We're back with a brand new system! Weekly Card Design Competitions (or WCDC) will now be running each week. The system in place is a little bit different, and we're looking to improve it over time; feedback and bug reports are expected and encouraged.
Our first competition is called "How To Train Year Dragon". For information on the requirements of the theme, you can check out the special page for it in the brand new Fan Creations portal. Alternatively, you can head directly there by clicking the banner below.
The New System
Speaking of our brand new system, I thought I'd take this opportunity to walk you all through what we have in place right now.
This is our brand new Fan Creations portal. Here, you'll find any articles about Fan Creations, links to the Fan Creations competitions, and forum threads from the Fan Creations section of the forums.
Of note is that this is exclusively for Hearthstone related Fan Creations content, as it is a subsection of the Hearthstone Portal.
You'll also see this on both the main Hearthstone Portal and the Fan Creations Portal, below the most recent forum posts. 'Learn More' will take you to the current competition, while 'View All Competitions' is... pretty self-explanatory.
Speaking of the current competition...
This is the main page for a competition. As we move through the phases, each section will become available independently.
Along the top is a Nav bar:
- Competition Home - This will return you to this first main page.
- Discussion Thread - This will take you to the forums, where you can discuss entries with other competitors and ask for help on design.
- Submit Entry - This will take you to the entry submission page.
- Vote on Cards - This will take you to a page which will show you a random submitted card other than your own that you haven't seen before, allowing you to vote on it.
- Voting involves rating a card from 1 to 5 stars. If you don't wish to vote on a card for whatever reason, you can refresh the page to skip it.
- My Votes - This will show you every card you've voted on (or ones which you skipped). Here you can change any votes you made.
Submitting an entry is super easy, but it can be a bit confusing at first.
This is the current competition's submission page. As you can see, the rules of the competition are displayed up front to remind you of them as you submit.
You'll input the information for your card - if it doesn't have a Race, or if it has no Attack and Health as a spell, you can ignore those boxes, or similar - and to the right is a place to upload a card image. We recommend using Hearthcards to create your card, which you can then upload here.
Some competitions will allow you to submit more than one card. If it's a requirement, there will be more submission spots immediately available; if it's merely optional, then there will be a button to allow you to add an extra card to your entry.
A known issue right now is that tokens aren't supported. To work around this, future competitions that allow them will allow you to submit an extra card, which can be used to submit the token. An alternative approach would be to include the token in the description box available for extra commentary on your card below the submission section.
Once you've submitted, you can't change your card, so make sure to check it over thoroughly beforehand.
Our General Rules For Submitting
Each competition will provide specifics regarding how that unique prompt will unfold, but there are also more generalized rules that should be followed every time. They are as follows:
- You may only submit one collectible card per competition unless the rules for that unique prompt state otherwise. You may include tokens as other "cards" if necessary.
- You may provide additional commentary about your card in the description box. This can be for notes on design, balance, or other gameplay qualities. Flavor text is also welcome. You may not post personal information, advertise your card, or post additional cards within the description box to exceed the prompt's card limit.
- The card must be of your own design. If you are caught plagiarizing from someone else you will be banned outright.
- Humorous entries are tolerated, but outright "troll" entries will be disqualified. We reserve the right to determine what classifies a "troll entry", regardless of the rules of that particular competition.
- You may not submit any Golden, Diamond, or Signature cards.
- After a particular card has been deemed a winner, it cannot be submitted again for future competitions - we want fresh ideas!
Hopefully you enjoy these competitions returning! As I mentioned at the start, we're always looking for feedback on the system, so feel free to ask on Discord or PM me directly if you have any questions. Happy creating!
Comments
Question: where do people get their card art for custom card competitions and custom updates to the Classic/basic set? Just interested in learning more.
hi all, was going to ask about possibly seeing the final standing post comp, but just found it. So, just compliments on the excellent system for the new comps, really smooth and fair. WD!
So after voting these last few days the only issue I've seen so far is fair number of too similar cards being created since they can't see what has already been pitched till they themselves are voting (i.e. the reno scheme cards). The only suggestion I can think of (besides players voting first before creating) is the 24-48 hour window of card feedback to minimize it.
I realize this is a bit of an old comment but I'll respond anyway since we've got this linked in the nav.
The positive aspect of this is that when people see the competition, they can immediately enter. We want to help them be accessible to more people so by allowing entries as soon as people see there is a new competition instead of forcing them to wait a day or more, it has the possibility to promote more submissions.
The cards that are too similar is an interesting "thing" to bring up though. Even in the old competitions, we could never really stop it, though people understood who came first and typically didn't upvote newer, similar creations. Penalizing creativity though can also be seen as a downfall. If two cards are similar but not exactly the same, one that came later could be better balanced and is more worthy of a win. It'll be one of those things we'll have to consider when making changes to the system.
Thanks for the feedback!
cool to see these are back! The custom card scene really crashed a year ago after the all the drama at the old site. Glad to see we've got a dedicated system for this. I'll give it a shot and see what I think about the interface.
GLHF to everyone. This is the place to be if you enjoy creating Hearthstone cards of your own.
My first idea: some form of acknowledgement for ones that actually ended up in the game. I know we have seen several cards created by players become reality in the past. I don't doubt that some designs have inspired the devs at some point.
I really like this system, though I would really like to have a way to see all the submissions at once.
I find only being able to see one, and having to refresh the page to see another one, kind of odd. I understand the logic behind it, but maybe it would be better if you showed them all, and each time you enter that page, you see them in different order, to preserve the possibility of all of them being shown up.
I get why you want that, but it would kinda defeat the purpose of the system.
The goal is to show you (a user) one random(ish) card each time you refresh the page. The system calculates which card has a higher priorty to be shown so all of them get a roughly equal view time across the board.
If there was an option to see all at once, you would never vote on many cards, or you would never look over all of them. Which you will not do anyway either way most likely, but that is ok, since the views are going to be spread across many users and the fairness of the cards being shown isnt in hands of each individual, but in a system that tries to balance it for everyone.
Even if the page where you would see all didnt have a set order in which cards are displayed and would shuffle every time, it would still bring an unfair advantage to the cards being displayed first/higher, which would be the same as the old system on pwn, post fast=get more views=probably more votes. This is the main thing we are trying to eliminate.
Maybe we can consider showing more than one at once (3? 5?), tho once there is going to be prompt with tokens or multiple cards, that could make things awkward.
What about a Next button, still random, wouldn't have to hit refresh the page... More so for us mobile users.
When you score a card, the page automatically refreshes, both on PC and mobile, so this shouldnt be an issue ;-)
Finally!
Is there a way to edit your own submission? I added the wrong image and spotted a typo, my bad.
Nope, everything is locked in once you submit. Allowing edits was a huge flaw in the old system!
I would at least like to be able to edit the "description" box. I mentioned a card but got the name completely wrong and now everyone who reads it will be confused.
I'm ready for this! I really like the main page with the countdowns.
This is a really solid way of doing this versus a going page by page for the voting process. Thank you for bringing these back.
Yeah the old method, and even current one the fools use over there still, is so bad at being fair. Even though we had created a decent system of weighing the votes vs where you were at on the pages, it was never good enough.
Yaaaaaay!
EDIT: is there a Discussion thread? I can't find it.
Discuss Thread will always be pinned at the top of any competition page on that competition's navigation. We probably should have linked it here too *glares at Shadows*.
https://outof.cards/forums/fan-creations/custom-hearthstone/3013-how-to-train-year-dragon-card-design-competition-discussion-thread
Thanks!