Jon Haire aka Breelo Babblebock's page

Saw mine again and it was not paired with a very good item this time.

Nazard wrote:

Will the bottom 32 (ie, those in the top 64 of the public vote, but didn't make the judges' cut) be mentioned anywhere?

Maybe. I did something like that last year for the almost-made-it items, and gave developer feedback on those items if the author requested it.

And it was good feedback, even if he hated the idea for your item.

Hi, Breelo. It was a keeper because the judges don't always agree. Obviously, Sean was a straight-up Reject on your item's premise. It had a lot of SAK elements to it which are difficult to override when they're featured that prominently. I believe he also had concerns about the monster ability-in-a-can aspect of it. I cited similar concerns, but also argued some of its merits.

Ryan became your item's strongest champion, though I too initially gave it a Weak Keep. That was primarily to keep it around for discussion and comparison, not because I felt exceptionally excited about including it in the Top 32. In fact, I even made the statement that I was certain we'd find 32 items better than yours.

Clark did the honors of hitting the Keep button, though he too was inclined to Reject it initially. I had no intention of saving it once we got down to the winnowing of the Keep pile. Sean was still dead-set against it. Clark became a firm vote to Reject, as well. And, Ryan had better items to spend "golden tickets" on, so he too didn't elevate it any higher.

Ultimately, your item became an easy one to set aside so we could focus on the others. And that's because, at its core, it really was just a SAK of monster abilities granted by donning a "second skin" with the vest's patches. We all universally agreed that it should be a leather patch rather than living skin, though. We didn't particularly relish the gross-out factor of wearing a meat-suit.

Aside from that, it's really not worth going back through an in-depth analysis. It too falls victim of pitfalls we've already covered.

Thanks. I guess it really wasn't in the keep pile for any particular reason other than Ryan.

Neil, I think most of us realize that an actual review is not possible in most cases, and that as judges your intent was not detailed critique but to select the 32 entries that implied the strongest design talent. I'm interested to hear the reasons for the elimination of our entries, but even to cut and paste is a noteworthy amount of effort, so I have no expectation of more than that.

We do appreciate all of your collective effort. It's unfortunate that those who don't speak so loudly.

edit- I'm trying to learn from the comments given to other items, but some of the terminology is new to me. What exactly is a SAK, or a SIAC, for instance?

SAK - Swiss Army Knife

I can see the reason for determining the location for the next AP, but what type of enemy do you want to face? Most of the APs have a general theme of monsters with other monsters thrown in for flavor.