Should good avatars fear entering the arenas?

[Pilotslover]

As the title says, should good cosplays and well put together avatars be afraid to enter the arenas?

My own experiences of the 'new' arena have been very negative with a perfect Jade cosplay (with image!) being down voted by people voting for their friends and down voting other entrants.

This to me, did not seem to happen quite as desperately on the old arenas and it makes me miss the bot ridden things.

So, the question stands, should good avatars be afraid to enter the arenas for fear of being down voted?  

[MemoryDragon]

I've actually never paid too much attention to the avi arenas... Sounds like it kinda sucks now. Still, it's only what... 2k? I think it's not too much now to just go ahead and give it a shot.  

[WindowOpener]

I've never really stayed in the loop with Arenas, either, so you may take this with a grain of salt. ^^ But even without favourtism and all the rest of it, the Arenas have always been busy and probably not always able to reward all the high-quality entries. So, maybe 2k is a similar risk now as always?  

[Pilotslover]

It's 1k.

It needs to be increased now gold is so easy to make (I'd say to 5k) to stop newb entries.

It's demoralising more then anything.

I'd love to see how Rita did this week.  

[shall she sail seas]

Blame it on poor organisation. URLs can easily be hidden with frames (if you're lazy) or other better methods to prevent people from promoting their own avatars. Allowing usernames to be associated with avatars is another problem that causes unfairness.

To be honest, I never really understood the appeal of arenas besides being exactly what you're complaining about: a popularity contest.  

[mamarita]

I truly detest the avatar arena now. It was an okay concept to separate cosplays and original avatars, but let's face it, some of the most disgusting avatars win, and the good ones (uh hum) get nothing. And I only ended up with about 3.5 stars... See what I mean- the newbies and the ichy avatars win and the good ones never do, anymore.  

[Pilotslover]

Thank you Rita.

You've backed up exactly what I said all along.

I had a great Viera cosplay that got a 3.5.

Pissed me off no end.  

[XenjinHattori]

Well, in my opinion, why -shouldn't- good avatars go for the top spot? If it's a really good avatar, even if some people vote it negatively (and some people will) it should end up in a -very- good position at the end.  

[Pilotslover]

NeoTsure

Well, in my opinion, why -shouldn't- good avatars go for the top spot? If it's a really good avatar, even if some people vote it negatively (and some people will) it should end up in a -very- good position at the end.

Exactly.

Maybe Gaia should work off the number of people adding it to faves rather then the vote.  

[XenjinHattori]

Can anyone describe the changes to the Avatar Arena? A -long- time ago (and I mean, 2006) I used to do reasonably well with my Avatar. Of course, that was with another... uh, gaian... people may know as Shric. Since then, however, I have not visited the Arenas.

Basing it off of what you've said here, I'd agree with using 'favorites' instead of votes, considering we know that votes lie.