Hair contest: petitioning

[DawnSolaria]

So, you think more diversity in the voting pool would make people complain more about a lack of diversity....?

More entries means more options. More options means less reason to complain about a lack of options...

I said nothing of lacking in diversity. If there are more entries shown then the likelihood of duplication or very similar hair style would increase, which is an already present problem in the current 25 choice voting.

[Glasya]

Before they did this event no one said a thing about in game hairstyle. Now an event to involve community earned them the title of "unfair".

Square Enix is the one at fault here for approaching the contest judging with such an unprofessional attitude.
Again, if they were uncommitted to policing the entries as stipulated by the guidelines and the contest boilerplate they absolutely should not have gone through with this event. The contest is a boondoggle; now a lot of people are mad, and it was caused by bias and incompetence.

If i were the Devs i sure as hell would not want to hold another one.

And you know what? If this is their attitude, I really hope they don't.

[Adire]

I said nothing of lacking in diversity. If there are more entries shown then the likelihood of duplication or very similar hair style would increase, which is an already present problem in the current 25 choice voting.

Lol. Seems like you said that to me, essentially. Seeing as how you seem to support having a very limited pool of potential creativity vs having an unrestricted one.

Look at it this way. There might be some hairstyles that look similar to each other. But there will also be a ton of hairstyles that don't. And those will have a fair chance to win. Instead, we get a small, homogeneous collection of hairstyles that SE picked anyways, and the ones outside of the norm will never even get a chance to see the light of day.

Anyone who complains about having unrestricted options to vote on what they like will be looked at funny. There is literally nothing to logically complain about with having a larger pool of options.

We complain about this now because we don't have a choice, our votes are restricted to SE's homogenous collection. If all entries were open to voting, we would not have that to complain about, and we could just happily skip over the similar entries or pick our favorite among them...we don't have that benefit with how the contest was done. We are locked in to voting for one of SE's picks.

[DawnSolaria]

...

But that is what a contest is. Many entries selected by a few judge for simplicity's sake. I have never heard of a contest that allowed the masses to vote on it. Most contest winner is decided by the judge(which is what SE should have done). And you dont go to the judge and cry foul just because you think the result is "unfair".

And while its true that having more option is always better, its unrealistic to hope that SE will show EVERY SINGLE entry(thousands!) for people to vote on, just to please a few vocal posters on the forum.

For the record im not against a tournament or more option, I am however against constant stream of senseless complains(which would no doubt multiply if the contest was expanded into a larger magnitude). Which i suppose is a rather silly thing to go up against... forum will always find something to complain. I guess I am essentially punching a sandbag that will swing back at me every single time..

Some of us are tired, tired of seeing complains every time SE does something nice for the players. While some of these complains might have valid points, I just feel like sometimes the people who kept quiet need to speak up to positively reinforce SE, to let them know that" we really appreciate you giving us a chance at creating our own hair style", or " thank you for the fire work and the fun beach party during moonflaire event.", and not just "the contest unfair and the entries sucked", or "quest line for this event sucked".

[Adire]

...

A contest is a competition. How the competition's voting method happens differs.

Tournaments exist. And while what contestants have to do to win may differ, accumulating votes is one thing they have to do sometimes. A tournament voting for this would not have to be that complicated. The technology the forums have is all that is needed.

Here's one example of a contest allowing the masses to vote (and using a tournament method): https://www.wwetoughenough.com/

The masses on this show have more voting power than the judges, as it should be. The contest is more about competitors making the masses like them than the judges. Much like how in this hair contest's end result, it's more important that the community like the winning style than it is for the judges to like it. If they can do a voting from the masses on the fly, I'm sure SE could do it within a few months.

And I can think of quite a few instances where judges have been accused of being, and successfully found to be unfair. But that's beside the point, as this contest was unfair in that it's clear SE had their mind made up already of what kind of hairstyles they were going to pick for us to vote on. Hairstyles that fit the game's usual theme.

It's not unrealistic for them to do a tournament voting. This is the 21st century and the forums already provide the needed technology. Brackets would narrow down the contestants, 3 months would be adequate time to cover most, if not all hairstyles in the voting. All they would need is an efficient format and schedule. Also, it wouldn't just please a "few vocal posters", it would please the entire community. What community wouldn't appreciate such an open, close to the community approach taken by SE?

Also, SE is a company. It isn't a person who has feelings. The team members of course have feelings, but rarely do I see anyone criticizing a certain member of SE, besides maybe Yoshida (but he's the face of FFXIV, and much like the President, people who completely blame him for things or completely praise him for things aren't entirely correct). It's almost always criticism of the company's choices or the company in general.

The success that we, as a community, have brought them is what speaks to the company more than anything else. And yes, I mean the people who voice their complaints too.

Oh, and SE could have at least tried to get an accurate representation of different tastes the community has. Their collection was not very accurate apparently, judging by the discontent and very unique hairstyles posted on the thread people made who didn't get chosen.

[KasKatta]

...

It is sad but true. It is the nature of the beast (community) to always have something to complain about. But I also believe criticism is not the same as complaint, and I feel most here have offered honest, constructive criticism rather than "senseless" complaint. And I also believe that these suggestions would have minimized overall complaint if they had been considered in the initial contest. Even companies as big and awesome as SE are not perfect and need a bit of critique now and again. Imagine where we'd be if no one spoke up about 1.0?

I understand showing every entry might sound impractical but allowing for more than 25 is not impractical.

[DawnSolaria]

It is sad but true. It is the nature of the beast (community) to always have something to complain about. But I also believe criticism is not the same as complaint, and I feel most here have offered honest, constructive criticism rather than "senseless" complaint. And I also believe that these suggestions would have minimized overall complaint if they had been considered in the initial contest. Even companies as big and awesome as SE are not perfect and need a bit of critique now and again. Imagine where we'd be if no one spoke up about 1.0?

I understand showing every entry might sound impractical but allowing for more than 25 is not impractical.

I do not disagree with anything you have said. It just really wore me down that 9/10 thread on front page of the forum is someone bitching about something.

[DamianFatale]

What makes me the most angry is that they are only doing two of each gender.. and I'm not even sure I'll wear one of them. I want the top FIVE not just two.. two isn't going to represent a broad range of people. :/

[LunaHoshino]

I seriously doubt there would be less complain. Most of the complain point in this thread is that choices lacks creativity and are similar to each other, issue like that would just be more common if they showed all of the entries.

There are at least two dozen entries between the Live Letter and the "Show us your contest submissions" thread that I would have voted for because they actually represented styles that I wanted to see in the game. As it is, I'm not voting because none of the ones that made the finals interest me at all, mainly due to being too similar either to each other or to styles that we already have. If you want short hair, you'd better hope you like 8, 23 or 24, because those are your only choices. Don't like any of those three? Well, tough.

Meanwhile, if you like long hair, you've got about 20 styles to pick from, meaning that the people who wanted a long hairstyle have a selection that's almost about four times as large as what the people who wanted short or medium-length hair get. Doesn't that strike you as being more than a little unbalanced?

[Glasya]

The fucking entitled generation holy shit.

Strawman, ad hominem, unwarranted assumptions, appeal to motive, and wow, even a "starving children in Africa" relative privation fallacy with that 1.0 comparison.