Design Challenges Update - We Want Your Feedback

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...

Boy oh Boy... still seeing terrible designs, not even worth the points but I'm forced to choose between terrible ones. I hope when this competion is over that it will stay offline until a better voting system is introduced.

Nevertheless, I've send my design which will probably get 2.5 again. You be the judge...

U can’t ignore high task, any com expert knows that if you leave a high task 2k or higher there it lowers the rate of getting high task more consistently. So if you get a monster 2500 or design 2500 assignment at start u have to wait until monster coms and wasting com time and design makes u wait days until u can do it. If u cancel assignments 1-4 time in high levels of com you can bet you won’t get 1-3rd place. I am com rank 119 right now city level 99, every assignment matters

This design fun and nice but only for players that don’t do com because u can’t enjoy the design if u play competitive com. From the start i had a 2500 assignment i had to wait 2 days to be able to do it then rushed to do map in 20 minutes and summited just to complete the assignment so i can try to complete all my 75 assignments but now 1 hr later, 3 assignments later i get the summit design assignment again , you can’t summit more than once smh

A few points:

1) the vote multiple times (once per hour) is an improvement.  Got 4.5stars for my tropical paradise so much happier.

2) the top prize is out of reach.  It seems to have been set at 2800 points which means you need to get 5 stars every week.  That’s impossible given the randomness of the voting - you will always lose some votes (come up against another good one, someone votes against you out of spite, ...).  Even with the bonus blueprints I got, the end will not be reached.

3) design challenges work much better when done Monday / Tuesday.  Ignore CoM, as stated below the challenges are a pain as can’t be done half the time (I only submit when CoM over). Most clubs war once a week at weekends so war + CoM + DC is a big ask and then there’s nothing to do Monday / Tuesday.