Criteria for the Interior Design Contest?

[Felinchen]

Uh, I'm 'glad' to see that here in the English Forums is a thread about the contest as well. I only wrote in the German one before.

Well, it was my very first contest in general. I am a very shy person and I don't know many people on my server, so I mostly decorate the houses for myself, and let my boyfriend look at them.

Since he kept saying I should participate, I did in the end... and omg I won twice!

BUT before I even knew I won, I saw Meoni's video on YouTube and I was fairly sad to hear, so many people won, even tho they broke rules.
I am a very strikt person when it comes to rules! It was very hard for me to not be able to change my interior for such a long time, since I entered all 3 houses (my personal, the one of my BF where I live and my FC house).

So when 4.4 came live, I was so sad I couldn't try out any of the new furniture and put them all in my private room. xD
I was so scared to do something "wrong" and risk my chance to win. And now all I saw (and I studied all winner entries a lot) how many people broke the rules.

By the way I am not a big fan of the fact that you can win twice or even more. Yes, I won twice out of my 3 entries, but all I thought was, if I enter 3 times, it will just give me a higher chance to win. Since in the end I cannot use the rewards twice, can I? So I found it unfair towards other really good entries that I saw.

But the biggest issue is still those /gpose users and the garden screenshot and that person who won twice with her character on every screenshot....

(Btw not because I wanted to win a third time, but because I think there were many great entries that missed their chance to win, and got 'kicked' out by rulebreakers...)

[Luna_Ariana]

Heyhoo schön dich kennen zu lernen Felinchen!

About the Winning Twice part please keep this in mind: THEY choose you win another therefore it is NOT you to blame! So no need to worry for this at first.


But since you are one of the Winners who won Multiple Times maybe you as the Winner can ask them how they will handle the Prize in that situation.

[Felinchen]

I did say that in the german forum already. And the dev that answered, said regarding the multiple time winners, that they will see in the future what they can do about it to avoid getting the rewards twice then... Not very helpful at all.
Of course I am very happy and honored that they chose two of my entries to win, but I can understand that it is disappointing for others.

And thank you Luna, nice to meet you, too.

[Harmonea]

Something else that bothers me about this contest that I'm surprised no one else has brought up: Japanese accounts got their own set of 200 winners, while all of NA and EU get lumped into one set... even though the contests were posted as separate region events.

I don't mind us being part of the same event... if that is made clear beforehand. But the fact that they were smushed together afterward? It seems like SE simply did not want to take the time to select a third set of winners.

Duplicate winners, winners who disobeyed every rule they possibly could, and only half the winning slots available for our regions.... Every last one of us who followed the rules deserved MUCH better than this selection process.

[HyoMinPark]

Something else that bothers me about this contest that I'm surprised no one else has brought up: Japanese accounts got their own set of 200 winners, while all of NA and EU get lumped into one set... even though the contests were posted as separate region events.

I don't mind us being part of the same event... if that is made clear beforehand. But the fact that they were smushed together afterward? It seems like SE simply did not want to take the time to select a third set of winners.

Duplicate winners, winners who disobeyed every rule they possibly could, and only half the winning slots available for our regions.... Every last one of us who followed the rules deserved MUCH better than this selection process.

Luna_Ariana actually made a thread where some posters discussed the combining of NA’s and EU’s contestant pools.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-your-Thoughts

Personally, I disagree with the practice, and it was never really made clear that it would be done within the contest rules, unless I am really missing something. The ambiguity of this action, I think, is what has a lot of people cross; though, I disagree with the combination unless they were going to do a single 200 winners out of all three regions combined—I don’t find it fair that JP was its own contestant pool, where as the other two had to compete with one another (and the other two also had more participants and more entries compared to JP, making the competition even tighter).

[not_ya_wify]

I made this thread a while ago and I don't feel as upset anymore but as someone else said, I was pretty salty about the results. Particularly because one of the individuals who won 4 times is not only stalking and bullying someone from the decorating community but we know that ALL of her designs are 1:1 copies of Japanese designs she's taken from housing snap. Obviously the people who judged wouldn't know those were blatant copies unless they patrol new entries on housing snap every single day like some of us decorators do. But I was still angry this person won in every category whereas really skillful designers who make their own designs didn't win.

It's over now. I'm disappointed and feel little hope for future contests.

As far as disqualifying people who already won goes: I wouldn't do that. Imagine how disappointing that would be if you were in their shoes. They should be grandfathered in.

But for the next contest, I would just get rid of those rules like no gpose, no characters etc. Those rules weren't enforced and frankly don't make sense. I can see that square would want ideally screenshots without filters and make sure the houses look at least mostly the same when visiting but they didn't enforce the rules which really sucks for those people who abided by them. The no gpose isn't even so bad but I actually didn't decorate my house and FC for 3 months even though I really wanted to. Then I didn't win in either of those categories and was very upset that I could have decorated this whole time. It would have made no difference. That rule was awful. They basically took my only reason to play away and it was for nothing.

As far as duplicate prizes go: I honestly don't care about the prizes at all. I wanted to win because I was hoping that more people would come visit my house in person and leave a guestbook entry. But ultimately, even the apartment I won with has had 0 new guestbook entries since the contest, so I guess that didn't help at all.

It would be nice if we get duplicate prizes if we could sell them or give to friends. I honestly will maybe use one of them but not the other 5. They're not that cool.
If someone wins several categories they should get honorable mentions or something and let someone else win.