BIONICLE G1 Canon Contests Discussion & Questions

Not necessarily, only some of the 3d models added that t-shaped visor. Nothing from the side view indicates the mask has this shape of visor/ eyehole

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Cool thought, but I don’t believe there is a canon mask of anger? Greg would have to get asked outside of the contest to canonize that power, otherwise whatever design chosen would be canonically an “unknown Kanohi”.

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Sorry, Toa Nidhiki is one of character who I wanted to see his canon design… :rofl:

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Since Lariska and Nidhiki are the only characters I still have a personal stake in those are the only ones I’m actually gonna bother with. Disregarding the want for rules that helps things be consistent between species through builds. Also just to clear things out I have no interest in affecting votes with my arguments about restrictions. Tbh I could care less who won or what won unless I really dislike the moc or the moc just looks completely visually distant from anything Bionicle, like say a CCBS General Grevious for Marendar. All I’m really interested in is canon accuracy and mirroring that to what gets entered. I’ll continue being adament about it and it will be prevelent during every toa contest until its implemented The only other characters I had any personal stake in was the Hagah but they are all but ruined for me. So expect me to be more active during those 2 contests

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We know a mask like that is possible because just like hunger, anger is a rahkshi power which Greg has stated can be made into masks. So far we have hunger, teleportation, gravity, accuracy, rahi control and adaptation.
But other than that, you make a good point.

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Counterargument: It’s true that we barely saw Marendar at the time the story froze, but unlike intentionally cryptic characters like Tren Krom, Annona, and the Great Beings, Marendar was almost certainly going to be fleshed out had the serials been allowed to continue. It was being set up as the main antagonistic force of The Yesterday Quest and only gained its mysterious reputation due to real-world circumstances. If anything, its complete lack of any known characteristics other than being humanoid and slightly larger than a Glatorian makes Marendar one of the contests I’m most looking forward to; it means we have potentially the most freedom with this character.

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Did some quote mining in the archives for TYQ Toa’s apperances:

  1. Is Orde blue and gold like every other Toa of Psionics?
  1. Yes
    Official Greg Quotes | Page 1

  1. What are the pronunciations for Orde or Zaria?
  1. Ord is pronounced Ord, like “board” without the b. Zaria is pronounced zah-REE-uh.
    Official Greg Dialogue | Page 329

Post not from Greg but is quoting him:

  1. With the recent revelation that Iron Matoran (and subsequently Toa, I would assume) have varying armor colors, I have to ask; is Zaria of the burnt orange and metallic grey armor color variation?
  1. Yes
    Official Greg Quotes | Page 1

Post not from Greg but is quoting him:

  1. My entry for KanohiJournal Contest #5: Lesovikk’s Hiatus, Part 1 features Chiara in it, and so I wanted to know what her Kanohi was, since otherwise I have to avoid mentioning her Kanohi throughout the entire story.
  2. Make it Stealth
    Official Greg Quotes | Page 2

1)I’m curious what is the pronunciation of the name Chiara?

  1. KEE-ah-RAH
    Official Greg Dialogue | Page 323

Lastly this quote aged like fine wine, lol

  1. Will there ever be an official artwork of Zaria, Orde and Chiara?
  1. Not unless BIONICLE comes back. There is no budget to get artwork done
    Chat with Greg Farshtey | Page 53
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Indeed. Haha

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This does make for a good counterpoint exception to what I stated earlier. If people want to go for the “it looks cool” rule for deciding what masks Orde and Zaria should have, then having a new shape with an unknown power would be the way to go. We would lose the opportunity to canonize their abilities, yes, but it would be more open to fitting the characters.

This is very premature but on a similar note I would like to see some “immoral masks” allowed for Toa, if one can provide a good enough reason within the canon story as it currently is. Specifically Zaria.

I personally would love to use Glava’s Mask of Scavenging. My reason is it fits the character quite well. “The Mask of Scavenging, also known as the Mask of Vulture, is a Kanohi that allows its user to drain the residual life energy from the bodies of any nearby beings that have just died. This makes the user stronger and more able. (Bs01)” When the Brotherhood wiped out the Iron matoran and most Iron Toa it would make since for his mask to be able to absorbed the death around him and allowed him to survive the assault by increasing his strength. Further, it has interesting implications to the in universe rumor that he “would often kill his enemies.”

Truly any mask will work and can be used to explain his survival though if you just alter the the unknown details to fit the power of the mask.

I know the two front runners in terms of popularity are certainly the Mask of Adaptation, and Mask of Recognition both which also fit the character well and have story points to them.

But its a bit early to begin bickering on that topic just a thought to put out there at this time.

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I don’t think immoral masks work for Zaria. He’s tortured over his breaking of the Toa Code, he’s not proud of it. He wouldn’t take the killing of a Makuta as free license to break more of the Code.

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I have absolutely no intention of still beating the long dead “end the contests” horse, but since you brought that up, that’s not entirely true.

In polls with the preference system, I took the largest number, since I’m looking for just participation, not people who voted in all three preferences. What I did for the rounds with multiple polls (1st Round and Semifinals) was average all polls in that round together, since its a reasonable assumption that most people are voting in all of them, or at least more than one. This is raw data from the polls, and so it could be slightly skewed from possible dupe accounts, but I don’t think its enough to drastically change the results.

Also, just for completion, I think there was a TTV “end the contests” poll way early on (between Helryx and Artakha?), but I have been unable to find it.

I think this shows two things:

  1. Both graphs, but certainly more so with votes, show a slight decrease overtime in contest participation.
  2. Voter turnout for the MOD poll is far higher than with the Hagah on average, which occurred during that time. If the results of the MOD poll still showed a majority in favor of the contests, why are the people who voted there not voting in the actual contests?

EDIT: There is an error in the Entries graph, where the Hagah Art entries should be 24.

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Nitpick in your data, but you show there being less than 20 hagah art entries. There were 24, with 2 of those DQ’d. I’m sure it doesn’t affect your larger point, but double check your numbers.

source: the auditing experience will not let me forget

I don’t think allowing immoral masks works, but I can see an argument for moccists using this line of reasoning to use more grey area masks, like the Komau. That’d be pretty cool, IMO.

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Thanks for pointing that out. I started making this data while the Hagah Art portion was still going on, so I may have made that graph, then others entered that I didn’t catch. However, as you said, it doesn’t really affect the point I was making. But I can assure you that I double checked the numbers on votes.

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Here’s a thought. Orde can’t be canonized having a Sanok if his Sanok is an inorganic fan design. Unless people use the official Sanok mold for Orde (or a modified Metru/Mata head compatible version that looks identical), his mask would be labeled an unknown Kanohi. Of course the same would apply to the other fan designs for Inika/Mahri masks.

Like I said before though, if Orde ends up with a fan designed Sanok (which it seems he might), Greg could always be asked outside the contests to canonize the mask power.

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I’m presonally against recanonizing the inorganic shapes for the Inika mainly because Greg has been adament enough about them being the same as the organic ones, just not organic ya know.

I’m also not super fond of regional variants as they are really not necessary. However if a 3d print Sanok that has a different shape from the one released by LEGO then having it be a regional variant or a new mask is the way to go.

on the same but slightly different note, I wouldn’t mind the Suletu having its design sligthly altered for its inorganic mask as it has plenty of grey area surrounding it but I would like the mask to still be asymmetrical like the original Suletu piece even hints at. I’ll have to make a 3d model of that sometime… :thinking:

but to illustrate my point here is a sketch from another topic:

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I think a Sanok is perfect for Orde. With a Mask of Accuracy, he can use his mace to perfectly bash those filthy Zyglak brains out

On a more serious note, do we a have ruling for substituting Lariska’s teal? Teal has entered back into LEGO’s color palate but available technic/bionicle pieces are still somewhat limited. I have a dark green moc but I’m unsure if I’ll enter it in the official contest.

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It’s mostly true.

This shows a crazy degree of consistency (not parity of numbers) between those that enter MOCs and those that enter art. The numbers aren’t the same, and there are obviously reasons for that (context that needs to be considered, since graphs and data don’t always tell the full story), but this is still a really impressive retention rate.

Again, a very impressive graph that doesn’t tell the entire story, and you need to consider context for.

Helryx was incredibly hyped up and had a lot of attention directed toward. The MOC finals also may be skewed heavily by duplicate voters, but I don’t recall the final duplicate account tally or off-site vote brigade amount that affected that. In some of those later polls, Artakha voters are higher than Helryx. And the Hagah had over a dozen MOC polls that people were asked to vote in, and major delays without a reliable idea of when to anticipate their return could have easily caused a drop in retention.

In a world where there are no issues, no time delays, with characters that are broadcast well ahead of time and that people are excited to see? Retention very likely wouldn’t decrease. It could, but there would very likely be reasons behind it, as we see here. And as we look to work closer with other BIONICLE community groups to welcome their members onto the Boards to participate, I except it may very well go up. Might not, but it wouldn’t be a surprise. That is a good thing for the health of the contests.

So yeah, a slight decrease and not a major one is still really good retention. If our YouTube channel showed a “slight decrease” like this, we’d be really happy.

It was sent out to a lot of communities, but the bulk of responses still came after our video was made about it. Obviously, voting on a SurveyMonkey poll vs. a Boards poll has a different level of ease, and as a result far different levels of security. We’ve discussed this with MoD at length.

So yeah. Spirit of the letter, I suppose, but retention is really good and impressive. And it’s my sincere hope that it will get even better as we move forward.

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Perhaps I should rephrase. I saw more of a problem in your phrasing than what you said.

You downplayed the amount of votes MOD’s poll received. Sure, TTV’s video about the poll received more views than the poll itself recieved, but it still received more votes than the contests do on average. The only clear exception is the Helryx MOC Finals.

I didn’t mention the vote brigading for Helryx because I thought it was such common knowledge that I didn’t have to. Regardles of the reason for why it was so high, it’s an outlier. But even ignoring that, there is a noticeable, but still slight, decrease from Artakha to the Hagah. The only question is if that trend continues into future contests.

That’s indeed a possibility, but we probably won’t know for sure until more contests take place, to get more data. I was actually thinking about holding off showing this until after Tuyet at least to have that data as well, but since you brought up votes, I figured now would be fine. This will be interesting to return to once Tuyet is done.

I’m a bit confused. You first made the point that the MoD poll received the largest number of responses after your video on it, but then you say it was so high partly because it was spread to other communities, as if fans don’t spread the TTV contests to other communities? The point about SurveyMonkey, though, is totally valid, and I’m aware of it from the TTV/MoD discussion. That again ties into the question of if the voting requirements are too strict, but that’s a whole other can of worms.

You haven’t explicitly said this, but the tone I’m getting is that you’re shrugging this off as unimportant. To be clear, I did not post this with the intention of “See? Less people are voting in the contests. We should end them,” but rather just something for TTV to be aware of going forward.

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Not a downplay. The point was that their poll, despite the scale it was at, had a difficult time accruing responses due to its nature as a poll and not a contest itself.

See, you assume a tone in what I’m saying, but you just “assume everyone knows the context.” If they did, then we wouldn’t be talking about this. Ignoring the context in regards to data is neglecting it at best and misusing it at worst. You can’t ignore context.

Also, again, you keep saying slight. And this is all keeping in mind that the Hagah contest was wrought with issues.

I certainly believe you’re misunderstanding, but I’m not sure if you’re trying to find issue with my statements or if I’m not properly conveying them. But to summarize, my point was that polls/surveys have a difficult time getting feedback and responses, while contests usually don’t. That was the point. And using MoD’s poll data is fine, but again there are a lot of circumstances and context as to why it got high numbers.

We’ll likely continue discussing the matter of the voting requirements with MoD, but they’re the way they are for security. Fraudulent voting shot down dramatically after changes were instituted. Is it impossible to vote fraudulently now? No, there are still ways around it (like anything), but it’s a huge time commitment for someone just trying to skew results. The whole point was to cater it to those that are invested in the contests, and so would see the importance of committing the time to get to trust level 1.

You’re reading the tone into it, which really isn’t helpful. All you’ve posted reaffirms what our understanding of the contests is, while also leaving out important context during a discussion of it. I don’t think you’re doing it intentionally, but this is how misunderstandings happen and how rumors get out of hand.

One of the reasons I garnered a reputation for hating red axles and blue pins is because I kept mentioning them as a possible con in any review they’d pop up in. And I kept mentioning them because I assumed that people wouldn’t watch every video back-to-back. But a lot of people did, so they heard me mention it a lot. I still maintain having done that because that way, if someone is just looking for one review, they still have everything I would consider bringing up, because I didn’t assume they had seen another video where I mentioned it.

Don’t assume. Don’t ignore context.

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