Dacy

Thoughts from my heart right now: I have heard some grumbling still about the fact that Vault Luxe is in the Community Choice contest. 💔 And where I hear anything, I know more is out there. This after I've tried to make it clear, both in the posted rules and in a posted clarification, that Easter Bunny did not 1) enter the base 2) judge the base, and, he is INELIGIBLE FOR AWARDS. We allowed the owners of bases that judges had worked on to enter the bases, so that they and any other builders who worked on the base weren't penalized by having happened to have built a base with someone who then became a judge. Honestly: Let's say a friend wins this contest. A friend you have worked on a base with, a base that will be ready for next contest. Do you want to be disqualified because that winner is now a judge for this round? We set up the rules so that people who aren't judges won't be punished because they worked with someone who became a judge. Judges can't enter their own base, and they don't judge any base they helped on, and they get no rewards if it wins anything. And I think that's fair. Do you think it's fair to prevent those that aren't judging from entering, even though the judge is essentially removed from being associated with the base? Now, Easter Bunny did the base in question before he became a CR, and there is another builder who also worked on it. As I stated above, he did not enter the base, that was the owner (over EB's objections). Can anyone look at that base and honestly say it doesn't deserve to be considered by the community? We have no control over the community vote, that is all YOU. It hurts EB that his integrity is questioned, that is probably the most important thing to him, and it makes me really sad, because I know he IS so very upright and honest. 💔 We CRs get no recompense for this volunteer position. We get no perks, we have no powers (as of this writing). We gave up being able to enter contests and win awards to be your voice and to run contests for you. We have spent many hours doing these things for you. Our goal is to help anyone who needs it with their base building, because we love it, because we love this community, and because we want to see people reach their personal best. But I do want to be clear: we lose out on things like recognition for our work, and prizes, so that we can serve you. Now, I guess you can blame me for allowing bases that CRs and judges had worked on (in part) to be in the contest. I did think that, if I told you how the judging would be handled and that the judges would be getting no rewards, people would understand that, and be okay with it, because I thought it was fair. I still do. I still think it's a shame that Easter Bunny is one of the very best builders around, and yet will not get any recognition for that. But, due to the lack of understanding and the grumbles, we will change the rule. No CR stuff will taint your contests in the future. But, regular players who happen to be taking a turn helping us judge? Bases that may have them on the building team can enter, but, the judge in question won't judge that base, nor can they earn the title or merits. However. As fair as I think that rule is, I have to admit that we are new. (And to be fair, we were warned that people wouldn't listen to what we said about how the entries of judges/CRs would be judged). So, we are still learning. The rubric isn't perfect, we will work on it, and we will take suggestions on what you think is important to a base when it's judged. The rules aren't perfect, and will be updated for next time. The categories weren't perfect, they will change next time. We appreciate feedback. We are listening. We will respond. So if you think that bases that judges (which remember, might be you at some point) shouldn't be allowed to be entered by their owners and other builders that helped, please, register your opinion. If you think it's fair, let us know that, too. If you have opinions on how the contest might improve, let us know. I appreciate greatly all of you who've been super supportive. I really appreciate those of you who see the incredible work that EB has done and agree that it deserves to be voted on by the community. I do love this community, I think in general, it's the best in the world, but I ache when people aren't happy, so I'd like to figure this out. Thank you all so much. -Dacy One more thing: It hurts to have to tell people, builders who put their all into their bases, that their wonderful work didn't make a score higher than some other bases, even though the bases that scored higher are superb, and scoring a bit lower does not in any way mean a base is not also awesome. It's just a score on a rubric, folks. We had to have some way to gauge things. If you want to learn what it was that could have scored higher, we're willing to share and help. But I do hope you don't get discouraged, because I believe every base entered has merit, and every base entered has weak spots; no base was perfect, nor do I expect to find a "perfect" base score wise, but I do hope a base can be perfect for those that made it. Take inspiration from great bases, and learn how to address things in your base that you think can be improved. It really doesn't matter what a rubric says. We want you to make the base that is right for you.

Thank you so much for your gracious response. That is exactly what we hoped for. It's the nature of a contest that not everyone can win, or even qualify; we have some spectacular bases that did, and just because a rubric put another base a bit higher on the scoring than it did your base, that does not mean your base isn't wonderful and perfect for you. Those that wish to take the learning experience and go forward, I applaud you, your spirit, your work ethic, and I know you'll be doing great things! 🙂 Those that become discouraged and turn away break my heart, and I wish I could help them feel better, but I'm doing all that I can. -Dacy

The Base CR's, Easter Bunny and Dacy, are holding a base crawl for the contest! What's a base crawl, you ask? We will be visiting each of the bases in the Community Choice contest together, talking about the bases and making sure we point out every area you can access, so you don't miss any, answering questions, until we've visited 5 of them on each weekday session. Then we'll visit all of them on Saturday's session in one big crawl! After each crawl, we will have a trivia contest about the bases we saw, with prizes! The crawls start in Kallisti Wharf, on the central island, near the bridge with the raised drawbridge between the central and eastern islands. Wednesday and Thursday, the bases are all on Everlasting. Friday, the bases are all on Excelsior. Saturday, we'll start with the Excelsior bases, then go over and finish with the Everlasting bases. Here is the schedule: Wednesday, April 26, 7 PM EST CrashCastle (On Everlasting) The Dark Coven The Deep Star Dryad's Tree Lake Thursday, April 27, 2 PM EST Firebrand Island (On Everlasting) Hidden Isle Lava.. Rampage City Vault Luxe Friday, April 28, 10 PM EST The Divine (On Excelsior) Shades of Arachnos The Station Super Nation Wild West All-Stars Saturday, April 29, 2 PM EST All of the above, but we'll start with the Excelsior group. Afterwards, stay for a trivia game! There will be prizes. And after you've toured, be sure to vote! Voting closes on Saturday, and we'll award the winning bases on Sunday, April 30 at 5 PM EST in Kallisti, near the Statesman Statue. See you there! We spread it out in an effort to 1) not do too much at one time and 2) give people with different work schedules a chance to make at least one, and yes, that means it's likely that someone won't be able to make one of them, and we hope people will see the bases on their own if they can't see them with us. Truly, the response so far has been really awesome already, we just hope this helps more people see the awesome work that's out there! Community Representatives Dacy & Easter Bunny

On the judge tours of some of the highest scoring bases in the contest, we asked each builder some questions. We asked, because it’s sometimes really illuminating to hear what they had problems with, what they are proud of, and what they learned themselves, in the process. Most of it were things I’ve known or encountered before, but, I thought it might be helpful to the community to collect some of these things into one place. So here’s a summary of what’s important to the builders of the best bases and some things I learned from contestants during this contest: Many builders regret building in one big room. Lag becomes too great to overcome when building gets into the higher piece numbers for most of them, and can also affect visitors. Color design is crucial. The best bases didn’t just consider technical aspects, weren’t just well put together. High quality bases coordinated and worked very hard on colors, and coordinated and used the in base lighting. Plants need careful color coordination to work well. Technical skill is critical, but also the time invested; all of the best bases have builders who have spent, in some cases, years, working on everything from how something is built to the smallest details. Paying attention to not how something is, but how you want it to be is key; then being willing to work to get something to look how you want it to look. Lighting is an underrated skill that can make or break a base. There is no comparison between a well lit base using in base lighting that can be tinted, and an above base base that can’t tint the lighting much at all or uses outdoor lighting. Story is key to understanding an RP base, and appreciating it to its fullest. Sometimes simple skills are the most important. Learning how to get rid of flicker and learning how to change the attachment on items has been a game changer for many. Tearing apart things to build it better is something the top builders do all the time. What do these high quality bases have in common? Attention to detail. Not just in what items you place, but how they are placed, what material they are made from and whether that adds to the overall desired effect. Items are placed, not because they are “cool”, but because they work for what was intended. Things like flicker are remediated. Gaps are eliminated. Edges are neatly sealed. Views on entering are planned. Chairs are chosen and placed so that characters can actually sit in them (for the RP bases). Services are blended into the theme in a way that enhances the theme. Great bases have a layout that flows and pays attention to what is important in that base. Sometimes that is story related, sometimes that is related to services, but it’s always related to how the base is used. Editors of high quality bases do not rely on the category of an item to determine how it should be placed, but rather, the qualities of that item. They recognize that the editor is not organized logically or cohesively, and they look for things that will work. They explore the editor. The best bases keep things very cohesive in theme. Everything makes sense as to why it’s there. And simply put, the best base editors are always learning and experimenting. Thanks for the awesome work on all of the bases! I hope that the best of us inspire all of us; I know I am inspired to go out and build some more! -Dacy

Yes, there will be other contests, and I promise, they won't be the same at all. 🙂 Other than the fact that we will still highly value skill and aesthetics. -Dacy

Easter Bunny and I have both been asked about bases not appearing on the list. If you have not been contacted for a tour, and you are not on the CC list, I'm sorry, your base is not in the position to win a category at this time. We scored bases on a rubric that was designed to score technical skill, artistic merit, and how well the base met the requirements of the category. Some bases blew us away with artistic merit, but did not score as highly on the technical side. Some bases lost points in other ways, simply not scoring as highly as the bases listed here, which you can see, if you visit, are very high quality. The bar was very high! All of the base builders have reason to be proud, but if you want to know where you could strengthen your base build, the CRs would be happy to help you. All bases will be receiving commentary from the judges on what we liked about your bases. Rest assured, we DID go visit and score every base. All 74 that were entered. However, we are still busy with tours and finishing out scoring, and are unable to individually address base issues at this time. We welcome your questions after the contest is done. Thank you! -CR Dacy and CR Easter Bunny

Yep! It's definitely personal taste, and THANK YOU so much for visiting them!! 😄 You're amazing to have seen them all so fast! -Dacy

Another plea to please, please visit. Please don’t just look for the base you know, or your friend's base. Please give the contestants due consideration. We the judges, and these base builders, would really appreciate the visits and the consideration. if you have been visiting these bases and are already ready to vote, thank you so very much! 🙂 -Dacy

We have completed going through each base, and have scored each based on our rubric for technical and artistic merit, and how well the base fit the requirements of the category in which it was entered. We are in the process of doing tours with a few bases we wished to get a closer look at, with the builder giving us a tour. Meanwhile, we have a list of the bases that scored the highest on our rubric. This list of course will include the eventual winners of each category, but we're still on the last leg of deciding that. Meanwhile, we offer up this list of bases for the Community Choice award! Visit the bases, please, and then vote (once) on your favorite. The winner will be the base with the highest votes that has not been chosen as the winner of another category. We will announce the winners in a ceremony on Sunday, April 30, at 5 PM EST in Kallisti Wharf on Everlasting. Next year, we'll do the ceremony on Excelsior, just to keep things fair. 🙂 We will then post the winners on the forums on Monday, May 1. Watch for announcements of our Base Crawls, as we take groups to visit each of the bases on a shard, ending with trivia about the bases you just saw, and prizes! But of course, we also hope you will visit the bases (yes, even the ones on that "other shard") on your own, especially if you can't make it on a Base Crawl with us. Good luck to all our worthy contestants! -CR Dacy & CR Easter Bunny

I think we may be able to grant permission on a case by case basis (somewhat dependent on whether all the judges have been through yet) within a few days, possibly. I will DM you on the forums when that's okay. We've been busy, and our judges have been doing a great amount of work and a great job! -Dacy

ATTENTION, ALL ENTRANTS: Judging is underway. Please discontinue any and all base adjustments until finalists are announced. We are working as quickly as we can! We need to keep the bases the same for each judge, to be fair. Finalists should also refrain from doing adjustments on their bases until after the winners are announced. Thank you! -Dacy

You can see my video guides to teach you how to do things. You can move all of your storage into a very small area, actually, like the entry room plus two squares is plenty of room, and then work on the base you want in another area. Could be above, below, or inside the base. You can open up the ceiling to make it look open, so inside the base doesn't have to mean closed in. Or have some sort of a floating air dock above the base (you can set up teleporters to get to the location up above) for teleporters to the various zones. Teleporters can really be made to look like about anything. Base building is really not too difficult, and we have an editor that allows you to do a lot, so unleash your imagination! -Dacy

I do want to note that two bases have been submitted by their owners, both of which were built by (but not owned by) Easter Bunny (who feels chagrin that his attempts to convince at least one of the base owners not to enter was not successful). A reminder, these bases are only eligible for the Community Choice award, and as CR and a judge, Easter Bunny will not receive any awards. The Community Choice award is decided on by the community, therefore, even as a judge (who will recuse himself from these projects anyway), Easter Bunny has no control over deciding this award. We set up the rules in the way we did so that base owners who are justifiably proud of their bases, can submit them even if the builder has another base in the competition, or is a judge, because of the many commissioned bases in this game. We feel it's fair that the owners and/or builders who aren't precluded from winning awards are able to win if their base is deserving. -Dacy

I believe the handle is @Envious. -Dacy

I highly recommend this latest video for those wanting their base to look its very best, with the services fitting in and designed to reflect the base theme.

I was going to say, searching images can often help. 🙂 Glad you figured it out! -Dacy

A general word: Yep. There will be more contests. Differently set up, different categories. How many and how often is up to us, and, of course, participation. However, for every contest, we not only get to put thought into how to set it up, we will have to examine entries carefully, and that's a time commitment, often a huge time commitment, and one we will not skimp on, so there is definitely a limit to the contests we will run. Not that we won't take suggestions into consideration (especially if you become a judge by winning a contest), but we do already have a pretty good idea of where we're going in the future. You'll just have to wait to find out what's in store, though. -Dacy

Well, Ultra, you are right, I did ask for suggestions. And I was responding; not the way you liked, obviously, but you make a valid point in that I did not make your suggestion feel valued, and for that, I apologize. I think I was fine until you went on about how a base built outside the bounds was somehow more impressive, which, as I indicated, I do not agree with at all. That made it less about building in or out of bounds and more about separating the types of bases because one was better than the other. Which is not a concept I'm comfortable with, nor is it one I wish to promote. For me, categories are to help with judging. We have so many unique and inventive concepts out there! (This group rocks the creative HARD). Sometimes it is difficult, personally, to think of comparing, say, a city section with a fantasy setting, or a hugely complex base built to function, with an intricate work of art. So, I make distinctions. I make categories. This helps with judging so I'm comparing apples to apples, so to speak, and it helps with who will win prizes, because the judge who likes apples also has to rank the oranges, and oranges aren't better or worse than apples, they're just...oranges, not apples. So, as to making categories for builds inside or outside of a base, I personally don't see enough of a difference to make that category make sense to me; hopefully that makes sense. I hadn't ever considered it a real difference, but I will think on it as a suggestion. After having several people express various negatives about item count divisions, I'm going to be thinking hard about future categories. I'm quite sure we will never make everyone happy, but I want to make sure that we're not unintentionally making a statement we don't actually mean to, either. I did not want to discourage participation (although I could wish that the discussion was happening in a different thread so this one could be more for entries.) -Dacy

Location, actually, -is- an issue. We've been calling that base shift, and it gets worse the farther you are from the base itself. So, it's worst at the bottom of the map. Some bases, for some odd reason, are worse than others, and some locations in a base will give you problems that other locations, again, for unknown reasons, will not. The problem will likely get much better if you move closer to the base plot, or even actually on or IN the base itself. -Dacy

Oh, and some people don't yet know about this contest. Please spread the word! Here's a link that might help: -Dacy

This is definitely not something I want to feed into. And, of the last winners in order of placing: Grimmsel College, inside the base. Simulacrum, outside the base. Invincible Ones, both in and around the base. Rat City, at that time entirely inside the base, currently has some parts outside the base. Paragon Galleria, inside the base. The Pagoda, outside the base. So, 2/3s of the winners had the bulk of their base inside the base. Personally, while I've built both inside and outside the base, I prefer inside, when I can. The greatly reduced base shift and lighting advantages are hard to give up! Plus, I enjoy the challenge of disguising the base walls. -Dacy

Well, the number is somewhat arbitrary. We had thought maybe 10,000, which is half, but we realized that most bases were not that big. In truth, we didn’t have much reference for the sizes of bases that were impressive. And this is a contest. We are looking for the most impressive bases, and we were trying to come up with categories that gave several different types of bases a place to shine. Just a note, of the winners where I know the number of items from the last contest, they are all over 10 K. So 7K seem like a good number of items, but yet under the number where most bases were when they won last time, which gives people who limit themselves on item placement a place to shine, without restricting it too much. -Dacy

Baffled Oooookay, Monk… whatever. I don’t know how I could have been more clear that “bigger=better” is NOT the belief here nor the practice nor the judging criteria, and that the categories are merely there to give as many types of bases the opportunity to shine as possible, but clearly, that either is not how you understand things after a fair bit of explanation, or it’s how you choose to see things for whatever reasons, but no one requires you to enter, certainly. It’s a bit annoying …sorry, frustrating… to have someone insist that we are somehow favoring and promoting bigger bases as better when we have bent over backwards to make all types and sizes of bases on equal ground for this, and we’ll have no “runner ups” or second place bases; all categories will have a top base and all titles are the same, but it seems clear from commentary that you seem alone in this interpretation. Also I realize, we can’t and won’t please everyone; and fortunately there will be other contests. Out of my inherent curiosity, how would you set up categories so as to cover the most bases possible without favoring one type over another? Also out of curiosity, did you in fact look at the rubric? -Dacy (Upon reflection that I should have done before posting, I realize my tone was a bit saltier than I meant for it to be, and I apologize for that. I realize you are just communicating your perspective, and that’s good to do. )

Remember, judging does not start until the entry closes after April 9th. Any and all bases entered (or not yet entered) can be worked on up until that point. Use the rubric, go through your base and see what you can improve! There should still be time to put some polish on a base. And if not this contest, then for the next one! 🙂 -Dacy

I’m having to do this from my phone, so this may be shorter than usual. It’s interesting how differently people can interpret things. Monk, you seem to feel that we are fostering bias, but I will tell you, the bias already exists. We made the dividing line to address it, not encourage it. Were you here for the last contest, Monk? There were no categories. There was some discussion that the larger, complex bases had an advantage, and even that maybe some won because the size was just impressive. I think I said this already, but the size categories are to remove any perceived advantage a larger base has. The winner’s titles will all be the same, because we don’t want to give the impression any type or size base is better than any other. The item count is, frankly, arbitrary. We needed a line, and settled on that. Yes, efficient building can and should reduce piece count. If you were to take a look at our rubric, you’d see that there is NOTHING in the judging relating to item count, but a heck of a lot of focus on what makes a good base technically, artistically and functionally. Another division being given less attention for some reason are the categories of utility, RP, and multipurpose. Now, we wanted the categories because there are serious skills involved with each type, but they can be different sorts of skills, and we want to value the person who is able to present base services attractively and logically at the same level as those who create huge works of imagination, at the same level as someone who creates a more intimate and focused work. All are worth honoring, and the categories and item count was our attempt to give the spotlight to a variety of builders. Next contest will be different, and we will see what worked and what didn’t from this contest, and we will apply that knowledge to the next. Meanwhile, just know that we are definitely going to be judging on quality, and we hope that the rubric will help us keep things as objective as we can be on a very subjective topic. -Dacy (anything I missed I will address when I’m at my computer!)