160 replies to this topic

[WhaleSmacker]

Jimerian, on 24 August 2015 - 05:19 PM, said:

Three weeks later people will still try to submit entries and CC will be forced to lock the thread.

You know me to we'll.

[Sh4dowSt4lker]

Annoyng rules -_-, how can someone cheat by posting the timezone in a diferent post?

[Tgb_matt]

CC_Sly, on 24 August 2015 - 09:55 PM, said:

Hey everyone, well that went by quickly.

 

Here are your 10 winners:

• Katherinedog
• Alakazamfan1
• ThemasterTanker1
• Melo_7
• purplemonkeys11
• pattymelt
• CakeIsLie
• SGM_zorbaz
• 2ya
• pummlingpumpkin

Congrats. 

I didn't even know about it yet.   

[acrisis]

OMG! 

Who in the world does a community contest on a weekday at 3pm EST ...

Throwing prior contest feedback about timing out the window re: working and school ...

Making it first ten five kill entries win ...

And most people find out after the fact ...

 

[Luckydip]

 I log on yesterday saw notting new, Log back on tonight i missed the event. _-

I prefer the winning pool be increased, 10 is to damn small even though i voted for 500 each winner* like last Radley event.  Those times were fun. Saw only 10winners,  not even going to bother with this event. Grind 14mill in 2 weeks for 2tier10s, don't even feel like playing  anymore.

[CC_Sly]

For this edition, I am trying to focus more on my observations rather than the positive and negative things that happened. I am also trying to keep in mind of what variables I could control in this contest. These things consist of when the contest portion began, how long the polls were up for, What questions we asked on the polls, what avenues we used to promote the contest, and other such things. 

 

So here we go:

 

What Sly Observed from: Community Created Contest #1: Radley-Walters' Medal Race

• Player complaints/suggestions/feedback. There were a lot of players who voiced their opinions and suggestions on how the contest was run.
  • Any "you should have had more/less winners", "Why did you chose the Radley-Walters' Medal", " or any other complaint/suggestion about how the final contest was run based on a poll vote - was noted and filed under the "you guys voted for it" section.
  • The timing of the contest. Since we had a "First to get" style of contest, I had to make a decision on when to start this. I made it based on when I thought the earliest I could reliably get the post up. 
    • This could be changed in the future in order to allow those who have school or work to have a chance. I will discuss this with Ratbat and see when our peak times are and base my decision on that.
• Visibility seemed to be an issue for some people. The point of this contest was to promote it 95% of the forums. No news article, no Push Notification, just a forum post. 
  • This seemed to drive up the Tier restriction for the contest.  
  • The second part to this experiment will include trying to promote this through more channels and get more people to vote.   
  • Some players were saying that they did not receive enough time to prepare for the contest.
    • Not sure how I can make this more visible just using the forums - I posted everything with schedules 1 week in advanced and the polls were public so anyone could see what they were going to have to do.
• This contest required that I answer lots of questions and moderate it quite closely. I could have let it go and just taken the first 10 valid entries as I had described in the contest rules, but it was obvious there was some disconnect between the How to Enter, Contest Rules, and the the entries themselves.
  • Not sure how I can fix this. I gave what was required and an example. Suggestions?
  • This created extra work and required I closely monitor the thread, taking away time from my other duties.  
• Overall it seemed like the voting process caused players to look at each questions separately as opposed to how they would interact with each other as a contest.
  • People seemed unhappy about the first 10 to get the medals even though that is what people voted for.
  • Not sure how to fix this without creating a TON of extra work.     

 

These are my observations and I did leave a few out, but any suggestions pertaining to more complex contest structure are not really valid. The more complex this is the more the workload grows exponentially.

 

Let me know what you guys thought! 

[_MoisterOyster]

My suggestion for the time zone thing is to add a time zone in-game... But then again... People could always change it..l

[SkiFletch]

CC_Sly, on 25 August 2015 - 02:03 PM, said:

 

• Overall it seemed like the voting process caused players to look at each questions separately as opposed to how they would interact with each other as a contest.
  • People seemed unhappy about the first 10 to get the medals even though that is what people voted for.
  • Not sure how to fix this without creating a TON of extra work.     

 

 

Circular argument.  You can't fix this without doing polls sequentially, something I've pointed out a lot in this process, and involving at least SOME more work.  Your only option is to pick one aspect of a contest (reward/type/tier), ask for a vote on that, and then WG pick a contest structure that fits that voting result.  Letting the inmates fully run the assylum leads to this all the time.  

 

PERHAPS actually polling people for what medal they wanted would have worked in this scenario, but still, a majority humans will pick the easy rout, not having bothered to use their eyeballs to read the fact that only 10 people get it, and engage their brains to understand that the ultimate result would yield to a race to it.  

 

Instead of asking people to post what they want and tally later, you could have given choices to that poll that had a relative difficulty to the number of winners (Raisin, Tarczay, or any of the others I suggested to you), OR if you were dead set on Radley and 10 winners, a lottery system would have seemed more fair to a majority of the player base and certainly received more participation than an hours worth of contest....

 

Some of those options represent a compromise between not a "TON" of extra work for you, while still getting to the spirit of what people want.

[Pilgrim_of_many_Pilgrims]

Thanks for the opportunity to be part of this Sly, my only observation would be that a lot of English speaking countries world wide play on the NA server so trying to give a fair time period so we can all have an opportunity to enter is nigh on impossible. Some will be disadvantaged because the start time was very early morning or very late at night.

So why don't you play on the Europe sever I hear you all ask, well that's a nightmare cos there are a hundred different languages to contend with as a starter and also the mind set/mentality of  a lot of Europeans is vastly different from the NA crew.

However the contest as it was was as good as it could be and yes it is what was voted for so "Well done" for your efforts and when is the next one?

[cashcashme]

If you gave me 2500 gold for my belated entry, I would be happy. 

[CC_Sly]

SkiFletch, on 25 August 2015 - 12:10 PM, said:

 

Circular argument.  You can't fix this without doing polls sequentially, something I've pointed out a lot in this process, and involving at least SOME more work.  Your only option is to pick one aspect of a contest (reward/type/tier), ask for a vote on that, and then WG pick a contest structure that fits that voting result.  Letting the inmates fully run the assylum leads to this all the time.  

 

PERHAPS actually polling people for what medal they wanted would have worked in this scenario, but still, a majority humans will pick the easy rout, not having bothered to use their eyeballs to read the fact that only 10 people get it, and engage their brains to understand that the ultimate result would yield to a race to it.  

 

Instead of asking people to post what they want and tally later, you could have given choices to that poll that had a relative difficulty to the number of winners (Raisin, Tarczay, or any of the others I suggested to you), OR if you were dead set on Radley and 10 winners, a lottery system would have seemed more fair to a majority of the player base and certainly received more participation than an hours worth of contest....

 

Some of those options represent a compromise between not a "TON" of extra work for you, while still getting to the spirit of what people want.

 

If I were to do a more "vote for a theme" and WG will chose the contest deal - I would have to plan and write out every possible contest before that poll went up. That is far too much time and work put into this. If I were to break up the polls into each section, the process would take far too long and people would start to lose interest after the first 2 weeks. If I shortened the poll lifetime then I would get people saying they didn't have enough time to vote and the contest wasn't fair since they didn't get a chance to get their say in.   

 

pilgrim2223, on 25 August 2015 - 12:55 PM, said:

Thanks for the opportunity to be part of this Sly, my only observation would be that a lot of English speaking countries world wide play on the NA server so trying to give a fair time period so we can all have an opportunity to enter is nigh on impossible. Some will be disadvantaged because the start time was very early morning or very late at night.

So why don't you play on the Europe sever I hear you all ask, well that's a nightmare cos there are a hundred different languages to contend with as a starter and also the mind set/mentality of  a lot of Europeans is vastly different from the NA crew.

However the contest as it was was as good as it could be and yes it is what was voted for so "Well done" for your efforts and when is the next one?

 

You are welcome! I am going to look at when we have the most people online and base my timings more off that than a "middle of the day" deal.

 

As far as the next one, part 2 of this 2 part experiment will be coming in September. Don;t expect too many changes, I plan to keep the format nearly identical since this is an experiment. Then I will gather feedback from that one as well and determine if this is something I want to keep doing for Blitz or if I want to try a different variation.  

[acrisis]

It all started on the wrong foot with the contest starting as the "first ten entries" time wise, versus what was asked &  understood in the poll as a "top ten (highest, best, most, ...) entries" ... 

[CC_Sly]

acrisis, on 25 August 2015 - 02:55 PM, said:

It all started on the wrong foot with the contest starting as the "first ten entries" time wise, versus what was asked &  understood in the poll as a "top ten (highest, best, most, ...) entries" ... 

 

The wording was "The Top/First 10 people should win"

 

Now I suppose that I could have included a question in part 2 to ask if you guys wanted the First 10 or the Top 10. Top 10 being the 10 people who earned the most of that medal over the course of the week, or the First 10 being what the contest was. When I originally made the polls the medal was classified in the "first to get" category though, which is why I ran it that way. 

 

I can see that - however that would require a BI pull. That is a request that is made to BI. Those requests need to be filled out about a week in advance. So I could have requested it when I started the contest and have had it hopefully at the end of the contest. I will take that into account in part 2 of this experiment. This is why I do these "What Sly _______ from"

  

[Mistake_]

CC_Sly, on 25 August 2015 - 02:03 PM, said:

For this edition, I am trying to focus more on my observations rather than the positive and negative things that happened. I am also trying to keep in mind of what variables I could control in this contest. These things consist of when the contest portion began, how long the polls were up for, What questions we asked on the polls, what avenues we used to promote the contest, and other such things. 

 

So here we go:

 

What Sly Observed from: Community Created Contest #1: Radley-Walters' Medal Race

• Player complaints/suggestions/feedback. There were a lot of players who voiced their opinions and suggestions on how the contest was run.
  • Any "you should have had more/less winners", "Why did you chose the Radley-Walters' Medal", " or any other complaint/suggestion about how the final contest was run based on a poll vote - was noted and filed under the "you guys voted for it" section.
  • The timing of the contest. Since we had a "First to get" style of contest, I had to make a decision on when to start this. I made it based on when I thought the earliest I could reliably get the post up. 
    • This could be changed in the future in order to allow those who have school or work to have a chance. I will discuss this with Ratbat and see when our peak times are and base my decision on that.
• Visibility seemed to be an issue for some people. The point of this contest was to promote it 95% of the forums. No news article, no Push Notification, just a forum post. 
  • This seemed to drive up the Tier restriction for the contest.  
  • The second part to this experiment will include trying to promote this through more channels and get more people to vote.   
  • Some players were saying that they did not receive enough time to prepare for the contest.
    • Not sure how I can make this more visible just using the forums - I posted everything with schedules 1 week in advanced and the polls were public so anyone could see what they were going to have to do.
• This contest required that I answer lots of questions and moderate it quite closely. I could have let it go and just taken the first 10 valid entries as I had described in the contest rules, but it was obvious there was some disconnect between the How to Enter, Contest Rules, and the the entries themselves.
  • Not sure how I can fix this. I gave what was required and an example. Suggestions?
  • This created extra work and required I closely monitor the thread, taking away time from my other duties.  
• Overall it seemed like the voting process caused players to look at each questions separately as opposed to how they would interact with each other as a contest.
  • People seemed unhappy about the first 10 to get the medals even though that is what people voted for.
  • Not sure how to fix this without creating a TON of extra work.     

 

These are my observations and I did leave a few out, but any suggestions pertaining to more complex contest structure are not really valid. The more complex this is the more the workload grows exponentially.

 

Let me know what you guys thought! 

 

Please don't have the *editing* rule next time because first 10 players didn't win due to editing. 

First ever contest and I participated in and didn't win just because I edited for my Timezone. 

Edited by Mistake_, 25 August 2015 - 11:39 PM.

[SkiFletch]

When you say you would have to write out all the details is that something your superiors are asking you to do, or your own thoughts?  No need to answer that if you don't want to . When I think of a "theme" for a contest, I think the type of contest. In this case, the question you asked which was ultimately amswered "Earn a specific medal" by voters would be the "theme". If you made it clear from the start that we were voting for a general type of contest, and that you guys would then work out details fit said type the best, you might get that combo of low work load for you and allowing us input to feel validated. I probably would have enjoyed the results of less input instead of more. I'm kind of on your side when I think that what we had here was info overload and the whole thing needed simplification to be more successful in basically every way. 

 

Good luck with round two

[CakeIsLie]

I got the gold, exactly what I needed to train my crew, thanks Wargaming for making this event!

[acrisis]

CC_Sly, on 25 August 2015 - 06:13 PM, said:

 

The wording was "The Top/First 10 people should win"

 

Now I suppose that I could have included a question in part 2 to ask if you guys wanted the First 10 or the Top 10. Top 10 being the 10 people who earned the most of that medal over the course of the week, or the First 10 being what the contest was. When I originally made the polls the medal was classified in the "first to get" category though, which is why I ran it that way. 

 

I can see that - however that would require a BI pull. That is a request that is made to BI. Those requests need to be filled out about a week in advance. So I could have requested it when I started the contest and have had it hopefully at the end of the contest. I will take that into account in part 2 of this experiment. This is why I do these "What Sly _______ from"

  

 

Appreciate the response. A lot can be said about the poll and the contest.

 

Better contest format, announcing, timing, prizes etc after the next one, I hope.

 

Because this and some similar ideas along the same as polled (pick ten random winners?!) are not even worth holding them or participating for, imo. Just my 2c

 

[ErikBlack]

CC_Sly, on 25 August 2015 - 09:03 AM, said:

For this edition, I am trying to focus more on my observations rather than the positive and negative things that happened. I am also trying to keep in mind of what variables I could control in this contest. These things consist of when the contest portion began, how long the polls were up for, What questions we asked on the polls, what avenues we used to promote the contest, and other such things. 

 

So here we go:

 

What Sly Observed from: Community Created Contest #1: Radley-Walters' Medal Race

• Player complaints/suggestions/feedback. There were a lot of players who voiced their opinions and suggestions on how the contest was run.
  • Any "you should have had more/less winners", "Why did you chose the Radley-Walters' Medal", " or any other complaint/suggestion about how the final contest was run based on a poll vote - was noted and filed under the "you guys voted for it" section.
  • The timing of the contest. Since we had a "First to get" style of contest, I had to make a decision on when to start this. I made it based on when I thought the earliest I could reliably get the post up. 
    • This could be changed in the future in order to allow those who have school or work to have a chance. I will discuss this with Ratbat and see when our peak times are and base my decision on that.
• Visibility seemed to be an issue for some people. The point of this contest was to promote it 95% of the forums. No news article, no Push Notification, just a forum post. 
  • This seemed to drive up the Tier restriction for the contest.  
  • The second part to this experiment will include trying to promote this through more channels and get more people to vote.   
  • Some players were saying that they did not receive enough time to prepare for the contest.
    • Not sure how I can make this more visible just using the forums - I posted everything with schedules 1 week in advanced and the polls were public so anyone could see what they were going to have to do.
• This contest required that I answer lots of questions and moderate it quite closely. I could have let it go and just taken the first 10 valid entries as I had described in the contest rules, but it was obvious there was some disconnect between the How to Enter, Contest Rules, and the the entries themselves.
  • Not sure how I can fix this. I gave what was required and an example. Suggestions?
  • This created extra work and required I closely monitor the thread, taking away time from my other duties.  
• Overall it seemed like the voting process caused players to look at each questions separately as opposed to how they would interact with each other as a contest.
  • People seemed unhappy about the first 10 to get the medals even though that is what people voted for.
  • Not sure how to fix this without creating a TON of extra work.     

 

These are my observations and I did leave a few out, but any suggestions pertaining to more complex contest structure are not really valid. The more complex this is the more the workload grows exponentially.

 

Let me know what you guys thought! 

 

I very much enjoyed that you required players to post according to the rules of the contest and edits were disqualified.

[_Sterben_]

Very nice Contest, but sadly didn't participate since I'm only at the low tier and I have TOG 2 but its a tier 6

so when will we expect a Radley Walters Contest for the Newbies like me?

[Pilgrim_of_many_Pilgrims]

CC_Sly, on 25 August 2015 - 09:11 PM, said:

 

If I were to do a more "vote for a theme" and WG will chose the contest deal - I would have to plan and write out every possible contest before that poll went up. That is far too much time and work put into this. If I were to break up the polls into each section, the process would take far too long and people would start to lose interest after the first 2 weeks. If I shortened the poll lifetime then I would get people saying they didn't have enough time to vote and the contest wasn't fair since they didn't get a chance to get their say in.   

 

 

You are welcome! I am going to look at when we have the most people online and base my timings more off that than a "middle of the day" deal.

 

As far as the next one, part 2 of this 2 part experiment will be coming in September. Don;t expect too many changes, I plan to keep the format nearly identical since this is an experiment. Then I will gather feedback from that one as well and determine if this is something I want to keep doing for Blitz or if I want to try a different variation.  

Thanks big guy!