I was asked by dd2k, Mr.Quidam, and Dumb Luck to review that matchup's judgings, so I did my own without looking at their input, then compared mine to dd2k's, and finally looked at each person's input into the situation. Though the matchup was a lot closer in my judgings, and I agree that dd2k's original assessment of Dumb Luck's card was overly harsh, I agreed with the outcome.
Dumb Luck
Bonus: 2/2
Balance: 6/10 Creatures that accelerate mana are generally curve pushers, so saying this isn't as good as Llanowar Elves or Birds of Paradise isn't necessarily a negative. However, this is a lot worse than either of those two cards. It generates two colors of mana, but is not a mana fixer at all since you already need GU to put it into play. It also limits what you can use the mana on, but the limits are minor since green loves creatures and blue loves instants. It can help you play cards with a heavy color commitment a little better than you otherwise would, for example it helps you play both Wilt-Leaf Liege and Cryptic Command in your Bant deck, but even in that respect Noble Hierarch blows this out of the water.
The upside to this card is, unlike most early-drop mana fixers/accelerators, this has a little more late-game utility as a surprise blocker or sneaking in those last couple points thanks to evasion. But overall, it's the color combination that should be great at mana fixing and instead it's sub-par. It's the color combination that should give you an interesting utility ability on a litle stronger of a body than you'd normally get, and instead it's still a weenie without anything special for abilities. It's not a bad card, it's just rarely going to do anything that isn't already done better by another card.
Flavor: 5/5 Beautiful art choice, good flavor text (though what's to say the faeries can't cause mischief in the woods?), a great bridge between early green sort-of-generic fairy flavor and the modern blue concept of faeries. Wonderful job.
Creativity: 2/4 Putting limits on what your mana fixers can pay for has been done before, though usually on lands (Primal Beyond, Ancient Ziggaraut). Not amazing, but reasonably fresh twists.
Quality: 3/4 No p/t in the text card; flying shouldn't be capitalized. Not quite hitting the slick factor, but partial credit.
Total: 18/25
Mr.Quidam
Bonus: 2/2
Balance: 8/10 What a funky card! This essentially has quadruple strike: it blocks or is blocked and the triggered ability fires for a point, you tap it whether you're attacking or blocking and fire off another point, then it deals first strike damage, and finally regular combat damage. In many ways this is a 4/1 first striker, but it is also a lot more flexible than that since it can kill three 1-toughness creatures at a time without dying, trade for two two-toughness creatures, etc. My big complaint here is that for this kind of mana cost it's an extremely fragile body at 1 toughness, and if it isn't ever blocked it's not a very strong attacker. Most of the time you'll probably want something with a bit more oomph from that kind of mana investment, but still I think it is costed very well for what it does.
Flavor: 2.5/5 Nice art choice (but crop next time, don't squish) flavor text makes a decent connection between the name and abilities. The flavor text is rather generic, though, and it just sort of lacks the awesome flavor a mythic rare wants to have.
Creativity: 4/4 Beautifully done here. It feels like something totally new using all abilities that are simple and familiar. Excellent work.
Quality: 2.5/4 There's about a zillion little things wrong with the text card: No p/t in the text card; tap symbol missing; colon instead of dash on type line; period after keywords; you should at least have some attempt at a copyright line. I have mixed feelings on the "slick" here; double strike is a very elegant ability, but this uses a ton of words to create "quadruple strike" and ends up being rather text-heavy for a kind of simple concept. But on the other hand it does communicate the sense of "quarduple strike" without saying it, and creates an incredibly complex creature out of a stack of relatively simple and familiar abilites. These issues, combined with the balance issues, lead me to suggest trimming the triggered ability and putting the mana cost down to [mana]1rw[/card]. That would simplify it and put it on the curve a little better, I think.
Total: 19/25
I believe that wraps up round 3. Round 4 will be posted shortly. FYI, "Make a card for the provided art" was the overwhelmingly preferred chalange among voters, and 4 contestants in the final round voted for it (compared to 3 votes for "make a common card" and 1 vote for "make a split card"). Xueguo Yang's art was the clear winner among the art choices. So that's what round 4 will be.
I might not be the best one to chime in on this discussion, but I remember thinking that the biggest drawback to your card, Kenaron, was the range of artifacts that you'd be able to snag with him. Nothing cheap, as it'll fall out of their hand as soon as Chandler comes down. Anything too expensive will require keeping him around for a bit, and he's fragile enough for that to be a problem. And it requires your opponent to be playing artifacts to be useful. Beautiful design (it had me worried), but it felt a little too narrow.
As a side note to my judge, the most frustrating part of my card (possibly tying with figuring out the wording) was the cost. I wanted to put it at :5mana:, but it effectively granted both pseudo-haste and pseudo-vigilance to your creatures in addition to the shenanigans that could be pulled off with a fresh army every turn. I figured that Fervor + Serra's Blessing in artifact form had to be worth something, so I costed it similar to Akroma's Memorial. Could I have gotten away with instead of :7mana:, in your opinion?
EDIT: Um, Kraj, did you take the poll down, or am I completely missing it?
EDIT2: Never mind. I guess when a stickied thread is unstickied, it finds its proper place in order of most recently posted in... Found it on page 2.
EDIT3: Lol, Kraj, I was looking at the chosen art before you posted the final round thread and thought to myself "I'll bet one of the bonuses is 'Doesn't use the word destroy.'" Just like you to go all anti-*** on us. Fun final round, although I'm sad that the funky treehugging bug didn't win. I like that art.
EDIT4: Wow, lots of edits. Anyway, to double-check (sorry, Kraj), since the type line isn't in the rules text, we can still make an Artifact or Artifact Creature, as long as "artifact" doesn't appear below, correct?
EDIT4: Wow, lots of edits. Anyway, to double-check (sorry, Kraj), since the type line isn't in the rules text, we can still make an Artifact or Artifact Creature, as long as "artifact" doesn't appear below, correct?
Correct. The bonus is specific to ability text; you can use the 'forbidden' words in the flavor text, card name, etc. I meant to put that in the clarifications.
BTW, 14 minutes has got to be a record, 'Trip!
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Correct. The bonus is specific to ability text; you can use the 'forbidden' words in the flavor text, card name, etc. I meant to put that in the clarifications.
BTW, 14 minutes has got to be a record, 'Trip!
Um....my muse is on overtime? No way to prove it, but I really hadn't been lurking in the art thread watching for the winner and making cards ahead of time. I really did just come up with it. (I'm so much better at top-down flavor/art-based design than other methods.) That card may well change in the small details (still not satisfied with the flavor text, or CMC-P/T ratio), but it'll likely be my final submission. I really like it.
As a side note to my judge, the most frustrating part of my card (possibly tying with figuring out the wording) was the cost. I wanted to put it at :5mana:, but it effectively granted both pseudo-haste and pseudo-vigilance to your creatures in addition to the shenanigans that could be pulled off with a fresh army every turn. I figured that Fervor + Serra's Blessing in artifact form had to be worth something, so I costed it similar to Akroma's Memorial. Could I have gotten away with instead of :7mana:, in your opinion?
IMOP you could have gotten away with 5. Your opponent picks the creatures, so all of your low cost creatures get picked first. You might have been able to get away with less than that if you consider how hard it is to abuse: you need some low cost creatures in your deck (and tokens don't count) and if you slam this down on turn 4 you don't get your game ending creature attacking on turn 5 because your opponent chooses. You're especially vulnerable to Fog-like effects because your opponent can pick your best creatures then Angelsong, and at the end of that turn those creatures get sacked. On the plus side you can use creatures like Progenetus that keep going back into your library, but if your card cost 5 I don't think you'd be able to reliably get it into play faster than Dramatic Entrance and that combo is rather unappealing. But back to the point, eventually your library will be out of creatures and then you're boned. For 7 cost you could have gotten away with a mass Proteus Staff, which I must confess would be pretty sweet. If your opponent chooses which creatures you get you have to do something to "stack the deck."
As a side note, I think you need to have it not target the opponent who picks creatures. That is, if they have Ivory Mask you shouldn't just sacrifice your creatures and end.
IMOP you could have gotten away with 5. Your opponent picks the creatures, so all of your low cost creatures get picked first. You might have been able to get away with less than that if you consider how hard it is to abuse: you need some low cost creatures in your deck (and tokens don't count) and if you slam this down on turn 4 you don't get your game ending creature attacking on turn 5 because your opponent chooses. You're especially vulnerable to Fog-like effects because your opponent can pick your best creatures then Angelsong, and at the end of that turn those creatures get sacked. On the plus side you can use creatures like Progenetus that keep going back into your library, but if your card cost 5 I don't think you'd be able to reliably get it into play faster than Dramatic Entrance and that combo is rather unappealing. But back to the point, eventually your library will be out of creatures and then you're boned. For 7 cost you could have gotten away with a mass Proteus Staff, which I must confess would be pretty sweet. If your opponent chooses which creatures you get you have to do something to "stack the deck."
As a side note, I think you need to have it not target the opponent who picks creatures. That is, if they have Ivory Mask you shouldn't just sacrifice your creatures and end.
Wow, thanks for the really good points. Appreciate the insight. I'll think about the Ivory Mask dilemma...not sure how to word it otherwise...
Sure, I'll throw my two cents in here - WotC makes a lot of different kinds of cards for a lot of different kinds of players. Unless it is specified in the round description that you are designing a card for a particular player type or format, a judge should be open to where this card could fit in. Constructed (of all types), Multiplayer, Casual, Limited, even Flavor and Technical junkies are all valid audiences for card design. Within those groups there are any number of subsets (Contructed in a artifact heavy environment for example).
Since we are designing cards that are more or less in a vacum (outside of the paramaters of the assignment), its difficult to say exactly how they would fit into a hypothetical environment. A certin amount of leeway should be given when determining how often a situation where the card would be useful would come up.
There is something to be said however for cards that have a broader scope and hit more audiences. The trick is to find a balance. Make it's too broad and it boring, too narrow and it will never get used.
I just want to say that I basically agree with everything said here. I've always been annoyed when a judge barely looks at anything besides the current standard and limited.
Cards are made for many different audiences and purposes, and it seems silly to restrict ourselves to only designing cards that would be popular in tournaments in the current metagame. Just because you don't fully understand a format/audience group doesn't mean you should pretend it doesn't exist or that cards designed for it are worthless.
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While I still don't think I quite hit what I was going for, 'twas nice to get a second opinion on my card--good luck to Mr. Quidam and all the finalists. Love the art choice and can't wait to see what y'all come up with!
Yea I dont like how my card was compaired to another when Dance's wasent. When I feel it is easily compaired with another popular card. (Jackal pup.)
If im gonna be judged on other cards I would kinda expect the same thing with my opponent.
Oh well, GG Dance, take it home.
In first place, if you sent a PM to me to let me know your opinion, why you posted the same thing here? may be to "deveal" a missjudging? Or what you want is to make it public creating a debate, or you wanna let me know your opinion in private. But doing both hasn't any sense, specially because your comment here isn't constructive, but half-flamming (did you readed about the new policies?)
In second place, I did mentioned Jackal Pup into his judging and it determined part of the score. The difference between both, your card and his one is that his card was a hard entry to judge (at least for me.) and isn't the same as the jackal, so I cannot just completely base my judging on that comparision.
Your card had more precedents about body/cost/color and activated ability (I don't know about any haste lifelink creature ever printed, or a creature that redirects all of its damage to you.)
I implemented the comparisions in your judging in a more exaustive way because they were more obvious and clear. Jackal Pup was less comparable to your opponent's entry for me, and I needed to judge his wolf as around a %70 new card concept.
Kraj, why not host both the FCC winner and another card each month? Heck, you could even start a "top ten" list of best custom cards for each month. There's no reason to discontinue it just because it became competitive.
Oooookay, so what behavior modification can we attempt to convince you not to remove the FCC? I'd like to know a little bit more about the reasons that it has "run its course" (with 100+ entrants every month, it doesn't seem like it's because there's a lack of interest). Is it too controversial? Too argument-ridden? I thought that was why you implemented new guidelines. If the new guidelines were an attempt to smooth things out, why weren't they given a little bit more time to take hold before the contest was ended?
If there's no negotiation here, what will prevent the community at large from continuing to run the contest without moderator-organization? Will that actively be discouraged, or is part of the purpose of this announcement to get the mods out of the FCC-organization business and back to modding the forum?
Oooookay, so what behavior modification can we attempt to convince you not to remove the FCC? I'd like to know a little bit more about the reasons that it has "run its course" (with 100+ entrants every month, it doesn't seem like it's because there's a lack of interest). Is it too controversial? Too argument-ridden? I thought that was why you implemented new guidelines. If the new guidelines were an attempt to smooth things out, why weren't they given a little bit more time to take hold before the contest was ended?
I'd really rather not get into specifics, but yes the whole point of the rules changes was a last-ditch effort to try and jar the contest back onto the right path. Why didn't we give it more time? Because it was instantly apparent it was a failure. Just looking at the discussion this month (even the signup thread!), it is plainly obvious that the rules meant to curtail drama were completely ignored. Well, except for the people who weren't really part of the problem in the first place; they listened. I realized that the only way we were really going to make a difference would be to either blacklist players who were causing problems, or start handing out infractions for people who ignored the new rules. Neither was an acceptable option.
If there's no negotiation here, what will prevent the community at large from continuing to run the contest without moderator-organization? Will that actively be discouraged, or is part of the purpose of this announcement to get the mods out of the FCC-organization business and back to modding the forum?
A little of column A, a little of column B. If the community wishes to run a contest like the FCC they are totally welcome to. But if won't be the FCC, it won't be trophied, receive any special threads, or forum sponsorship. In other words, if you guys want to run it go right ahead, but it will treated like every other Custom Card game.
If it's all the player v. judge whining that is causing all this to end I would think (and hope) that the threat of the game actually being taken away is enough of a wake up call to stop it.
Otherwise... I dunno. It was certainly nice to have such a well structured card creation game even if I only caught the tail end of it. Much thanks to everyone that made it happen!
A little of column A, a little of column B. If the community wishes to run a contest like the FCC they are totally welcome to. But if won't be the FCC, it won't be trophied, receive any special threads, or forum sponsorship. In other words, if you guys want to run it go right ahead, but it will treated like every other Custom Card game.
No offense, Kraj, because I get the feeling that you're just as saddened by this as I am, but it seems terribly...drastic to end an extremely popular contest that's been running for 5+ years. I think that a large portion of the popularity stems from it being the FCC, with trophies, recognition, etc. I can understand why you don't want to get into blacklisting/infractions, but why not fire a warning shot over our heads as a wake-up call instead of cancelling the party wholesale?
EDIT: Phuzzy! Bite your tongue on that pessimistic talk! It's not over til the fat lady sings...
Why not make a probation list of the people that complain too much? It seems like a punishment is the only true way to help out the contest.
I can certainly see why it's a problem, and I can easily see why the contest has to be a horrible chore to Kraj, M_E, and Shep, but there has to be a solution out there somewhere. While this month (yes I've been paying attention for almost no reason) has simply been drama brought to the forefront, there's still no reason no to in the rules.
That way the judges and contest heads have the final say, and no longer have to shy away from the thought of people coming back to play the game that are ruining the spirit of the contest.
I'm sad to see it go, but I can understand why it's ending.
I would think (and hope) that the threat of the game actually being taken away is enough of a wake up call to stop it.
Honestly, I wouldn't think so. Sure it might drop at first but I'd imagine each and every week the griping and nitpicking would slowly ramp up until we're back to where we've been.
To me the FCC has been dead for a while now. I won't say how long for fear of offending, but there has been a marked decline since I first started and those who came before me have led me to believe that the decline goes much further. I want to imagine that I didn't contribute to the downfall, but pointing fingers won't help anything.
Not suprised at all, I felt this coming a long time ago (the change in the art policy was a big clue), it's also why I decided to leave.
I won't say I am not saddened , but I don't think everyone should press Kraj for more info as I'm sure he would share it if he could.
Many thanks to Kraj/ME/shep for allthe hard work and effort you put in to the contest and hopefully this won't impact the forum activity to the point design is hampered.
Boooooo! Lynch all doomsayers! (Sorry, playing first game of Mafia.)
I understand what you're saying, though, so I'll retract the request for more information, specifically, but it's horribly frustrating to think that there's really no solution for what is obviously such a popular contest (actually, it's as close to an institution as I've seen on the web). I don't want to be the stalwart hanger-on of an idea that truly is dead...but the FCC still seems vibrantly alive to me (except for the scimitar of hopelessness hanging over its neck at the moment).
... What if... (may be this could sound stupid or even crazy) What ends and becomes temporarely closed is the FCC discussion Thread instead of the contest?
I mean, if we check the thread, almost the comments and conversations are about the judgings. To congrat the winners we have the "current month's winning card" thread, and for those kind of discussions, we have the PMs to contact our judges (and certainly the idea isn't to flame them). I know it isn't just for those ones who doesn't provokes unconfortable arguments, but it seems to be the only solution (and an acceptable sacrifice if we want to see this contest growing and running).
After all, the discussion thread's management (by the users themselves) is the problem, not the FCC itself.
If im gonna be judged on other cards I would kinda expect the same thing with my opponent.
Oh well, GG Dance, take it home.
Bonus: 2/2
Balance: 6/10 Creatures that accelerate mana are generally curve pushers, so saying this isn't as good as Llanowar Elves or Birds of Paradise isn't necessarily a negative. However, this is a lot worse than either of those two cards. It generates two colors of mana, but is not a mana fixer at all since you already need GU to put it into play. It also limits what you can use the mana on, but the limits are minor since green loves creatures and blue loves instants. It can help you play cards with a heavy color commitment a little better than you otherwise would, for example it helps you play both Wilt-Leaf Liege and Cryptic Command in your Bant deck, but even in that respect Noble Hierarch blows this out of the water.
The upside to this card is, unlike most early-drop mana fixers/accelerators, this has a little more late-game utility as a surprise blocker or sneaking in those last couple points thanks to evasion. But overall, it's the color combination that should be great at mana fixing and instead it's sub-par. It's the color combination that should give you an interesting utility ability on a litle stronger of a body than you'd normally get, and instead it's still a weenie without anything special for abilities. It's not a bad card, it's just rarely going to do anything that isn't already done better by another card.
Flavor: 5/5 Beautiful art choice, good flavor text (though what's to say the faeries can't cause mischief in the woods?), a great bridge between early green sort-of-generic fairy flavor and the modern blue concept of faeries. Wonderful job.
Creativity: 2/4 Putting limits on what your mana fixers can pay for has been done before, though usually on lands (Primal Beyond, Ancient Ziggaraut). Not amazing, but reasonably fresh twists.
Quality: 3/4 No p/t in the text card; flying shouldn't be capitalized. Not quite hitting the slick factor, but partial credit.
Total: 18/25
Mr.Quidam
Bonus: 2/2
Balance: 8/10 What a funky card! This essentially has quadruple strike: it blocks or is blocked and the triggered ability fires for a point, you tap it whether you're attacking or blocking and fire off another point, then it deals first strike damage, and finally regular combat damage. In many ways this is a 4/1 first striker, but it is also a lot more flexible than that since it can kill three 1-toughness creatures at a time without dying, trade for two two-toughness creatures, etc. My big complaint here is that for this kind of mana cost it's an extremely fragile body at 1 toughness, and if it isn't ever blocked it's not a very strong attacker. Most of the time you'll probably want something with a bit more oomph from that kind of mana investment, but still I think it is costed very well for what it does.
Flavor: 2.5/5 Nice art choice (but crop next time, don't squish) flavor text makes a decent connection between the name and abilities. The flavor text is rather generic, though, and it just sort of lacks the awesome flavor a mythic rare wants to have.
Creativity: 4/4 Beautifully done here. It feels like something totally new using all abilities that are simple and familiar. Excellent work.
Quality: 2.5/4 There's about a zillion little things wrong with the text card: No p/t in the text card; tap symbol missing; colon instead of dash on type line; period after keywords; you should at least have some attempt at a copyright line. I have mixed feelings on the "slick" here; double strike is a very elegant ability, but this uses a ton of words to create "quadruple strike" and ends up being rather text-heavy for a kind of simple concept. But on the other hand it does communicate the sense of "quarduple strike" without saying it, and creates an incredibly complex creature out of a stack of relatively simple and familiar abilites. These issues, combined with the balance issues, lead me to suggest trimming the triggered ability and putting the mana cost down to [mana]1rw[/card]. That would simplify it and put it on the curve a little better, I think.
Total: 19/25
I believe that wraps up round 3. Round 4 will be posted shortly. FYI, "Make a card for the provided art" was the overwhelmingly preferred chalange among voters, and 4 contestants in the final round voted for it (compared to 3 votes for "make a common card" and 1 vote for "make a split card"). Xueguo Yang's art was the clear winner among the art choices. So that's what round 4 will be.
Current New Favorite Person™: Mallory Archer
She knows why.
As a side note to my judge, the most frustrating part of my card (possibly tying with figuring out the wording) was the cost. I wanted to put it at :5mana:, but it effectively granted both pseudo-haste and pseudo-vigilance to your creatures in addition to the shenanigans that could be pulled off with a fresh army every turn. I figured that Fervor + Serra's Blessing in artifact form had to be worth something, so I costed it similar to Akroma's Memorial. Could I have gotten away with
EDIT: Um, Kraj, did you take the poll down, or am I completely missing it?
EDIT2: Never mind. I guess when a stickied thread is unstickied, it finds its proper place in order of most recently posted in... Found it on page 2.
EDIT3: Lol, Kraj, I was looking at the chosen art before you posted the final round thread and thought to myself "I'll bet one of the bonuses is 'Doesn't use the word destroy.'"
EDIT4: Wow, lots of edits. Anyway, to double-check (sorry, Kraj), since the type line isn't in the rules text, we can still make an Artifact or Artifact Creature, as long as "artifact" doesn't appear below, correct?
Correct. The bonus is specific to ability text; you can use the 'forbidden' words in the flavor text, card name, etc. I meant to put that in the clarifications.
BTW, 14 minutes has got to be a record, 'Trip!
Current New Favorite Person™: Mallory Archer
She knows why.
IMOP you could have gotten away with 5. Your opponent picks the creatures, so all of your low cost creatures get picked first. You might have been able to get away with less than that if you consider how hard it is to abuse: you need some low cost creatures in your deck (and tokens don't count) and if you slam this down on turn 4 you don't get your game ending creature attacking on turn 5 because your opponent chooses. You're especially vulnerable to Fog-like effects because your opponent can pick your best creatures then Angelsong, and at the end of that turn those creatures get sacked. On the plus side you can use creatures like Progenetus that keep going back into your library, but if your card cost 5 I don't think you'd be able to reliably get it into play faster than Dramatic Entrance and that combo is rather unappealing. But back to the point, eventually your library will be out of creatures and then you're boned. For 7 cost you could have gotten away with a mass Proteus Staff, which I must confess would be pretty sweet. If your opponent chooses which creatures you get you have to do something to "stack the deck."
As a side note, I think you need to have it not target the opponent who picks creatures. That is, if they have Ivory Mask you shouldn't just sacrifice your creatures and end.
Wow, thanks for the really good points. Appreciate the insight. I'll think about the Ivory Mask dilemma...not sure how to word it otherwise...
Oh, and since it's started, good luck in the finals!
I just want to say that I basically agree with everything said here. I've always been annoyed when a judge barely looks at anything besides the current standard and limited.
Cards are made for many different audiences and purposes, and it seems silly to restrict ourselves to only designing cards that would be popular in tournaments in the current metagame. Just because you don't fully understand a format/audience group doesn't mean you should pretend it doesn't exist or that cards designed for it are worthless.
-Douglas Adams
While I still don't think I quite hit what I was going for, 'twas nice to get a second opinion on my card--good luck to Mr. Quidam and all the finalists. Love the art choice and can't wait to see what y'all come up with!
-DL
I'm third from the left.
In first place, if you sent a PM to me to let me know your opinion, why you posted the same thing here? may be to "deveal" a missjudging? Or what you want is to make it public creating a debate, or you wanna let me know your opinion in private. But doing both hasn't any sense, specially because your comment here isn't constructive, but half-flamming (did you readed about the new policies?)
In second place, I did mentioned Jackal Pup into his judging and it determined part of the score. The difference between both, your card and his one is that his card was a hard entry to judge (at least for me.) and isn't the same as the jackal, so I cannot just completely base my judging on that comparision.
Your card had more precedents about body/cost/color and activated ability (I don't know about any haste lifelink creature ever printed, or a creature that redirects all of its damage to you.)
I implemented the comparisions in your judging in a more exaustive way because they were more obvious and clear. Jackal Pup was less comparable to your opponent's entry for me, and I needed to judge his wolf as around a %70 new card concept.
I hope this explanation cleared your doubts.
Kraj, why not host both the FCC winner and another card each month? Heck, you could even start a "top ten" list of best custom cards for each month. There's no reason to discontinue it just because it became competitive.
If there's no negotiation here, what will prevent the community at large from continuing to run the contest without moderator-organization? Will that actively be discouraged, or is part of the purpose of this announcement to get the mods out of the FCC-organization business and back to modding the forum?
More information, please.
I'd really rather not get into specifics, but yes the whole point of the rules changes was a last-ditch effort to try and jar the contest back onto the right path. Why didn't we give it more time? Because it was instantly apparent it was a failure. Just looking at the discussion this month (even the signup thread!), it is plainly obvious that the rules meant to curtail drama were completely ignored. Well, except for the people who weren't really part of the problem in the first place; they listened. I realized that the only way we were really going to make a difference would be to either blacklist players who were causing problems, or start handing out infractions for people who ignored the new rules. Neither was an acceptable option.
A little of column A, a little of column B. If the community wishes to run a contest like the FCC they are totally welcome to. But if won't be the FCC, it won't be trophied, receive any special threads, or forum sponsorship. In other words, if you guys want to run it go right ahead, but it will treated like every other Custom Card game.
I think that's probably the perfect way to put it.
Current New Favorite Person™: Mallory Archer
She knows why.
Otherwise... I dunno. It was certainly nice to have such a well structured card creation game even if I only caught the tail end of it. Much thanks to everyone that made it happen!
No offense, Kraj, because I get the feeling that you're just as saddened by this as I am, but it seems terribly...drastic to end an extremely popular contest that's been running for 5+ years. I think that a large portion of the popularity stems from it being the FCC, with trophies, recognition, etc. I can understand why you don't want to get into blacklisting/infractions, but why not fire a warning shot over our heads as a wake-up call instead of cancelling the party wholesale?
EDIT: Phuzzy! Bite your tongue on that pessimistic talk! It's not over til the fat lady sings...
I can certainly see why it's a problem, and I can easily see why the contest has to be a horrible chore to Kraj, M_E, and Shep, but there has to be a solution out there somewhere. While this month (yes I've been paying attention for almost no reason) has simply been drama brought to the forefront, there's still no reason no to in the rules.
That way the judges and contest heads have the final say, and no longer have to shy away from the thought of people coming back to play the game that are ruining the spirit of the contest.
Honestly, I wouldn't think so. Sure it might drop at first but I'd imagine each and every week the griping and nitpicking would slowly ramp up until we're back to where we've been.
Boooooo! Lynch all doomsayers! (Sorry, playing first game of Mafia.)
I understand what you're saying, though, so I'll retract the request for more information, specifically, but it's horribly frustrating to think that there's really no solution for what is obviously such a popular contest (actually, it's as close to an institution as I've seen on the web). I don't want to be the stalwart hanger-on of an idea that truly is dead...but the FCC still seems vibrantly alive to me (except for the scimitar of hopelessness hanging over its neck at the moment).
... What if... (may be this could sound stupid or even crazy) What ends and becomes temporarely closed is the FCC discussion Thread instead of the contest?
I mean, if we check the thread, almost the comments and conversations are about the judgings. To congrat the winners we have the "current month's winning card" thread, and for those kind of discussions, we have the PMs to contact our judges (and certainly the idea isn't to flame them). I know it isn't just for those ones who doesn't provokes unconfortable arguments, but it seems to be the only solution (and an acceptable sacrifice if we want to see this contest growing and running).
After all, the discussion thread's management (by the users themselves) is the problem, not the FCC itself.
This sad news I come home to see the FCC's final moments.
This contest was the reason I joined Sally, and it made me a better designer for certain.
Such is life I suppose.
It was a great run guys.
Winner of the First and Fourth Double Dare Single Elimination Contests
2009 July CCL: COMING THIS JULY
2008 December CCL: The Mechinations of Fate
Double Dare to Design: The 5th Single Elimination Contest
Double Dare That Designer: The 2nd Single Elimination Contest
You have to be kidding me. Worst.News.Ever.
If I had known, I would have judged Round 3 despite everything - how was I to know that it was my only chance?
I'm still hoping the calender is spoilt and it's actually April 1st.
'Bad Spirit' banner by Hot Pizza at Ye Olde Sig and Avatar Shoppe
I was a Top 32 Contestant for RPG Superstar 2008!
Come take a look at my custom set, Lost Relics. (To be finished...eventually)
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"Sarcasm is the body's natural defense against Stupidity"