with the idea of not giving the 8 who got no conversions extra competition. That and the sudden nature of this mini-event was meant as not a full extension, but a minor extension, of the previous event. Also, a lot of the colorists are tired due to having done as many conversions and contests as they did in Dec. So it's meant to be relatively small and low impact mini-event. Again, I don't know why, but if I had to guess, these would be factors. To return to the 0 Conversion thread and the rehomed pets - the idea is to give someone who got nothing a chance. If a plush conversion was rehomed it is considered as a win- because really it is a win. It's not a punishment, it's meant to make sure the handful that got absolutely zero potentially get a pet. As for no guarantee that the 0 Conversion thread will get anything, I think that has a lot to do with artist burnout. It's the same reason Birthday Frakkens have changed this year. The task of giving everyone in the shop one kid, when the shop is the size it is now, is very taxing. It's better to not promise something than to promise something that will cause colorists to become exhausted. That being said, once a 0 conversion person gets a pet, they are removed from the list... So the small number will progressively get smaller and chances will get better.
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Eco-friendly Shapeshifter
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Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2017 2:37 am
Mhm! And all of those points totally make sense. I just definitely wanted to bring them up for future consideration. <3! Thanks for the responses!
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Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2017 6:39 am
First of all, thank you so much for using our suggestions forum!
If you don't mind me bumping in here as well, I would like to clarify the issue regarding why people who are maxxed are allowed to put in for more plushies. Basically, we've found that the Gaia RNG system is imperfectly "random" and tends to favor certain numbers, so a handful of the people who were maxxed actually wound up maxxed within the first few days of the event, stripping them of the ability to enter plushies that they received later in the month and effectively removing them from the event. People are definitely going to be allowed to enter plushies as references for customs in the future, so it's not like the issue of plushies disappears entirely - December is the only month plushies can be distributed, which is how it was done last year as well. But we realized rather early on in December that it was going to be difficult to get everyone a plushie or to allow participation in the event throughout, so January mini-events were discussed nearly from the getgo. I know several colorists would actually look through those who had not received any conversions yet for their CC, to help along the fact that people still hadn't received a conversion.
Regarding a lack of ability to allow new people into the event - I will agree with you that this is an issue. However, as Magi said above, a lot of the colorists are feeling very burnt out or are already struggling to catch up with previously owed work. There seems to already be an implication in this thread that everyone who has no conversions should at least receive one conversion - which is absolutely fine and definitely makes sense. However, by tacking on to the number of plushies that would then be converted simply by bringing new people into the event, it only increases the number of people that would then have zero conversions, ultimately putting more pressure on colorists to give those people conversions, sort of making this deadly cycle. It would decrease the chance of people currently with 0 conversions of ever getting a conversion. I hope the way I'm saying this makes sense to you? The staff of NMA already works very hard to ensure everyone possible gets a pet in as timely a manner as possible, so while it can be disappointing when we can't get to everyone, we already have an incredibly high output rate for the small size of our staff.
That being said, we have already been discussing ways in which we can improve the event for the future, including using a different RNG to ensure fairness. Although a lot of this January mini-event is already deployed and running, we'd really appreciate any suggestions we could improve the December plushies event for the future. We do want to take customer considerations into account and it becomes difficult to do so if we aren't receiving ideas for how to improve. Especially for something regarding an event like this, where we had already had very detailed discussions about how to proceed, it can be somewhat disheartening when we receive complaints with no suggestions on how to handle this in the future. Thanks so much again for your patience and discussion!
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Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2017 8:14 pm
I don't mind you bumping in at all! <3
I totally agree that gaia RNG is flawed (gosh is it ever), and never thought that adding more people wasn't bad– it just seemed skewed because of the fact that it was allowing those who had more to get more and preventing those with less from getting more!
And yeah– making it so everyone who entered would guaranteed get a pet would make an infinite feedback loop/something that would be basically untenable to handle.
Thank you for mentioning that concerns/comments should come with suggestions for improvement– I've been in forums/etc that prefer the comments be provided (at least initially) without them! I did happen to talk with Magi about a couple things.
If, say, the 8 people had been guaranteed one, and the newcomers had somehow been allowed to enter, it wouldn't make sense for the newcomers to be guaranteed something. Rather, a chance would seem to be enough, imo!
As for the December-exclusivity of the
Maybe, if future last-chance or January events like this happen, newcomers/people who had no more plushes left to convert (because several participants did not receive three or more to have converted), perhaps they could use a proxy entry!
Ex: posting an image of a sweater, palette, and race preflist in lieu of a plushie itself, upon winning a contest, or for their entry into, say, a zero/one plush raffle for those who had fewer to begin with.
The fact that many of the CCs were chosen from the conversions didn't go unnoticed! I like trawling rolling threads, so I was following in the event! It was definitely great to see~.
I wasn't trying to imply that the event should have guaranteed something for everyone from the get-go: massive sites like Soq have incredible backlogs and difficulties with those sorts of things and their templates are preshaded to begin with. Rather, I was trying to provide ideas/concepts for things that were absent that may also have been good ways of giving more people an opportunity to get something!
Birthday pets are the perfect example of what happens when a staff gets inundated with something that was previously-promised! And as someone who's coloured at multiple shops/sites, I definitely empathize with burnouts and backlog.
...this got rambly! I'm gonna condense.
And since you mentioned wanting suggestions/it being less helpful if this is brought up without ideas for future improvement:
Less a suggestion, and more a summary: the concern wasn't with people who'd maxed getting more or not everyone getting something, but both at once being in play, because it could make people feel discouraged!
The "extra chances for people who didn't already win" was great! Defs would love to see again if the colorists have the motivation in the future (obviously it's not a necessity).
The ability in event extensions for people to enter some sort of proxy for the CYO plushes if they win?
Possibly a secondary cap on extension events! Or a staggered cap– start at max 2 plushies next December, until X% of people get one conversion, or until all entrants who have entered at the time of the cap bump.
Maybe a rule that people can keep a max of 3 from the event, so entering in the other event would require donating one (possibly encouraging they be donated for a raffle at the end of the event, maybe-but-not-necessarily starting with people who had won zero, then open to everyone who weren't at cap already)
Obvs, despite whatever changes are made, staff should continue being brilliant lovelies who enjoy the work they do! <3
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Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2017 7:41 am
Hey, Ishda!
Thanks so much for your suggestions! These are all great ideas and we will definitely be discussing them. (:
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Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2017 10:12 am
I hope it's okay that I bump in here, just because I had a suggestion about this same event that Ishta already sort of hit on.
Last year in the December event the max number of conversion was set at 2 per person. It actually turned out last year, by the end of December, everyone had either been rolled or CC'd for a plushie. This does help to spread out the conversions as well, because instead of some people getting that extra third, they'd be maxxed and this constantly changed up the list and moved numbers around to help with that rascally Gaia RNG.
Maybe one way to allow people who didn't get a chance to participate in December, would be to have a game where those with Zero plushies in the event thread, can design their own plushie and enter into a raffle? So yes, plushies would be made in January, but only for those newcomers to the shop in January. This way they can be included in the January events.
Or maybe even some premades that use the plushie templates in a raffle?
Just some more suggestions to help those newbies. c:
Love you gais~ <3
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Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2017 10:27 am
I love your suggestions, too! I guess something good did come out of accidentally quoting you, lol. I'll definitely tack these on to our list of considerations heart
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