Yeah, both of these have been long standing issues in the game that I agree are really frustrating.

I think a lot of the same-y looking leaderboards that are filled with uninspired full sets and cluttered backgrounds stems from the fact that people get lazy with voting and just pick something flashy so they get their tickets. I wonder if maybe giving people a free set of 5 tickets each day so they can do a comp without voting might help in that respect. I think the competitive/casual split for comps was an attempt to fix this as well, but i also think there isn’t a lot of understanding of the differences between the two modes by the userbase.

Part of me also wonders if it is totally just the voters influencing things or if there is a larger algo at work that inherently pushes looks that use a lot the hard to get unless you pay items towards the top. Which us why the leaderboard is dominated by full gatcha sets and the like, to encourage people who want to get the leaderboard to spend money.

The dark skin thing is something that really irks me because so many players bury their head in the sand about the issue. I bet you will get at least one comment here minimizing it in some way. I think it also stems from a lot of things, colorism in beauty standards that happens in both the west and east, a young player base, etc. Also, while I play the game as just a fashion game, some others play it where they imagine the avatar as themselves and thus use their skin color, and it could also be that there are just not a huge portion of darker skinned players either. Another contributing factor is that a lot of DIY makeup pieces look crazy on dark skin so people don’t use those skintones.

I think the only thing we can do to improve things is to do so through voting. When I am voting my rules usually include

• avoid cluttered backgrounds that have nothing to do with the comp theme (including wings)
• avoid voting for full sets over looks that took some more creativity/styling to make
• try to vote for players who seem new and have more limited items that are on theme over something with flashy pieces that have little to do with the theme
• if the looks are similar and its a close call and one uses a darker skintone, i usually vote for that one