Contests for Implementing Player Suggested Content (Gear, Weapons, Quest, etc.)?

[kingfury]

It was a few years ago when I stumbled upon what would equate to a fan-fiction that detailed a unique and original quest that delved into a great story centered around Tavnazia's history. The Fan made quest was so intricate and detailed that it included every single Npc dialog, location for a cutscene, to the very boss fights including special attacks they would use. It was pretty epic.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure what became of the request, but the concept of such serious and well thought out player suggested content is pretty undeniable. We have great contest that calls on the creativity from players like the Fan Art contest, and If I'm not mistaken, we at one point had a contest that called for players to create the best In-game party event using the group meeting functionality or something like that. Yet we don't have contests that allows the player to use that creativity for actual in game content.

The question purposed in the Thread title asks if the Devs could possibly consider hosting an "Official Annual Suggestion Contest " where players submit suggestions for actual in-game content targeted towards Gear, Weapons, Spells, and Quest. The contest could function very much like the Fan Art contest works in terms of the Dev team judging the submissions to crown winners in each category. All the nice legal stuff could flow in the same vein as the Fan Art Contest as well in that the payoff would be actually getting your idea created and implemented into the game. The Devs could even showcase the visuals of the base weapons/gear/scrolls(each spell type up for suggestions)/locations(where the quests can be implemented).

(Armor) Head———Body———Hands:
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Heavy(Hd.)——Heavy(Bdy.)——Heavy(Hnd.)
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Mid(Hd.)——Mid(Bdy.)——Mid(Hnd.)
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Light(Hd.)——Light(Bdy.)——Light(Hnd.)
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Shields(Tower)——(Kite)——(Round)——(Buckler)
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(Weapons) GA—Axe—Sword—GS—Scyth—Dagger—Staff—Club—Polearm—H2H—Bow—Crossbow—Gun—Throwing—Ammo
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(Images of each of the respective weapon type with nothing written for the descriptions)
=========================================
(Scrolls) White Magic—Black Magic—Enhancing Magic—Enfeebling Magic—Elemental Magic—Healing Magic—Divine Magic—Summoning Magic
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(Images of each of the respective Scroll types with nothing written for the descriptions)
=========================================
(Quest Locations) The Republic of Bastok—The Kingdom of San d'Oria—The Federation of Windurst
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(Any of the areas associated with these zones)

And so on.
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»Submission Example

The rest would be up to the players to choose which category they would like to suggest in. One submission per category per player, up to maybe 3 categories per player. Each contest wouldn't have to focus on ALL these suggestion categories at once per contest. Even if only one or two items from each category was picked to let players suggest for, it would still be awesome. ^^ Add in all the other "fairness rules" you'd expect to see surrounding a contest of this magnitude. So long as the suggestions are of a serious and well thought out nature, this kind of contest could be the most highly anticipated FFXI event ever. Not saying that each submission would have to be on par with the example I spoke of above in terms of detail, but perhaps the forms per category that players have to fill out offer enough detail to the Devs so that the submissions are clear enough to explain the suggestions effectively.

The majority of post found here are not focused to specific concepts, even in the respective thread locations like say for instance the WHM thread. Players can post on literally anything regarding WHMs, where these contest would have very focused points of content to suggest for like the possible stats for a new Hand gear for Mages. The forms would be very simple to fill out (literally "Fill in the Blank"), so pretty much a child could handle filling one out.

The contest could be targeted around only one to two topics from each category, so it wouldn't have to be the whole list each time. So you would see a contest one year that focuses on a Head piece and a Body piece, a Polearm and a Sword, a Healing and Dark magic scroll, and one or two quest for players to submit suggestions for.

These "Suggestion contest" would be regarded very much the same as our suggestions here in that they are just "suggestions" which the Devs can use entirely or partially and change whatever they need to change. Everyone entering the contest would know and agree to this before submitting their suggestions.

Thanks for listening Devs /salute

[Kimble]

Must be time to show off this weeks artwork!

[Korpg]

Must be time to show off this weeks artwork!

That was what I was thinking too

[BorkBorkBork]

I think Ifrit mated with a galka.



As far as the idea no offense king but it's terrible and it looks like your looking for recognition again. These reason they do things like fan art contests is because its easy because all it requires is a screen shot. Suggestions are great but the average player has no idea what it takes to implement "their great idea" and it would probably be more of a pain in the ass then it would be worth. Even if the development team did decide to lean heavily on someones suggestion, if it wasn't exactly what the person suggested full on NERD RAGE would ensue.

Long story short the forums are a good place to suggest things but they already have to sift through 10 tons of crap to find a kernel of anything that is worth considering. Adding a contest would obligate them to implement something that might be horrible. Unless of course they can end the contest by saying I'm sorry all of your ideas are horrible but thank you for giving the dev team a good laugh.

If its a great idea a community rep will say cool idea I'll pass it along and we should let it die at that

[Korpg]

I think Ifrit mated with a galka.

It does seem that way, doesn't it?

[kingfury]

As far as the idea no offense king but it's terrible and it looks like your looking for recognition again. These reason they do things like fan art contests is because its easy because all it requires is a screen shot. Suggestions are great but the average player has no idea what it takes to implement "their great idea" and it would probably be more of a pain in the ass then it would be worth. Even if the development team did decide to lean heavily on someones suggestion, if it wasn't exactly what the person suggested full on NERD RAGE would ensue.

Long story short the forums are a good place to suggest things but they already have to sift through 10 tons of crap to find a kernel of anything that is worth considering. Adding a contest would obligate them to implement something that might be horrible. Unless of course they can end the contest by saying I'm sorry all of your ideas are horrible but thank you for giving the dev team a good laugh.

If its a great idea a community rep will say cool idea I'll pass it along and we should let it die at that

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Aside from it being really fun to participate in, why would someone enter a contest if they didn't want the possible recognition of being a winner? It would be a contest where folks compete, and hopefully folks would win and be celebrated for it. I'll correct you again, I've never "looked for recognition" from these suggestions.

The concept is called a "Suggestion Contest". Meaning that all submissions would be regarded as such, and SE wouldn't be "obligated" to implement anything. The fun of the contest would be in coming up with original ideas for the categories in question and "hoping" your suggestion gets picked. It's based on the same excitement of the Bonanza lottery thing y'know? You may or may not win. The "fairness rules" I mentioned in the OP would cover SE as well in that they have the responsibility to maintain game balance and therefore wouldn't add anything that would upset it. If all submissions fail to be something the Devs can realistically implement into the game, then yeah, they could say something like, "Unfortunately, none of the submissions we received for "category name" met the required game balance standards currently in place."

Just like the Fan Art contest, where there are great submissions and not so great submissions, a contest like this would see a wide range of potentially great ideas and not so great ideas. Contest usually have a way of separating the good from the bad fairly easily. Theses forums are indeed a great space for ideas to be tossed around, but this space is not focused on specific elements like these suggestion contest would be. Nor is there a limit on how many suggestions we can make here, where the contest would be limited per player and possibly cause folks to think deep and hard before submitting. That wouldn't stop the silly submissions completely of course, but it could reduce them significantly.

The idea would be to have a focused contest that's fun and creative.

[TybudX]

There's a reason why SE doesn't look to the player base for game related ideas, and evidence of it is all over these forums.

[kingfury]

There's a reason why SE doesn't look to the player base for game related ideas, and evidence of it is all over these forums.

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Huh? Abyssea adjustments, new warp Npcs, higher Fellow Npc levels, Gear augments via Synergy(stage 1), Atma infusement menu additions, better skill up options, new porter moogles storage options, more inventory space (moogle sack), etc, etc. all came from player based suggestions.

[Yarly]

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Huh? Abyssea adjustments, new warp Npcs, higher Fellow Npc levels, Gear augments via Synergy(stage 1), Atma infusement menu additions, better skill up options, new porter moogles storage options, more inventory space (moogle sack), etc, etc. all came from player based suggestions.

They came from player based suggestions that started from other forums. The posters on these forums compared to the actual playerbase are like the Vancouver rioters compared to Vancouver citizens. An embarrassment.

[HFX7686]

This is a terrible idea. Fan art and fiction, sure, but stuff this is too complicated and difficult for players to do.