There is rarely, if ever, a competition that can be called "fair". Competitions by nature pit people against others to get those people to accomplish a certain thing. Perhaps they would accomplish those things otherwise...perhaps not. Personally, there can be a lot of good to be found in competitions. Sports, for example, encourage physical learning and teamwork. But the down side is, if you get too involved/get sucked in, you tend to focus on the bad side of it all (there's always (a) "loser(s)").

The TdV is like Splatoon. It can suck you in with its brilliant concept and gameplay, but as you play you come to realize that certain people get the short end of the stick, especially those who lack experience and the rewards that come with that. You've just gotta focus on the good, or just plain not try to participate. I feel a number of things need changed...but as long as the TdV exists and you participate in it, you have to realize you're participating in something that rewards some and isolates others. The work people put into this competition isn't necessarily a bad thing, just like Splatoon can be ridiculous, silly fun. But as we've seen time and time again, the "losers" often end up unhappy about the unfairness of it all.

There's serious potential in the TdV. I think it could be used to highlight good things. Like, for example: certain threads, certain posts, certain users each day. I'd like the Tour de Vizzed to live up to its name: To be a tour of Vizzed, rather than a competition. To have it focus less on what users accomplish than on who users are. When users are too focused on posting sprees, they aren't experiencing the full benefits of Vizzed. While the TdV certainly pushes certain users to talk more, it pushes a number of them to talk more for (I feel) the wrong reasons. Shouldn't users enjoy talking more during the TdV rather than focus on what they might or might not be able to get?

As a contrast, it pushes others users to post less. I'm probably one of those people, although I've pretty much stopped taking account of this, and just post when I feel like it. I've heard from others who don't like the TdV very much.

I like the intent behind the TdV. I think it's a good intention. I think many users have lots of fun working for the banner(s) they earn. But why can't other users that worked just as hard, if not harder earn the same banner? We all have different skill levels.

I know that this post might step on some users' toes, and I'm sorry if that's the case. But I feel this needed to be said.

RDay13 :  

I definitely agree that number 1 (of crash's post) isn't fair (why punish those who put in more effort fairly?). But for number 2, it should be elite and below, because elites can not do staff actions either. (so it's more of a non-staff banner)

As for the idea of half points or giving only a portion of a green jersey point for staff... I feel like there can honestly be a better way than that, because that is just punishing staff members. But I can see how competition may be more balanced... I mean... The staff actions can make up for it still. But I would use this idea as last resort. 

I think just not letting staff actions count toward green is better. Staff actions don't count for red anyways, so why not green? (and I guess my daily limit idea can help make it more balanced if David can implement it)

Mohammedroxx3 : 
ZeeTee :  

(As close as I was watching the scores, it does seem that posting raises Green by 1 for each post, whether the rules say other wise or not. I noticed it went up by 1 for 3 different users when they posted, all who had posted previously that day. I even checked their CP Logs just to be sure, and posting was the only action they had done in that window of time.
Also, as a Trusted, it's really not that hard to hit the daily limit for every action available. I did a lot of research in to this before I became staff for competing this month.)

-I agree completely with the concept of not having Staff actions count toward the Green. I'm not entirely sure why they do count for that one, but are excluded from Red? (And agree they shouldn't be in Red either). 

-I can some what see how removing the limit for how many actions count toward Green as ZT suggested would help balance things, but I feel that would be abused pretty easily. Users would simply do what ever action has the lowest cool down time for a couple hours, and could easily pull off 600+ actions. I can do 225 eBay listings in about 45 minutes, so if a user committed for a few hours, they could do 2000 + actions in a day easily, and even more with multiple tabs. --It's not so much the fact this could be done, but if more than a handful of users attempt  it, trying to check all their work to see if it's legit or spam would take a tremendous amount of effort. Not to mention how many users would spam just for a chance to win, and the effort required for certain actions to undo their negative impact, such as adding incorrect information, wrongfully moving huge amounts of listings, etc.

-Along with the White Banner, as the OP suggested in #2, having a special banner for every one 90 Days + through Elite is actually a pretty good idea. If the competition is getting to the point that only Staff are winning ( be it because of time / effort, advantage, or what ever else may be the reason ), then adding another Banner for regular members could be a huge incentive to get them to compete.

As RDay said, motivation is the biggest key here in getting more users to participate. Other than the Banners / Hall of Fame, there's almost no incentive for users to compete, and put in the time / effort it takes to actually win. I don't personally have any ideas ( at the moment ) on how to improve this, but finding a new and / or better way of motivating users to compete would probably make the biggest difference.

( Though his idea of cutting Green points in half for Staff is whack lol. If a Staff and non-Staff are the only two fighting for the Green, even if the Staff wins every day, the non-Staff would outscore them by 1.5 points every day )

Mohammedroxx3 :
RDay13 :  

Hey you two gotta watch the language.  Even if your text is crossed out the Mods will still see that.




So It seems that  Idea Number 1 is a no go. that's alright  It was just an idea to keep the competition from being too dominated, I really didn't think it through.
But a secondary banner seems to be just fine,  if it's a non staff banner.

I'm surprised this thread hasn't been discussed with Davideo7 yet, there's alot of vaild arguments that can both contribute to the future of Tour De vizzed competitions.

I also agree on the idea of having staff actions not count towards green if some of them aren't counted towards red in general anyways. 


Motivation is really what we need for a better TDV so I figured at least one of these ideas could get people posting again.      

Cox didn't really have a huge advantage over anyone else with the actions he did.
There are a lot of CP actions that any user could have easily done that would have put them way ahead in a shorter period of time such as submitting screenshots(which a lot of games desperately need) and as for posting, he had no advantage there.

People need to stop complaining about the TdV being unfair and just compete.

Vanelan : I think the "advantage" they mean when it comes to posting is the staff forums but those hardly get any activity, definitely not enough to affect blue at least, so I think that point is rather null. However I do think staff posts are also more prone to being long posts so that does certainly help with yellow. Nonetheless I do agree with you that there are plenty of actions that seem to be ignored.

I don't think it's fair to tell people not to complain though - shouldn't we try to make this fair for everyone? What does shushing everyone do to help that? If so many users are complaining I don't think it's simply a matter of users not trying hard enough, be it little motivation or not.

I'm not exactly up-to-date on TdV stuff as I haven't really had a reason to care, being that I much prefer the old VCS (call me stuck in the past or whatever), but remind me - do post CP count towards the red banner?

Minuano : More of the reason I stopped complaining about it. Its just gone to the point I am tired of the tdv really I am. What does complain do if it gets tiring? The tdv won't ever go away. So most people have to deal with it. Even if there were more changes to be made I guarantee more people will complain about it. When the month comes I just imagine its a non tdv month, and carry on with how I normally post at that. If I was still elite I would had still done what people saw last month that's no change. Its what you have on you, that you can use to help you. People are saying its unfair for the members of below that are not staff. Those members can do just as much. They just need to figure out how they can post in what areas. Just because staff has a slight upper hand of a little power. Doesn't mean most would just abuse it like I said. Anyone can do what cox does its a matter of making the effort, and complaining about it won't really help. But, then again its the best way to see they are still not happy about the tdv. Its better to grind, and put up with it like other people have. '-'

Vanelan : There will ever be someone complaining. Because we make changes, because we don't make changes... Nobody will ever agree 100% on a decision. However, if the complain is constructive, like suggesting new ideas instead of simply saying "shut down this unfair competition already", then the least we can do is reply and discuss.

And yeah, people keep forgetting how could Ferdinand establish a record for most points in a single jersey and how could he get second overall competing just in two jerseys. Screenshot adding should be taken more seriously by non-staff users, both for the competition and to contribute towards the site.

Minuano : The advantage is that we have several staff+ actions available and also higher daily limits, so we can score a lot more actions than non-staff. We saw that exclusive forums mean nothing when an Elite was able to score +200 posts in a day.

And well, posts do count for Red, but you aren't awarded that much CP per posts, so it makes little difference.

Eniitan : There are several reasons to get tired of the TdV: the exhausting effort all month long, the bad-player attitudes many users show, disagreement with the changes made... Honestly, for members that have stick around for very long and have witnessed and even participated in +10 TdV it's really hard to not get tired of it.

And well, non-staff users should start to increase their pace if they want to stand a chance. We've seen non-staff users make it to the top 5, so they just need to step up a bit their pace and they can fight for the win. However, in July, most active users have just been promoted to staff for their contributions, so it's hard that we see any non-staff performing quite well, but those who haven't been picked have one more reason to step up their activity and contribute even more to the site so they can try better luck at a staff position later on.

If we want things to be more fair we should do the following:

1. Remove post, CP and word counts for any forum that is trusted+ restricted. That would be any staff forum or any rented forum that restricts its membership (like my private forum).

2. Make the green jersey unlimited for all non-staff actions. If people want to watch and rate 500 videos per day or listen to 1,000 songs then by all means they can do that. It would mean they don't have as much to do the next day and the next eventually running out of stuff unless new content is also being created just as quickly (which might actually encourage new content).

3. Restrict all non-staff actions from counting in either red or green. That would help remove the staff advantage that exists and obviously shouldn't.

Those 3 things seem to be the main issues that people have.

Davideo7 : how hard would it be to implement those rules before the next TdV?

A lot has happened while I was sleeping in this thread :o.

I just want to point out a few more extra things- CP Abuse this time around will be easier to find because of how many people can access the CP and Viz logs. Last time I checked, it's Elite+ now when it used to be Local+. And I have a feeling that people who would abuse the CP system for green would have done so even if points for green were only for the actions that didn't go over the daily limit, just not on as big of a scale.

I also want to say that I like the idea of an Elite-below only jersey. And I don't like the green for staff members should only be .5, since that is punishing the staff :/.

Mohammedroxx3 : That's what I thought too- until I noticed when I was going for points in green that posting did give me one point, just like what cox noticed. For every post.

Vanelan :
When Did I say the TDV was unfair?  and more importantly how am I complaining when I'm making suggestions?



All I'm saying is there needs to be some form to encourage Non staff competition. Something like a Normal user banner could do the trick and encourage more normal users to compete. 

In the very recent tour de vizzed  There was 3 teams.  Staff and Vets,  Locals and above, and  Trusted, newbie and regulars.

In Theory Trusted Newbie and regulars should've been on top due to a vastly higher population versus the other two teams, but due to lack of motivation users didn't compete.
And the Trusted team ended up barely getting 300 points.

If Users aren't competing then it's not much of a competition in that sense.

Is that unfair Criticism to say that we need more ways to get normal members to compete?  

Even then  If Multiple people have been complaining about The Tour De vizzed, then If I were an admin or local I'd take a look and try to make some solutions.
I'd rather have the complaining somewhat stop over it continuing.  

Mohammedroxx3 : If I had my staff role back, I could easily make a month of reaching my limit everyday...

I do find it a good idea to unlimit it for that amount of time, however... You still have to think that 3/4 jersey's, arent really limited to staff. Word count deffinitely isnt limited, but I supposed subjected to post limits. However, I havnt seen anyone on this site reach over what a regular member could. And if they have, it wasnt by much (The limit would be 50), which honestly, I havnt seen any normal member try that hard this last TdV xP But I will somewhat agree with red being an issue, and green deffinitely being an issue. Red is only slightly an issue, because certain actions really don't give that much CP. But can be very reliable on the CP action count.

Im not saying everyone is wrong by possibly changeing it to the way you guys are suggesting xD I think it's a good idea. Only downside is no one can complain about regular members not winning because they literally have every oppritunity ;P

Also. May I add that it maaaayyy bring more work to the Local/Global mods when it comes to monitoring unlimited actions?

Alright, just as expected the half thing didn't get a lot of support. I have another idea that I hope will at least be considered. 

So two big problems that have been stated before is lack of activity and lack of competition. I have a rough idea that may or may not work out. 

So for each jersey, we have a certain threshold, that if enough people reach, the points for that jersey double or increase in some way. 

For example, in the blue jersey, if 10+ people get 15+ posts, people who place in the top 5 that day, for that jersey, get a bonus, in some way. Not only will this encourage more activity, but it will also make the competition more competitive. 

I also like ZT's idea to remove the action limit for the green jersey. I think if nothing else is implemented, having an elite and below jersey is a good idea. I think the three things geeo stated is pretty on point as what would be good for TdV. 

RDay13 : the only problem with adding or changing too much stuff is that it makes the competition really complicated. I would prefer keeping it as simple as possible rather than adding new things and making new rules to make it more complex.

My changes would even out the playing field without making the competition more complex which I think is better.

I don't know if there is any way to prevent the last 10 days from being slow. Once someone has a strong lead it is tough for anyone to catch them. People need to compete from day 1 in order to keep things interesting. If only 1 person really competes like we've had the last 2 (or more times) then the winner is set.

Maybe having prizes for the top 3 or 5 spots would help that. Give people something to work for beyond just the #1 spot would help that.

I dislike your first idea. Seems like it would make it pointless to put in a lot of effort at the start. I think the winner should still ultimately be whoever put in the most effort throughout the month. If that's really required to get people to compete then we likely need to look at other ways to get people more involved.

I actually like the second idea. Perhaps change it a little bit by splitting up the overall jersey so there's one for non staff (elite and below or trusted and below) and one for staff and up. Seems like that would be the easiest way to deal with the problem of staff advantages while also encouraging people that aren't staff to compete since they'd simply be competing for two different banners. It wouldn't require completely changing TdV aside from the addition of a new banner/leaderboard which I think makes it the best option since I don't think david is too keen on adding a bunch of new rules and further restricting it.

geeogree :
Mynamescox44 :  

Technically staff actions don't count towards green. The thing that makes it unfair is that actions that non staff can still technically do like character adding has to wait to get approved by staff. So that would mean removing those actions as well which aren't strictly non staff. The problem with this is that we'd also have to removed moved ebay listings (trusted + restricted) so by the end barely any actions would count.The green jersey is pretty much by design a jersey geared towards staff members. I think splitting up the overall jersey would be a better solution.

Zlinqx : I believe there are still a handful of restricted actions (like song adding) that still give points even though not everyone can do them. Regardless I think a review by David would be welcomed by everyone to confirm that only actions that EVERYONE can do count towards Red and Green so that this issue can finally be put to rest.

The 2nd point you raised sounds like more work than less. Making another overall jersey would be more difficult than changing the restrictions on the TdV in my mind. David will have to make that decision though since he knows which would be more work overall.

geeogree : Possibly but I think it would be better at actually encouraging people to compete since to some degree staff is always going to have an advantage otherwise. It would be less complicated when actually competing to have another banner compared to having a bunch of rules restricting what actions count and what doesn't.

I know I've raised the point with david before about green and he said staff actions don't count towards green so if song adding counts it's likely because he forgot to make it so it doesn't. There's still going to be a problem though because moving ebay listings is trusted+ restricted, things like character adding will still give staff an advantage because normal members will have to wait to get their submissions approved. Not to mention we also have higher limits on actions. 

Zlinqx : I thought that staff+ actions didn't count towards red, not green... I think staff only actions like removing ebay listing and character EDITING (not adding) still count for green. I mean, that's how I got a green jersey last time (even if that was an year ago).

And elite or below still get the CP and get a point for green from character adding, the only difference I can see from having it pending or approved is that the name is either italicized (pending) or not (approved). I think you may be confusing it with game page content adding, which needs to be approved until the elite or below gets any CP (which btw already doesn't count for the green jersey).

ZeeTee : Removing ebay listings doesn't count for green and hasn't in a long time, character editing does. I didn't know people earned CP before a character was approved so you're probably right about that one though that does seem kind of weird.

Minuano : I'm not telling them to shush, but rather to direct their efforts toward actually trying instead of complaining.
The post and word counts of the staff threads is insignificant. I don't think anyone won TdV by using either of those...
As for the actions, there are plenty of actions that others can do that can easily compete with staff actions, especially since David increased the number of actions.

EX Palen : Exactly. Ferdinand and I were killing TdV by adding screenshots. Its something everyone can do as well.

geeogree : I don't think its an issue with staff or non-staff actions. It seems to be more like there are users that don't want to put the effort into winning.
On the last day, the logs show that cox wins red and green mostly by posts and song ratings. Both actions that anyone can do.

SuperCrash64 : Saying the staff+ has an advantage is more or less saying the competition is unfair.
Its not the system's fault if the users aren't participating.