Bardics and Artisanals

Kaden

So during the last announcement of Bardics and Artisanal winners, they said they'd be changing things in exciting ways. Now they've revealed these changes and...I honestly find myself a bit confused and underwhelmed. Mostly because it seems the writers will be competing with the artists now and it's going to be quarterly now instead of monthly. It seems to me that the recent announcement just raises more questions than it does answers and I can say I have more than a few:

How will rankings resolve now? Will the point system be changed to reflect the fact the contests take longer?

Will there be more spots for placing now that it's been combined?

Does that mean that people who can write and do art are limited to just one submission now? (I'm really just a writer but that sucks for the really talented people who do a bit of everything. )

And let's be honest here too: will the prize for winning or going up a rank scale?

I don't know how many other lurkers are regulars in the bardics but what do you lot think?

Thaumas

I'd rather they significantly cut or completely removed the credit prizes rather than give them both less and less frequently. In my opinion, it sucks. It sucks badly.

Delphinus

I suspect the longer judging periods are so they can get more high-quality submissions. Exclusivity is probably meant to cut back on the amount of total submissions, lessening the workload.

Tahquil

Kaden

@Delphinus

That's what I think too, I'm just not what sure what we're supposed to be excited about here exactly since they mentioned exciting changes last time. So maybe it's just half the announcement--at least I certainly hope it's just half the announcement. :P

Namino

Also announcing the theme of this season eighteen days into it is significantly annoying, particular to those who already submitted. Even if we retract our entries now, we have to wait until the end of March to submit them.

Edit: And that's assuming next time doesn't have a theme. Then it could be a half year waiting period. At which point, speaking personally, I imagine my submission will no longer be relevant to current events.

And that's before you even consider the credit aspect devaluing the submission's worth while simultaneously increasing the competitive nature of the event by inducing more entries per judging period.

Tl;dr:

Tastes bad, man.

Xith

With the underlying motive being to give out less credit prizes. Not sure if they're trying to devalue art or just raise the bar like Delph said.

Namino

Speaking candidly, @Xith, I doubt extending the period of competition is going to really impact the volume of entries anyway. Bardic/Artisinals are very well marketed in Achaea, so it doesn't exactly spring up on anyone at the eleventh hour.

The people who submit two and a half months into this season, by my assumption, would be the same people who would submit after twenty five days into a monthly competition -- with the exception of people who genuinely write epic eddas that take three full months of consistent writing to complete (and I doubt the admins want to pour through ten of those at the end of the season).

Seems to be a case of fixing what isn't broken.

Aerek

I see it as more of a boon to the judges than us. Perhaps the Admin/volunteers would rather judge that list of entries 4 times a year instead of 12, which gives them more time and opportunity to help craft our roleplaying experiences.

I'm okay with this.

Wysteria

These are the questions I have due to the vagueness of the last announce — please correct me if I missed the answers in that post:

1) Are artists really being pitted against writers now? They're completely different skill sets, you simply can't compete apples against pears.

2) Granted this would result in higher quality work, three months can be a long time for one submission. Would people be allowed to submit multiple entries into the one quarter?

3) Prizes: Would the prize credits generally be the same or changed? And how would this affect rankings?

I understand wholeheartedly if this is due to workload, but I still think having monthly or even bi-monthly submissions could work also. To be honest, I think this would increase the workload for the judges because there's now three months worth of entries to pour through and clear out compared to just one month's worth of work that can get taken off the servers faster.

I also agree with @Namino in that the entry might not be relevant to recent events (to a degree). I did that Bal'met snowman thing because it was so recent after the event. If this concept was popped up earlier, we would have voting going until like March. People would start to forget.

Either way I hope this is just Part A of the announcement and there's more to come to make it clearer. Thanks all.

Eld

Apples > pears.

Chryenth

Suddenly apprehensive. Hoping for another half to the announcement, I guess.

+1 to apples > pears.

Tecton

Yep, more info to come, but to alleviate your fears:

- This is intended to give everyone more time to complete their works, allowing us to see more of the artist's "A" game.

- Prizes and points will scale with the new timeframe.

- For this round, we're just doing a single submission per character, but we may re-evaluate this going into the next round.

Athorem

I'm pretty disappointed at this 

And pears>apples, I say

|)

Tvistor

Also to be fair, they probably lose a ton of money on credit sales. Some people have gotten pretty artied out on bardic credits.

Sylvance

@Tvistor I'm not sure it's quite that simple.  The people who have become 'pretty artied' out of the B/A credits are also often people that add a lot to the game experience, which makes other people more likely to buy credits (before anybody starts, I don't fit into that category, having only won once, and having added very little to the playing environment in Achaea. inb4 ad hominems).  I also doubt that many of them were just about to buy ex-hundred credits and suddenly didn't have to because they won.

I'm mindful of Tecton's previous post, so I'm decidedly less pissed off about the announcement than I was last night.  I do think it was a bit insulting to say 'Exciting things are coming!' and then announce... this.  I sure as all hell am not excited.  Had the announcement been "Sorry, guys, this is taking a load of our time up, which we'd rather be using to do X" or even "This is costing too much" (which would be a poor argument for reasons I won't go into), I'd have had a ton more respect for the announcement.

And yes... announcing a theme halfway through the month?  Seriously, did nobody think that that was going to cause problems?  Had this been announced at the start of April I wouldn't have believed it.

ETA: Artists vs Writers simply does not make sense.

Tvistor

I can only say that I stopped buying credits after winning Bardics once, since I could afford everything I considered necessary 1 v 1 serpent combat.

Nellaundra

Could they at least still have winners from both art and the writing category?  They're way too damn different to judge against each other as everyone else has already said, and this is just going to turn out -awful- if the writers and the painters/drawers/whatever have to compete.  The mediums are simply too different.  I have a few favorite books and I have a few favorite paintings.  They're -entirely- different things and I can't even begin to compare them aside from "some people that weren't me made these".

Exelethril

Just my quick two cents: With the new format, credits should scale proportionally(directly?) to the new timeline too.

Sylvance

Exelethril said:

Just my quick two cents: With the new format, credits should scale proportionally(directly?) to the new timeline too.

@Exelethril Might be a good time for you to read @Tecton's response...

[Deleted User]

@Exelethril, isn't that what Tecton said?

Tecton said:

Yep, more info to come, but to alleviate your fears:

- This is intended to give everyone more time to complete their works, allowing us to see more of the artist's "A" game.

- Prizes and points will scale with the new timeframe.

- For this round, we're just doing a single submission per character, but we may re-evaluate this going into the next round.

Sarapis

The reason for this is pretty simple: The number of entries, particularly in art, is dramatically lower, and if it's not an actual contest, what's the point of having a separate art contest?

As for judging written vs. visual art, that's not an issue any more than judging narrative vs. poetry is. There are plenty of real-world contests that do it, like the Scholastic Art & Science awards (going on 90 years now).

Wysteria

Sarapis said:

The reason for this is pretty simple: The number of entries, particularly in art, is dramatically lower, and if it's not an actual contest, what's the point of having a separate art contest?

As for judging written vs. visual art, that's not an issue any more than judging narrative vs. poetry is. There are plenty of real-world contests that do it, like the Scholastic Art & Science awards (going on 90 years now).

Bardics = Monthly
Artisanals = Quarterly then to make up the numbers?

Lodi

If only there was an IG Artisanal and Bardic contest for text paintings, text music, theatre etc. that had decent credit prizes.

Athorem

Text paintings?   How about,

"This is a painting of <insert achaean name here>. It is a MASTERPIECE"

Hoho, I win.  

Lodi

Tahquil

Lodi, you can always submit  a log of you walking about your gallery.

Lodi

... that would be excepted? For some reason I didn't think it would be allowed.

Athorem

I just noob

Tesha

Tesha has like 25 (editted: text) paintings, haha. I wish I was talented enough to make real ones, but unless everyone had to paint with one toe (not two, they would be able to hold the brush that way) I would not stand a chance.

Namino

If by text paintings you mean Ascii, then Namino's already a well established artist IC.

>_>