If you have a lot of ties, just eliminate the bottom few until you have your finalists. Maybe you’re just a few clicks away from your new favorite Halloween costume! At the beginning of your costume contest, give your judges a few votes (2-4, depending on the number of judges), and have every hero who receives votes progress to a second round, regardless of how many votes are cast for him. The problem with blind voting is that people will predictably vote all over the place, especially at the beginning of the contest. This will result in more “honest” votes, game costume ideas since people don’t know whom others are voting for. While there’s no contest as to which MMO has the more robust economy, there are still similarities that fit the pay-to-progress comment Mr. Simon Ludgate made in a recent Gamasutra article. A couple of interesting blocks fell into place this week that fit well with a look at how EVE and RoM allow money to circulate through the economies, and how PvP works in conjunction with it.

While it might be targeted at kids, Wizard101’s proven hugely successful among adults as well. It was simply a lazy writing error (decades ago in The Original Series) that led to the use of the term for the ships for two different species, and the devs at STO really needed to keep the confusion level down, especially for players who aren’t as familiar with the Trek universe as others might be. It’s truly a level playing field. Hivemind voting and kingmaking are real problems when it comes to fair treatment of potential candidates. The real problem: Is it really? I’m definitely not going to talk about costume design, but I can discuss how to create a judging and voting system that lends to fairer selection of winners. If you follow these basic steps, your costume contest will run a lot more smoothly; more importantly, it will be a lot more fair. If you choose to vote last, you can sabotage someone else’s win to give someone you like more a guaranteed spot.

It refers to a player stuck in a losing situation who has the ability to cripple another player at the expense of all of his or her win potential. Obviously, this situation is incredibly bad for people who deserve to win. Probably the most difficult situation comes when one judge says, “I like this person’s costume.” This may be fine when nothing is on the line, but when you have a panel of judges, influencing them to think your way is bad. The way to remove it is to have someone honest (ideally the person funding the contest) function as a vote keeper. In fact, voting methods that completely remove it are ideal. This virtually eliminates bandwagon voting based on favoritism. If judges communicate too much about what they like, bias and favoritism hits fast. How much does it cost to stay competitive in RoM? Obviously a lot of people will stay to see the winners, and that’s fine, but it keeps you from wasting a lot of people’s time if they don’t want to stay.

Then again, I didn’t honestly think that the first one would see its way to release, so my ability to accurately gauge these things is rather suspect. Set your jump-point past the break to see. Literally. It’s not really a thematic set for Tankers, though, since you’re essentially going full-on offense. Next, hold another voting round and eliminate all but the top five or so, giving your judges the same number of votes or slightly smaller. This way, judges can’t be influenced by the opinions of other judges and can pick the choices that stand out best in their own minds. Costume contests have judges precisely because they are a group of varied opinions. The idea behind kingmaking in a costume contest is that the person you want to win has no chance, and someone whose costume you don’t like is winning the contest. We just want it to be fair.