Monthly Competition Feedback

Having finished judging for the first competition yesterday, I think now is a fitting time to ask for everyone’s feedback on the competition while it’s still fresh in everyone’s minds. Please reply with your constructive criticism, questions, suggestions, comments, etc.

I check the forums a fair bit, so if you want to bring something to my attention, for the competition, I’d recommend leaving it here.

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e, thats all I have to say

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Imma just say that theme is important. Preferably it should be something new, or something that needs development. The sorting theme was really good so keep it up :+1:

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yeah the bars pretty high, might be hard to match it.

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Glad you enjoyed the theme, hopefully future themes work out just as well. I’ve got a list of stuff I want the theme to be, it’s something like this:

  • Challenging
  • Simple to understand
  • Diverse solutions
  • Enjoyable
  • Not too specific so there’s room for creative ideas
    etc etc

Primary goal is always to make it an enjoyable experience, all the other points are just more or less my approach to it.

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I think judging needs to be streamlined. In a small way with better communication about judging requirements, but mostly in terms of the actual judging period. 4 hours of judging gets long very fast. And with everyone talking over everyone else, including the judges, it was very hard to follow what was going on. What could be a great improvement would be a possible speaking order for each build, then asking questions. Also, maybe giving a set time for presentation? For example, at each plot, the group makes a 1-2 minute explanation, gives a 1-2 min max demonstration, then each judge gets a minute or two to ask questions. At most, each plot takes 10 minutes, and at the low end 3-5.

Overall, I enjoyed the competition. I thought the theme was well chosen, the plot sizes reasonable, the expectations reachable, and the submissions diverse and interesting.

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Great suggestion, I think setting up specific times for everything would be a good way to avoid it taking forever.

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I think the judging should be more oriented around the actual design, and each competitor has to say all the designs pros and cons, how and why it works, and all the struggles he had making it. The way the competitor represents the design with certain IO does not matter, the actual design does, so like it does not matter if the design is shown in a CPU or with some levers and lights. The judging was good in the first competition but I think it should be better. It may be just me and my specific case, but I want to make change for the better for all, not just because I’m not satisfied with the judging of me.
I agree with Mr_Tea for making the judging more planned.
And of course the competition was amazing!
I like the way it turned out overall, and am looking forward to the next one!

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I think each build should have some values rated, for example 5: speed, size, expandability, usability, UI. And then it would make it simple, faster and more straight forward for the judges. Tho it is understandable that the judging wasn’t so refined because its the first time judging.

Also, i wanted to say thank you to everyone who was involved in the competition, because i too, had a great time in the competition

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Not to mention that the competitions made ORE more alive than ever, reaching up to +50 players online and in voice chat on the last day of the competition. Its really good for making us think and design new stuff that can be used later or adapted in other builds to make the more compact/faster/more efficient. Overall I REALLY loved this new concept of having monthly competitions :smiley:

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its like game jams but with red stone

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i didnt even participate and i enjoyed it. by all means keep this going, i’ll get the chance to join it next time

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Maybe a tournament for judging? would be more efficient to minimize comparisons and be less about memorability. Though it could be unfair if the number of contestants aren’t a power of 2.

I think a point system is counter-productive, because it forces contestants to prioritize aspects of their build that grants the most points for their work. Leaving some intuition-based judging makes the competition more about creativity and merit.

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Yeah I’m thinking about having the judging be more than just “the judges can do whatever” so I don’t just leave all the work of figuring it out each time to the judges.

I no get enough space and couldn’t really do as well as I’d like in time

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Yeah I definitely wanna work on getting students the same space as builders so things stay fair

ye cause we already have to rely on others for world edit, also about that you should have a few more builders trusted to plot so that when no one else was on there is still someone who can we

In my opinion the sorter theme was perfect, I don’t think anything will match it, but this one was a little too hard - and I don’t think increasing the time limit would really help. Having some get cut out due to them being unfinished or not working is a good attribute though, it credits the ones that do end up working.
I wouldn’t have the next one anonymous, personally, because in the end some get leaked by accident as people say things like “Wow, you’re making a hex one?! Oops, it’s the only hex one…”, and having some anonymous and some revealed makes it less fair than if it was just open.
Regarding the Verlio thing, while it was a joke at first, I must agree with Trecar. Judging being stalled and interrupted with everyong getting confused and moving to school for no real reason was just silly. I can imagine it would have been a very messy ordeal if there were two different competitions for students and builders.

Don’t get the wrong impression though, I still really enjoyed it I just thought I should give as much constructive feedback as possible.

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This was the first time (of course) that I participated on a competition so I don’t know how the sorting comp went. However, I really enjoyed it! Although it was pretty hard, it is nice to have a finished build at the end. For feedback:
Although the anonymous is more fair (especially for new people like Fearless and me) it is not good for the showcase of the redstone. It is just that you cannot documentate redstone easy and so the judges are just bombarded with an uncommented code in a way. For me I would have like to explain our builds a little bit just so they can see why it is special in some cases. (or not xD)
For the UI - thing: You should definetly judge the UI and how easy it is to use. Maybe you can think of different categories like User-friendly, creativity, speed, compactness, bonus points.
This makes people maybe more aware that they have to make a nice UI to win.
Other than that: Nicely done and I can’t wait for the next monthly one! Thanks for organizing Les, and thanks to the judges for taking their time. :slight_smile:

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although you should not expect a good ui on difficult competitiions in 2 days like the line drawer