EA Staff (Retired)I have to admit, I really enjoy the Design Challenge feature, more than I thought I would, now that my expectations for voting has been tempered (I got 2.5 my first time out). I just like the sandbox feel of it and designing a small area without having to worry about population packing. However, I do still have a few suggestions.
There are really good critiques and suggestions for improving Design Challenge, so I won't repeat the ones I read through (I did give XP to those). One thing I didn't notice anyone mention is the Design Simoleons. They should roll over to the next DC if you have any left. I know EA wants to sell us the DC pack (which I did buy this last time) but to be fair, we should also get "rollover" Design Simoleons to go toward the next challenge. We could do some really lovely stuff if only there were more dSimoleons at our disposal. I'd still consider buying the pack since it wasn't super expensive, but c'mon. Roll over those Design Simoleons! 🙂
One other thing: I think we should be able to submit TWO images to vote on. One daytime picture and one nighttime. What's the sense of using some of these assets that light up at night if you can't see them in a daytime pic? If you choose a nighttime pic, then the rest of your city can't be seen clearly. Allowing two photos to be submitted for judging gives a better impression of what we've designed.
One last thing: allow us to see our friends list from the DC. I hate having to go back to my main city for items needed to upgrade and I try not to spend much time in Global Trade for items to upgrade these buildings in DC. Some of my Facebook contacts do keep simple items in their depots though. Would be nice to go there from the Design Challenge screen and back rather than having to go to the main city, go to the friend's depot, back to my main city, and THEN back to Design Challenge.
Having nudged over the 600 blueprint line submitting my next design, I can see level 4 is 1000 blueprints. The end is mathematically Impossible now. Four rounds, 200 to submit, say 4 stars per round target, end should be at 2400 blueprints..
and here’s a couple of ways to make it fairer:
1) split the competition into 10 groups. In CoM you compete against cities of similar level. In DCs you need to do the same as a level 30 city will not have access to the same materials as a level 99 so it isn’t fair. Say 1 to 19 (as so few under 20), 20 to 29, ..., 90 to 98 and the 99s on their own? Or 90 to 99.
2) when the votes are all in, again split into groups of 10. The lowest 10% get 0 stars, the next 10% get half a star and the top 10% get 4.5 stars. The winner is boosted to 5 stars. On that basis, to reach the end you would need to be in the top 20% each week (if 4 star average to get to the end) and that seems a fair ask to me. 3.5 star average (top 30%) would be better but might be seen as too generous; top 10% (4.5 star average) too tough an ask, especially given the randomness of the voting, and will put people off.
i do like the idea of rolling over DC coins posted below. How’s this for an incentive? Coins roll over and you can buy stuff (to keep, not just for the DCs) using them, e.g. Eiffel Tower 5000 DC coins, a lake 500 DC coins, ... say 1 DC coin = 1 sim coin: 50 DC coins = 1 sim cash and 500 DC coins = 1 golden key and 1000 DC coins is a platinum key as a conversion rate? Something like that ...
I like this... groups! In particular the same bunch of people (100) you compete against in the current weekly CoM, and enough time to vote to have visited all participants. Those who didnt participated are automaticaly excluded from voting. Lets see if this can work...
Some changes have been made to this round.
When voting, I saw ratings less than 2.5 stars.
Also changed the number and interval of votes. I think I was able to vote 5 times.
Let's see what the results will be 😉
I (and most of my teammates) again got only 2.5 star in the last round “fresh spring city”. I saw some 1.0-4.0 stars when I voted so I hoped the voting finally worked, but unfortunately not.
I heard when someone vote for your design, you get a notification. So my 2.5 means the mine even didn’t show up for the vote? And less than 2.5 means it showed up in vote but didn’t get voted...? It’s unfair if some design never had chance to be seen by others. The numbers showed up for the vote and numbers you got voted need to be clear.
EA gave us compensation design currency but 400 isn’t enough... I started wondering if the DC track is even possible to anyone to complete. Just as the first round of Mayor’s pass and Vu pass, they must have set the tier score way too high.
Let’s see how this round voting will be...
