Alolan_Apples
Let the apples roll!
Now that the TBT Fair is over, I would like to review the TBT Fair and how well the staff did.
The TBT Fair of 2016 was the best site event I went to. Of course the TBT Fair is supposed to be exciting, but the staff really done it this year. In the Carousel of Contests, the Event Pavilion, Championship Series, and the TBT Fair Shop, they have done better than they did in 2014. I would like to thank the three administrators, the four moderators, and the three project staff members for making this fair the best TBT Fair.
Easily the most fun part about a Bell Tree Forums event is the contests where you can submit your entries, wait for staff nominations after submissions are closed, and vote for your favorite entries. Like every TBT Fair, there are five contests. They are the Art Drawing Contest, the Avatar & Signature Set Contest, the Poetry Contest, the Design-a-Villager & Interior Design Contest, and the Design Your Town Contest. The prizes for each contest is a trophy like every TBT contest, a rainbow feather for every time you place in the top three, and 30 to 60 extra tickets, which depends on how high you ranked. As a bonus, you would be able to get restocks of limited-stock fair collectibles. Just participating in them would get you five tickets. I participated in four of them, but didn't receive a nomination in any of them.
Favorite Contest:
Design-a-Villager & Interior Design Contest - like the last fair and the fair before, one of the contests was an interior design contest. Although I prefer theme-oriented contests, the switch-up was very interesting as I liked this one more than 2014's contest. It's a two-part contest. The first part was basically the interior design part, where you decorate a house, take a picture of a room, and upload it to TBT or an image-sharing site. The other part was to create a villager, by coming up with a name, species, personality, and a backstory with less than 100 words. What I liked about the contest is not just that it involves my favorite feature in Animal Crossing since the GameCube Version, but it also allowed me to use Happy Home Designer as part of the contest. I was already done with New Leaf, and Happy Home Designer had better interior design features. This was the first contest I entered.
The dream town contest was my second favorite contest, but it was the only one I didn't enter, mainly because of how I don't really play ACNL anymore. In addition, my town was a huge mess and it's not worth spending all the time to fix the town for the contest.
Least Favorite Contest:
Art Drawing Contest: - the most reoccurring contest in Bell Tree's events is easily the art contests. This year, everyone had to draw according to the fair's theme, the Summer Nights theme and the Fair theme. It's not a bad contest at all, and I like the idea of having an art contest of any kind in every contest. However, I didn't enjoy it as much because I'm not really an artist, and the other contests were better.
I seemed to be more proud of my submission to the Avatar & Signature Set Contest, but it's my second least favorite contest because it involves making art. I don't have anything against art, but I am not a good artist. Though I did enjoy using the features Microsoft PowerPoint had, as well as compiling the frames in a gif maker.
While we had the big events in the Carousel of Contests, there were smaller events in the Event Pavilion, which we had nine events. Six of them always guaranteed the limited edition animated Crescent Moon Glow Wand collectible, depending on how high ranked you are in an event or if you got a staff favorite. While the contests don't distribute tickets until submissions close, you are always guaranteed tickets after each session ends (unless if you lost or didn't follow the rules). I have participated in all nine events this year, and earned at least one ticket in each event.
Favorite Events:
My top three favorite events this year are Bucket of Paint, New Leaf Photo Challenge, and Count Inside the Bottle. Two of them were from last fair, but the other one, was a new event for this year.
The Bucket of Paint was undoubtedly the best event at the TBT Fair of 2016. What you do here is that you color within the lines drawn by the event runner, either through physical or digital format. This event was not only the best because it was so fun, but it was also the best because everyone had good entries. Even the worst of the entries were above average, but the best of the entries were very magical when it came to coloring.
My second favorite is the New Leaf Photo Challenge. What you do is that you play Animal Crossing: New Leaf, take a picture, upload it to Bell Tree, and caption the picture. This one is not only fun because it involves playing the game, but it's the easiest way to get a staff favorite with an animated collectible as the prize.
Count Inside the Bottle was also a memorable event worth mentioning. What you do is that you guess how many snack items are inside the bottle in the picture posted by the event runner. You do this by submitting a thread in the submissions forum, putting the bottle number in the title and your guess in the post. The closer your guess, the more tickets you get, and if you were the closest, you get the animated collectible. Of course, being far off would get you nothing for the week.
Least Favorite Events:
The three events I did not enjoy as much as the rest are the Discord Trivia Night, the House of Mirrors, and the Caption the Picture, with the trivia night being my least favorite. Although it sounds like fun, it eventually became my least favorite because it was set up to be a typing contest, which made me feel stressful. And you only get points for being the first one to answer a question correctly, not answer a question correctly.
The House of Mirrors is a good idea as I liked the fact that we had both easy and hard mirrors this year when last year's mirrors were nothing but hard. You wouldn't be surprised to see me rank it this low. In fact, I originally decided to put this at the bottom, but then after two stressful nights at the Discord Trivia Night, I felt that the House of Mirrors was better.
The other event, Caption the Picture, was in 7th place because it wasn't as bad as the trivia night or house of mirrors, but it was simple and easy as the other six events had more of a challenge.
Although I only played in the Mario Kart event, I felt that it was genius to have video game tournaments beyond Animal Crossing and art as a site event. We had the Smash Tournament, Pokemon Tournament, Splatoon Fair, and Mario Kart 8 Friendlies. I only played Mario Kart 8 because I don't play Smash or Pokemon, as I don't own Splatoon.
Strengths and Weaknesses:
While I had a lot of fun, the fair has its strengths and weaknesses. I will go over what the staff did right at this year's TBT Fair opposed to the first TBT fair I went to (the 2014 one).
First of all, the overall theme of the fair was better than last time. The glow theme, bright night theme, and anything like that is much better than the birthday theme. Secondly, the championship series (where you can play other video games as part of the event) was a good idea, because it expands the fair to the point where it's not limited to the contests or the events. Moreover, they did a better job maintaining the events rather than cancelling or changing management of an event. The Count Inside the Bottle Event in 2014 was a disappointment since it got cancelled mid-way. I would also like to point out that the House of Mirrors had a larger range of difficulty opposed to all-hard last year. Finally, they introduced the glow wands and black feather collectibles.
Now for the disadvantages. One of them was that it took place in the summer rather than the winter. Not that it's bad, but I like the idea of putting the fair towards the end of the year rather than in the mid-year. Another disadvantage was that the event was lot shorter. We had three weeks of events rather than four. I also didn't like how it was harder to get tickets than last year's (i.e. Scavenger Hunt allows up to one of each rather than two of each per day). Furthermore, the prizes were a lot more expensive. Balloons were like ten tickets each. Their counterparts this year are 15 tickets. Last, but not least, the pinwheel and balloon collectibles were retired instead of new balloons being added.
Event I would like to add:
I would like something like an advent calendar were everyone picks a number between 1 to 30. All slots are guaranteed prizes, but only one can win the prize in each slot (including the animated collectible of the year). When the event is closed for the week, a randomizer would pick the lucky winner in each slot. You can only enter once per week. Some of the prizes are booby prizes (fruit collectibles, tasty cakes etc), but others are fair prizes.
Event I would like to remove:
The correct answer is none of them, but if I had a choice, it would have to be Caption the Picture. It's a one-step process you can easily do, which makes it not as memorable. You may think I would want to remove House of Mirrors or Trivia Night, but those two were good ideas.
Event I would like to see return:
As I would easily assume that the trivia night, mirror event, photo challenge, scavenger hunt, and count inside the bottle would return, I would hope that the Bucket of Paint event returns as well. This was my favorite event, and I enjoyed what others did in the event. Even others enjoyed this a lot.
That's all for my TBT Fair review. Comments are appreciated.
The TBT Fair of 2016 was the best site event I went to. Of course the TBT Fair is supposed to be exciting, but the staff really done it this year. In the Carousel of Contests, the Event Pavilion, Championship Series, and the TBT Fair Shop, they have done better than they did in 2014. I would like to thank the three administrators, the four moderators, and the three project staff members for making this fair the best TBT Fair.
Carousel of Contests
Easily the most fun part about a Bell Tree Forums event is the contests where you can submit your entries, wait for staff nominations after submissions are closed, and vote for your favorite entries. Like every TBT Fair, there are five contests. They are the Art Drawing Contest, the Avatar & Signature Set Contest, the Poetry Contest, the Design-a-Villager & Interior Design Contest, and the Design Your Town Contest. The prizes for each contest is a trophy like every TBT contest, a rainbow feather for every time you place in the top three, and 30 to 60 extra tickets, which depends on how high you ranked. As a bonus, you would be able to get restocks of limited-stock fair collectibles. Just participating in them would get you five tickets. I participated in four of them, but didn't receive a nomination in any of them.
Favorite Contest:
Design-a-Villager & Interior Design Contest - like the last fair and the fair before, one of the contests was an interior design contest. Although I prefer theme-oriented contests, the switch-up was very interesting as I liked this one more than 2014's contest. It's a two-part contest. The first part was basically the interior design part, where you decorate a house, take a picture of a room, and upload it to TBT or an image-sharing site. The other part was to create a villager, by coming up with a name, species, personality, and a backstory with less than 100 words. What I liked about the contest is not just that it involves my favorite feature in Animal Crossing since the GameCube Version, but it also allowed me to use Happy Home Designer as part of the contest. I was already done with New Leaf, and Happy Home Designer had better interior design features. This was the first contest I entered.
The dream town contest was my second favorite contest, but it was the only one I didn't enter, mainly because of how I don't really play ACNL anymore. In addition, my town was a huge mess and it's not worth spending all the time to fix the town for the contest.
Least Favorite Contest:
Art Drawing Contest: - the most reoccurring contest in Bell Tree's events is easily the art contests. This year, everyone had to draw according to the fair's theme, the Summer Nights theme and the Fair theme. It's not a bad contest at all, and I like the idea of having an art contest of any kind in every contest. However, I didn't enjoy it as much because I'm not really an artist, and the other contests were better.
I seemed to be more proud of my submission to the Avatar & Signature Set Contest, but it's my second least favorite contest because it involves making art. I don't have anything against art, but I am not a good artist. Though I did enjoy using the features Microsoft PowerPoint had, as well as compiling the frames in a gif maker.
Event Pavilion
While we had the big events in the Carousel of Contests, there were smaller events in the Event Pavilion, which we had nine events. Six of them always guaranteed the limited edition animated Crescent Moon Glow Wand collectible, depending on how high ranked you are in an event or if you got a staff favorite. While the contests don't distribute tickets until submissions close, you are always guaranteed tickets after each session ends (unless if you lost or didn't follow the rules). I have participated in all nine events this year, and earned at least one ticket in each event.
Favorite Events:
My top three favorite events this year are Bucket of Paint, New Leaf Photo Challenge, and Count Inside the Bottle. Two of them were from last fair, but the other one, was a new event for this year.
The Bucket of Paint was undoubtedly the best event at the TBT Fair of 2016. What you do here is that you color within the lines drawn by the event runner, either through physical or digital format. This event was not only the best because it was so fun, but it was also the best because everyone had good entries. Even the worst of the entries were above average, but the best of the entries were very magical when it came to coloring.
My second favorite is the New Leaf Photo Challenge. What you do is that you play Animal Crossing: New Leaf, take a picture, upload it to Bell Tree, and caption the picture. This one is not only fun because it involves playing the game, but it's the easiest way to get a staff favorite with an animated collectible as the prize.
Count Inside the Bottle was also a memorable event worth mentioning. What you do is that you guess how many snack items are inside the bottle in the picture posted by the event runner. You do this by submitting a thread in the submissions forum, putting the bottle number in the title and your guess in the post. The closer your guess, the more tickets you get, and if you were the closest, you get the animated collectible. Of course, being far off would get you nothing for the week.
Least Favorite Events:
The three events I did not enjoy as much as the rest are the Discord Trivia Night, the House of Mirrors, and the Caption the Picture, with the trivia night being my least favorite. Although it sounds like fun, it eventually became my least favorite because it was set up to be a typing contest, which made me feel stressful. And you only get points for being the first one to answer a question correctly, not answer a question correctly.
The House of Mirrors is a good idea as I liked the fact that we had both easy and hard mirrors this year when last year's mirrors were nothing but hard. You wouldn't be surprised to see me rank it this low. In fact, I originally decided to put this at the bottom, but then after two stressful nights at the Discord Trivia Night, I felt that the House of Mirrors was better.
The other event, Caption the Picture, was in 7th place because it wasn't as bad as the trivia night or house of mirrors, but it was simple and easy as the other six events had more of a challenge.
Championship Series
Although I only played in the Mario Kart event, I felt that it was genius to have video game tournaments beyond Animal Crossing and art as a site event. We had the Smash Tournament, Pokemon Tournament, Splatoon Fair, and Mario Kart 8 Friendlies. I only played Mario Kart 8 because I don't play Smash or Pokemon, as I don't own Splatoon.
Other Details
Strengths and Weaknesses:
While I had a lot of fun, the fair has its strengths and weaknesses. I will go over what the staff did right at this year's TBT Fair opposed to the first TBT fair I went to (the 2014 one).
First of all, the overall theme of the fair was better than last time. The glow theme, bright night theme, and anything like that is much better than the birthday theme. Secondly, the championship series (where you can play other video games as part of the event) was a good idea, because it expands the fair to the point where it's not limited to the contests or the events. Moreover, they did a better job maintaining the events rather than cancelling or changing management of an event. The Count Inside the Bottle Event in 2014 was a disappointment since it got cancelled mid-way. I would also like to point out that the House of Mirrors had a larger range of difficulty opposed to all-hard last year. Finally, they introduced the glow wands and black feather collectibles.
Now for the disadvantages. One of them was that it took place in the summer rather than the winter. Not that it's bad, but I like the idea of putting the fair towards the end of the year rather than in the mid-year. Another disadvantage was that the event was lot shorter. We had three weeks of events rather than four. I also didn't like how it was harder to get tickets than last year's (i.e. Scavenger Hunt allows up to one of each rather than two of each per day). Furthermore, the prizes were a lot more expensive. Balloons were like ten tickets each. Their counterparts this year are 15 tickets. Last, but not least, the pinwheel and balloon collectibles were retired instead of new balloons being added.
Event I would like to add:
I would like something like an advent calendar were everyone picks a number between 1 to 30. All slots are guaranteed prizes, but only one can win the prize in each slot (including the animated collectible of the year). When the event is closed for the week, a randomizer would pick the lucky winner in each slot. You can only enter once per week. Some of the prizes are booby prizes (fruit collectibles, tasty cakes etc), but others are fair prizes.
Event I would like to remove:
The correct answer is none of them, but if I had a choice, it would have to be Caption the Picture. It's a one-step process you can easily do, which makes it not as memorable. You may think I would want to remove House of Mirrors or Trivia Night, but those two were good ideas.
Event I would like to see return:
As I would easily assume that the trivia night, mirror event, photo challenge, scavenger hunt, and count inside the bottle would return, I would hope that the Bucket of Paint event returns as well. This was my favorite event, and I enjoyed what others did in the event. Even others enjoyed this a lot.
That's all for my TBT Fair review. Comments are appreciated.
