Summer Scramble - Your Thoughts?

Although I was not a part of this year's Summer Scramble, due to being very busy with school, I do have some things I'd like to say about it.

From what I saw, it looked like the event went very well. Everyone seemed to be having a lot of fun, and some people I was talking to even left a conversation with me because they "needed" to do this for their team. I don't really know much else about the event apart from that everyone enjoyed it a lot, so I think the event was a big success!

 

My thoughts? The whole thing went pretty well. The events were well organized and required the teams to work together, which was the goal.

I'm not sure how this would be fixed, but the events left some people... overcompetitive. It was to the point where it felt like some users (not naming names) were sore winners/losers about fun little teamwork events. Once again, I'm not sure how this could be fixed. Maybe make some of the events a bit less competitive or have the admins/mods monitor the general mood of the scramble??

All in all, the Scramble was pulled off pretty well. Only a few things would need touching upon, but for the most part everything was done with aplomb!

 

As someone who partook in the Summer Scramble, I can soundly say that things went very well! Working with a team of people helped me know people on LV I had barely known before, so it brought our little team closer. There were plenty of events for everyone to enjoy, so everyone could pitch in no matter the particular niche everyone had.

However, I would like to bring up a few nitpicks. Although the team I was on was very active, Acuity had around five inactive members that didn't even show up once. Teams do work better with more people, and with around ten users juggling fifteen events, it can be a hindrance to even show up at some events (half of Acuity's submissions were like last minute). If all the late sign-ups were put into our teams earlier, that would definitely help the teams out: and improve the quality of submissions.

Like @WolfeyStar said before me, there were a few users (like her, not gonna name names) that got way too competitive with this, even to the point of someone not from Acuity refusing to help me with a little question I had on shiny hunting and condemning my sister for providing the help I needed because I was on a different team as Wolfey and the someone in question. There were also a few "team jabs" thrown around (ex: Verity is the best, Valor cannot beat us!), and I put that in quotes as these "jabs" were quite discouraging at times, particularly one that told Acuity to basically give up since we were "behind as a team". I know that this fix will be very hard as everyone's wired a little different when it comes to competition, but next time, I'd love to see the staff remind everyone that this is a community event and you're with friends, and supporting everyone no matter which team someone is on is essential for having fun. I'm not kidding, I legit thought of giving up after some of those comments. Serious issue right here...

Those are really the only major issues I encountered. Despite that, this little event was quite enjoyable and I had lots of fun!

 

Ah, I was hoping this would come up. This event changed me a lot, for better or worse so it's only fitting that it get some feedback.​

I'd like to start by saying a very huge thank you to the staff at LV who put this event together. The amount of dedication that required was enormous but you guys managed it! Congrats! Special thanks to @Achromatic @Satix @Cadbberry @MarineAurora @Eclipse for hosting the events and making it memorable.​

I hate to be the devil's advocate though and I know what I say may come across as whiney and grouchy but I really do want everyone to benefit from this first try and have this event thing improved for the future! For the sake of easier understanding, some terms are explained in the spoiler below:

Spoiler: Terms

• Team Based Events - These are events that the entire team has to compete in together and submit one piece in. The entire team gets points.
• Individual Events - Individual participants submit their OWN entries but win points for their respective teams.

How does this post work?
I will start off with some thoughts about "general issues" and "the bigger pictures" and then make my way to "team selections". Then I will go down the event list, rating them and giving my thoughts on them. I will also include events that I believe deserved a place in the scramble.

General + Team vs. Individual Events
An event like this is tough to execute. No doubt about it. While at times it shined brightly, it's faults were evident as well.
First, a team based scramble like this was not possibly the best idea. Don't get me wrong, 3 teams competing for team points is a very good idea but what was sorely needed was individuality. This means people having control over points that they could win for their team regardless of whether their team members participated with them. Yes, I know, "the postfest was like that but you asked for a change Vig," That is true but there needed to be an equality of individual events and team based events (See terms spoiler for definitions). Team members would participate in the individual events and their teams would win points but it would be not dependent on the entire team in those specific events. Point rewards would be higher for individual events rather than entire team event to balance the effort levels. This will lead to my next discussion on points for each event.
Which leads to my issue about the various point awards. The best idea would be that all team events would be worth an equal number of points across the board while ALL the individual events would have equal point value among themselves BUT be more than the team based ones.

Points
Points were not the same even across team based events. While people may argue it's cause some events are more hard than others, it would be easier and less complicated if everything was worth the same. If points truly shouldn't be the same across the board, it is important to sit down and decide which events should get more points. Art/Literature and Pokémon Hunting should all be allotted more points than other events like the postfest. Postfest should have gotten a lesser point allocation along with flash events. The reasoning behind this is that art/writing and Pokémon hunting take time and skill. Postfest is about activeness and flash events don't show the true nature of a team working together or a person doing his best job on something.

Events that missed out
I'm frustrated to see the lack of a SOTM style event considering the success it's had. The SOTM is a so called example of another "individual style event," that would have fared well. Another event that scould have been added was Sheep's Drawing Contest which was running in the Creative Corner. For writing, something simple and fun such as a come up with a poem about a theme would have been a good individual event. Clearly there are good ideas out there that missed out.

Staff and Competition.
While people being uber competitive should not be an issue (this is a competition after all) I do see how this was a problem for some members. Being proud of your team and believing "it's the best" is fine but not at the expense and abuse of others. More moderation may help? but I would suggest each team should have had a Moderator or staff member on it. Valor had Marine. She could use her Moderator permissions to organize the Valor Hub, for one, an idea I suggested but was not possible at the time.Having Marine was a huge advantage, she is smart and dependable and overall a strong leader (she is a SMod after all). I am not making excuses for other teams losing by saying Marine is the sole reason, but if you put a veteran football or soccer player or a basketball player who just won a championship on a team and give the opposing team no one of equal value, it's tipping the scales for sure.

Team Hubs being opened to everyone
Yes, I complained about this on discord. Call me old fashioned, I liked the idea of us having our secret place to be ourselves where other teams couldn't pry which is why opening all the hubs made me kinda annoyed. I see the benefit of learning and while I would prefer it remain closed off to the members of their respective hubs, I guess it is for the greater good.

On to the team pickings and event ratings!​

Spoiler: Team pickings

I'm not sure how the team pickings went. If it was completely and truly 100% random, the RNG Gods had a very bad day. The best way would be to predetermine the type of events (art/writing/posting) and then use a system where teams were made as such that they balanced out. How would this work? Each entrant would be placed in a category (see picking type of events above) and from there, teams would be made so that each team has roughly an equal amount good artists/writers/active posters (active posters can be checked from previous postfests) and such. Sadly, the teams lacked greatly at times making large parts of the scramble undesirable.

Spoiler: Postfests

A decent idea which I suggested should be changed to a team event. In hindsight it could have worked both ways BUT people were inactive across the board. Props to Marine for rallying Valor to be active but the other two teams had a lot of no shows which required a lot of effort to push people into entering and posting which became a huge bother. Overall, the postfest was largely a bittersweet event dealing a lot of frustration due to having to make your own posts (which is fun and nice) but then having to track down people to do the same.
I gave this event a 4/10 (for all 4 postfests)

Spoiler: July the 4th Flag Contest

This was a neat idea. A quick event to honor July 4th which included art and team work. One of the best events throughout the summer. The short duration made sense since July 4th is only 1 day and all teams did fairly well in this.
I gave this event a 9/10

Spoiler: Treasure Hunt

Yes, this event was draining as it took a lot of time BUT I appreciate it. It was a tough event that tested our grit which isn't always bad. It's not perfect though. It would have been better! How? Take the 4 weeks and take four forum sections. Each week, 20 coins were hidden across that specific section and teams hunt for them in the specific section. Participation points would be given (1 point per member) while the team who found the most would take first (8 points) and so on. If there was a tie, the team who submitted theirs faster would win. It would have kept the event fresh and not been a bore that people pushed to the back of their mind. I still respect it for it's effort though.
I gave this event a 6/10

Spoiler: Create Your Own Pokémon Cards

This was a good team event that was enjoyable. It got people working together and allowed appropriate amounts of collaboration that got the task done. The sad part is that inactive members made this a frustrating event and it became a burden on the core members. Props to the amazing event idea though Cad!
I gave this event a 7/10

Spoiler: Collab Writing Contest

Marine delivers a spectacular event idea! This one is for all the writing fans! I was busy and chose to focus on art more (for the scramble and my personal projects) so I skipped this event but from the looks, it was fun, team conducive and fostered great partnerships. The occasional grumble of an inactive member didn't do it much harm SINCE people who specifically signed up for this were the only ones participating.
I gave this event a 9/10

Spoiler: Summer Quiz Event

Eclipse came up with a fun and interesting event but it had some flaws. I heard people saying the 1999 event contained America focused questions for the most part. I am American so this didn't bother me but I can't really validate the claims. My main issue was that anyone could google anything and no one would know. Like seriously, unless someone copied the entire answer verbatim from a site (wow, suspicious much?) you could get away with anything. I tried to give an explanation with most of my answers but honestly, you could get away with it. I mean, honor and dignity has its own place but in the competition, I'm not sure how far that extended for some of us.
I give this event a 7/10

Spoiler: Shiny Hunting Contest

Another great event idea. I couldn't participate because of not having a console but it seems well thought out and was enjoyed by many. I would have suggested asking all the scramble participants before hand (before the scramble) about participation cause some teams got the short stick in this matter, often relying on one person to carry them through this event. People's participation and a lack of plan B in this case was the biggest problem.
I gave this event an 7/10

Spoiler: Design a Treasure

Fun little flash event that allowed us to express our individuality for ourselves and still win team points. Great event idea, I just wish we had more of these.
I gave this event a 10/10

Spoiler: Double battle competition

Kind of a sticky one here. It's great for Showdown people and Bloom showed us all that. While I enjoyed a Verity win, I would have thought this event would have been better if people battled by themselves without combining teams. It increased hassle and let's be real, in the end it was the one person winning it. Would have served as a good individual event.
I gave this event a 8/10

Spoiler: Sentenced to Storywriting

Very nice event that was thought out and well planned. Everyone had their theme and we worked together on it to make cute little stories. Nothing to complain about here cause it was executed perfectly.
I gave this event a 10/10

Spoiler: Collaborative Art Contest

Run by CK, this event emphasized team work and collaboration. It was one of the Scramble highlights as people worked to make one final symbolic piece. It is rated so low because it became a huge deal of frustration since active members did't wanna leave it (they had the determination to finish it, even by themselves) while inactive members tossed it aside. A good flip would have been an individual Signature Making event.
I gave this event a 6/10

Spoiler: Create A Pokémon

Another nice art based event. As with ALL the art based events (except the treasure one) teamwork was important which sucked if people ghosted on your team. I rate this event and the collaborative one so low because of the lack of participation would could have been aided by maybe equaling out the damage caused by the inactive members with more individual events.
I gave this event a 6/10

I may sound like a whiner or a sore loser but it's honestly not that. I enjoyed parts of the scramble and would actually like it if LV had events like these take place all year without teams and a huge scoreboard. My criticism stems from issues participants faced that left a pungent taste in some of our mouths. I really hope we can learn from these events. I don't claim to have all the solutions but the first step is figuring out where we went wrong and coming back better. Myself, as a member of Team Verity have already identified tons of places where I didn't work hard enough so there's that but it's a two way street that needs works to be done on it. I would encourage more member/staff discussion such as this above that would allow future events to run smoothly.

I do not have all the answers and most of this was thought of over the course of the events reacting specifically to issues voiced. I encourage people to debate and talk about improvements cause that is how we move forward​

 

U think that the event was well planned but now i realise that if i am gonna take part in an event i need to have some form of an art app or recording app!

But enjoyed what i could do during the event like the quiz and the feedback i was giving.
I wonder if there is going to be something like for winter time called Winter Wars or something haha coz the one in summer was great!

 

Changing the post fest to be more team oriented was a good idea. I just wish it had been that way from the start.

Actually that reminds me, I never got any of my pokepoints or the trophy for that last one.

I'm not sure that I liked how some events were announced out of the blue and only lasted a few days. That doesn't give a lot of people time to participate.

Then of course there were issues with member participation, but that's not really an organization issue on the admin/mod end of things.

 

I actually feel that individual events should have fewer points to be won and the team events more. Because then you lay the focus on the team events and the fact that this is a team competition. I agree that more small individual event would have been nice, though.

First of all, thank you for the kind words. I know every leader has tried their absolute hardest to work with the teams and I know you were helping out a lot as well. Now onto the more serious stuff.

As this was the first time that the Scramble was held, I admit that there would be some mistakes to be had. We should have been more vigilant about stuff like that and there are no excuses to be made for it.

I would like to point out that aside from one thread that showed team participation and the team as a whole, I never used my mod powers in the hub. I solely acted as a Team Captain and an active participant for my team, albeit I was probably one of the most active ones. I do agree that a staff member acting as an advisor could be off a lot of help for the teams, with keeping deadlines straight and spurring members on, as well as helping organize the hubs a bit more.

Talking about deadlines, I would like to ask that next time every deadline is kept. It is not fair to other teams who did finish and submitted in time to have to wait for other teams to submit their pieces and drawing everything out. I am well aware that my team would have benefitted from this at the time, but deadlines are there for a reason. Also, can all the deadlines be in one universal time zone, like GMT? If we have to go from Australian time to American time to BST and keep converting everything, people will get confused when they need to act and meet deadlines.

And lastly, the unexpected event dump on the first Friday. That was just really poorly timed for most of us and caused a lot of stress as we were trying to start up the other events in time. But this can be solved easily the next time around by making a schedule or something.

Wait, that didn't happen yet?

 

My pokepoints never changed and I know for sure I got over 100 posts so I should have gotten the trophy. I was keeping pretty good track of that. It's really difficult for me to make a bunch of posts, so I put in a lot of effort for that.

I don't know if it was just me, or if no one's gotten credit for that yet. I assumed it just didn't happen yet since sometimes there's a delay, but it's been a while now. I guess giving credit for events is one more criticism I have. Sometimes it would take days to get results from events, sometimes just a few hours. I know it might not be possible to know how long it's going to take, but having a rough time estimate would be nice.

 

Well now its time for my opinion... I still question how these other people were able to write so much... I type so slow thou...

Scoring:
My problem with this event was that events had little to no feedback in general and near the end this became a much bigger issue. This I believe this could have made the events swung in favor of Acuity. Now don't get me wrong! Acuitys win in the Collaborative Art Contest was 100% fair and many events had very solid entries on all sides BUT lets take the CAC for example. Acuity should have win that event and they did because the had a whole image they all worked on. I assume Verity did too (The image was broken for me) but because no reasoning (Which could have been because it was late-ish) was given, it felt like their potential win may have been taken away from them in favor of a team that could win. In the end the lack of feedback made our win feel less legit and Verity's fate seem sealed.

Now that I got the conspiracy theory thingy out of the way! Time for the other stuff

Score Amplifier:
Essentially if the winning team is at at least 40 points behind the winning team there score in events (not including participation) is doubled till it isn't. This would allow teams with what seems like a sealed loss (Like Verity, bless their hearts for still trying) capability of winning with a major comback!

Flag Event:
This event was THE WORST of all the events in SS. Now it wasn't the events fault but rather a teams fault for making it political, intentionally (As there is a way to word it were it isn't). Im sure people would have complained I, for example, named a Mew "NoLateTerm(Abortion)" and as such I believe that ANY political entry should be disqualified of any points for that said event.

Some might as why? Well people will likely hurt entries that are against their opinion and favor ones that are in their opinion and its insensitive to other peoples opinions on a politically nuetral forum

Battle Event:
As an retired expert battler I know Doubles OU isn't a popular format really compaired to all singles formats and VGC and using those as the event format would have helped it become more popular.

Shiny Event:
A 1-3 day Shiny Fishing Event were you try to catch as many Shiny Pokémon through fishing (Even repeats count) would balance this event out. But its role as a potential gamechanger is fine with me to stay as it is. It up to what the mods want to do.

Competitiveness:
I can't recall ANYONE saying anything like "This team sucks" or anything. I didn't mind the "This teams the best" regardless of what team they were on unlike other people. But denying help because you are on different teams is NOT COOL! Heck I even helped other teams and stragtegized on Discord!

Thats all for now!

 

Gonna reply to some stuff here. I've enjoyed seeing all the feedback pouring in. I actually have come around to this point Marine and I thank you for that. Individual events should have a lesser point allocation DUE to the fact that team events are more strenuous and require more effort to mobilize everyone. I echo the same sentiment that we sorely needed more individual events. Well said, Marine!

I agree with the fact that you made only one thread but I want to point out that more of that was needed. At times, the hubs descended into chaos and an experienced Moderator like yourself, or any staff member assigned specifically to each Hub would have been a great fix. Especially since this was the first Scramble, I would expect that would go without saying. Kudos to your role in Valor though, it was very inspiring leadership!

This was a very valid point. I can't say much since Verity submitted stuff after deadlines but if you want to keep everything fair, everyone has to be on the same page. This time fix and a stricter enforcement is definitely needed.

This was an interesting point you brought up and Wolf said something similar as well. The thing is, competition brings this kind of stress and surprise flash events, while adding to the stress, are not bad. They are exciting and spice up the mix. BUT, it does cause stress so how can we fix this? The easiest way would be to make these flash events either be limited (less) point worth or keep them individual events as it would allow people who are free and can participate to do something.

This was the first point of yours I wanted to touch on. Individual events (where people submitted their own stuff but points were won for their team) could have alleviated this problem. It would allow these members to do what they can, knowing that they contributed points if they won, and at least participation points if they didn't.

Yeah, shuffling out teams has to be the worst idea so no bueno.

This is highly contingent on new sign ups. Problem is, we didn't have many of those. The regular sign ups were already stretched thin with the amount of drop outs so it was all spiraling down.

Probably the most important statement said, yes, too many events caused so much stress. It was obvious from the get go that the amount of regular sign ups would be a long shot since so many people came out as inactive, yet events that ran for a whole month continued to be added which didn't help much.

This was me I believe, yes, again, shorter interval events, some long events and a split between entire team and individual FOR the team based events would have been great.

It is correct, the point being made though is that more of it was needed and sadly, never happened.

That is a fair point but something that could have been easily foreshadowed. I would like to think that no cheating happened BUT I know that when pressed for time in a competition, and results being needed, it DID happen.

This brings me to the last point.. I saw no one mentioned this so I'll bring it up again with a specific tag to both SMods.
@Eclipse @MarineAurora
Why wasn't a SOTM Style event considered/added to the event pool?

 

Because most of the users were completely overwhelmed during the first week thanks to the event dump and the staff was like, crap we overdid it a bit. Besides that, it has been done so incredibly often in event months that it was time for something different. At least that is what I think may have happened. I know that you like to do this, but others might not. It is basically what the staff thinks at that time is wanted/needed.

 

Okay, so now it is my time to express my opinions about Summer Scramble. Honestly I think Summer Scramble is a great idea, and it was a really nice addition to LV. Although, I do have to say that there are a couple things that probably should be worked on before the next Summer Scramble starts.

I'll start with what I think worked out.

The variety of events was especially nice, so then more people could do what they actually are more talented in. I honestly liked that, since I couldn't do much in the art events, I could still work on things like the writing and shiny hunting events. It helped bring people together, and helped with communication between them.

The staff did well with organizing most of the events, making sure that the submissions were all judged fair, and made sure to give enough time for most of them. The Team leaders also did well with keeping their events organized, and I applaud to everyone who helped out to that as well.

Now for some of my concerns about the event.

Honestly, I felt a bit aggravated when about four to five people from my team ended up becoming inactive members, and didn't post at all during the event. That made things a lot more stressful for the rest of our team, and harder on me as well. Acuity was able to pull ahead with a lot of the events, but I feel like something needs to be done about the inactive members of the teams. Possibly do a check on each person to see who is more likely to take part in the events, compared to those who who are not as active and will most likely not take part? I feel like that would most likely be the best thing to help out with this problem.

Earlier, I did mention that most of the events were pretty well organized. There were a couple of events that I felt were not as organized, and in multiple events I noticed that people had to ask when events were ending. There were several different times that things were due at different times, and it was a little annoying for me, who had to make sure to remember when everything was due. I think that all of the events should probably be surrounded around one time zone (I think someone else mentioned this as well, although I can't remember who af the moment).

I'd also like to talk about the timing of events being released. Most of the events were released in the first week, and it started to stress some of the people out. So when the Flag event came out about a week and a half later, it made things worse for them. My point being that to help out with this stress, all of these events should probably be spaced out evenly, so then people aren't overwhelmed with all of the events.

I don't know how much help this will be in the future, but I hope that this mini essay basically explains all of my concerns.

 

I enjoyed the event a lot and I had a lot of fun working together with people on my team. The main problem I had with this event was there were so many events I couldn't fully take part of. The only event I was able to do is Postfest and the art contest.

Art contest:
I enjoyed the art contest a lot but we weren't given as much information that would've probably helped the event a bit more. My team had issues with coming up with a theme, how to actually do a art collab and coming up with a canvas size. I don't know much about art collabs and how to run it. I helped take charge of this one because I've seen art speed paint videos dedicated to this but they don't explain how it fully works.

The Events:
For someone who is struggling to get back into Pokémon and I know darn well this is a Pokémon site, there were so many events I couldn't take part of and it made it rather difficult for me to take part of the summer event. If we had more events focused on creative minds and creativity that would've made it easier especially for artist like myself. One thing that would've worked really well for participation points is the art challenge. I was surprised I didn't see that event in this.

Capture The Flag:
The Flag event happened so quickly it made it difficult to come up with something right away. We have people who were out spending time with their family so I felt this event was a bit unfair. We weren't given much time and we had to rush rather quickly.

I would give this event a 6/10 since I enjoyed it so much but I felt so useless throughout the whole event and probably because my slight lack of interest in Pokémon. I don't know what's wrong with me lol.

 

I don't really have much to say other than I really enjoyed this event except for when some of the team members became basically inactive. Because of this, it put a lot of stress on more active team members to handle more events and I think that's a bit unfair. I understand that people have lives outside of LV and have things to do, but some team members went completely missing and others popped up one week and didn't show up the next week.

Additionally, I wish the events had different point values than each other, since some were definitely harder than others. Overall, I guess that's all the constructive criticism I have about Summer Scramble. Honestly, even if it was incredibly stressful at times, I really enjoyed it and it was a lot of fun!