the stars are dimmer without you around

Wait, Why an Overhaul?

It’s a fact that festival submissions have been declining over the years. When I first started submitting back in 2021, we were regularly seeing the page count for festival skin contests hit 10+, but in 2025 and 2026, festival skin contests have barely been hitting 9 pages. As a recent example, the lightfest skin contests was at a remarkably low page count of 6 three days before the contest deadline, despite being one of the most popular elemental skin contests––and unfortunately, this has been the same for every festival contest sans the water/nature fest contests in the 2025-2026 cycle.

My friend August goes into the actual statistics of the decline more here, but the TLDR is that we’ve gone from an average of 25-50 pages per skin contest to an average of 7-12 over the past 13 years. The FR userbase is only growing so theoretically we should be seeing more entrants––so why isn’t that the case?

Problem #1: Lack of Consistent Entrants

This is going to be my main point going forward, and it’s the fact that the skin contests haven’t built up a roster of consistent entrants. At the moment, there are about 8 artists who enter regularly (“regularly” defined here as “have entered the last 5 contests consecutively”). 

But why is it important that the contests have consistent participants? Well, while I agree that encouraging new artists to join skin contests is a way to boost participation––what is equally important is maintaining their participation. Think about it: if new artists join skin contests only for 3 contests, then drop out the moment they obtain a win, then you’re going to constantly be looking at a deficit of entrants rather than consistent participants who will contribute every time. And in the scenario where you really want to stabilize or increase the number of participants, what would you prefer? An artist that enters just once, or an artist that enters multiple times? 

To explain this with numbers, here’s an example. As I mentioned before, there are currently about 8 artists that consistently submit to festival contests. That’s less than 1 page of entries. Now, imagine if that number was 30. Then that’s a consistent, guaranteed 3 pages of entries that you’ll get every contest. As such, I think it’s in the site’s best interest to continue growing that consistent group of artists––which begs the question: once you get a new artist interested in participating in festivals, how can you encourage them to keep participating? 

That leads us to the next problem.

Problem #2: Outdated Prizes

If we’re going to look at what incentivizes artists to enter the most––particularly new artists––then you have to start with the prizes. And frankly, I believe the skin contest’s prizes are outdated. The last time any changes were made to them was in 2019, when the gem prize was upgraded from 1.5kg to 2kg for the Brightshine Jubilee. As we’re now at the point where a large portion of the playerbase are established players and the general economy has changed pretty significantly, I feel that the current prizes aren’t sufficient to draw interest. So I’d like to make some suggestions:

Suggestion 2A: Update Gem Prize (3kg for Winners, 1kg for Honorable Mentions)

Many other artists have spoken about this before, but the winner’s prize of 2kg is no longer enough of an incentive for more established artists to enter. (This is because artists generally earn 3kg per run filled skin run - 350g of profit x 9 copies sold, on average, minus the 5kg blueprint cost for x10 skin copies of the same design.) That means artists actually lose out on profit if their skin wins. Since the time and energy dedicated toward making a festival entry and a UMA is generally the same, when you consider whether you want a chance at 2kg or a mostly guaranteed 3kg, the choice is usually clear. 

And if we’re talking about how to encourage people to keep participating, I think what would really help is if the honorable mention prize is updated as well. After all, the more likely it is to obtain a prize beyond being a winner, the more people will find it worth their time and energy to participate. Plus, there isn't a limit to how many honmens there can be the way there are winners. And finally, if you don’t have to win to get something, this also reduces the intimidation of the contest, which I’ll also address later.

So my solution is as follows: winning prizes should be updated to 3kg to match the profit earned from a run of skins, while honmen prizes should be updated to include an additional prize of 1kg. 

I think this is the easiest adjustment to make. The gem prize is insofar the only skin contest prize that’s seen updates (2014 ROR & 2019 BSJ) This is proof that the staff have changed the gem prizes in accordance with the playerbase, and since it’s been 7 years since the last update, I think it’s reasonable for the gem prize to be updated again.

Suggestion 2B: Blueprints (5p bp for Honorable Mentions)

I really like blueprints as a prize, and I think the 5p skin bp is the most useful––especially since you can also print accents with the skin bp, so it covers for the possibility that you might be doing that. 

The main suggestion I’d like to make for bps is actually on the honorable mentions end. Since honorable mention submissions are the ones that are often printed outside of contests, I think it would be more appealing if they could actually sell extra copies, since it could help kickstart new skin artists. Assuming they keep a copy for themselves, they could sell the remaining 4(*850) for 3.4kg, which is most of the way to a 10p Skin bp, and I find that to be more helpful and enticing to new artists than a 1p Skin bp that they can only use to print for themselves. 

Suggestion 2C: Skin Artist Vista

The skin artist vista is one the main reasons I see more established skin artists submit to contests. And it’s also the main reason I see them no longer submit to contests. For a lot of artists I know, they (very validly and reasonably) enter contests just for the vista and no longer submit once they get it as the other prizes just aren’t appealing to them.

If we’re going to talk about building a consistent roster of participants, I find it absolutely necessary to update the skin artist vista. After all, there’s currently nothing stopping artists from just dropping out of the competition once they get the vista they want. 

I personally don’t know if I have a good solution for this. The first thing that comes to mind is a new skin artist vista––after all, the current one has been around for 13 years, so it might just be time for a change in general. What I do feel is that we need something new for the winner’s prizes beyond the current skin artist vista to encourage people who’ve won already to begin submitting again.

I did consider other prizes––say, apparel, scenes, etc. But since we’re talking about prizes that will be account-locked, I personally feel like anything other than a vista would result in a lot of drama towards repeat winners. But we do need repeat winners, because the premise of a repeat winner is a consistent participant, and as mentioned several times at this point, I personally think consistent participants are incredibly important for maintaining submission numbers in skin contests.

I also thought about the possibility that the staff could award prizes based on consecutive contests you’ve entered, but I realize this would be incredibly hard to manage since someone would have to manually check each and every entrant, and the FR staff team is pretty small. Still, if festival submissions ever get automated to the point where that information can be collected within reasonable effort, then I’d really suggest that.

Problem #3: Lack of Notice

Now that we’ve talked a bit about prizes and retaining entrants, I think we need to address the elephant in the room: which is, how do we get more people to enter? If you want to build a consistent roster, you need to first have people that want to enter, and that’s where we get into some logistical issues with the skin contests.

First and foremost is the fact that the skin contests are no longer prominently advertised in the sidebar. This has mostly been a problem with the recent 2025-2026 festival cycle, as early as FF 2025, and I can’t count the number of times I’ve spoken to someone who didn’t even know the skin contest was ongoing or that it had just ended. The problem is pretty prominent: if even established players aren’t aware of this event, then how could new players ever find it? 

I can somewhat speculate on the reason for this––and I think it’s because skin contests now begin on the same day as the start of the previous festival. And when there are two events ongoing, it’s inevitable that one gets overlapped by the other. 

For instance, let’s say it’s the Wavecrest announcement thread, at the bottom of which is the BSJ skin contest. Well, as a participant of the festival, I’m usually going to scroll down, take a look at the new items, and immediately get to collecting, forgetting about the skin contest entirely. 

And since skin contests have consistently only been advertised at the bottom of announcements for other new things, I think what’s happening is that it just gets overshadowed by the shiny new stuff.

Suggestion 3A: Skin Contest Submission Pinglist

Establish a pinglist to notify players when the thread goes up. This also helps remove the issues we’ve had with the wrong submission threads being linked (or the discussion and submission threads being swapped). Advertise this pinglist in the skin contests, festivals, etc, and you’ll be able to notify people who are already interested in submitting, giving them that extra kick they might need.

This would also be helpful for the staff in gauging just how many people are interested in participating in the skin contest.

Suggestion 3B: Post the Skin Contest Thread the Monday After Current Fest Ends

I feel like there’s been a significant drop in participation since skin contests were set to begin on the same day as a festival, for the reasons I mentioned above. The easiest fix is to remind people of the skin contest after all the excitement of the current festival has passed and people are beginning to look forward to the next one. 

 I suggest that the Skin Contest Thread go up the Monday after the end of the current festival. It’d give people time to enjoy the festival, and it’d decrease the chance that the skin contest is overshadowed by the current fest.

Problem #4: Intimidation

There’s no way around it. Entering the festival contests can be scary. This is especially true for new artists who are unfamiliar with creating themed skins. And the reason? I think it’s mostly because people aren’t sure what constitutes a festival skin. I’ve seen many artists submit amazing skins that I know won’t be picked because it looks far more themed for another flight, and I’ve seen a lot of artists submit skins that will be rejected just on linebreaks/lack of transparent image, etc.

Suggestion 4A: Example of a Valid Entry

This is a small fix, but I think it would absolutely help clarify things for new players. Having an “example valid submission” in the submission thread would really help give new players a visual of what their final entry needs to look like (shadows and lines applied, transparent png). This doesn’t only help “confirm” for new players what their submissions should be like. Providing a submission template code on top of that would help as well. 

I also consider a visual reference an accessibility upgrade, since word blocks are sometimes difficult to read (and this is even truer if English is not your first language). So I see this suggestion helping on multiple ends.

Suggestion 4B: “What We’ve Enjoyed”

I think it would do a lot for the festival contests if the staff provided a “some elements we’ve enjoyed seeing in the past” blurb in each of the skin contests, with a note that a skin possessing those elements doesn't guarantee an automatic win. My reasoning is that 1) it would really help new artists understand what to focus on and ensure their skins stay thematically on-point, especially since new entrants usually possess less of a grasp of the elemental themes 2) it would provide a sort of “prompt board” for artists who are stumped/stuck with ideas, and 3) having a section like this would be helpful as a reference for artists that back out of contests because they don’t know what to draw.

A Small PSA

Since we’re talking about intimidation, I get the feeling this may be brought up, so I’m going to preemptively shut down the conversation that skin submissions are declining because new artists don’t win, or because of repeat winners. Quoting from August’s decline breakdown (backed by raw data), an average of 45-65% winners of the 2025 skin contests were “less established/new artists,” and August also stated:

“I overall believe it's unhelpful to repeat the idea that 'new artists have no chance of winning' or that festival winners are crowded by repeat winners. Blindly echoing this discourages new artists from participating more than the actual data on festival winners shows.”

I agree, and he does a better job of backing up his statements with raw data, so I suggest checking out his thread. But if you’re a new artist, please don’t feel intimidated by the fact there are established players submitting. In fact:

Due to the massive drop in submissions, NOW is actually the best time to submit because you have less competitors

Don’t compare yourself to other artists. Every artist started from ground zero––even if your art isn’t where you’d like it to be right now, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still try.

“Repeat” winners make up only 30%ish of the winning slots. Per raw data from August’s thread, 45-65% of winners are less established artists. That means statistically, new artists actually have a higher chance of getting a winning slot.

“Established” artists are more scared of you (me, I’m more scared of new artists than anything)

Problem #5: Festival Monotomy

This is probably the biggest issue for festivals in general, and it is simply the monotony. It’s a difficult issue to navigate, partly because I feel it’s an inevitable result of a long-lived site, and partly because it’s hard to balance appeal to older players who've kind of seen it all vs newer players who are excited to collect new things. But overall, festivals no longer contribute new gimmicks or aesthetics to the game. 

The same formula, aesthetic, and gimmicks (new apparel, returning apparel, new vista, gene expansion) are used every time, and the predictability makes it difficult to feel excited for a new festival. And the less invested the general playerbase are in festivals, the less invested they’ll naturally be in festival skin contests as well––especially when skin contests also suffer from the reuse of aesthetics. 

Which, now that we’re entering the 13th festival cycle, I feel even more keenly as someone who has been submitting to all but 1 contest since 2022. 

However, this is where it gets a little tricky. Festival contests, by nature, need to adhere to the aesthetics of their elemental flight, which means skins contributed to the contests need to necessarily repeat some elements.

I’m not denying that and I do recognize there’s an argument to be made that aesthetic reuse is a part of creating festival skins. I myself often advise other artists to review previous winning skins and existing aesthetics to create their own entries. But I don’t think that necessarily has to be the case.

Suggestion 5A: Themed Contests/New Art/Lore Drop

Wait, but festival skin contests are already themed! Well, yes, but picture this: when the festival skin contest opens, we get a new lore drop or art drop for the celebrating flight. Lore/world expansions are probably some of the events that remain consistently anticipated by the playerbase, and serve as a decent “gimmick” (so long as the same things––lore or art or secret––isn’t reused too much) to get the playerbase hyped up. 

It doesn’t have to be a new breed––maybe a little story about Imperials meeting Everluxes for the first time, or just something that introduces a new aesthetic into the flight. I think this would do a lot in encouraging people to draw in relation to the new lore/art drop.

Suggestion 5B: Reintroduce New Gimmicks per Fest Cycle/Crowdsource Ideas

As much as I love Ancients and the Elemental Genes, I feel like they’ve been really detrimental to festivals, especially since the reception of genes are so dependent on how much people like a particular Ancient. Coupled that with the fact that we get the same new items every festival (1 big apparel and scene), and it’s a contrast from the days when we got halos and we were looking forward to seeing what the next one would be like, or when we initially got genes, or the vistas, or scenes. These new gimmicks that catch people off guard were really helpful in making people anticipate upcoming festivals.

I’m not a game designer so I can only imagine it’s really difficult to come up with new stuff for every festival. But I don’t think that has to be the case… I think FR could absolutely crowdsource ideas for festivals.

Imagine if, during the Anniversary, FR launches a post where players can suggest gimmicks they want, and the staff can choose which one they want to implement. This not only introduces fresh ideas to the existing FR team, it also encourages general participation from the players. Everyone wants to be the one that’ll suggest the item that gets converted into an actual in-game item. Imagine how exciting that would be! 

For example, I personally would want more elemental eyes––but something like the corrupted version of primal eyes, like “elements but they went very wrong.” Or what about school garb for each of the flights? I think it would be really cool!

What WON’T Help Boost Submissions?

Here, I want to take some space to preemptively address the most common suggestions I've seen, and explain why I don't think they would work.

Adding More Winning Slots

Adding more slots is NOT the answer. We’re already seeing a record low for submissions––the more winning slots there are, the more likely that we’ll run into a problem where staff cannot actually pick enough eligible submissions to win. Also, it costs 680kt for a full set of festival skins at this point. People have already stopped buying full sets for this reason. 

Banning Repeat Winners to Encourage New Artists

All repeat winners exist on the premise that they are consistent participants, and I’ve established early on just how important it is to have a roster of consistent participants. If you remove repeat winners, you’re looking at barring at least 20 artists or 2 pages of submissions from the next festival contest.

At a time when submissions are at an all-time-low, I really don’t think this is the best move.

Summary:

So, what do I think is contributing to festival skin contest declines?

Lack of consistent entrants

Outdated prizes (last updated 2019)

Intimidation/knowledge gap of skin contests

Inconsistent/lack of advertisements

Festival monotony

What will NOT help:

Adding more winning slots (we’re already at a deficit of submissions. Adding more winning slots could result in a scenario where the staff runs out of skins to pick.)

Banning repeat winners (you’re removing 20 participants from the next contest at a time when we’re already low on submissions)

My suggestions:

Find ways to encourage new artists to enter AND maintain their participation, cultivating a roster of consistent entrants for the skin contests

Update contest winner prizes to 3kg + 5p skin bp

Update honorable mention prizes to 1kg + 5p skin bp

Update skin artist vista prize to help retain consistent entrants

Add examples of “valid entries” to the contest thread

Add a “elements we’ve enjoyed in the past” list to the contest thread (should be changed annually)

Adjust the start date of contests to the Monday after the end of the previous festival

Skin contest submission pinglist

Add a lore/art drop to coincide with the start date of the contests to hype people up for the contest and the festival

Crowdsource new gimmick for festivals

Conclusion

Once again, I want to emphasize that this is just my personal take. I recognize that the FR staff is incredibly busy on other aspects of the site and the festival skin contests might not be on their list of priorities. 

I also am not aware of how skins are selected or what internal processes might be limiting the possibility of a skin contest overhaul. I am just someone who really loves the skin contests and would love it if more people continue to participate in them. However, as of the 13th fest cycle, I do believe that many of the existing prizes and such for the festival contests are outdated and could benefit from an overhaul.