Random proposal, if staggered is picked:
A poll, to determine the order. Using the ranked system, so you vote 1, 2, 3, or four for each Toa. Lowest goes first, highest goes last.
That seems the most fair. I imagine people are going to want to see Kualus/Gaaki flirts.
Main reason I think they might be first is that some people who I heavily disagree with would prefer they not be gold. If Pouks and Bomonga are first, and they’re both silver, then people would have to choose between metallic color balance and not wanting Gaaki to look like a Toa of Psionic.
As far as I’ve seen, that’s the only thing that people might care about that would be impacted by the order. (aside from if they’ve only built one of the Toa Hagah, of course, but that’s going to be a lot more scattered)
Gosh dern it autocorret.
Yo, so, I’m not gonna be able to be on this topic as much as I was the other two, I’ve got exams coming up, and of course Easter’s tomorrow. I’ll get to miss out on all the fun, delicious arguments.
But yeah, my thoughts on the OP:
I voted for artists not being able to change Kanohi, but honestly it would wouldn’t bother me too much if they could or not. I know for my designs I deliberately chose specific Kanohi for each of my hagah, but it’s not a hill I’d be willing to die on. If the artistic community makes a big enough point to allow them to change the Kanohi, I’d allow them too. I mean, they don’t get very much artistic freedom outside of that.
As for the main question, for me it’s wholeheartedly forcing complete sets of 4 hagah.
Imagine for a moment a world where Lego had 6 different designers design the Mata in a void from one another. We might have five mata with black shoulders … and one with grey shoulders. Lewa might have Mata Green Limbs while everyone else got a primary and secondary color. We might have five Pohatu builds and one normal torso. We might have three toa with the same eye color, and the other three with unique colors. Maybe Gali wouldn’t have her unique chestplate. You get the idea.
The Mata were all designed relative to one another.
I don’t want to see an outcome of this contest where metallic color distributions are wonky, or where every hagah but Norik have a Bohrok shield chestplate, or whatever. Especially considering the low piece count of Iruini Gold, we could see multiple hagah have a similar build due to how limiting the piece selection is.
Over the past few topics, I’ve been one of the dude’s championing as much freedom in the builds as possible. Pohatu torsos, shin armor, whatever. HOWEVER I would rather accept boring, literal pallet swap hagah if it meant that they all felt like a unit. It wouldn’t be my preference, but in my mind anything weird like a 2/3/1 or 2/1/1/1/1/1 armor split would kinda be a blemish on the hagah. Mandating groups of 4 would fix this.
One artist’s vision for all four in the group. Takes out the multitudes of chances we have of messing up the team consistency. It’s unfortunately the most expensive option for the mocists, but hey, we have Stud.io. Peace out dudes, I’m gonna be dipping until Monday, gonna spend tomorrow with the family. You mods better not close the topic before then; I may have exams to study for then, but I always make time for my precious plastic building toys.
And also, if a moccist has, say, one black mettur Torso, they could use it for all four mocs. Couldn’t do a group shot, of course, but you could do indivdual photos of each.
Of course, this doesn’t apply if you have one in any other color.
Lego already did do this. Five Toa Nuva have primary-coloured hands, while Pohatu has black. Five Visorak have long thighs, while Oohnorak has short. Kopaka Mata has a grey neck.
(EDIT: Kopaka Nuva has black hands (well, hand) as well, which is actually pretty similar to your point about three Toa having same-coloured eyes, while three have unique colour. Except this time it’s hands, and its unclear if Onua’s hands are “black” or “primary-coloured”.)
Yeah, it would be pretty crazy if Lego decided to give one Toa a completely different body type. Good thing they never did that.
So now you’re saying that designing them individually would reduce the unique things about them?
Your entire argument is that the Mata only fit together because they were designed together, and then you end it by saying “if they were designed separately, Gali wouldn’t have stood out”.
Except it won’t. People could still submit non-matching Hagah.
The more likely outcome is that you get people who have been working on one Hagah for the last month who are now forced to create 3 other builds just to get their original one seen. That original will absolutely stand out amongst these.
If someone’s going to that much effort to make a Hagah moc, it’s going to stand out anyway. These are Mettur builds, not Artakha.
hmm… yeah, that’s a fair point
And people can just
not vote for them.
That’s the whole point.
actually, Gali’s hands are light blue and Onua’s hands are grey.
Not necessarily.
I’ve been spending the last 3 months trying to find affordable paint of a certain colour that isn’t also out of stock (apparently a lot of people are taking up painting in the pandemic).
If I’m forced to submit three other Hagah, do think I’m going to try to go out and find even more shades of paint? Or am I just going to make three silver/gold Metru builds?
I appreciate and respect the gotcha moment you have here, I see now that I wasn’t clear enough with my point.
The Mata being designed as a team allowed for carefully calculated differences between the group, while still allowing for a consistent through line. Let’s examine the Gali Chestplate as an example, because it was convenient to fit it in the same quote.
Gali’s unique chestplate implies her femininity. It is a unique chest piece to her, and only her. If, for example, Tahu had gotten that chestplate too, Gali Mata would lose one of her most unique, defining build traits. The fact that the Mata were designed in tandem with one another allowed for each one to utilize unique techniques between one another without having each stray too far from the unified aesthetic. Each one is unique, but feels like part of a whole.
I see that my argument was not clear originally, I hope this clears it up.
You make some pretty good points here, and your point about Gali’s chest makes a lot more sense now.
Although, with all the rules already in place regarding how the Hagah are to be built, I can’t see the random differences from individual voting being any more outstanding than the “calculated” differences you mentioned above.
Yeah, I suppose so. There is always a good chance things’ll balance out just due to people voting. It’s funny, originally, I wasn’t super jazzed about either the Helryx or Artahka mocs, but over time I just began to accept them and see them in my mind as those characters, despite my initial impressions. tbh I don’t think it’ll matter in the end too much which road is chosen, I’ll probably just roll with whichever, lmao. It was nice talking with you, man. Glad we understand one another’s perspectives now, if not seeing completely eye to eye. You have a good night.
But I’m serious this time, for real, I’m actually gonna put my phone away, this is it until Monday.
Studio is free software. And you wouldn’t say the Artakha contest should’ve been done limb-by-limb because some people don’t have the parts to build the whole MOC. This logic doesn’t make sense.
It’s not 100% guaranteed, but it’s much more likely. And if someone enters a full set of Hagah that don’t work well together, don’t vote for it.
A little variation, sure. But personally I don’t want 3/4 Hagah being gold and the other being copper, and for two of those to have the same spear piece. Doing separate contests for each Toa runs the risk of creating such conflicts, especially so if they’re held simultaneously.
You’re confusing consistency with monotony. Norik and Iruini are clearly consistent with each other - all their elements have either a commonality or a polarity - yet they’re still teeming with individual flare and creativity. They have the same colour placement, but have different metallic colours. They have different masks and spear heads, but they both have spears and shields. One has short legs, one has long. They strike a careful balance between consistency and individuality, and there are mathematically enough points of variability (mask, colour, armour, spear head, etc.) to preserve this balance of uniformity and creativity with the other Hagah without ending up with ‘boring clone sets’. The designs I’ve seen posted so far, especially the Stud.io ones, look plenty creative to me.
To me, the Hagah are striking, but they don’t scream in your face with “Look at me, I am EPIC”. And to my eyes, that’s a good thing. The designs that I’ve seen so far are striking, but subtle, playing on the inherent nostalgia of the Hagah and the 04-05 aesthetic. If we never got any of the Hagah as Toa, I’d probably be saying that bolder, distinct designs are more than welcome (though I would still personally vote for the ones that look most like real sets). But the Hagah contest is unique because we have a very clear precedent in the form of Norik and Iruini. Many people will be voting on the basis of maintaining that delicate balance between consistency and creativity, and we cannot cater to those people if we run simultaneous voting.
And don’t forget: if you want less consistent designs, there’s still a chance that two Hagah using the same really cool and unique aspect both win. Now neither of them are unique. The only thing simultaneous voting does for such people is silence the people that would otherwise be able to make an informed vote on the basis of consistency. That doesn’t seem fair to me.
This is exactly what I mean by silencing people who want consistency. If the most consistent designs keep winning, then that’s evidence that a huge group of people want consistency. But conversely, if the least consistent designs keep winning, that’s evidence that most people either don’t care much about consistency, or prefer inconsistency.
If you run the votes simultaneously, you’re guaranteeing that more people in the pro-consistency group will be disappointed with the winning designs.
The issue of fairness when it comes to which Toa gets voted on first and last is a valid concern, but again, I think it’s a necessary sacrifice to accommodate for the fact that this is a team contest as much as four individual contests. The suggestions I’ve seen (or have come up with) of how to mitigate this issue to an extent are:
Well, this begins to prove my theory that the people who chose simultaneous voting have little to lose by converting to our side. 
I’m new to this platform so I’m not familiar on how to quote people so bare with me
I’m well aware studio is free, it’s a fantastic program. My argument is that some people don’t have access to a computer so that’s not a one size fits all solution. As far as parts go, my argument is that requiring people to have four times the amount of parts can be a financial burden. Requiring people to make four toa as opposed to one will limit the amount of people who will be able to enter. If Someone can make the absolute best Bomonga moc that would win, but can’t produce a Pouks moc then the entire community misses out on what they could offer. I personally wouldn’t want to sacrifice that. I’m all for giving everyone a chance to enter so that we have more options.
Your second argument “don’t vote for it” isn’t very valid in my opinion. The same thing could be said for separate contests, if you don’t like the entry then don’t vote for it. That is what a contest is after all.
The third argument I don’t disagree with, a little is good, but we want consistency. The way I see it I can pick and choose witch Mocs I think fit the cannon character, We as individuals would have more say in witch Mocs get chosen if we have separate contests, I can choose my favorite moc for each character rather than comparing them as a group.
@SirKeksalot I see what you are saying regarding the money issue. I agree most people do have a computer and probably could afford to order parts. That said there is people who don’t, no matter how small that portion of people, I’d hate for the community to miss out on what they can offer because they can’t produce all four toa.
I love your argument for staggered voting! I think that would definitely improve the chances of getting a more consistent set of toa.
@TheJerminator Four times as many parts for four toa as for a single one. I’m not referring to how many pieces the moc has compared to previous contests. If we require people to product four Mocs then the will need four times as many parts as they would if they were only required to make one.
Do not double or triple post. -Eljay
And that is the problem that arises with that option of staggered voting… and again with no benefit to improving the ‘consistency’, as I explained in my previous posts.
Also keep in mind Hagah can be whatever metallic color they want and any number of them can have that color. Your argument is largely built on personal preference of equal ratios.
To hold all 4 polls together is really the only option that fits free-for-all format. No bias created.
But not everyone can afford to splurge on Lego, either. In fact, most people already need a computer for work or even to enter this contest to begin with, so they’re already set there. If you can’t afford one, you probably can’t afford the other.
This isn’t to say that we should have simultaneous voting because there is one important resource besides money: time. Making a good entry, even a bog-standard Metru build, will take careful planning and consideration. If we had a solid year to prepare (at this rate, we just might), yeah, mandating all 4 Hagah wouldn’t be a biggie; but we may only have, what, a month before the submission window begins? So in order for people to make their choices and order the parts they need (shipping can be slow!), it’s best to have a staggered vote and let people only enter the Hagah they want to enter.
This is risky because the community won’t all be voting with the same priorities as one individual. To give a simple example: it could end up that that Bomonga and Kualas both end up having silver armor when they win, same as Norik. But the most popular Gaaki and Pouks entries may not be FDG like Iruini, so you could end up with copper Gaaki and silver Pouks.
A staggered vote allows everyone to make plans. Color consistency is easier to keep when we know more of the canonized team composition. If we already know that 3 of the Hagah are now silver, voters can keep that in mind going forward and entrants can make necessary adjustments to their entries.
Let me restate this again, because thi is VERY IMPORTANT for people to understand.
Option 1 is the only voting option that makes sense for the format of free-for-all.
Options 2 and 3 DO NOT actually improve any consistency.
The extent of consistency that is present in the existing Hagah is as follows: Metru torso, spear and rhotuka shield, metallic colors reserve for specific body parts, similar height. That’s it.
All of these points are already adressed and enforced in the rules for Hagah contest.
Any sort of consistency that Options 2 and 3 would produce would be 100% redundant with what is already ensured. Therefore Options 2 and 3 do not bring any benefits.
However they do introduce severe restrictions, exclude significant fractions of potential entrants, or arbitrarily create unfair bias. All of these problems are unbeffiting of the free-for-all format, which aims and claims to give everybody equal chances regardles of the medium through which they choose to depict their Hagah.
Option 1 is the only one that makes any reasonable sense.
The “consistency” in this case is regarding having an equal ration of metalics colors and armor pieces, wich we couldn’t know if we vote for all of them separetly at the same time. Also two entries could end be with the same mask.
If we choose Option 3, then the voters would indicate what they prefer, the best moc in their opinon or the one that mantain the metalic color proportion and armor pieces, as @Hazash mentioned.
About consistency I want to point out that the Inika don’t have a perfect ratio. 3 of them have a metalic chest armor same color of their weapon, two of them have a primary color chest armor and Kongu is in between, with primary color and metalic chest armor. So there is a precedence of not consistent armor in a Toa team. Now in the Hagah would be more notisable, since the metalic color is everywhere.
Imagine all this arguing for one thing or another, only for an artwork to win the contest
So?
Why is it a bad thing if some people prefer balance in armour colors, or armour type?
You say that this is unnecessary, it’s only some people’s personal preference? Fine. Then give them a chance to vote for it. Simeoultaneous voting gives the people who actually care about this no chance to vote for it, and it will result in people regretting their vote.
Well, most of what’s been said will apply to art too.
I don’t have a preference for option 1 or 3 but I strongly advise against option 2 of staggering the contest because if you stagger it, it sets the precedent for the other 3 hagahs that come after it. Basically it’s way too much emphasis on the first moc and the last moc gets the short end of the stick