Re: Design Challenges Update - We Want Your Feedback

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...

@SimOldFan yes, you get a notification when someone voted for your design. In the last round I got 3.5 and I got 2 notifications. 

The first 2 rounds I got 2.5 and didn’t get any notification, so it means mine never even shown for the voting selection I think. 

You get +0.5 per vote and -0.5 if yours is shown but didn’t get the vote maybe? If your design is shown more you have more chance to get high rating. To make the voting fair, all designs need to be seen same number of times. 

@SummitVista3310
In the last round, I got 1 notification and 4 stars.

I'll see what happens in this round.

Alerts are not as important as the fact that the voting system is very bad.

There is not a single response from EA to all our proposals, neither in the topic of discussion of the preliminary stage, nor in this topic. And I very much doubt that anything from this forum is transferred to the studio.
The mutual assistance of the players - of course. But there are other sources for this as well.

I thought the “your design is being voted on” notification just meant your design had entered the voting stage and was not indicative of the number of times your city was put forwards for voting.  I tend to see that notification once or twice early in the voting and then never again.  Got 4.5 stars last time and don’t recall seeing the notification after the start.

@Dunsnoozin Interesting. The last round the number of times I and my teammates got the notification and the rating matched up. 

2 notifications 3.5, 1 notifications 3.0. That’s how I figured +0.5 star per voting. Probably it depends on how often you get login to the game too, since we can vote every 1 hour you can miss the notification. 

@SimOldFan the point is not the alert, it’s how many times it’s shown in the voting selection and it needs to be equal and clear for every players. It greatly effects the star result if yours are seen only for 2 times or 10 times. 

Well I was wrong on one thing, the final level was set at 2600 points (4.5 star average).  Got 3.5 stars on my final design so with the bonus they handed out after week 2 due to the voting system I made the end!  Hopefully the threshold will be a little lower next time: 4 star average is probably sensible.

only saw notification once, though, when the voting started.

Got 3.5 stars.
Only saw notification once, when the voting started.

And again error:
DC finished and it is not known when it will start again.
New COM at the very beginning - design task 2400.
I have to ignore him.

Design this time around scored 3.5 only, I've seen worce scoring 4 during voting. Anyway, those who seen it and voted it in thank you. The winning design wasn't exactly a perfect design imo, but anyway I discussed this poor voting system in the past in several previous posts...

To get the final prize really depends on superb luck, that is not fair to people who pay for your designer cash , so I come up with these solutions to get better designs and make it more fair:

- Remove blueprint reward on voting results, replace them with golden keys. E.g.  0.5 points = 1 key in stead of the current 50 blueprints. For 5.0 score you can reward 5 diamond keys. 

- Add MUCH more (mandatory) requirements to gain blueprints and improve the designs being entered for voting

- Stiffen the jobs a bit. 3k population is really easy to get over 3 days, even if you are beginner - start at 5k at least

- One I feel needs to be absolutely mandatory : 100% happiness 

- Once you completed and entered all 4 designs and completed all the (mandatory) job requirements you are eligible for all prizes. It doesn't matter how much your design scored because you would have received golden keys for your best efforts and the designs we get to see will be improved a lot. This will be fair to everyone who compete, and be value for the players who paid €28 for the designer cash.

I haven't participated in the design challenge to avoid adding XP.

I hope XP will not be added to this temporary city creation.

That said, I enjoy voting to see many beautiful cities. Especially in the "city center", I felt that there were many high-level designs.

However, I saw many designs whose evaluations did not match. The design under construction was 3.5, and at the same time, the beautiful design was 3.5.

I would like to participate again when XP addition, assignment problems, and voting problems are improved.

Me and 1 another teammate got 3.5 and we both got 1 pop up. I missed the beginning of the vote but I still got the pop up.

2 teammates got 3.0 they didn’t get the pop up at all.

The base line was 3.0 (the first 2 rounds when most of players only got 2.5, that time the baseline was 2.5...?) and people who shown for the selection are either +0.5 or -0.5...?

Not sure how the notification works but seems there are designs that never be shown in stage, for those who got 3.0 stars and didn’t get the notification. 

I hope we can see how many our design are shown in stage and how many votes we got, not just the stars. 

Also it’s disappointing that we can’t see the past rounds result. Really hope they add the galley for the past designs! 

I really like those castle collections and enjoy seeing variety of designs. Only complain is the voting, the past design gallery, and the CoM task. Unlike wars, both CoM and DC is fixed schedule they better adjust the timing so we get the DC task at the right time. It’s just silly to get the DC task when we don’t even have the challenge. 

Western Challenge is up...

Imagine it without all the pesty icons and clutter... (Yes EA, we still don't have a way to save our designs 😮). Those dirt roads really put you back in the 1800's 🙂

Some of the eyecandy came from a western themed season way back, so I decided to use them to build an old Western Town around a Cattle Rance, ajacent to the city in the background. Hope you get to see it in the game!

Something wrong with the voting system...

6 hours in the voting process I've seen 25 designs so far all at 2.5 points...

That can't be right, some of those designs should be on 3.5, maybe 4.0.