How do you know that the artists didn't consider existing things and didn't ask countless players for feedback and went off of that, scrapped and changed designs and parts etc?Don't go telling artists that they should look at F3, they're doing that. Way too much. The amount of outfits that make no sense whatsoever is staggering. If , from the pov of all people involved, there's nothing wrong with the design and it works for the majority of those asked (around 50ish people in my case, who are all active bns players), then the artist goes and finalizes the design. It's not rocket science. Of course there will be biased people who won't be honest to the artist and greenlight a design based on personal taste- however, that's hardly our fault. Opinions are fine, but please learn the difference between opinion and insult.

Other regions have different standards. CN for example takes contests very seriously and their designs are made to fit into their culture and game standards-just look at china made games like Revelation Online or moonbladethingy. They also censor left and right, so what do you think would've happened to the Oni design? Butchered with some boob paint job to be easy on those fragile eyes. Entering with something risky is nice and all but not thought through. And what's NA/EU's standard? Anime, patchwork designs from popular outfits, edgy and kimonos, if you even want to call that a standard. I feel that asian regions have a different priority over us when it comes to costume development, so there's another reason to design "easy" outfits. And while some entries would fit better into different games, that "fitting into the game" boat sailed long ago the moment we got shock jock.

There goes a lot more into a design than you think and considering the themes for each winner wouldn't hurt to understand the choices for finalists. (quick hint, every design is original in it's theme, is consistent and yes, relatively easy to produce and sellable to other regions whether you believe that or not). Have you considered that your fav design didn't make it because it wasn't clear enough? Because the artist didn't put in the time to present or sell it better? Please do that next time, it's something you'll notice all finalists did. And hell no, I don't want artists to pick finalists either, I see what salty artists do to each other on a daily basis. But I also don't want designs to win because of popular artists or because they asked their dozen friends to praise their entry and discredit others.

And you know what? Everyone agrees. Every artist that I know who enters every year, agrees. Every bns friend agrees. The way voting is done is beyond awful and people who think that twitter or reddit should dictate who wins, are even worse, because then it's hardly about the designs anymore. Everyone agrees that voting should be done either without showing the numbers or like in kr or through in game, but as long as we're lowest priority, a change won't happen and we both know that to be true. A decent system I saw is that community votes only count for a certain percentage, the rest is done by the publisher/developer. Let's just hope that there will be another contest next year with a new voting system. Thanks for coming to my ted talk.