the votes are in...

McDougle

go to test to see the winners....

Cetric

lets hope something different is done.  because as it sits, 1 and 2 arent bad.  2 has pink floors, kinda sucks on that end, but its a nice different take.

the ones that tied for 3rd are just an absolute travesty...

Can the devs just release their own version of an updated castle and keep designs after reviewing feedback and seeing what the community proposed?

ITS A CASTLE....its supposed to be the best, a highly desirable item.  Castle ruins are less deplorable than some of these.

Pawain

Only 62 votes to get a winner.  Those that cried about a guild deciding the winner.   A Llama won instead.
  

Priceless.

Congrats to the Llamas!!!!

Violet

1. Needs the fireplaces removed.  Let us add our own if we want them.  There are other design problems with this but the fireplaces really limit what we can do with it.

2. Replace the pink floor tiles with something more neutral. Grey goes well with that tile set and Grey is a very neutral color for design.  As it stands now the design choices for this due to the colors is severely limited. Very few people can make this their own.  Also the stairway railing going from second to third floor, the last railing piece is actually the wrong one.

3. Both of them... just remove them from the contest. Please.  Have a dev's pick as number three. Only one person in game would mind, the designer of that eyesore.  Maybe she forgot to finish it, I'm not sure, but it's terrible from so many design points and looks half finished.

McDougle

One and two are fine even if not everyone's cup of team how three got so many votes baffles me as first glance i thought maybe they left it so people could customize to their liking with but a deeper look it seems like it was just left unfinished.....

Pawain

Ill be using the winning design ASAP and love the fireplace.  It roasts Llama Chops wonderfully.

I am just surprised a Keep won.  I thought we would have to wait a long time. 

I don't have a castle so I have no opinion on the other 2 or three winners.

Thanks to all the devs!  It was fun and will be fun some more.

Lieutenant_Dan

They did a fine job on #'s 1 & 2. Congratulations!!!
Some shenanigans are going on with 3 though! But Congrats regardless lol

For the record I didn't use any of my 6 votes for the empty castle plot. No regrets. The players spoke for it.

jaytin

I think there must have been some voting shenanigans going on there, it went pretty much as expected, I wonder how many people will actually replace their current castle/keep with these designs? I know I won't be and nor will any family members. Dot's is pretty but I didn't like the inside as much as the outside, too colourful for me. The other two were just not the best examples of a castle or keep both inside and out, did people vote for them without even looking? 

Bilbo

The Keep layout can be worked around but those 2 castles are a pain in the ass for layout.  The biggest gripe on castles was the floor plans and look what won.  Come on PUB 102

ZekeTerra

I came in 8th

Maximus_Neximus

Bilbo said:

The Keep layout can be worked around but those 2 castles are a pain in the ass for layout.  The biggest gripe on castles was the floor plans and look what won.  Come on PUB 102

Agreed. I briefly considered making my castle into the new keep for that design. But I'll wait and hope that 102 brings a winner more to my liking.

Garth_Grey

Ok so.....ooof

MissE

Violet said:

1. Needs the fireplaces removed.  Let us add our own if we want them.  There are other design problems with this but the fireplaces really limit what we can do with it.

2. Replace the pink floor tiles with something more neutral. Grey goes well with that tile set and Grey is a very neutral color for design.  As it stands now the design choices for this due to the colors is severely limited. Very few people can make this their own.  Also the stairway railing going from second to third floor, the last railing piece is actually the wrong one.

3. Both of them... just remove them from the contest. Please.  Have a dev's pick as number three. Only one person in game would mind, the designer of that eyesore.  Maybe she forgot to finish it, I'm not sure, but it's terrible from so many design points and looks half finished.

Agree,

wont be replacing my Keep or Castle.  Don't want fireplaces and pokey corner rooms, hate the  pink  tile choice, not to mention it is near impossible to find your way to the roof, and all those itsy bitsy rooms, and the third one has lots of wasted space and unusable water tiles as well as heaps of tiny rooms and a multitude of floor tiles.  The pink thing is nice to 'look' at for something different from an architechtural viewpoint but would be worse to live in than exisiting castles and impossible to 'edit' due to the tile  choice.

The designs are not 'bad' for the owner, if that is what they want then it is fine.  Just too much stuff in each that is owner specific and not suitable for the majority. 

I wish they would just let us customise our own. So over UO atm, it seems every time they 'do' something that people have been crying out for for ages, they have to do it in such a way that it is borked from the beginning. Lets just make stuff that will IRK everyone rather than just give people what they ask for.

I am sure they really wanna just pee us off til we quit.  

Unsortable jewelry boxes

Hopeless doom modifications, sampires online.

Changes to shadowguard making it again template specific.

Useless rewards for the Eodon mega quests (zippy etc, I mean seriously 'titles'? for all that damn effort)

Absolutely crap Endless Jny restrictions

Hopeless castle/keep contest

It would of been so nice to be able to just customise castles, they could of taken the horrid blue glacial set of tiles out of the mix to avoid that monstrosity but there were a LOT of designs nice designs but sadly too many with silly additions forcing you to have stuff you just don't want.

The day is sure edging close now for me to shut down my 3 accounts.  Every time you think you are gonna get something new and exciting to re-energise you they bork it up.

 

Mene_Drachenfels

I think the really last word in this case here is not yet spoken - but this winner vote #3 is a terrible felt butt in the ar..se to all those who really fret about this content. I'm not really surprised about and in some way i did even expect something like this - so I'm not so bitterly disapointed - but to see this result it only makes me headshaking what's up in peoples mind. None of my worsest nightmares I could have imagine that someone would live in such a house - - and at the end it's our choise if we want to change our plot to crap or leave it as it is.
My own castle certainly will remain oldstyle...

*grumbles* some people should really give up smoking ****....

Democrazy and give folks a choise to choose what they like is certainly fine and important - and this is again a result of this "Time-Consuming-Monster" a small Dev-Team of 5 people have to live with. You cannot be everywhere - but a 5 minute overview and a preview-shoot out next round would really be better - and much more heart-attach-avoiding

Skett

Wow those are not at all my taste to be polite 

like someone here has said about closing accounts, I'm closing down 3 accounts in September just tired of this direction. 

not it sure why they just don’t give us 32x32 customizable lots so we can all enjoy our house the way we like them. 

McDougle

The more time i spend in Dot's castle the more i like it getting used to the colors seems to have softened them a bit for me and i can make the design work !!

Captain_Lucky

Did anyone really think this was going to work? Anybody? Can we have a customizable plot like every other house in the game now? I said from the very beginning what a colossal waste of time this would be. Castle owners are still hosed and it's not right. Once again we wasted a ton of dev time and accomplished nothing and castle owners aren't the least bit satisfied by it. I have no idea what the motivation would be, but I swear they just want us all to get fed up and quit. Custom plot, make some accommodations for terrain for existing properly placed castles, *bam* done. Everyone happy except you know who. Me being right about what a bad idea this contest thing was is the only satisfaction this castle owner got out of this drug out fiasco. I give up, some people just don't have common sense.

Bilbo

I get the idea that all the none owning castle owners decided to try and teach us Castle owners a lesson.  I have a Castle and the design I picked was based on what a hassle it is to get around in a Castle and how I could set up different crafting stations / display areas and just general gathering area and very few of all the designs fit those requirements.  Done of those Castle designs that won will work for anybody.

IMHO these contests in the future will be no different so why even bother.  Look around a see how many spots were taken and nothing was ever done to them, to me it was just a bunch of people that said I don't have a castle so I will take this spot so you can't.  Devs should look at the accounts that have unused plots and ban them from placing any castle or keep spots in the future.

Bilbo

MissE said:

Violet said:

1. Needs the fireplaces removed.  Let us add our own if we want them.  There are other design problems with this but the fireplaces really limit what we can do with it.

2. Replace the pink floor tiles with something more neutral. Grey goes well with that tile set and Grey is a very neutral color for design.  As it stands now the design choices for this due to the colors is severely limited. Very few people can make this their own.  Also the stairway railing going from second to third floor, the last railing piece is actually the wrong one.

3. Both of them... just remove them from the contest. Please.  Have a dev's pick as number three. Only one person in game would mind, the designer of that eyesore.  Maybe she forgot to finish it, I'm not sure, but it's terrible from so many design points and looks half finished.

Agree,

wont be replacing my Keep or Castle.  Don't want fireplaces and pokey corner rooms, hate the  pink  tile choice, not to mention it is near impossible to find your way to the roof, and all those itsy bitsy rooms, and the third one has lots of wasted space and unusable water tiles as well as heaps of tiny rooms and a multitude of floor tiles.  The pink thing is nice to 'look' at for something different from an architechtural viewpoint but would be worse to live in than exisiting castles and impossible to 'edit' due to the tile  choice.

The designs are not 'bad' for the owner, if that is what they want then it is fine.  Just too much stuff in each that is owner specific and not suitable for the majority. 

I wish they would just let us customise our own. So over UO atm, it seems every time they 'do' something that people have been crying out for for ages, they have to do it in such a way that it is borked from the beginning. Lets just make stuff that will IRK everyone rather than just give people what they ask for.

I am sure they really wanna just pee us off til we quit.  

Unsortable jewelry boxes

Hopeless doom modifications, sampires online.

Changes to shadowguard making it again template specific.

Useless rewards for the Eodon mega quests (zippy etc, I mean seriously 'titles'? for all that damn effort)

Absolutely crap Endless Jny restrictions

Hopeless castle/keep contest

It would of been so nice to be able to just customise castles, they could of taken the horrid blue glacial set of tiles out of the mix to avoid that monstrosity but there were a LOT of designs nice designs but sadly too many with silly additions forcing you to have stuff you just don't want.

The day is sure edging close now for me to shut down my 3 accounts.  Every time you think you are gonna get something new and exciting to re-energise you they bork it up.

 

I just resigned to the fact that we will never get a functional layout and we will continue to live with what we have.  IMHO is most of these designs were done by non castle owners and the voting was done to give us more bad designs.  We do not need a bunch of perty stuff, we need function.

Minerva_Foxglove

As I mentioned in another post , I doubt I will find a castle made by someone else to fit me  good enough,to start all ower with taking down my castle with loads or masonry in it.. I rather keep my laggy one. No1 and 2 was good buildings but fireplaces or pink floors to my deco. No thanks. It was fun to build castles but making a competition of it made it bound to fail. I might go there next time and spend some weeks,but I have no hope to get that crafter and deco friendly place I need
The prob is also you cant build a place exactly as you want it for your playstyle,and think enough ppl will vote for it,so you have to leave gaps so ppl can chose if they want walls doors or arches and thoose buildings looks unfinished and get no votes. So my castle will have to wait for as long as it takes or forever.  We need the empty plot and some improvements to the tool pieces . Why not remove the eyeoring ones and  finish the old sets atleast?

Max_Blackoak

I really hope that the tie between #3 and 4 will see #4 being chosen. #3 is simply horrible while #4 actually allows you to build your own custom castle. Lt. Dan you should have used your 6 accounts to vote for your empty plot!

jaytin

I think we all went about this the wrong way, it's UO we should have all bribed our friends and guild-mates to vote for us, then we might have got something we liked. I actually feel quite angry about how some of the 'winners' were 'chosen', we waited years for new castles and keeps and this is what we ended up with because some people were so determined to win even though their designs were not particularly liked. I give up. 

Garth_Grey

jaytin said:

I think we all went about this the wrong way, it's UO we should have all bribed our friends and guild-mates to vote for us, then we might have got something we liked. I actually feel quite angry about how some of the 'winners' were 'chosen', we waited years for new castles and keeps and this is what we ended up with because some people were so determined to win even though their designs were not particularly liked. I give up. 

Some did just that, which is why some of the borg cubes got the number of votes they got.

JollyJade

jaytin said:

I think we all went about this the wrong way, it's UO we should have all bribed our friends and guild-mates to vote for us, then we might have got something we liked. I actually feel quite angry about how some of the 'winners' were 'chosen', we waited years for new castles and keeps and this is what we ended up with because some people were so determined to win even though their designs were not particularly liked. I give up. 

How do you know they were not liked when they in fact received more votes than any other? 

Congrats to the winners! Well done. Just remember you can't please them all

Hope the castle owners enjoy the new designs and the Devs can finally move on and focus on areas affecting a broader playerbase again.

JollyJade

Garth_Grey said:

jaytin said:

I think we all went about this the wrong way, it's UO we should have all bribed our friends and guild-mates to vote for us, then we might have got something we liked. I actually feel quite angry about how some of the 'winners' were 'chosen', we waited years for new castles and keeps and this is what we ended up with because some people were so determined to win even though their designs were not particularly liked. I give up. 

Some did just that, which is why some of the borg cubes got the number of votes they got.

The crowd on Stratics went crazy over the idea of voting a blank spot some days ago lol

McDougle

We whine and bitch about people wanting to solo UO but then whine and bitch when people make use of the fact that it's an MMO lets all breathe.... what should happen is for them to add the winners to the tool let us convert our current test places and "move into" the new designs for a week or two get our deco and things in see how it looks at least just spend a little time in the design yes Dots castle is bright at first but after an hour or so i got used to it and can deal with it . again i will point out i am willing to bet 80% of the player base has neither a keep or castle and the fact the fact that the dev bothered to at least try to cater to the 20% that do should not be overlooked

AmberWitch

Personally I think this contest was a great learning tool to determine what people actually want.

Don't look at the votes. Those can lead to a false conclusion as we all well know. Look carefully at what people designed and built and what elements were in those structures. I'm betting this can be quantified.

Hopefully the design team will allow these structures to remain for a while so we can learn something from them.

There are 300 structures to review. There's a few that I'm going to suggest that were done knowing that they were not going to win but did it because they thought it was a cool idea and just something they wanted to build so those don't necessarily have to be included (raises hand). The serious ones? The variance in those design styles can be broken down into broad categories. I'll throw out 5 categories just for the heck of it.

• Same basic European castle as what we currently have but with open space

• Same basic European castle as what we currently have but with larger rooms

• Same basic European castle as what we currently have but with more rooms that are small

• Different culture castle than what we currently have built with different material with the above variations

• Borg castle. Frankly, I'm not sure what that really means but I've heard people toss it around.
  

Start a spreadsheet listing which structure fits into which category. Which ever category has the largest number of structures built, review those for common elements. Etc, etc, etc.

Next competition build that if your goal is to build what people want. There's going to be multiple competitions so eventually, hopefully, one that you personally like will get enough votes to win. 

The first competition, like anything else, first time is a learning experience. I learned that I still cant do a damn roof.

Petra_Fyde

I built a keep-sized version of my 18 x 18 on Siege. I knew I could live in it, because I had done.  Result - no one liked it but me.  (no 194 )  Oh well. Seems no one shares my taste. I think I could live in the winning keep, and I like Dot's, though it's not for me.  but I don't think I could live in No. 3.

Merus

The disappointing part of this contest really is the pattern we have seen for the part 10 years or so.... a decent concept with utterly horrible execution.

Concept: add some additional housing choices in the keep and castle size footprints.  Allow the community to participate by using their creativity to submit potential designs.  Excellent concept.

Execution:  No design tool when announced years ago.  Delay, delay, delay.  Contest was turned into a player popularity contest or who could buy/recruit enough votes.

Selection of winners should have come from a panel of 3rd party judges who did not have access to the identities of those who submitted the designs.  It would have been nice to have several criteria for the contest that designs would have been scored against and, since this will be a recurring thing, a theme to design.

Minerva_Foxglove

Amen. couldnt said it better . 

Skett

Agreed should have been outsourced to judges 

also I voted on the empty castle lot and accidentally casted 1 vote on wrong plot so the empty lot actually came in 3rd lol 

what ever dots castke design is nice but the building materials are not my stysale, if it was the original castle materials I would use it.