Valentines day event fail

[E4EO]

They shouldn’t have had Astrid to begin with.

Knowing this community, picking between a cutesy wutsy Elezen girl, a male highlander, and a male Elezen, the choice for the vast majority of said community members would be Astrid, not because of her idea, but because she’s cute. You see way more cute/waifu races about then Elezen or Highlanders, it’s no small secret that the community prefers cute/sexy things, so this event might as well have been rigged.

Would’ve been better to have three males, maybe not a lalafell as people see them as cute, or a female Rogadyn, Highlander, or Elezen instead, just to minimize the amount of people picking based of cuteness (Or sexiness if Astrid was replaced with a female Au Ra, Viera, or Female miqote) and instead the merits of ones idea. Ridiculous

(guilty of the cute/waifu race myself at the moment, still deciding on whether to switch back to male Xaela or maybe give male Elezen a shot)

[Voidedge_Ragna]

So many speculate why ... ppl just ran for the red one skipping cutscene, Forum has always been a minority. A lot of players dont read the lodestone or updates so im sure 80% of players dont even know it was dyeable to begin with.

When my partner told me the results are out i asked "did the aura girl win" this is how little i even cared about the whole deal, why am i doing it? Glam/Achievement. But it goes to show that while many believe this to be a big thing ... trust me, most just want "ooooh red works on V-day"

It also did not help that the only female in the race was aligned to that color i think.

If they wanted to do this neutral they would've needed 1 per race and gender giving out a neutral while one which you can dye yourself or get asked how you'd like to dye it.
And even then it would've been between the female miqo, aura and the hyur with long ears.

[Hasrat]

Marcette may be a terrible match, but, at least it gives the guy a chance to learn to be more assertive, and he learns more about what to avoid in the future. I still hold that at least he's gaining experience.

[Chyro]

Ah, so that's what it was about.
On my server there was someone ranting in shout about people chosing Astrid just for the red outfit.
Was wondering why they were angry about people making obvious decisions.
Didn't even know it had some majority vote result / effect that would affect anyone else in the server (or well, those who cared).

I didn't really care for either of the 3 NPC's and went with the red choice cause it seemed the least likely to look bad on my char.
..still looked bad, so probably gonna discard it anyhow. And the story was mildly amusing (at least the WoL's helpless smile and shrug at the end).

The 2-player valentines trial is quite fun though, but only did it once so far - may quickly get repetitive if doing it more often.

Overall I feel it's like any other event so far - some light fun and distraction with cosmetic rewards that may be hit or miss.
Don't really have an opinion on the vote thing. It's something they did, maybe tried it out as an experiment for future reference.
Now they know how easily player votes may be swayed very one-sided depending on presentation of the event / choices, and will maybe do better if something similar comes up in the future.

[Dogempire]

Honestly, a lot of people just skipped the story and chose Astrid because red, from what I can tell from asking around.

It's kind of sad people just chose based on appearance instead of actual substance, but that's this game's community in a nutshell.

[Iscah]

I'll be honest - once I'd ticked off picking each of the three options on at least one alt, I just went with red (not Astrid) for the others. The colour seems most appropriate for the outfit theme, and "Rose" sounds nicest and is most associated with Valentine's Day. Petty, perhaps, but there wasn't much else to go on.

Honestly I feel cheated, because I never would have voted to set up poor Ywain with Marcette. She's awful. But we had literally nothing to go on.

(Then again I would have felt just as cheated having the 'best choice' outfit locked behind voting for that prospect. Can't win either way.)

I don't think we'll see this mass voting system again - not without some contingency plans anyway. It seems like an idea that sounded good on paper and they didn't think through the 'wasted work' angle of it.

[LalaRu]

You don't like who won so the event was a failure and votes rigged, eh?
I'm sure I did read same thing on more serious things.

Someone is kicked out a duty and that's fine because "majority" decided that, but when the same "majority" made Astrid win, that is no good? Talk about double standards.

[Iscah]

You don't like who won so the event was a failure and votes rigged, eh?
I'm sure I did read same thing on more serious things.

Personally I feel like the failure is more that every single world voted the same way when the whole concept of the event was that there were three possible outcomes with scenarios already written and ready to play out.

If not a single person gets to play two of those three scenarios, ever, then something has gone wrong with the overall design of the event - regardless of the content of the individual stories.

[RicaRuin]

You don't like who won so the event was a failure and votes rigged, eh?
I'm sure I did read same thing on more serious things.

Someone is kicked out a duty and that's fine because "majority" decided that, but when the same "majority" made Astrid win, that is no good? Talk about double standards.

For some people, it's less about that their favourite didn't win and more about the fact that you have no way to experience the other Questlines, not even on YouTube. (Reading a script is just not the same.)

[MsQi]

You don't like who won so the event was a failure and votes rigged, eh?
I'm sure I did read same thing on more serious things.

Someone is kicked out a duty and that's fine because "majority" decided that, but when the same "majority" made Astrid win, that is no good? Talk about double standards.

Some people are saying rigged, but that really isn't the right word. Rigged usually means someone is altering the actual vote and since they haven't given us numbers there isn't much we can say about that.

The issue is the built in bias. If their objective was to produce a variety of results (some worlds choosing differently) they didn't really try to even the playing field. Assuming the devs know their player base, and a little bit about people in general ,they seem to have intentionally skewed it in favor in Astrid.

1. Cute Girl - You need only look at the game population to see this.
2. Familiar Character - Astrid was a part of previous V-Day events.
3. Color - Blue and Red are far more popular than yellow, and since this is a V-Day event, and the dress has a heart motif there would be a bias in favor of Red.

The factors that seem to even the playing field:
1. What the candidates said. (honestly none are great)
2. The outfits can be dyed the exact colors, or any color

Both of those require that people read, either the quest dialog or the website. If you have experience with dye in this game you may be skeptical that the match is exact, and why would you worry about dyes if you can just get the color you want?

People were predicting a landslide victory for Astrid before the event began. I pushed for Bert mostly because I knew he would be the least favored, hoping there would be some variety. I also find his suggestion the least bad.

You see it’s not that people are doubting the majority, but that the devs' objective was not to provide a varied experience. I think this shows that players care more about what they get than content. I’m guessing that the devs suspected this, but wanted something that demonstrated this.