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Staff Post Summer Scramble 2020 - Feedback

Discussion in 'Valor Archive' started by Jeydis, Aug 6, 2020.

  1. Jeydis

    Jeydis Midnight Gourmand

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    The month of July has come and gone... rather quickly for some of us. Time flies when you are having fun!

    So as the mods and I are finishing up the judging and voting for all of the events, let's do like last year and get this feedback thread going!

    So what did you like from the Summer Scramble events this year? What did you dislike or would like to see changed for next year? Are there any events you wish had returned? Do you have any events you would like to see in the future? Let us know.
     
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  2. Gazi

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    I loved all the art and drawing related events. One thing I didn't really like about this year was the deadline format of the trivia weeks. There was more than enough time for each week to last for six or seven days, but that wasn't how it went. One of the weeks, the questions were posted a day late, and they asked us to turn them in a day early, which give us two days less to put some answers together. If you're going to have one of the trivia weeks only last for four to five days, I think it would be better if all of them were that long. It would make the event less stressful, at least for me.
     
  3. LassusVulpes

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    In my opinion, very stressful for me. I don't plan on coming back to the event because of how much work was to be done in such a short amount of time. Yes one month has 30ish days but for some of the projects it just felt like it cut far to early. With a mix of having work, stream and LV in a condensed schedule it was hard to do stuff I like mostly playing video games solo.

    but i did have some fun here and there. and @ChocoChicken you're the fetus now.

    I'll also say this, imo the teams were unbalanced. I'm not trying to point fingers or start an argument but some teams had far more active people that had no things going on while others had people doing things and or inactive. Perhaps in the future try and find those people who're inactive before the event and mix them in with a group that has fairly active people.
     
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    #3 Aug 6, 2020
    Last edited: Aug 6, 2020
  4. Jeydis

    Jeydis Midnight Gourmand

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    Hmm we did try to balance things out though mostly by interest rather than activity level. Drops in activity are pretty much there every year but I did feel like it was stronger this time around. Noted your feedback! We do have a thing or two to try and get people that are active to join up.
     
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  5. OzoneFruit

    OzoneFruit Made The Arcadia Virus a Cute Anime Girl

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    This Scramble was simultaneously much more fun and much more stressful than last year's. I loved the return to more collaborative/creative events instead of an overfocus on the competitive aspects; the showdown formats were a nice touch, and I'd love to see those in future battle tournaments.

    That being said, there was a HUGE problem with getting people to consistently participate this year. I understand that times are difficult, and many of us are growing up and have other commitments besides the Scramble, but as a Captain and general team member, I often felt that if I didn't personally reach out individually to people for help, participation would be maybe 50% at best (and even when people did respond, I often felt an air of reluctance/"I don't feel like it"). I know other teams had the same problem as well, and some of the people who signed up initially never even came back. If something pops up, I implore people to reach out to the team, or at the very least the person heading it to just let them know that they might be scarce. But going cold turkey and never responding to messages is both unhelpful, uninformative, and frankly quite rude. And that doesn't just apply to this. It applies to any sort of team project/collaborative effort.

    With that in mind, I'm proposing some form of vetting process be implemented in future Scrambles, to really get an idea of commitment. Sign-ups should happen earlier in the summer, after which a mini postfest should take place. I'd say a minimum of 20-30 posts between signing up and the actual Scramble would be sufficient to see who is really going to stick around and who might drop out. Those who meet the requirements would be given priority team sorting, while those who didn't might be reached out to, or dropped if they never respond to further inquiries. That way, all teams have members who actively and consistently participate to the best of their abilities. And reiterating from earlier, if something comes up and you find your schedule compromised, reach out to fellow team mates.
     
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    #5 Aug 6, 2020
    Last edited: Aug 6, 2020
  6. Beffie

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    the short version: better than last years for sure!! still needs some improvements tho

    long version is just the improvements lol!!! anyways compared to last year the variety and number of events was much greater so i actually felt like i wanted to to them!! but this also has a negative i felt all thruout the month: theres just TOO MUCH to do. id prefer having too much to do over having too little to do but there was just so much that my brain couldnt take it!!

    oh i gotta play arcade, no i gotta do trivia, no i should be shiny hunting, i need to make something on animal crossing, i have to draw something, but i have to take a picture, it goes on. i know you can like. not do everything and thats to be expected but when participation points can make or break your chance of winning it can VERY easily overwhelm me and perhaps others who dont have as much time in their days to do this stuff. i once again really like the huge variety in events so if you dont play the mainline Pokémon games youre not too left out but at the same time even the non pkmn event roster was HUGE!!

    speak of participation!! we gotta do something to address the ppl that just fall off the face of the earth!! ive witnessed it in every single scramble so far so this isnt a brand new issue. and im not talking about the ppl who dont have time but still try to do something because believe it or not most of us have actual lives im talking like. "ill sign up! (last seen 27w ago)" stuff. its downright frustrating to be outnumbered solely because someone didnt wanna show their face to the site again and quite frankly it dooms that team to lose from day 1. maybe next year the hosts can keep tabs on whos not logging in? (i dont agree with it being thru posts like above, some of us just dont have much to say)

    those are my 2 big gripes, a minor one id like to throw forward is the heavy emphasis on a story for the past 2? 3? years. sure it opens up some new chances for inspiration for some events but the first scramble will always be my favorite because it was the SUMMER scramble. it was about summer!! honestly this event could have been run at any other time of the year and be called the unova scramble and i would fail to see a difference. but thats just a nitpick. not all of us play Pokémon is what im trying to vaguely say lol.

    tldr: much better than last year but improvements can still be made, i honestly had a lot of fun the times i wasnt stressed to participate in Everything so i think that should count for something. gg everyone!
     
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  7. ChocoChicken

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    As someone who was also part of the collage event in 2018 SS, I felt like the collage event this time around just felt... smaller. A bit of a nitpick really, but back then we had what felt like at leasy 7-8 people working on this huge drawing, whilst our team had like 3 people for most of the month and about 2 extra artists showing up near the end, which just felt kinda. Eh. Coupled with the whole inactivity thing it did make the teams feel a whole lot smaller than they actually were. But it could also be just because I started using Discord more this year, which I don't think I have for the past 2, and few people are on during my usual times.
    The events covered a whole lot of ground - sometimes though, it did feel like we were really stretching some of our abilities. For the Card event in particular, Might was super rushed for that one because most of the team just didn't know how TCG works.
    Photo event was nice but felt a little forgotten. But with lockdown and everything that's nobody on LV's fault.
    All that aside though, I had fun this SS, although it was more stressful - but not completely LV's fault, the year has just been a pain in general, and it was nice to unwind for a bit.

    also @Link_The_Fox is a fetus
     
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  8. SAF

    SAF Team of Conflict

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    As for myself, I can't really compare anything since this is my first year of Summer Scramble, but still... gotta say it's loads of fun. There sure were tons of things to do, yes. I personally agree with @Beffie who said that too much to do is better than too little to do, at least to the point that it felt weird when SS was over.

    About the teams' balance, I gotta say that it kinda awkward. I mean, according to what I've seen during the Scramble itself, Wisdom had more people active here in LV, Might had the least amount of active people, and Courage was somewhere in-between. But still, everyone have irl things to do, so the imbalanced teams in terms of activity was unavoidable.

    As for events, I wish there would be a Pokémon gaming event thrown in the Scramble, maybe a speedrun or a challenge run of some sort. For the speedrun, the points would be given to all participants with more points awarded to three participants with least amounts of playing time. And for the challenge run, the points would be given to whoever reached the midway (either the 4th gym or Olivia's grand trial) and end of the game being played. Not sure if it even gonna work here, though.
     
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  9. KnightBlader

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    Let me make this clear, if something like this does get implemented, I won't be able to participate in any Scrambles here on out. Not a threat, or anything, I just simply don't have the time, nor the ability to find even 20 posts to make, as I personally only really post when I feel like I can contribute to a discussion point, therefore I would be completely ineligible. Not to mention it scares off new participants anyways.

    Okay, now going back to the actual feedback. People have been saying it's been "way less competitively focused". I'd disagree. Last year had a total of 4 battle weeks compared to 3 this year. I think it's fine, personally, I preferred last years "chosen Pokémon pool" system more than monotype-esque NatDex, but I also get that takes more time. It's a bit sad that we went down from two battles per week to one though.
    Also people have been saying there was a lot to and I'd be inclined to kinda disagree. Yes there was a good amount of events but, for me, a person who preferably does battling and writing, the amount of events really was quite scarce, once again I do get it time constraints, but the art based side definately got the main focus this year.

    I have also seen people complain about activity (did you guys seriously dm your teammates about that?) but personally, to me, that's not mod based, so dw about it too much. People have lives, it's summer, and we are still in a pandemic, so stuff can pop up.

    Last criticism and imo the most important one: Participation points felt way past unbalanced. Trivia Event is the perfect example of this. How can Team Might get 1.5x the Scramble Points than Team Wisdom, when Team Might literally had the worst total points? I get them being ahead of Courage, maybe tying Wisdom but 1.5x really just kind of makes Trivia not a - you know - Trivia and knowledge based event but a secondary postfest.
    I don't mean this as an insult to Team Might, it's simply the best example of this.

    I want to thank all the mods and admins who did the events though. It was a fun month, as per usual, and thanks to my team for putting in the effort for us. :)
     
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  10. OzoneFruit

    OzoneFruit Made The Arcadia Virus a Cute Anime Girl

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    There are a multitude of threads where you can quickly accumulate 20 posts over a week or two. Just to name a few off the top of my head, there's the Q&A, the Pokémon Catcher, and the Lounge. As the captain of my team, if a potential team member said had neither the time nor ability to do that, I would be concerned about their ability to regularly contribute. I also disagree about the post requirements scaring off new participants. If anything, it should give them incentive to interact with other members of the site, and therefore hopefully establish friendly relationships with potential team mates (and others in general).

    Yes, I did, and I have zero problems with doing that. Being the team captain in a team-based event, it is my responsibility to make sure people are doing their part and pulling their weight, and if not, to see if something has arisen. I have now been team captain for three Scrambles in a row, and have done my best to personally reach out to each and every team member individually; if I am chosen as team captain again in a future Scramble, I will continue to do so. It is a matter of common courtesy to let your team know if you may not be available, in any sort of field.

    I do agree here. The majority of points should be delegated to the event theme itself, and participation points in particular are one of the reasons this scramble was so stressful. When you only have about half your team consistently posting/talking without being asked, the amount of points you miss out on quickly adds up. I'd personally suggest the points be halved to 5 in future events like Trivia, as 10 points per participant can easily make or break a team in that week.
     
    #10 Aug 7, 2020
    Last edited: Aug 7, 2020
  11. KnightBlader

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    I disagree on multiple levels.
    1. "There are a multitude of threads where you can quickly accumulate 20 posts over a week or two"
    Yes, and I never said you couldn't do that. The issue is that I, and some people like me, do not really post if the topic isn't something they are personally interested in/feel like they could add anything. I personally don't really care about my "highest level Pokémon on LV" or asking questions in a Q&A that have already been asked, because I want to participate in a fun event. Nothing against those that do like doing that, more power to them, but yeah, no, being FORCED to do it, is imo not cool.

    2. "As the captain of my team, if a team member had neither the time nor the ability to do that, I would be concerned about their ability to regularly contribute."
    Okay, first of all, arguments ad hominem are in bad faith, second of all, participation pre event does not match participation during or post event. Furthermore, the notion that somebody doesn't find it in themselves to do a tiny postfest, should not reflect their willingness to participate by any stretch of the imagination. People don't always want to talk at work, at school, etc, and still get their job done.

    3. "I also disagree about the post requirements scaring off new participants, [as it helps] establish(ing) friendly relationships with potential team mates (and others in general)."
    Sure, it may do that. Certain people may also throw them off though, as well as, once again, this is a for fun event. Why make people jump through hoops to enter it.

    4. "Yes, I did (dm/ping my teammates that aren't actively participating), and I have zero problems with doing that. Being the team captain in a team-based event, it is my responsibility to make sure people are doing their part and pulling their weight, and if not, to see if something has arisen."
    I disagree wholeheartedly. It's not your responsibility to (as you make it sound in prior messages) coerce your teammates into working on things they may not want to do.
    If they signed up for it (like battling and writing this year), sure, go for it. But this system is made to initially ask "are you interested in the notion of SS2020?" to then choose individually whether they want to participate or not. I cannot, and will not force my teammates to have fun and participate because honestly, they may not have it when they are forced to. Even more so, they should not have to justify why they do not wish to participate in an activity, like come on, you don't have to specify at work when you are calling in sick.

    That's all I wanted to say. I considered not posting this lengthy thing, but really, it just kinda irked me.
    That's the last post I'll make on this topic, because we won't see face to face and agree here. Not because either of us is necessarily wrong, but also because we see the entire thing differently.

    Once again, thank you to all the admins and mods though (especially my buddypalfriendslicehomeslice Jeydis) who made this SS20 into a pretty sweet event, even if there is still things that coulda been done better (personally I woulda loved to see a Smash/Mario Kart event like last year, even if the points would be severely reduced to avoid the moonlight smash trading from last year. Just generally more gaming events than just shiny hunting and comp battling would be nice.)
     
  12. OzoneFruit

    OzoneFruit Made The Arcadia Virus a Cute Anime Girl

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    Likewise, I will cease further arguments as it seems we are at an impasse. However, I would like to make a statement on one point in particular I take issue with.

    At no point in time did I, nor anyone else on the team, "coerce" anyone into participating against their will. Coercion suggests the usage of underhanded/threatening action, of which, and I cannot stress this enough, never occurred. Attention was brought to matters of importance, and pings were issued. The importance of participating to the best of your ability was continuously stressed. But never once did I, nor anyone else on my team, threaten a fellow team member if they chose not to participate (and if such behavior had occurred, I would have immediately reported it). Please do not suggest such behavior took place, as it is both offensive to me and my team as a whole.
     
  13. HeroofFire101

    HeroofFire101 Stirlingite

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    As the other Team Captain, I whole heartingly agree with this. He never pushed any boundaries when anyone, AND he got our team members to participate. Scramble went a lot better this year, and it was actually fun this year. And, for your information, we had one member who signed up this year that went missing even before SS started. We tried to notify them about SS, but we both decided to notify Vigilance because we had no idea what to do about this. We did reach out, but we got nothing from them. We tried. Ozone encouraged our team to participate.
     
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  14. HiddenLore

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    I really enjoyed the even this year. I had a good team who did a good job of working together and collaborating. I’ve had times where I felt a bit left behind, or one year offended, but this team was great. I think there was a fair amount of variety in the events available. I just wish July had felt a little longer
     
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  15. Vigilance

    Vigilance once here, now gone

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    Thank you all for your wonderful feedback. As a staff team arranging this, we definitely know there are many areas of improvement and appreciate the constructive criticism being provided. I'll answer a few general themes below that I saw occurring in the feedback posts and hope that helps:

    1- In general, SS is really intensive in terms of effort required. We don't want to make it an effortless month because then what's the point (no bonding, memories etc etc) but this summer was different than most we tried to find a right balance between too hard and too easy. Sorry for those that felt stressed or burdened. Part of it is you guys having a lot of your personal stuff going on (I had summer classes) and in that case, definitely prioritizing is a must and it can get tricky. The hope is to continue to strive to find that right balance and do our best!

    2- Inactivity is tough for all teams in SS. Just going to say sorry about this. This year was tougher cause team size was smaller (about 11-13 members per team). Some teams had to endure a couple of teammates going MIA or just being inactive (Might dealt with this too) and that did put a dent in a team's performance. The post method is one idea we're exploring but there are concerns about people wanting to only participate in SS and not being used to posting around the site. It's a double-edged sword for sure. We're going to have to talk as a team and review your feedback to find how best to combat people signing up and then not carrying their weight. Again, very sorry!

    3- Participation points and their effects - Tricky here. The idea was that we knew at teams would be unbalanced in terms of skill level as well. Some of you might be exceptional at battling or art or whatever. This will be evident when results come out for the events. It's tough for us cause we can't go back to each participants' old artwork and then try to rate their work and place them into teams based on that to balance skill levels across the board in lets say the art category. Moreover, who are we to make those judgments right? This was a challenge we faced and so participation points were a way where if a team, lets say, didn't have the most experienced artists, they could still rally. I think pretty much every event this was done properly and wasn't an issue. It seems to be mentioned somewhat for the Trivia Event so I'll address that below.

    4- Trivia was largely my fault cause I last-minute thrust it upon RadEmpoleon. Sorry Rad! They did a fantastic job of creating those questions and I looked through some of your guys' trivia threads and it genuinely generated a lot of discussions about stuff you never would have talked about.

    - RE: Timing of week being off - I'm going to slightly disregard this because while it was a bit off (sometimes not the full 7 days), this criticism is kinda harsh. This event was intensive to run (having to create a custom question set each week) and Rad did get busy. I don't think this was the main contributer to the stress teams felt, rather people chose to sit and let this wait till the last minute each week to get in their answers. I'm guilty of this too.
    - RE: participation points, I do agree to some extent that Might capturing participation 4 weeks in a row threw some stuff off but in reality, you didn't even have to post about every single question to get participation credit. You could literally post the answer to the one thing you knew and it would count so I'd more so say it was a missed opportunity on other team's parts. That said, we will review the placement prizes for each week and see if they need to be scaled up a little bit to distance itself from the participation reward.
    Thanks again to Rad for running what was my favorite event of the summer!

    Overall, we enjoyed setting this up for you guys and the plan is to get the results out soon. We will try, as always, to find the perfect balance between types of events and skill level required while also doing our best to cater to our userbase here. Hope you had fun!
     
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  16. Pirate Captain

    Pirate Captain Nightmare Tala

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    Even though I had a blast. I did wanna say something about the photography event.
    It never specified ya need to go out or search some old photo.
    For me I thought go outside to look arounr. Even with a lockdown . Im pretty sur3 when ya buy get groceries stopping somewhere to make one is possible.
    If I knew I could use some old photo from a vacation I woule have done that.
    So that is the only part I thought was a bit unfair
     
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