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I support spreading spotlight wins farther apart. It might be a bummer to those looking for the achievement, but otherwise I think it would make spotlight wins feel more special for owners as well as give more time for other users to see the pet (say if the winning pet were on the side of the homepage rather than in a news post), rather than have the news post for a day disappear down the homepage. And besides, I don't think there's anything wrong with having to actually work for an achievement rather than having it be instant gratification. Same goes for the spotlight itself. I actually would prefer a spread of a week for the spotlight. Any longer however seems a bit too long/difficult for the number of people wanting to participate, and might poorly affect site traffic for those who spend their time here focusing on readying pets for the spotlight.
Personally I gave up on the spotlight over a year ago because my pet kept getting kicked out, and when I asked on the forums, no one else who replied had any idea as to why either. I didn't see any conflicts with the spotlight rules. And then after getting frustrated, I eventually stopped coming on this site for a while because it was actually a blow to my abilities since most of the work done on my pets is by my own design and effort.
So, I do agree with many users here that there needs to be feedback for rejections, whether it be just a broad checklist of reasons or a detailed description. Or even a checklist with a box for optional extra comments by a staff member. And I agree that perhaps more than one person should be dealing with the spotlight as user HADES suggested, to give a broader range of opinions as to the quality of a pet as well as deal with the sheer number of nominated pets. If the reason feedback is not being given for rejections is because there is a fear of users ganging up on whoever handles the spotlight (or at least holding a poor opinion of the user since I don't think it's allowed to actually gang up on users on this site), perhaps hiring another person or persons would also help, in that staff feedback could be made anonymous and users wouldn't know exactly who reviewed their pet.
I don't have much qualms about whether pets are nominated by owners or other users. I kind of like that it's nominated by other users since that means that someone else actually already likes the pet. But I think it might be a good thing, if the number of nominations goes up once again, to only put pets in the queue for staff revision after a certain number of nominations by unique users. The number I think would depend on the number of nominations the site gets total, but my idea is maybe five to ten users rather than one.
And finally, this may be less of an issue for everyone as opposed to a personal qualm but I think that maybe a rule should be added for users to complete a certain percentage of their own work on pets. It bothers me when users hire other people for everything. I understand profiles and art but am especially bothered when stories are written by someone else because I don't consider writing a story as a skill you have to learn to do to the extent of drawing well and learning to code... and if the effort is there in the writing, I think that is enough.
Friday 5th - no winner? :(
We used to have 1000 pets in the queue. We have 80 now. But we don't have any extra time to tell you guys why we are rejecting your pets.
Logic... you are lacking it Subeta staff
pet spotlight is serious business folks. lives are on the line here. how will people survive without daily winners nooooooooo
A lot of people make their own profiles, art and stories.. but often that people do not win. I really can understand, when people buy art (not everybody can draw and I even buy art in some rare cases and I am capable to do decent art) or if they ask for coding help (but in the end code the thing themselfs with help). But it is really disheartening to see your ownpet rejected you did put so much work and hours in.. only to see pet XYZ win.. with owner A.. and you read in the Credits: Profile by X, Art by Y, Story by Z.. and then it is also a fanpet od some series.. It feels like a slap in the face for all people who do a lot on there pets themself..
Also I really support a feedback system why a pet gets rejected.. I want nothing big.. only short messages like story needs to be reworked, font not ok.. and so on.. cause allways guessing, what could be wrong is alo pretty demotivating.. when your pet gets rejected again and again.. and even the nice people from the support threads can't help anymore.. and also a big thx to the nice Anon.. that allways gives nice and very helpfull tips.
It seems like people ask their friends to nominate their pets and those of us that don't troll for nominations get nowhere. And I agree about getting feedback as to why our pets do not win/get tossed out of the queue would be great.
I thought only pets with lots of overlays, pretending to be human instead of beautiful creatures, and very long sad silly stories were in the spotlight. The few I've checked out, anyway, were like that. Guess we'll see how this works.
I'm all for getting feedback since I've had pets be kicked out of queue and I had to guess why. I'm actually not surprised they decided to space out the PS winners after seeing my friend's pets win practically every few days which was kind of evidence they were running out of nominations.
Maybe this would be easier if you guys actually made a feedback system so we'd know what's wrong with our pets. That way, we'd be able to fix what's wrong and actually get them into the queue.
That'd be a great idea, wouldn't it? HMMMMMMM?
I think this change will make each win a little more special ^_^
It feels like a cheap way out-- rather than trying to see why they're not getting nominations or pets that are capable of winning, its become, "Lets space it out!" :/ I'm in the stance of "space them out, but tell us why pets are rejected. Or give us a hint, at least."
this basically means i will never win even if i tried, because i have even less chances [fewer days] well.. i'm not hatin' on the change... maybe it's a good thing tho...
If you've read some of the staff comments below, then a fear explanation was given as to why this was done. The staff simply do not receive enough nominations to keep having winners without running out eventually. They're just spacing out PS winners, so if your pet is already in the winning queue, then you don't need to worry at having less of a chance to win. You just won't get your shiny trophy tomorrow.
"Maybe I'd care more if there was an emphasis on character design opposed to all the visual things someone commissioned,"
I've seen a few comments like this in other threads that people who enter the Pet Spotlight just pay for commissioned profiles, which implies that they don't deserve to win. Just wanted to put out that not all of us do that - I make all my own profiles, stories, and overlays (well for the one overlay I have). And I do work hard on character design in my stories. (Although I do see Andrea's point that pretty visuals shouldn't trump good design. Just wanted to clarify things :) )
Oddly enough, someone commissioned me for a profile and their pet won the spotlight but none of mine ever have :P I'm still kind of proud though, because at least I know my profiles CAN win ;)
The passion is always most important to me, not the fame.
I'm sure those who make their pet profiles or pay for one are enjoying the passion as well. Fame is what we are wanting to begin with. Recognition, spotlight award. Something to pay off all the hard work and time/sp/$ spent.
I really dislike the idea of having fewer wins overall now. Haven't enough players lost all faith in PS already? What was this supposed to do? Get everyone really excited and lifts ours spirits? "Hey, it's already ridiculously difficult to win, let alone have your pet me nomminated, but now it'll be ever harder to earn a place. Only three chances a week now! Best of luck!"
Whatever, I'm too poor to afford custom profiles and too lazy to teach myself how to code anyway.
so instead of prizes or a proper system... it's slimmer chances? awesome.....
I always thought having a winner every day was a little much :3 I like this.
Take all those hours from the four days you aren't using to judge pets and write up rejection notices. Sounds like a good idea!
It broke my heart to see people being discouraged. Don't stop loving or working on your pets if that's what you enjoy doing ❤! The passion is always most important to me, not the fame.
Whatever... Maybe when the rejection end is redone to include /why/ (like the cws process) then maybe I'll think about it. I'll continue to flaunt my bland as bread empty pet profiles for the foreseeable future.
See, this is even more discouraging. I was planning on working on a profile but after hearing everyone say how heartbreaking it is to not get a REASON for being rejected, how it's tiring and saps all the fun out of it...this just seems like it's even MORE difficult to get through, meaning more waiting, and still no critique. :/ This turns me completely off from trying to use this feature.
Hey, here's a thought, maybe we'll have to pay for it...then it will work even twice a day :D :D
it does not matter how many times its organized we dont win it anyway, its always the same persons over and over that win with all theire pets - those that are good in it have won it already 3-4 or 5 times
the others like me that are not good in that kind of stuff even dont win with one pet so i gave it up long time ago to think i could win so to be honest, i dont care anymore when or how many times a pet is choosen ( only to see the same users over and over again)
This doesn't affect me since my one pet that i truly love and is nominated keeps getting kicked out and I don't know why.
I'm with everyone else on this. It's you guys who ruin this contest for everyone. You need to give reasonings behind kicks and you need to allow us to enter our own pets when we need to. The current system is the entire reason why no one wants to try anymore.
Maybe more people would enter pets if there was some sort of reasoning behind kicking pets from the queue! I know my pets have been kicked a few times and it's a bit of a guessing game as to why.. then you have to wait until it's nominated again, then who knows how long it'll take before you see if it's kicked again. The whole process is a bit of a pain.
I guess all we can do it wait and see how it turns out..
This makes getting those achievements more than twice as impossible.
I gave up on the spotlight after the whole thing was revamped and every single pet that was nominated kicked out. That told me my pet was in the queue for a year at least and never once looked at. Now I have feeling that no one would be impressed with any of my pets as I like a simple profile and don't really care for overlays.
This screams of lazy. "Hay gaise, instead of figuring out why people aren't entering/aren't getting pets as polished as we want, we're reducing the number of winners in a week because we have no time to tell you WHY YOU AREN'T WINNING."
The system needs an overhaul. With this, I would damn well expect to see reasoning. :/
Initially I was bummed to read this, but then realized that there must be fewer pets in the queue compared to when the Pet Spotlight first began. It makes sense, anyway. After thinking about it more, I think it'll make the pet spotlight wins more exciting. Really need to work on my remaining pets and get them PS ready xD
However, I also agree with giving a little more feedback, especially why a pet might have been rejected. But I understand that staff would need more time in order to do this.
I also want to say a pet leash is 100csc and a great way to "advertise" pets you're both proud of, and would like to see nominated c:
While I rately look at bragging prt boards (I assume it's just an indirect nominate me thing) or spotlight winners I almost alwaays click on leashed pets because I assume someone is really pleased with a pet to directly link it in the forums.
While I understand that cutting the number of winners a week is necessary due to fewer pets in the winning queue, maybe you should try looking at it from the view of "Why are there suddenly fewer pets in the queue?" New pets are constantly created and people are still working hard to get pet spotlight. But a LOT of people have given up on certain pets due to lack of feedback. Overall, the process has discouraged people, so there are fewer winners.
Honestly, it seems the process should be re-examined. Maybe consider changing your system from "two buttons" (accept and reject) to: Accept Rejected for story Rejected for credits Rejected for graphics Rejected for content (There is a suggestions board about this, so I will just say people should go there-LINK). But honestly, even if that is all the reviewer does, having the system send that alert to the owner would definitely help out. Maybe there are pets out there that just need some very small change, but the owners gave up after so many tries. Maybe then you could have more winners in your queue again?
While I don't mind it being every few days (yeah, it kinda sucks since I have two nominated pets and a third which is ready for nomination... with more pets that are almost ready), I really think you all need to consider some changes to the system if this change is what you feel you have to do to have winners. I also suggest adding pet spotlight to the side of the news page (under the potion winners) so it can be displayed better. For example, if your pet won on a Friday, the event won't show again on Saturday and Sunday, right? Might as well add it to the side if we are now showing the winners off for longer.
Trying to find out why many people that love to work on their pets don't give a crap about the spotlight probably would have been the better way on the long run but hey, this might work for the moment, too.
I like this ^^ I think it's good, especially if the queue was starting to slow down a bit. Makes it a bit more of a challenge :B.
Well, one of my pet was entered, was in a queur for long time, and then suddenly he got rejected, I have no clue at all why it happened after more than a year in the queue. I changed things, and it was rejected 3 times again. So I gave up, and did nothing with my other pets as well. If 3 PS per week, or one would help to at least give some base explanation, I would truly support it. I guess people got tired to work a lot on the profiles, and then fail again and again to enter :/
Chill, guys. Neopets only had a pet spotlight winner once a week and I'm pretty sure they had way more entries to slog through.
On that note, I actually support the tick box critiques suggestion. Since you've already established rules as to how a profile can be rejected, you might as well add the why whenever you do reject. I'm not sure if this is difficult to code in, but I think it'd be way easier than the individual critiques you usually have to write out for CWs... And lets be honest, you're definitely getting more CWs in queue than pet spotlight nominations.
I don't give a crap about the whole spotlight thing.
Still doesn't really encourage me to work on pet profiles. ._.
I can see the reasoning, but a bit sad... I'll keep working on my pets anyways in hopes they'll eventually be noticed for a nomination. X)
It seems like instead of cutting down on winners every week, the process needs to be updated.
This doesn't effect me at all xD; I never look at the winners (unless they have a fan name or custom OL) and I have no desire to enter my own pets into what should really be re-named "Profile Spotlight".
Maybe I'd care more if there was an emphasis on character design opposed to all the visual things someone commissioned, but as it stands now I'd like to see it removed entirely. All it's done is fester animosity and self-entitlement -shrug-
I agree that a notification when you're rejected from the queue would be nice. Obviously I'd love to have reasons why I was rejected, but I understand there aren't the resources for that... so just a general alert would be fine.
Mostly though, I wish there was an easier way to get pets nominated. I have several pets who are ready to enter, but since we can't ask for nominations, nobody knows! I think there would be more entries if we could self-enter or at least ask others...
The spread isn't a bad idea, but I'm sure there are people like me who stopped entering queue due to the frustration of getting them kicked and trying endlessly to fix an issue that they don't see. I would like to see someone hired to post changes since I do understand it's a lot on one person.
Considering there has been a significant drop in entries in the queue, I think it's a good move to spread them out like this.
"...had upwards of 1000 entries in the queue. Now we have about 80." The reason your numbers are so low, staff, is because NOBODY KNOWS WHAT YOU WANT! The ONE page you made with a VERY ROUGH idea of what you're looking for in a spotlight winner is vague and opinion-based, and you won't tell us what you rejected us for! Your system was made to actively work against us, and then you blame it on US when no one enters by implying that you think we lost interest! We're giving up on this mess, not telling you its few selected entries need more cowbell!