Discussion about Monthly Champ/Concept Creation Competitions and Structure

So... I'll introduce myself since this is really the first Discussion I've started and well, I was an inhabitant of the Old Forums so the boards are still a little strange to me :P

I am ElementLlama, in the old Forums I went by "That Random Lore Guy", since I would write lore for people's concepts provided I both had the time and inspiration. I am Gold V and currently going through post secondary education aiming for a Honor's Degree in Com Sci Game Development.

Now, when it comes to the MCCC's I really have little to no clue what I'm talking about. My biggest contribution was two months ago as a first time judge in Moby the White's October MCCC "Memories Reborn". Recently, I've talked to Moby and Elphrihaim about the structure and process (I guess) of the Competitions and how they might be organized in the future.

I have no real weight when it comes to making decisions about this kind of thing, since I have little experience and most of the people involved with the competitions probably have no real idea who I am. So I can't just say "It will be this way, deal with it", and really I'm not assholish enough to do something like that anyway, but I think that as the competitions are they are fairly well... I'll just say that they are far from optimal.

I don't know how hosts are chosen, and they choose their judges based on their past experiences with them from as far as I can tell. The problem with this is, well, "who are the hosts going to be?" and, "What if the community doesn't like the host?"

The problems above are just things that I can guess at, doubtlessly there are more problems, and the monthly competitions have been around for a long time, so assuming there is no structure is a slip on my part (sorry). None the less, the process that I've seen from working with Moby and keeping an eye on the November MCCC, is kinda clunky. I want to suggest that the community should choose or maybe "elect" hosts that are willing to act as hosts and have the same for judges. I think there should be something like a mini committee with open discussions, that should at least be able to smooth out the kinks that are in the current system.

Now, the idea of a committee isn't something new. According to Moby, there was one once upon a time in the old forums, but they were not well received... I understand that having a group of people that make most decisions about how an activity made by a community of LoL fans would be a pain, and might end up being restrictive of creativity and an obstacle for people that want to do things like host and judge. I also know about the work load involved and the commitments that are made with being involved with judging and hosting.

I'll give some examples about what I mean by "the work load" from my experience with the October MCCC.

When Moby started it, and was getting everything ready, I thought it would be cool to try my hand at judging so I volunteered. As it turned out Moby was going to ask me anyway so I was in. That was my first exposure to the MCCC community, I had tried to enter in one sometime last Spring, but I didn't really understand the whole process or community then, and I didn't understand it any better when it came to The Oct MCCC.

First, there was the problem of making a challenge that was doable, inspiring, unique, and that fit the theme for October's competition "Memories Reborn", now Moby, being a really good person with lore had the Memories Reborn lore challenge firmly in place, but being the lore person, the mechanic challenge was iffy. The original Idea was "Dualities", and not much of an idea was around after that, which was why I was asked to help with them. Now, Step 1 - Figure out how many Dualities, Step 2 - What are the Dualities, Step 3 - How should they be incorporated into the concept? Here was the first problem with the Competition, I was also a lore person, how the mechanical stuff to be done was way over my head, but we did it anyway.

Next issue I won't really get into, the Forums were being shut down so the MCCC had to transition to the Boards. Moby took care of that, though It must have been a pain.

Now more challenges come with keeping track of the competitors, Who joins? Who leaves? Who doesn't mention they are leaving but do so anyway? Who gets disqualified?

Then after those, there is the part where the competitors must understand what the challenges are, and how they should be viewed. We made the challenges, which meant we knew what they were all about and that translation was and will always be imperfect.

Now, when the Judging comes around, well... It was hard to put it bluntly. At first we went over champs separately then talked about them, which didn't work well in terms of where the bad and good parts of the concepts were. Then we worked on one champion at a time together and that worked better, but it transitioned into Moby having the bigger say in the Lore components where his experience came from, and I ended up picking up where the mechanics, stats, and play-ability of the champions. Since my background was also firmly in lore, and that this was my first time judging, I will admit, I was a hard-ass.

The concepts themselves weren't always a problem, some went smoothly and others not so much. One of my biggest problems was looking at walls of text that were not formatted well. I have ADHD, and enough to take medication in doses slightly higher than the average that others take, and those walls of stuff, were literally void of any meaning to me. (Thank you Moby for doing the lore, most of those I couldn't read to the end)

Another problem was how the kits worked, how does one aspect fit with another? What did the creator mean to do with the kit? does it work the way it should? and finally, How broken is this ability?

I am not kidding about that final question, some abilities were absolutely ridiculous. Other abilities were next to useless to be honest.

Now the above process with the judging has to be done with each concept, and you have to keep track of the concepts, their scores for individual categories and why those scores were given. Now, there are also the concepts that are brutally hard to decipher, Elphrihaim's concept for example was at first so complicated that we were tempted to disqualify him so we didn't have to deal with it, good thing we didn't since in the end he was the winner of the contest.

Now after that there was still work to do, talking with the people that wanted insight into their scores, and who wanted to defend those scores. Only after that did my commitment end and I could run away and hide under a pillow.

That's it for my experience, and why I think there should be some sort of organization of how things should be done.

It's another thing to mention that the MCCC's for the boards and old Forums only merged at the beginning of this month, and from what I know people involved in the MCCC's from both places have been doing stuff together, though I don't know how that works out.

Anyway, I thought that there should be a structure to the MCCC's that is formed by the people who have stayed with the community the longest and those that know more than I do.

There were also other details that I was going to mention, but I don't have the time to do so at the moment, anyway, just thought that this should be a topic open to discussion.