I totally see why. If you were ranked #12 in votes, but didn't even get to be an alternate, how would you feel?
I would feel like I have a better idea of what to do with my item next year, because I succeeded in pleasing the voting public, but failed to impress the judges. I could ask myself why, and be able to come up with a reasonable answer. What if I was #1 and didn't make the top 32? I doubt I am going to get very much critical feedback on the "Critique my Item Thread" because the vast majority of people loved it, but I would still be missing the critical information of what I did wrong to turn the judge's head.
It would let me know instantly that I am capable of impressing the voting public, but still have work to do to impress upon the judges that I have Design capability.
I already know I didn't make the top 32. Knowing my ranking isn't going to make me feel worse, I think it would make me feel better, because now I know where to go from here.
If you plan on entering again next year, you're better off waiting for the "critique my item" thread to open and looking for feedback there. Knowing where you were in the rankings isn't going to tell you how to improve in the future. Getting actual feedback from voters (and possibly judges) will.It seems like that might be pretty useful as I evaluate what I did and how I did it. Maybe I was the (un)lucky guy who ended up high in public vote, but didn't impress the judges. I would love to have that information to be able to look at my item and evaluate how to impress voters AND judges, instead of just one of those groups.
Also, considering the likely scenario that I am not even in the top 100, I would love to be able to know just where I fell in the overall rankings, again so I can have a better idea of how close (or far) I was.
See my response above... I'm not trying to cause trouble, I am just trying to point out the possibility that pleasing voters and pleasing judges are not always the same thing. A true superstar item does both, but if I did please the voters, the Critique my Item thread isn't going to help me close the gap with impressing the judges. I just want to know if thats where the gap is. It's about self evaluation and improvement, and the more I know about where I am at currently, the more effective I can be at fixing my mistakes.
There are really only five different categories: Top 32 (unanimous judges), Top 32 agreed upon by judges, Top 100, Top 80%, and culled. Breaking it down any farther does not help anyone become a better designer.
EDIT: What Jeff said.
Plus this is a contest :) not an election to determine the leader of the free world who needs laws of succession to keep the country stable.
I totally see why. If you were ranked #12 in votes, but didn't even get to be an alternate, how would you feel?
If I were in that situation that would be valuable information to me. It would mean that I adequately appealed to the audience but that there was still something wrong with my work. I'd like to know that.
If I were #12 and didn't even make alternate I would know to take a long hard look at any of the top 32 that the voters didn't like as much as my entry. That is really useful I think.
Comparing your Top 100 design to any of the Top 32, should yield the same information.
And I stated 5 categories above, but I am reallly stretching it. There are truly just 3.
I totally see why. If you were ranked #12 in votes, but didn't even get to be an alternate, how would you feel?If I were in that situation that would be valuable information to me. It would mean that I adequately appealed to the audience but that there was still something wrong with my work. I'd like to know that.
If I were #12 and didn't even make alternate I would know to take a long hard look at any of the top 32 that the voters didn't like as much as my entry. That is really useful I think.
+1
This is what I was trying to enunciate a few posts above. Just knowing my item wasn't good enough, while being useful, isn't nearly as useful as knowing how much it wasn't good enough by. I think there is a big difference between "just try to get better" and "this is the specific area in which you were slightly (or severely) lacking"
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What everyone else has already said. :)
Also, remember that most voters don't see all the submitted items.
Let's say your item was shadow boots. It got upvoted a lot. And someone else also wrote shadow boots, and theirs got upvoted a lot, too.
With enough upvotes, both items might end up in the V100 list. And it's possible they were only paired up against each other a few times.
So when the judges look at the V100, they see two pairs of shadow boots. And they're going to compare them to each other (as that's the nature of judging), and probably going to pick the better of the two items.
But remember that just because something has a higher voter ranking doesn't mean it got more upvotes, because not all items got exactly the same number of votes. Frex, the #1 item had 775 upvotes and 260 downvotes... but the #3 item had 787 upvotes (more than the #1 item!) and 303 downvotes (more than the #1 item), so Christopher Anthony took that into account for the rankings. So is the V#1 item "better" because its weighting (percent of upvotes) is higher, or is the V#3 item "better" because it actually had more upvotes than any other item?
So the relative positions of these items in comparison to each other is kinda fuzzy. So it doesn't really matter if your item was #2, #33, #68, or #100; all that matters is we have a list of the highest-voted items, and those were given to the judges to evaluate, and the judges picked the 32 + 4 they felt were the best out of that list of 100.
In other words, voter approval gets you considered for the Top 32, but isn't the deciding factor. Much like how a baseball team's win-loss record determines if it gets into the World Series, but it's the actual World Series games which determine which team is the overall winner (it doesn't matter if the American League team won 90 games that season and the National League team won only 88 games, what matters is how many World Series games the two teams win that year). The public voting is the team's track record over the course of the season, and the judge's evaluations are the World Series games.
So, if you made it into the Voter's 100, congratulations! That's qualifying for the "World Series" of RPG Superstar. But once you're in, your ranking compared to other teams doesn't matter, it's how you demonstrate your skill to the judges that matters, and they're not looking at your rankings relative to the other items. And while it might be cool to know your "win-loss record" for the main season, it doesn't help you improve your gameplay.
Let me just say that I apologize if I created a little storm, it was totally unintentional. I am an engineer by trade, and therefore I am extremely logical in all of my thought processes. I like numbers and lists and data. Letters make more sense to me when I am using them for arithmetic.
You (SKR and Paizo) certainly don't need to defend your decision to do anything with this contest, and I hope I didn't imply that you did. I was just curious if there was a reason for not publishing the rankings. You could tell me its because The Hurricane King pays good money to keep it a secret and I would accept it without question.
I understand perfectly (now) what you are explaining and why you do it the way you do it. Again, I wasn't trying to stir anything up, I was just curious. Thanks for responding Sean!
No problem, Steve. We get similar questions every year. I'm glad yours wasn't a "who are YOU to judge ME?" sort of thread... which I'm sure will show up from someone in the next few days, it always does. ;)
It would be nice to know whether I got culled though. That would tell me alot.
It would be nice to know whether I got culled though. That would tell me alot.
There is a list of itmes that the community put together of everything seen post cull. While it can't be 100% accurate if you see your item on it then you were not culled and if you don't then most likely you were.
You can also post your item in the Critique Thread and see what constructive feedback you can get. Many will tell you how they voted and why.