Dude, I had to go look this up:

When the winner was announced:

When the finalists were announced:

When the event started:

Now I see where I got that winners would have one item to design. I took it from the news announcing the winners. I see though my other thought that the item would be like the custom wearable contest and available to everyone was wrong though.

The cancelled bans book is not the prixe, as I created a band and did not get it.

I agree with the general sentiment of this thread. I mean, it's just a virtual pet game so it's not the end of the world, but it's lame that people aren't being rewarded for the actual real life time and effort they put into this event. Especially people who spent like a billion hours playing the game and posting in forums which (to me) doesn't sound fun. A prize shop sounds like a good idea.

Also, at the risk of sounding like a self serving whiny loser, I'm a little sad that people who made non-finalist bands didn't get some kind of "oh goodness you sucked but at least you tried" type prize. Something to show that they also put time and effort in and were a part of the event. I made a band with a couple of my friends and we had a good time even though we didn't make it to finals, but now I'm feeling kind of excluded because my participation is being ignored. Everything comes from either being a finalist or supporting a band (which I chose not to do since I liked zero bands), and that kind of sucks.

I feel it. During the last EPICon I got lazy and didn't exactly do my best with the games and getting points. To reflect that, the points I gathered suffered and I didn't get to buy everything I wanted from the prize shop. That is fair. Little work = little reward. However, for Street Team I made damn sure I did my absolute best and really, what did I even get for it? Nothing really, because I didn't go with the winning team.

I'm not mad at H&R for winning, like really congrats to them. I'm mad that I put effort into playing the game and subeta suddenly decided to move away from the prize shop method, and rather than let users be rewarded based on the work an individual put into this, they were rewarded based on whether or not they "made the right choice" IE picking the winning team.

It's been proven that someone could have picked H&R to support but not played at all and still come out with a massive haul. I'm not at all implying that that was the case for every supporter, because H&R wouldn't have even won if that was true. But it did happen on a small percentage. Those few people were rewarded for doing nothing. Why couldn't I have been rewarded for doing nothing during epicon and the reading drive? :P

It's just one of those things that doesn't make any sense to me. The switching between getting rewarded based on efforts made and getting rewards based on luck has me confused on when exactly I should bother participating, or if it even matters.

I'm just gonna quote my board here. @ Shay

Oh, I know what the prizes are. I was just pondering exactly what the "for just entering prize" was suppose to be and if maybe that something got mixed up.

As for the game prizes, I was meaning where the top scorer(s?) got two already on site items (potions) for all their effort.

Thank you. I didn't remember reading that those who didn't support anyone didn't get anything. Too much to remember going on right now.

Potions? Who got a potion? (see how I care)

Yeah, I wasn't really fussy for this event since I realized that:

a) we would not be voting for the finalists, the staff would pick their favorites (which don't necessarily reflect the likes of the rest of the site - and since we got to vote for Epicon which had an individual image for every person I would think 400ish bands would be manageable as well), and

b) that the VIP items would not only be terribly lame, but also that I could buy them from other users for 40k (okay, so I get a book for visiting the vip tent everyday but if I had missed a day the thing would have been completely worthless. I also know that ugly wearables came with the ticket but I didn't want any of them and would have rather of had the option to just pay 100csc for a ticket instead of getting gaudy wearables/items with it).

I have to say I didn't expect the prizes to be given out the way they were. I really liked the EPICon shop and the way it was set up. I don't care if I can't afford everything, if I could just pick a couple things I wanted/liked I'd feel so much better than just being handed a few items that I don't really have much use for.

I don't really care for wearables (have maybe 30 items in my wardrobes at the moment), but it would have been nice to perhaps give the winning team and their top supporters free copies of the items, along with the points they earned, and just made everyone else purchase their prizes (and still keep a couple of band/supporter specific items exclusive to HnR supporters)? All the items they got tailored to them seemed a bit like overkill to me (again, I don't care about wearables and I don't even collect stickers or anything so I'm not particularly biased about this).

I don't know, this event just felt really... distant to me. Like we weren't really involved in much of anything. Sure, we could make bands, but once the finalists were picked most of us had nothing to do but chat with the bands and play a crappy game... If anything, it seemed like a blatant money grab hidden behind a few pretty pixels. I really enjoyed EPICon in spite of the fact that near the end of the event the games were becoming a pain in the ass so this summer event was just a major downgrade... I was actually excited for EPICon this year but I got this crappy band event that didn't even have any music at all aside a single game (pretty sure the poster said 'games', too...). DX

Yeah the way the prizes were distributed really sucks- it isn't fair at all that some of those that got the most prizes could have done nothing but be lucky enough to pick the winning band. I really can't believe the supporters of the winning band got more prizes than finalists, or even genre winners. o.O

If Battle of the Bands happens again next year everybody is obviously just going to be trying to side with the band that looks the most likely to win, rather than supporting friends and just having fun. I hope it doesn't happen again next year to be honest. Or if it does, I definitely agree that this would be better:

I think my favorite thing about the prize distribution is the reasoning. Because 1. The items aren't really any less rare or expensive. All giving it to HnR supporters did was allow them to potentially just put 100 mil. in their pocket by the end of the weekend. 2. Like I said, the items aren't any less rare. This isn't how you are supposed to distribute items onto the site if you want a decent amount to be available. 3. What? I don't really understand the logic of giving items to users if you are wanting them to get into the market. I mean, for prizes of plots and stuff I figure items are given out with the intention of being kept on the account they were given, but users who turn around and sell them are taken into account as outliers. So just picking a group of people based on an aspect that didn't involve the work and time they put into the event to be the majority controller in the reselling of these items still makes very little sense to me. 4. I mean really, is the entire reasoning just something you guys made up? Literally 98% of Sticker collectors already got fucked over when you released the What exactly determines when and how you should fuck over collectors and when you should make the effort to pretend like you're not screwing them over?

tbh, I'm still bitter for xD Even if she sells those potions she's going to have to work a LOT harder to earn the sP needed to buy the items she wasn't able to obtain in this event.

[Quote=Nicholas] I mean really, is the entire reasoning just something you guys made up? Literally 98% of Sticker collectors already got fucked over when you released the

What exactly determines when and how you should fuck over collectors and when you should make the effort to pretend like you're not screwing them over?[/quote]

[Img]http://33.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m1m02zBcIE1rn95k2o1_250.gif[/img]

[Img]http://33.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m1m02zBcIE1rn95k2o1_250.gif[/img][/quote]

As an avid book collector who is regularly screwed by every single site event, I have to agree with this. |D

Damn you,

Totally agree with this. I enjoyed EPICon (to an extent), i mean, they could have incorporated more ways to get points than just mindless game playing.

But in the end, you put in the time, you get reward. Simple. Isn't that the point? If you didnt put in the time, you use SP to get the item.

Totally agree with this. I enjoyed EPICon (to an extent), i mean, they could have incorporated more ways to get points than just mindless game playing.

But in the end, you put in the time, you get reward. Simple. Isn't that the point? If you didnt put in the time, you use SP to get the item.

Personally I really liked EPICon, but I like the way the points worked for the Reading Drive more, if only because, in addition to turning in the books, we could earn points via questing.

Isn't that the worst feeling ever! (left out the ping rofl)

I figured after all the hullabaloo, a book would be the last thing to be released as an exclusive prize

[Quote=rah] But we didn't like to make a book a participant only prize - not when there are people who read books to multiple pets! There is a higher demand for books, so we put that one in the couture tab for the cheapest amount. [/quote]

I didn't take part in this event (unless clicking a random band counts) since I was out the country for the whole thing - but the way these prizes were awarded was ridiculous. I don't really think anyone was awarded the right tier of prizes aside from the overall band winner members themselves.

Seriously, why not a prize shop. Then you can properly categorise everyone's effort =/.

I've been thinking about this today, especially after reading the reasoning behind the distribution was item rarity, and there are gaps in this logic:

• if you're worried about rarity, why even allow an item only half a dozen people will own? seems hypocritical

• distributing everything to HnR supporters just to up the amount of each item was nothing but laziness, sorry; you could have given the fliers to every supporter in the genre, THAT would have made more sense and even increased amount available on site

• surely if the HnR band gets that one exclusive rare item, what's SO wrong about giving the top scorers something equally special (nope, potions don't count... obviously) if we've already established an item can be THAT rare??

And this makes me believe that clearly whoever made these decisions was missing some vital piece of information.... supporting doesn't automatically equate to individual effort, because that's well... obviously individual (it's what is making everyone go ugh prize shop please, it's FAIRER, that's all this really boils down to.. the word fair). It's hard to believe whoever made this decision could be so tactless as to disregard all of this and instead focus on prize rarity? Seriously?

With so many tiers of achieving things (grand winner, genre winners, finalists, being part of a band, supporting a band), it's SO easy to unbalance the prizes but staff had THREE WEEKS to think about this and make sure to not step on so many toes. With THREE weeks, someone could have been working out the kinks as to make it FAIR. Or was all of that just waiting for the artwork? Because it certainly feels that way.

Can we just retcon this entire event, please, because it was a clusterfuck from start to finish.

I am still pissed at the scores not being weighted, btw. So pissed that it was just a glorified popularity contest.

Had the scores actually been weighted by number of supporters, we could have seen a totally different festival and everyone could have felt like they mattered. But, they didn't, because it depended on how many people supported a band which should NEVER HAVE HAPPENED.

I'm glad I'm not just being bitter here (or at least, not alone in my bitter discontent).

The saddest part of this event is it started off on a fun foot then took a sharp 90 degree nosedive at a thousand feet in the air and slammed full-throttle into the ground. Then the team that came out with the least amount of broken bones, got 6 exclusive items and 2 more that might as well be exclusive because only the other finalist band members got the books.

I call bullshit on "we wanted to put more in the system" otherwise everyone who supported a finalist band for each genre could have gotten the book/candy, and everyone who supported a particular genre could have gotten the respective plushie/music sheet. So, shenanigans on that one sorry but not sorry.

I cannot possibly quote this harder than I am right now, too:

Usually the saying is: if something isn't broken, don't fix it. For subeta, the saying is: if something is working fine, break it. Then leave it for dead until a mob is formed, then call them all self-entitled and see if that works. If it doesn't, half-fix it and leave it for dead because they'll either leave or deal with it.

I could also go with the saying: don't try to reinvent the wheel.

Once upon a time, once, subeta totally 100% nailed the best way to handle an event in terms of plots. Omen Islands War. It's infamous because it was just so great. You picked a team, you earned points by either restocking, or battling! We got loot, and we got prize shops. It was fantastic, but it could have used a slight bit of improvement-- adding either a game and/or a particular quest as means of point obtaining. Otherwise, perfect.

And instead of just rolling with that, subeta has essentially spent the past FIVE YEARS trying to find "new ways" to make a plot interesting/"fun" and instead.. doing everything one sided. Like ONLY games with EpiCon (so time consuming), and only retired books (that was cheap) or questing for Reading Drive (better, but RETIRED really like those weren't expensive enough??). And then, we had this master piece. Where the prizes were awarded based entirely on luck of the draw.

Started fun, and cute, make a band support a band and then.. shitwreck. I didn't even want to converse with my band because the game made me anxious and I had to walk away from the PC. Like wtf was I supposed to say? CUTE THEME GAIS-- I'M DRAGGIN' Y'ALL DOWN BECAUSE THE ONE THING I CAN DO TO MAKE POINTS MAKES ME WANT TO CRY :'D SO I'VE CONTRIBUTED 120 POINTS TOTAL, BUT HEY COOL THEME?? Right. Right.

Then, god. I feel for the users who actually played the game for any band that wasn't the winning band. I'm really really sorry this event was such a wreck. But hey, I've wasted a ton of effort/time on past plots only to pick the wrong plot to put effort in and got shafted. Or the things I assumed weren't plots (summer in centrawhatever) and didn't put effort into-- and missed out on huge prizes. Then I put effort into what I assumed was a plot (tempest), that apparently wasn't, and got called self-entitled by the site owner because I figured we'd at least get the potion in the TS.

This was the worse event to date. I hope that no one ever rivals it for that crown, but this is subeta-- and staff listen when they want to, so I'm sure it'll just be a matter of time before BotB '14 is dethroned.