Voting fraud in castle contest.

Seems very suspicious that all the winning designs are garbage. lol.

Could people create alts and spam vote their own or something?
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Comments

  • GandalfGandalf Posts: 115
    edited February 2019
    Pay players with gold for vote :)
  • TimStTimSt Posts: 1,779

    A lot of the designs are pretty to look at but not very functional or have horrible flow.  I can just see an episode of Love it Or List It UO Castles with the castle owner asking Hillary to improve the functionality of their castle. 

  • BilboBilbo Posts: 2,834
    Can EJ Accounts vote?
  • The House design contest is stupid. Should have just charged players a ridiculous amount for a customized plot and been done with it.

    It looks tacky seeing all these prebuilt homes now on the placement tool. And with more contests coming every publish or whatever it's just going to get worse.
  • The thing with the designs is they are anothers idea of what people can use.... some are not as desireable  as they think
  • IvenorIvenor Posts: 1,216
    I must have missed it (again, as I lost the windows to partecipate in the contest...  :# :D ), but where is the page to see the contest designs and/or to vote for them? :/
  • Voters over but you can still see the top 20 on TC.  There's a stone in Brit Commons that will take you each one.
  • Mesanna just refuses to admit she dropped the ball on not doing a customizable plot. The current mess is wrong on so many levels it can't even be justified.
    Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies
  • We now have a castle lottery where one person gets their dream castle and the rest of us tear up our tickets and throw them away.
    Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies
  • Ezekiel_ZaneEzekiel_Zane Posts: 326
    edited February 2019
    The thing with the designs is they are anothers idea of what people can use.... some are not as desireable  as they think
     None, are desirable!  There's multiple issues I have with every single one of them.

    - too many doors
    - steel interior doors
    - too many rooms or goofy rooms
    - arches PRE installed
    - flat-out fugly
    - zero, limited or poorly thought out customization options.
    - pillars so you can't put up completely connected crenelations
    - no hooks or notches so you can fully connect south & east stone walls
    - fencing used as railing
    - no railing
    - stairs you have to run from one side of the plot to the other to go to next floor
    - single wide stairs - ppl the plot is 30x30
    - designs made into the floor tiles, floor tiles with designs
    - too many different and poorly matched floor tiles



  • TimStTimSt Posts: 1,779

    The thing with the designs is they are anothers idea of what people can use.... some are not as desireable  as they think
     None, are desirable!  There's multiple issues I have with every single one of them.

    - too many doors
    - steel interior doors
    - too many rooms or goofy rooms
    - arches PRE installed
    - flat-out fugly
    - zero, limited or poorly thought out customization options.
    - pillars so you can't put up completely connected crenelations
    - no hooks or notches so you can fully connect south & east stone walls
    - fencing used as railing
    - no railing
    - stairs you have to run from one side of the plot to the other to go to next floor
    - single wide stairs - ppl the plot is 30x30
    - designs made into the floor tiles, floor tiles with designs
    - too many different and poorly matched floor tiles



    Pillars or walls oddly placed is because you can not span 30 tiles without support from below.  The max is something like 20 tiles across.

  • I'm talking about the pillars on the roofs.  The ones that look more like spikes.  They don't fill in the full tile and so they don't connect with the short walls.
  • Too bad they cant except the shell and let us customize the interrior
  • You would think the developers would realize that not a single person is happy about house design contests and would undo what they have and just give people the customizable plots. We do not need 100 prebuilt houses to select from.
  • IvenorIvenor Posts: 1,216
    You would think the developers would realize that not a single person is happy about house design contests and would undo what they have and just give people the customizable plots. We do not need 100 prebuilt houses to select from.
    I totally second that! I will not pay a copper piece for most of the designs I've seen around, but I will gladly pay 100m GPs for a fully customizable Keep or Castle-sized plot.
  • UrgeUrge Posts: 1,204
    edited February 2019
    The House design contest is stupid. Should have just charged players a ridiculous amount for a customized plot and been done with it.

    It looks tacky seeing all these prebuilt homes now on the placement tool. And with more contests coming every publish or whatever it's just going to get worse.
    They could make a separate tool just for the custom keeps and castles. Leave the original tool as it was.

    Food for thought. :)
  • The contest had some great artwork in a few of them , however none of those made it to finals and I still haven't seen one I would tear down my castle to change it to from any in the finals. Totally disappointed. Personally I feel the deciding vote should only be 50% from players and 50% from UO Team or bring in outside source to decide winners and if they want to unfairly chose designs not deserving then 25% from players and 50% from UO Team and maybe get Mickey Mouse to vote the final 25%
  • Killroth said:
    Seems very suspicious that all the winning designs are garbage. lol.

    Could people create alts and spam vote their own or something? 

    I believe some people have several accounts and used them to vote for their own design as well as having friends to vote for them. I think that the dev team should look at all the designs and choose the top 10 or so out of them, not let people vote because people will take advantage of it and do what it takes to get theirs in the list, even though they are terrible designs. Out of this contest, I have only seen one (that made it to the finals), that I could consider doable for my crafters. Other than that, the best ones were ignored, which is disappointing as I saw some really awesome designs. Even the villages, which are not really functional except for role playing...were better than what made it on the list. 

  • You would think the developers would realize that not a single person is happy about house design contests and would undo what they have and just give people the customizable plots. We do not need 100 prebuilt houses to select from.

    ^^^ This
    Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies
  • BilboBilbo Posts: 2,834
    If a paid account gets one vote and EJ Accounts are not allowed to vote then please explain where the fraud is in the voting.
  • SarahSarah Posts: 2
    People spent a lot of their time designing these castles. I do not believe there is Fraud. The flaw is that one person designs it and he gets 150 of his friends to vote on it without looking. It is not Mesanna or the Dev's fault. It is the fault of the people, the guilds that do not vote for functionality or flow, they vote for friends. I like that Tim and Ezekiel at least told what they want in a castle instead of just complaining. I have entered every time and come in the finals every time but never won. I will try again with those suggestions in mind. Only thing I do not like about the winner designs is that they are all Block and nothing pretty. Some like all block but some of us want a pretty design. I know some like open, but some cannot make all those walls themselves and want rooms. I am sure there is some reason Mesanna did not make a castle plot designable. I have to agree that would be fun.
  • SarahSarah Posts: 2
    By the way, I thought the Devs had a pick. I was hoping it would be a pretty one. I have not seen the official winners list. I wish the devs would pick a pretty one to go with the others.
  • MerusMerus Posts: 656
    The castle voting is much more of a popularity contest than a design contest.  Simple as that.

    Personally I think they should just put the custom tool on production.  

    However, 2 changes that would drastically improve the current contest route would be:

    1. A design theme for each contest
    2. Independent judges
  • No 2 people will ever agree on their dream home. End of story. There's the problem. Continue to ignore our pleas for a custom plot cause UO thrives on bitter subscribers. Wait... independent judges? Where are we gonna get those? lol
    Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies
  • jaytinjaytin Posts: 417
    I agree with @Merus on this, but I have no idea how you could get independent judges.  :/
  • Design a castle that allows us to be creative in our own way. Not your version of creative cause it only appeals to you.
    Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies
  • MerusMerus Posts: 656
    edited February 2019
    Broadsword has employees other than those who work on UO.  If it were me in charge (and barring just making it custom on production) I would have the designs built per the theme on test.  Once it was time for the judging I would copy test, remove all player names from the house sign and have 3 or 4 other broadsword employees judge the designs based on the contest theme.

    Sample themes could be:
    Japanese Temple
    European Fortress
    Renaissance Chateau

  • UrgeUrge Posts: 1,204
    I'll never own either but I think allowing player customization using only classic walls and tiles would be the best fit for the current playerbase. 

    Allowing use of granite would be a bad thing. 
  • Merus said:
    Broadsword has employees other than those who work on UO.  If it were me in charge (and barring just making it custom on production) I would have the designs built per the theme on test.  Once it was time for the judging I would copy test, remove all player names from the house sign and have 3 or 4 other broadsword employees judge the designs based on the contest theme.

    Sample themes could be:
    Japanese Temple
    European Fortress
    Renaissance Chateau

    Sure the person in the office across the hall you see 100 times a day is going to be impartial lol. Or just end this clear failure and give us plots. I appreciate your way of thinking on this but your trying to fix something horribly broken and there simply isn't a fix for the way things are done currently. This issue grinds me every time I log into the game. At least half the subs in this game are for housing and they are shooting themselves in the foot with this. Maybe it's just me but it seems like building resentment in the player base is probably not the best idea.
    Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies
  • jaytinjaytin Posts: 417
    Urge said:
    I'll never own either but I think allowing player customization using only classic walls and tiles would be the best fit for the current playerbase. 

    Allowing use of granite would be a bad thing. 
    I agree with that, I really hate the lag caused by granite, every time I visit friend's castles with extra floors and walls the lag is unbearable and my PC was built within the last 2 years!  :D
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