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Champions Online: Halloween Costume Contest!

edict#8422 edict Posts: 108 Cryptic Developer
The Powers that be of Millenium City have come together to celebrate the spooookiest of holidays, Champions, and you can be a part of it! This Friday, November 3rd at 5pm PT, we'll be doing a live streamed Halloween contest, judged by some of the developers that work on Champions Online! Head to the Powerhouse Theater to participate!

We'll be judging in two categories:

Horror
Classic Hero
In each category, there will be three winners and five runners up. Here's how the prizes break down:

1st: Therakiel's Sword, Gold Voucher, Purple Voucher, 5 dev tokens
2nd: Gold Voucher, Purple Voucher, 5 Dev Tokens
3rd: Gold Voucher, 5 dev tokens
Runner ups/Honorable Mentions: Purple Voucher, 1 Dev Token

You can exchange the vouchers and tokens for a variety of prizes! See some examples here.


And our grand prize, the very rare Therakiel's Sword:
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Comments

  • chaosdrgnz43chaosdrgnz43 Posts: 1,674 Arc User
    Oh my. Frickin' Dev Tokens!

    Any chance there's a huge axe weapon unlock in the future?
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  • stergasterga Posts: 2,353 Arc User
    Classic hero? As in tights or from a specific era? I'm here for the paper doll simulator not because I know anything about comics.​​
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  • chaelkchaelk Posts: 7,732 Arc User
    what's that in Server time, for those not in the US?
    I have a sneaking suspicion it'll be about 2am sat
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  • pantagruel01pantagruel01 Posts: 7,091 Arc User
    chaelk said:

    what's that in Server time, for those not in the US?

    Server time is (usually) the same as pacific time (it seems to be using an older timezone database so it's off for a small amount of time near the switch between standard and daylight time)
  • deadman20deadman20 Posts: 1,529 Arc User
    You can check the Server's time relative to yours in-game by hovering over the clock attached to the minimap. It may help.

    Also, I hope to be here for this. It sounds fun!​​
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  • ealford1985ealford1985 Posts: 3,582 Arc User
    I am not sure everyone realizes just how many people may probably show up.

    The last time that sword was up...we had 4 zones in PHT.

    Is there any way to increase the zone size? I just have this feeling this is meant to be simple...but it's going to be bigger than expected.
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  • sekhmet46sekhmet46 Posts: 175 Arc User
    Jesus Christ Dev tokens... I need the Toothy Maw... I actually want that more than I'd want Therakiel's Sword...
  • kaiserin#0958 kaiserin Posts: 3,078 Cryptic Developer
    While we can increase zone size, it's not really a good idea. If multiple zones pop up, we'll just move from zone to zone and look over the costumes.​​
  • sekhmet46sekhmet46 Posts: 175 Arc User
    Also is switching allowed, ie do I need to make 1 costume or 2?
  • kaiserin#0958 kaiserin Posts: 3,078 Cryptic Developer
    Switching is allowed.​​
  • lezard21lezard21 Posts: 1,510 Arc User
    Is the 2H sword tradeable? I may participate if the possibility to break the game's economy is an option
  • pantagruel01pantagruel01 Posts: 7,091 Arc User
    edited November 2017
    Plausible possibilities for the meaning of 'classic hero':
    • Classical (Greek, Roman, etc)
    • Golden Age
    • Silver Age
    • General Superheroic
    • Clones Welcome
    Might want to say which.
  • ealford1985ealford1985 Posts: 3,582 Arc User
    Technically CO has defined “Classic” hero in the zstore.

    But I think the question is more...are we heroes dressing up for Halloween? Or are we just heroes dressing up in “classic” looks.
  • kaiserin#0958 kaiserin Posts: 3,078 Cryptic Developer
    We're just looking for a classic hero look, we're not looking for a specific era.
    Same for horror, just looking for something with a horror feel.

    It should go without saying that clones should be strayed from in a Cryptic held costume contest :p​​
  • chaelkchaelk Posts: 7,732 Arc User
    edited November 2017
    get reported by multiple Devs at once, makes it kinda hard to argue that you didn't have a clone

    ok 5pm my time = 1am ST.
    so 5pm ST= 9am my time.. might be in.
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  • stergasterga Posts: 2,353 Arc User
    This weekend is daylight savings time. Cryptic has this habit of doing the time change early. Like on a Thursday. Which happens to be right before this Friday contest. Is that going to be the case this year? Are the devs going to hold the contest at 5pm pacific time (normal server time) and completely forget the server is actually an hour off?

    I probably won't be there either way as I have things to do on Friday.​​
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  • pantagruel01pantagruel01 Posts: 7,091 Arc User
    sterga said:

    This weekend is daylight savings time. Cryptic has this habit of doing the time change early. Like on a Thursday. Which happens to be right before this Friday contest. Is that going to be the case this year? Are the devs going to hold the contest at 5pm pacific time (normal server time) and completely forget the server is actually an hour off?​​

    The announcement says Pacific Time, not Server Time, so it doesn't matter if the server is off.
  • spinnytopspinnytop Posts: 16,450 Arc User
    edited November 2017
    kaizerin said:

    We're just looking for a classic hero look, we're not looking for a specific era.

    So then a nice classic magical girl costume \o/
  • stergasterga Posts: 2,353 Arc User
    The announcement says Pacific Time, not Server Time, so it doesn't matter if the server is off.

    It does for everyone not in the pacific time zone. Especially since it's not exactly a secret that ST is pacific time. And several people, including you, pointed out ST is usually pac time. Asking about a topic that is almost guaranteed to be an issue isn't something that needs to be argued over. As someone who has been running contests for years, I know how DTS and they way Cryptic handles it causes problems twice a year, every year.

    Just because I won't be there doesn't mean I can put a PSA up for anyone who actually does want to go.​​
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  • kaiserin#0958 kaiserin Posts: 3,078 Cryptic Developer
    Hey guys! So the power died at Cryptic (I'm typing this on my phone). We are going to continue the contest at 6pm OR. Very sorry for the delay!
  • guyhumualguyhumual Posts: 2,387 Arc User
    That was a terrible experience but I guess I know never to bother with costume contests again.
  • lezard21lezard21 Posts: 1,510 Arc User
    guyhumual said:

    That was a terrible experience but I guess I know never to bother with costume contests again.

    What happened?
  • kaiserin#0958 kaiserin Posts: 3,078 Cryptic Developer
    Thanks all! Despite all the hiccups the contest wound up being a blast!
    We will likely post up the winners next week on the forums for all to see.​​
  • xparibaxxparibax Posts: 149 Arc User
    This was quite amusing, despite the problems- Thank you Kaizerin and Overlord N for having us!
    Congrats to all the winners! :)

  • mithrosnomoremithrosnomore Posts: 521 Arc User
    Thanks for hosting, and thanks for the "after party".

    And especially thanks for doing this sort of thing knowing that a bunch of people that didn't win will accuse the hosts of being blind, biased, or both.

    Is there any chance, though, of making dev tokens account-based currency or at least tradeable within an account through the hideout bank?

    Thanks again.
  • guyhumualguyhumual Posts: 2,387 Arc User
    edited November 2017


    And especially thanks for doing this sort of thing knowing that a bunch of people that didn't win will accuse the hosts of being blind, biased, or both.

    Well anyone pissed off for those reasons sadly doesn't understand how contests work. I can't tell other people which costumes were the best, only which ones I liked, and if the Devs happened to like the costumes of their in game friends best it might be because those players know the devs taste's best, but what I can tell you that the process was far too long. That's what made me angry. I had friends RPing in the Minefield and I completely missed out because of how long and drawn out this event was.

    If other people had fun, good on them, but I didn't and the experience has ruined costume contests for me completely.
  • xparibaxxparibax Posts: 149 Arc User
    A power outage, a delay because of that and a judge that had problems getting in, a switching CC- we all know those take longer- and 3 zones to sort through. I hosted a 3[ 4 for a while] zone CC before- it takes a good while. There are a lot of people simply to look at, any other problems aside. They did pretty good and i'd wager most people who attended had fun. ;)

  • bluhmanbluhman Posts: 2,410 Arc User
    guyhumual said:


    Well anyone pissed off for those reasons sadly doesn't understand how contests work. I can't tell other people which costumes were the best, only which ones I liked, and if the Devs happened to like the costumes of their in game friends best it might be because those players know the devs taste's best, but what I can tell you that the process was far too long. That's what made me angry. I had friends RPing in the Minefield and I completely missed out because of how long and drawn out this event was.

    If other people had fun, good on them, but I didn't and the experience has ruined costume contests for me completely.

    Clasically the biggest cause of salt in any CC (personal experience speaking) is duration of the contest. That's more time a person not-winning is going to end up getting nothing for standing around in a line looking pretty, when they could've been actually playing the game or farming something. That factor does get mitigated if you're the kind of person into socializing with the CC crowd, but I made it a pretty express goal of mine, back in the days I hosted, to usually keep contests close to a maximum of 10 minutes of judging time.

    Considering there was over 200 contestants though, 10 minutes would've been an impossibility. I feel like they did the best they could considering everything and was fortunate enough to get a prize at least.

    Though apparently beating Negalodon would've gotten me some Dev Tokens from what I heard? I crashed out of the fight before it ended and was basically spent after 4 hours of waiting and stressing over whether the one costume out of like 130 I had chosen was a good choice, so I kind of missed out on that...
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  • mithrosnomoremithrosnomore Posts: 521 Arc User
    bluhman said:



    Though apparently beating Negalodon would've gotten me some Dev Tokens from what I heard? I crashed out of the fight before it ended and was basically spent after 4 hours of waiting and stressing over whether the one costume out of like 130 I had chosen was a good choice, so I kind of missed out on that...

    Yeah, after the Megalodon fight finished up I guess everyone there/that participated got a dev token.

    I was fortunate enough to not crash until right after the pop-up appeared on my screen, but when I got back to the game I checked and the token was there.

    I just wish that they could be transferred, or if not then raise the cap a little to give us a margin of error to work with.

    They host another contest next year and I somehow manage to win 5 tokens, I guess that one token goes to waste.

  • netheriusvashtarnetheriusvashtar Posts: 16 Arc User
    bluhman said:

    guyhumual said:


    Well anyone pissed off for those reasons sadly doesn't understand how contests work. I can't tell other people which costumes were the best, only which ones I liked, and if the Devs happened to like the costumes of their in game friends best it might be because those players know the devs taste's best, but what I can tell you that the process was far too long. That's what made me angry. I had friends RPing in the Minefield and I completely missed out because of how long and drawn out this event was.

    If other people had fun, good on them, but I didn't and the experience has ruined costume contests for me completely.

    Clasically the biggest cause of salt in any CC (personal experience speaking) is duration of the contest. That's more time a person not-winning is going to end up getting nothing for standing around in a line looking pretty, when they could've been actually playing the game or farming something. That factor does get mitigated if you're the kind of person into socializing with the CC crowd, but I made it a pretty express goal of mine, back in the days I hosted, to usually keep contests close to a maximum of 10 minutes of judging time.

    Considering there was over 200 contestants though, 10 minutes would've been an impossibility. I feel like they did the best they could considering everything and was fortunate enough to get a prize at least.

    Though apparently beating Negalodon would've gotten me some Dev Tokens from what I heard? I crashed out of the fight before it ended and was basically spent after 4 hours of waiting and stressing over whether the one costume out of like 130 I had chosen was a good choice, so I kind of missed out on that...
    Blarg, Wish I knew that... Part of the problem was, my character was under 40, and no one was scaled up to 40... the end result? Lower-level players getting whaled on by higher level players, and too many players fighting each other instead of the Negaladon thing, but I wonder if there's a token waiting for me since I participated?
  • ealford1985ealford1985 Posts: 3,582 Arc User
    I think the tokens came from actually beating it. I had two...but I noticed one appeared when it died.
  • omnilord#8416 omnilord Posts: 348 Arc User
    Just checked all the characters I had in the theater. AND I fought the shark for like 40 seconds, AND was present when it died. No Dev tokens at all. How fix please? Feeling pretty hurt over spending four hours in the contest and being one of the missed for an ambiguous hit or miss consolation prize. :frown:
  • guyhumualguyhumual Posts: 2,387 Arc User
    So if there was a Megalodon fight I missed it. I left the moment the horror category winners were announced. So I didn't even get a consolation prize. So I guess that's more salt in the wound.
  • guyhumualguyhumual Posts: 2,387 Arc User
    bluhman said:



    Clasically the biggest cause of salt in any CC (personal experience speaking) is duration of the contest. That's more time a person not-winning is going to end up getting nothing for standing around in a line looking pretty, when they could've been actually playing the game or farming something. That factor does get mitigated if you're the kind of person into socializing with the CC crowd, but I made it a pretty express goal of mine, back in the days I hosted, to usually keep contests close to a maximum of 10 minutes of judging time.

    Considering there was over 200 contestants though, 10 minutes would've been an impossibility. I feel like they did the best they could considering everything and was fortunate enough to get a prize at least.

    Thanks for that Bluhman, good to know I'm not alone in this, and I was expecting about two hours, maybe 10 minutes per zone for each contest, that'd be a solid hour of judging, and then half an hour of deliberation and announcing names? Throw in anther half hour of fooling around and you got a two hour contest. I experienced nearly twice that.
    bluhman said:

    Though apparently beating Negalodon would've gotten me some Dev Tokens from what I heard? I crashed out of the fight before it ended and was basically spent after 4 hours of waiting and stressing over whether the one costume out of like 130 I had chosen was a good choice, so I kind of missed out on that...

    I left the moment the horror winners were announced. I didn't even know there was a Negalodon to fight. Might have been nice to have had something to show for the time wasted, my toon was level 40 and kind of tough, but whatever, it was past midnight when I left and knowing my luck if I'd stayed I'd probably been one shotted adding pain to the misery.
  • xparibaxxparibax Posts: 149 Arc User
    It was zone 3, it was a "everyone huddle up under the shark" thing, as z1&2 had finished theirs by then. And not everyone who was there got one. I died to the shark and the pvp so many times- but I thought it was hilarious. ;) worth it!

  • tigerofcachticetigerofcachtice Posts: 551 Arc User


    ^ Selfie with Overlord N =)

    I remember when I hosted a CC to give away the Lord Gar Dev action figures, where then-CO GM Trailturtle helped and also advertised in News and in the Launcher, etc., there were 56 contestants and it took 1 hour. This was after I practiced, watching other hosts' CCs just to see how fast I could score them, so I already prepared as best I could for the actual event.

    Thus, I understand the feeling of the players, because even after preparing, I myself felt my own CC took too long as a judge.

    (That time, 1 guy sent me a complaint Tell about my picks that was so long, he must have been typing it before I even announced the winners! I was really impressed because as soon as I hit Enter I got a block of purple text. It was amazing!)

    There were 3 Zones of 200+ contestants this time, right? If there was a problem, it was I think the Devs dramatically UNDER-estimated the MASSIVE turnout. Seriously there's usually not even 3 Zones in Millennium City outside of events. This was HUGE. I don't think anyone could have expected a Costume Contest where the turnout needed multiple Zones.

    So I appreciate what the Devs tried to do, but there were technical difficulties and this was the 1st time they tried something like this I reckon. I just hope it's not the last time. In that hope, I share my following experiences in the spirit of being helpful:

    1. Perhaps run a forum-based contest instead - people could post pics in the forum or Twitter, etc.
    2. Just do the Negasharkzilla in...Caprice or something - in case you want to Twitchstream something hilarious
    3. Or have a host asking CO-related trivia questions - like player volunteers, giving Gs for right answers, to occupy players*


    * Note - Bunni B.O.T., whom many of you may know in Costume Contest and Roleplay circles, helped me greatly by hosting, with her own Gs and her own questions, to say nothing of time and her experience in handling complaints. It was critical.

    Just providing some constructive feedback for future events, if we are so fortunate.
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  • stergasterga Posts: 2,353 Arc User
    Actually, I would expect a CC with incredibly high value prizes to be multiple instances. Isn't Therakiel's Sword worth 20k+ globals? Ms. Whats-her-name's CC only gave out 10k globals and that was multi-instance.

    The best way to get better at hosting is to host a lot. I bet many of those with the fastest CCs are also the same people that have been doing them for years. I don't see why the devs can't host a CC and get people from the community to judge them. Or just start sponsoring already existing CCs.​​
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  • kaiserin#0958 kaiserin Posts: 3,078 Cryptic Developer
    edited November 2017
    So a lot went wrong leading up to the contest.

    We were originally going to have a host, Ambassador Kael. However he fell ill Friday and could not attend. Edict was going to take his place.

    Then about 30 minutes before the contest was supposed to happen Cryptic had a power outage, and employees had to leave the building.

    We had a quick meeting and discussed what we should do and decided to log in from home and run the contest from there. We wouldn't be able to stream and had to delay the contest an hour but decided that would be better than calling off the contest that day.

    Edict was unable to participate from home, and our Executive Producer was having issues getting the game to patch at a quick rate.

    Many of our other devs were at Blizzcon/unable to attend, so that left Supreme Overlord N and myself to attend the contest.

    Needless to say things did not go as planned, but for all the things that went awry the contest turned out very well.

    We didn't underestimate the contest, I figured there'd be 3~4 zones.

    Judging did take a little bit, but we had a pretty good system in place. We did decide to extend the honorable mentions so we wouldn't get stuck trying to narrow those down.

    If we host another one the one there will likely only be one category to save time. Also prizes will be fixed (instead of choose a voucher) as waiting for responses on what voucher the winners wanted ate up a lot of time.​​
  • deadman20deadman20 Posts: 1,529 Arc User
    We appreciate the effort you all put into this. It's not an easy task to manage a contest across multiple zones. Hope something like this comes up again!

    Also, if you find yourselves short on staff for another contest like this, I won't mind stepping in as a guest judge. I'm sure others would too.​​
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  • kaiserin#0958 kaiserin Posts: 3,078 Cryptic Developer
    edited November 2017
    I don't think we would ever allow player involvement in the form of judging/hosting in a Cryptic run costume contest. There's a lot on the legal side of things that would get messy.​​
  • n3lln3ll Posts: 21 Arc User
    If you ever hold another CC would it be impossible to start it hour or two earlier or keep it in 2 parts, one earlier and one later, or something because this one continued past 5 am my time so I was dead tired and even left right away when shark spawned because it was going down so low so didn't even get the consolation prize lol. Ofc I know it's my decision if I want to stay up so late for CC or not and could have just not participated. Bit salt there maybe in my comment, sorry about that already beforehand lol.
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  • markhawkmanmarkhawkman Posts: 4,915 Arc User
    kaizerin said:

    I don't think we would ever allow player involvement in the form of judging/hosting in a Cryptic run costume contest. There's a lot on the legal side of things that would get messy.​​

    Maybe allow players to do a trivial contest while you judge?
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  • stergasterga Posts: 2,353 Arc User
    kaizerin wrote: »
    I don't think we would ever allow player involvement in the form of judging/hosting in a Cryptic run costume contest. There's a lot on the legal side of things that would get messy.

    How so? It's hardly unusual for companies to sponsor cash shop crap giveaways from players to players. Cryptic has even done so before, if I'm not mistaken. We have volunteer moderators on the official forums, what's the difference with having volunteer judges at an official contest?​​
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  • theravenforcetheravenforce Posts: 7,065 Arc User
    Cryptic has, in the past, supplied rewards to player run events.

    I'd definitely re-start the Cosmic Key Events that I used to run, if I could figure out Dev backing and a good time...
  • mithrosnomoremithrosnomore Posts: 521 Arc User
    sterga said:

    Actually, I would expect a CC with incredibly high value prizes to be multiple instances. Isn't Therakiel's Sword worth 20k+ globals? Ms. Whats-her-name's CC only gave out 10k globals and that was multi-instance.



    The best way to get better at hosting is to host a lot. I bet many of those with the fastest CCs are also the same people that have been doing them for years. I don't see why the devs can't host a CC and get people from the community to judge them. Or just start sponsoring already existing CCs.​​

    So that people can hook their friends up on Cryptic's dime?

    I am not big into conspiracy theories about rigged costume contests, but I am a big fan of avoiding the appearance of impropriety.

    Letting random players give Cryptic's goodies to whom they see fit has "appearance of impropriety" written all over it in giant glowing letters.

    And the folks that think Kaiserin just gave the prizes to her friends would go into overdrive if they had guest judges giving prizes to guildies, no matter how good that person's costume may look and no matter how well it fit into the category.
    kaizerin said:




    If we host another one the one there will likely only be one category to save time. Also prizes will be fixed (instead of choose a voucher) as waiting for responses on what voucher the winners wanted ate up a lot of time.​​

    I would love it if these could become a semi-regular thing with a variety of categories.

    I did suspect that waiting for people to decide which voucher they wanted was the biggest reason for why it was taking as long as it was between some of the winners being announced.
  • pantagruel01pantagruel01 Posts: 7,091 Arc User
    Yeah, whatever the legal issues, there are certainly business reasons to not provide prizes for player-run contests. Particularly ones that are as subjective as CCs.
  • stergasterga Posts: 2,353 Arc User
    So that people can hook their friends up on Cryptic's dime?

    How would player judges be any different than any event Kai could ever be involved in? If someone don't trust the devs, it doesn't matter who does the judging in any official contest or where the items come from. And trust is what this will always boil down to. So many people know everyone else it's basically impossible to find a dev or player "untainted" in the contest community.

    That's less of a legal issue and more of a players like to complain about everything issue. Unless people want randoms from off the streets judging CCs, there is nothing Cryptic can do to stop people from making accusations that don't pass the common sense check.​​
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