Criteria for the Interior Design Contest?

[not_ya_wify]

The winners for the interior design contest were announced today. Congratulations to the winners. There were some very creative designs. I know several of the winning designers (myself included) and they absolutely deserve their win. But I was kind of stumped. There were TWO HUNDRED winners but some of the best designs didn’t get anything in any category.

Like one of the people who didn’t get anything is basically a legend on our side of the pond and literally anyone who has done anything in housing has taken inspiration from her (even if that inspiration came from a third party who was inspired by her). Her design didn’t make it but skill and creativity wise it’s top notch.

Even when I looked at the Japanese winners, there were a lot of creative ideas but few of the caliber you see on housingsnap on a daily basis.

I’ve been trying to wrap my head around this and wonder why so many great designs didn’t make it and wonder if they were disqualified (that would certainly lessen the feelings of rejection).

My hypothesis is that designs with excessive glitching were disqualified or that the judges were looking for designs that can be recreated without difficult glitches.

We all checked the winners from 2 years ago and saw table float glitches, so we assumed glitching was fine. However, none of the winners are using a ton of glitches besides table and wall floats.

[Kirbfucius]

Seems there was a certain aesthetic of "modern, clean, with window libraries" on a lot of them. So, ya know, unpainted partitions, piles of windows, and book shelves.

[Arazehl]

SE seems to makes the rules, but those rules don't mean a thing, when judging these design contests. Not only were there glitches obviously used in the designs, some even used filters like /gpose or photoshop, and 4.3 housing items were used past the deadline.

I'm happy for the winners but at the same time, why does SE bother to put in a list of requirements for these contests, when they don't follow their own rules at the time of judging? Why do people bother entering something that is clearly not on the up and up according to the terms outlined by SE?

[Beckett]

SE seems to makes the rules, but those rules don't mean a thing, when judging these design contests. Not only were there glitches obviously used in the designs, some even used filters like /gpose or photoshop, and 4.3 housing items were used past the deadline

There was no written rule against using glitches, but if it's true some winners used gpose and photoshop, then that's a real shame. Not because those people didn't deserve to win, but because others could have benefited from those tools if it had been known that they were acceptable.

[HyoMinPark]

There was no written rule against using glitches, but if it's true some winners used gpose and photoshop, then that's a real shame. Not because those people didn't deserve to win, but because others could have benefited from those tools if it had been known that they were acceptable.

It is. Quite a few very obviously used the filters you find in /gpose in their screenshot submissions.

I'm more miffed about the fact that the people who broke the rules still won. There were contestants who did not abide by the "do not make any changes to your estate until the winners are announced" rule, yet they were not disqualified. Two of the houses that won and were on my server had 4.4 housing items added to their interior (the partition from Saint Mocianne's HM and the new Mahogany bed). I even read a comment from a winner on Reddit who claimed they had redone their entire interior thinking "Meh screw it, I want to redecorate" and won.

Why have rules if you aren't going to enforce them?

I will happily congratulate those who played by the rules. And some of the designs that won looked really nice and deserved to win. But it sucks for those who didn't win, who did play by the rules, and who lost to entries that clearly did not play by the rules.

Not to mention the other aspects of the contest I disagree with, such as the people who won multiple times and the lumping together of NA/EU while JP was its separate contestant pool. Honestly the proportions for the winning categories themselves weren't proportionate at all.

[Miles_Maelstrom]

There was no written rule against using glitches, but if it's true some winners used gpose and photoshop, then that's a real shame. Not because those people didn't deserve to win, but because others could have benefited from those tools if it had been known that they were acceptable.

There most certainly are rules against making use of exploits. Which housing glitches definitely fall into that category especially for this contest when they were used to give an advantage over other players in an in game event.

[Miles_Maelstrom]

Also I would like to make a point in here. Majority of the inners chosen made use of exploits, like false windows on particians and floating tabletop items. SE clearly enjoys the effects these types of glitches, why not make them features and easier to do. Especially the most basic ones like stages acting a floor or the false windows able to be placed on particians. The false window thing boggles my mind, they go out of the way to make sure you know ingame they are false windows no real ones but they still have this wierd only usable on outerwalls.

[Beckett]

There most certainly are rules against making use of exploits. Which housing glitches definitely fall into that category especially for this contest when they were used to give an advantage over other players in an in game event.

I can't find anything about that in the official contest rules. The closest I can see is

(k) violate any other rule or condition in these terms or on this webpage

which could maybe link to violating the FFXIV TOS, which maybe has something in it that applies to housing exploits, but I'm not willing to dig that far.

Their stance on housing exploits with this contest seems to be the same as their stance on the exploits in general, the exploits aren't hurting anyone (and are bringing joy to many), so they'll look the other way.

[Vidu]

There most certainly are rules against making use of exploits. Which housing glitches definitely fall into that category especially for this contest when they were used to give an advantage over other players in an in game event.

They were asked to clarify wether or not the use of those glitches was allowed or not - at least both in the english and the german part of the forum. Both questions went unanswered and were ignored or "overlooked". So it was by no means clear wether or not the use of those glitches was against any rules - if it would have been, there would be an answer from them saying "You may not make use of them".

[Myon88]

Are there seriously people who view floating furniture, or even clipping furniture together (because they aren't solid objects) as exploits? That's a very strange stance to take. You are simply using the tools the default housing editor gives you in completely vanilla ways.

You may as well say weaving ogcds is 'glitching', or slidecasting is 'glitching'. I'm sure the former seems like witchcraft to those without an understanding of the combat system. And the latter is an interesting subject actually, since you're abusing the leniency of the lag tolerance built into the action queue. Logic would imply that casting a 2.5s spell with a 2.5s gcd would leave you completely rooted, but with slidecasting even the impossible is possible. Even things like requiring subcommand menu keybinds/interactions remind me of things like the legacy/standard camera toggles in the combat side of the game. By simply flipping a toggle, you gain functionality (instant 180 turns) that is literally impossible otherwise - is that an exploit?

Well I'm not here to change anyone's mind, but to offer some advice. Sometimes, you'll miss out on opportunities and utility if you're too timid to extrapolate from imperfect knowledge and make a call. We know that egregious housing related bugs have been fixed in the past (out of bounds furniture, clipping aquariums) and yet these 'glitches' persist, it seems like a rather safe bet to me.