Should contests be age-grouped?

[SPIRIT]

What you might be able to do is divide the contest into veterans and newcomers (defining veteran as someone whose MOCs have made it to the finals of a previous contest).

 

Ultimately, I agree with many other people here who have pointed out the potential pitfalls and complications surrounding age verification.

[Arcee]

I like the suggestion of skill tiers as opposed to age groups. Like, honestly most 13 year olds on here could blow me out of the water.

 

i don't know if there NEEDS to be a divide but it'd be nice for the less experienced MOCists or hobbyists without much access to new parts to have some way to win a thingy

 

I like the idea of a casual/serious sort of split, like, to borrow from Smash Bros, "FOR FUN" and "FOR GLORY." with the "for fun" tier having smaller prizes or whatever. lower risk, lower reward? of course you might get really skilled people selling their skills short and going for the casual contest and just absolutely dominating it.

 

@Spirit's idea reminds me of cosplay contests at comic/anime conventions and that could work I guess but how would you get new members in the high tier? would they get moved to top tier if they win/qualify in a low tier contest?

[Lyichir]

I like the suggestion of skill tiers as opposed to age groups. Like, honestly most 13 year olds on here could blow me out of the water.

 

i don't know if there NEEDS to be a divide but it'd be nice for the less experienced MOCists or hobbyists without much access to new parts to have some way to win a thingy

 

I like the idea of a casual/serious sort of split, like, to borrow from Smash Bros, "FOR FUN" and "FOR GLORY." with the "for fun" tier having smaller prizes or whatever. lower risk, lower reward? of course you might get really skilled people selling their skills short and going for the casual contest and just absolutely dominating it.

 

@Spirit's idea reminds me of cosplay contests at comic/anime conventions and that could work I guess but how would you get new members in the high tier? would they get moved to top tier if they win/qualify in a low tier contest?

I don't support the idea of dividing up the main BBC contests. But you might be onto something with the idea of smaller contests exclusively for less experienced users, provided you could find an appropriate way to determine eligibility. It'd be kind of like the new member raffles, although you'd have to use a different criteria than that—new to BZPower doesn't necessarily mean inexperienced at MOCing, and if you did limit it to new members I think a lot of the winners might wind up being experienced MOCists from other sites.

 

Alternatively, you could do something like some raffles on Eurobricks, where any MOC that fulfills the entry conditions is considered a ticket, but winners are picked completely at random. That has the benefit of encouraging less experienced MOCists to give it a try without the perception that there's no chance of winning. Raffles like that work best if there are multiple small prizes being distributed periodically, so that there's a greater chance of winning even with a large number of entrants.

Edited March 22, 2015 by Lyichir

[Saint-14]

What if contests were separated into MOC size? I mean, it's hard to ever imagine a fantastic Matoran sized MOC ever winning against a Titan one, so why not put in sizes categories? Matoran (Protector now, I guess), Toa, and Titan? Obviously there'd have tin ev ime wiggle R om between the categories, but given overall size and guessed piece count this could possibly be implemented

[Aanchir]

Obviously there'd have tin ev ime wiggle R om between the categories, but given overall size and guessed piece count this could possibly be implemented

 

Something really weird happened in the middle of this sentence and I'm not sure what.

 

But anyhow, I agree that having a contest with different size classes would be cool. The only issue is that you'd need polls and prizes for each category, which could be more expensive and time-consuming than just putting all MOCs in a single contest pool.

[Saint-14]

 

Obviously there'd have tin ev ime wiggle R om between the categories, but given overall size and guessed piece count this could possibly be implemented

 

Something really weird happened in the middle of this sentence and I'm not sure what.

 

But anyhow, I agree that having a contest with different size classes would be cool. The only issue is that you'd need polls and prizes for each category, which could be more expensive and time-consuming than just putting all MOCs in a single contest pool.

 

Autocorrect isn't my friend (don't use BZP on mobile, kids)

 

Anyways,you understood the gist of what I was saying, so that's good I just meant that there should be a bit of wiggle room between the categories, as it is ahrd to purely define Matoran/Toa/Titan beyond small, medium, and large, as some MOCs do blur the lines

 

And I think that the mods could handle the polls well if there were different submission areas for each category, and prizing wouldn't be too hard, as I've seen other websites do around the same concept. However, that being said, I'd hate to give the mods any extra work, they're already busy with other things, hehe

[Jacks]

But anyhow, I agree that having a contest with different size classes would be cool. The only issue is that you'd need polls and prizes for each category, which could be more expensive and time-consuming than just putting all MOCs in a single contest pool.

If having multiple size categories within individual contests is prohibitively overcomplicated, why not have more contests in which size is specified in the theme? BBCC#8 was exclusively small MOCs; I don't think that contest theme has ever been repeated in the 12/13 years since. We oughta bring that one back now and then.

[PDPsi HAN]

I would say no. It would be great to have brackets or divides but not enough people actually enter in the contest to make those divisions meaningful.

[Noxryn]

To be honest, the only thing I could imagine is saying "People who won recent contests/finaled in them, enter here and people who are entirely new/never placed enter here" but at the same time there's a lot of complications with breaking things up like that. Personally, I feel that yeah it's a little on the unfair side for someone new to come in who's rarely ever MOC'd before, but that's the point of the contests -- to improve your MOCing capabilities.

 

Like, yeah you won't win if you're completely new and someone like DV enters. BUT you get to see all these designs, all these styles of building and inventive manners in how they think and put their models together, that you can assimilate to improve your own work -- and eventually, through practice (like the practice they've done), you can probably place (if not win). And if not win, there are other sites that I believe may have a bit of an easier competition? As in people more on the beginner tier who are newer to the overall community-- I'm not sure of what communities, but they must exist?

It sucks to lose, yeah, but every time you lose the point's to learn from it and improve for next time. Not so much to have the bar placed lower. (Of course I do like age-based things when it's verifiable, but online? It's not something you can verify easily and it's a bit unrealistic for BZPower to do).

[P~M]

I think the motivation behind separate groupings for contest entries is a good one, but the problem of course is in execution. I propose an alternate idea: piece limitations. There could be special contests where entries can only contain a certain number of pieces, say, or where entries can only contain pieces from a strict list. This encourages creativity in execution, not just purchasing power, collection size, or experience; the problem with the first idea, of course, is the same as before: those with "better" pieces have a better chance of winning; the problem with the second is that there's no way to choose a list fairly, because everyone has a different collection of pieces. A LEGO Digital Designer contest would eliminate both those problems... have we had one of those in the past?

 

Honestly, fairness aside, I think smaller, more frequent MOC contests alongside the big BBCCs would be fantastic, however they're structured.

[Black Six]

Honestly, fairness aside, I think smaller, more frequent MOC contests alongside the big BBCCs would be fantastic, however they're structured.

We have (approximately) bi-monthly Flickr contests that fill that void.

[P~M]

 

Honestly, fairness aside, I think smaller, more frequent MOC contests alongside the big BBCCs would be fantastic, however they're structured.

We have (approximately) bi-monthly Flickr contests that fill that void.

 

That's true, but the Flickr contests don't have themes or special restrictions; they're just general contests. That's fine, but I guess I just want more BBCCs, haha .

[PDPsi HAN]

 

 

Honestly, fairness aside, I think smaller, more frequent MOC contests alongside the big BBCCs would be fantastic, however they're structured.

We have (approximately) bi-monthly Flickr contests that fill that void.

 

That's true, but the Flickr contests don't have themes or special restrictions; they're just general contests. That's fine, but I guess I just want more BBCCs, haha .

 

 

Having to come up with unique themes on a bi-monthly basis might be a bit much.

[Noxryn]

 

 

Honestly, fairness aside, I think smaller, more frequent MOC contests alongside the big BBCCs would be fantastic, however they're structured.

We have (approximately) bi-monthly Flickr contests that fill that void.

 

That's true, but the Flickr contests don't have themes or special restrictions; they're just general contests. That's fine, but I guess I just want more BBCCs, haha .

 

 

A lot of work goes into setting up contests in general on here, so like every mini-BBC would likely take as much staffpower to create and hold as any of the regular sized BBC's (And there's a reason BBC's aren't super duper incredibly frequent, because it takes a bit of time to think of a theme, get people to help with the contest, write up the rules, restrictions and set up the topics).

 

I like the idea? But all I can think of is if the Flickr contests were more advertised (first time I heard about them, but maybe I just miss the announcements?). Honestly, it could be interesting to have some of the limits you mentioned in the smaller Flickr contests rather than the full blown BBC (Since BBC is largely "Build THIS the best you can with your collection" and the Flickr contests could be tuned more like MOC Challenges? Like "Only MOC with this amount of pieces" or "use this or that color" or something... not exactly what you suggested, but it made me think of the Art Squad offsite and some of the older Writing topics where those challenges existed to help get people to go outside of their creative comfort zone to, overall, become better at their chosen artistic medium).

[Scanty Demon]

I know this kid who's 13 whose MOC's absolutely eclipse my best ones. Kid's got skills, s'what I'm saying.

 

So no, age brackets don't make much sense.

Pretty much my opinion too. The only time I can think when age would need to be considered is if there was adult stuff which wouldn't happen on bzp. So no to age brackets.

[Makaru]

Pretty much my opinion too. The only time I can think when age would need to be considered is if there was adult stuff which wouldn't happen on bzp. So no to age brackets.

We've definitely never had two tongue-in-cheek adult themed contests and even if we did no one would have even noticed probably.