Criteria for the Interior Design Contest?

[nranola]

Small things like planting/unplanting seeds in flower pots I do not think they would consider significant,

I'd argue that using flower pots may still be considered as breaking the rules because I've seen many people (myself included) use the flowers still in the pots as part of the decor. This was one of the things I was wondering about myself and wanted clarification on, but unfortunately we didn't get any official response on it.

I also believe that the GMs would be able to know which entrants modified their houses within the judging period if they took the time to look at their logs. I suppose that considering how many rule violators made it into the winners list, and some comments on the reddit thread from people who had knowingly forfeited the contest by modifying their interiors and shockingly still won, my expectations on them doing so is quite low. That said, I think they should at least disqualify the winners who had violated the no gpose/alteration rule and other clear violations that we can see via the screenshots. This is how they "do better".

I do appreciate them hosting the contest and I imagine it must be a huge undertaking going through as many entries as they do, but I hope they make this right. I would be perfectly fine losing contest after contest if the rules are implemented properly. The way things stands right now joining the contests feel like wasted time and effort.

[Asrun]

Well it's not from the English Team but on the German Thread there's been an actual repsonse posted.



What she said in the Post is that she understands our Frustration and that they will work on this in the Future. Including an Apologize.

Well.. atleast one response has been made?

Nice to have an answer, but an apology means nothing at this point.

The more I look at the winner list and the more i find evident violations of the rules...
Someone even made a video about it:
https://youtu.be/41W0aNgWz0s

It is just ridiculous for them to say that for future events of this kind they will consider the points mentioned in the german post. In this contest they set rules and then they choose as winners so many entries that so clearly violated those very same rules...

They should at least select other winners among the ones that followed the rules to get credibility back. If they won't react to this situation this time, I will not care for any future events or contests. Fool me once, shame on you....

[Ryaz]

And this is one of the few reasons why I didn't even bother entering the design contest.

[Jojoya]

Or don't enter because you care about winning. Enter because you enjoy sharing what you've done with others.

[HyoMinPark]

Or don't enter because you care about winning. Enter because you enjoy sharing what you've done with others.

There are personal blogs for that.

The complaints aren’t about people not about winning the contest; it’s about fairness, or rather, the lack thereof. The contest had rules in place, and people that did not adhere to them still won while people who did adhere to them lost. How is that fair? This wouldn’t be an issue if the contest just didn’t have these rules in place. Don’t have rules for a contest if you’re not going to abide by them. Simple.

[Myon88]

Not to derail the discussion, but I've always been puzzled at what the point of the 'can't edit your house' rule was in the first place. I mean, I highly doubt it was just meant to be some kind of arbitrary test of discipline for people who like to decorate a lot or something. I assume the screenshots are what are being evaluated and those are locked in at the time of submission, like sure you can put in 4.4 furniture later, but it isn't going to improve your chances.

There must be some kind of practical reason for it. Like perhaps they wanted to be able to see it in person to check if something wasn't photoshopped, or if an entry was particularly good they wanted to go in and grab extra pictures for media use or something. I don't know though, none of the reasons I can think of sound very compelling, anyone care to venture a guess?

[InkstainedGwyn]

Not to derail the discussion, but I've always been puzzled at what the point of the 'can't edit your house' rule was in the first place. I mean, I highly doubt it was just meant to be some kind of arbitrary test of discipline for people who like to decorate a lot or something. I assume the screenshots are what are being evaluated and those are locked in at the time of submission, like sure you can put in 4.4 furniture later, but it isn't going to improve your chances.

There must be some kind of practical reason for it. Like perhaps they wanted to be able to see it in person to check if something wasn't photoshopped, or if an entry was particularly good they wanted to go in and grab extra pictures for media use or something. I don't know though, none of the reasons I can think of sound very compelling, anyone care to venture a guess?

Pretty sure they actively checked houses out, or at least, I'd hope so. When limited to only a handful of photos, there's no way to show of some styles of houses, especially if you like to have rooms & the like. My .02 is that they just handed the project off to a bunch of interns and told them each to check out 200 houses and then pick their favourites, and rules weren't even talked about. Which, of course, I don't agree with - as with HyoMinPark, if they're not going to abide by rules they shouldn't institute them.

[Jojoya]

Not to derail the discussion, but I've always been puzzled at what the point of the 'can't edit your house' rule was in the first place. I mean, I highly doubt it was just meant to be some kind of arbitrary test of discipline for people who like to decorate a lot or something. I assume the screenshots are what are being evaluated and those are locked in at the time of submission, like sure you can put in 4.4 furniture later, but it isn't going to improve your chances.

There must be some kind of practical reason for it. Like perhaps they wanted to be able to see it in person to check if something wasn't photoshopped, or if an entry was particularly good they wanted to go in and grab extra pictures for media use or something. I don't know though, none of the reasons I can think of sound very compelling, anyone care to venture a guess?

They want to be able to enter the house/room to make certain the submitted screenshots are for the player's own housing and not from someone else's. Otherwise you get people submitting screenshots from someone else's house and all they have to do is say "I redecorated since entering the contest". This way they know that what was submitted was from the player's own house.

The contests are generally run by the Community team, not the game masters or the developers (though the judges could be from the other teams). I highly doubt they have access to game logs that would record if changes were made to a house and what those changes were (assuming those records are even kept - imagine the data storage that would be required if SE kept a separate history of every single housing layout/setup after every minute change made). If something was not clearly visible in the screenshot then they likely wouldn't know a change had been made but they could at least verify that what was in the screenshot was part of the house/room.

We can only hope that future contests are organized and run better.

[MizArai]

Nice to have an answer, but an apology means nothing at this point.

The more I look at the winner list and the more i find evident violations of the rules...
Someone even made a video about it:
https://youtu.be/41W0aNgWz0s

It is just ridiculous for them to say that for future events of this kind they will consider the points mentioned in the german post. In this contest they set rules and then they choose as winners so many entries that so clearly violated those very same rules...

They should at least select other winners among the ones that followed the rules to get credibility back. If they won't react to this situation this time, I will not care for any future events or contests. Fool me once, shame on you....

In the video he talks about people using 4.4 furnishings, but they show things that were added to the game in 4.3. I didn't see anything that had been added in 4.4 in any of the winners' pictures, though I haven't really taken a chance to study them yet.

He also talks nonsense about how winners used glitches for things like lofts, but that was something people specifically asked if it was ok and never got an answer to, it's also something that SE has known is happening for a long time and if they wanted to, they could easily fix most of it by just getting rid of the counter placement toggle. "Glitching" is a huge part of decorating houses in ffxiv, so it shouldn't have even been mentioned imo.

I do take offense to the person who won and used a screenshot of their yard (especially since they asked in the forum and were told they could not).

It was specifically stated that a person could make one entry in all the different sizes, so if you had an apt/ FC, cottage, house, and mansion you could enter all four, so I'm super happy for the person who won 3 times. That's amazing to me!

The winners who used /gpose, filters, had their character in the screenshots, or altered their screenshots with a 3rd party program should have been disqualified. Some of them were quite obvious.

With how lax everything else about the judging was, I do wonder how many people altered their home and won anyway, though it's been obvious for a long time that SE doesn't take these contests too seriously, since these kinds of things happen with all of them. I agree with the other people who say not to take it so serious yourself. Enter to show off your great home.

[GunnerMegaraptor]

As this was my first time entering, I didn’t realize how strictly the rules would be enforced. That said, I did make sure to read all of the rules thoroughly and followed them exactly to refrain from being disqualified. I even used the practice thread to make sure my post didn’t have any issues and so I wouldn’t need to make another post. After putting so much time and effort into complying to the given rules, it’s a bit frustrating that people who didn’t take the time to read the rules or broke them purposely won. Now I at least know that the contests are more casual than I anticipated (which I should have maybe realized based on the rewards) but I do wish that this information was stated more clearly for those that haven’t entered before. I think it’s pretty obvious that giving rules for a contest leads people to believe that entrants breaking these rules would be disqualified.

I also read about one person getting disqualified because they made a small change to their home, yet others that used /gpose or had their character in their screenshots won. If this is the case, then that is really unfair. Why should only some of the rules be enforced?

Another thing that was a little upsetting is that some of the entries that won appeared to have less effort put in than others. I think most were great, but I saw one that had a completely empty room with grass flooring and a couple were fairly plain, but there must have been a reason they were chosen of course. I suppose that the screenshots also may not have portrayed the house as well as physically visiting the home.

My main takeaway from the contest experience is that it’s not organized that well, but the rewards aren’t amazing so it’s not a big deal. Just meant to boost morale in the housing community and get people more interested in housing in general. I do hope they fine tune things in the future, but I won’t expect them to take any action regarding this currrent contest.