Your thoughts on the current state of the workshop/DOTA2Store
polycounter lvl 14
Mirroring the thread on reddit a little : http://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/2ltyy1/let_us_show_valve_that_their_newest_monetization/
I'd like to ask artists here who know firsthand about working in the workshop system, to voice any thoughts and concerns about the workshop in its current state, the pros the cons and what you would like to see improved.
Mainly my concern is two things,
Consistency is the key. if the playerbase knows to look out for one set chest, one .99 item chest and a couple of store items per month, as artists we can start to plan accordingly. I assume the playerbase will also enjoy looking forward to the regular additions.
I'd like to ask artists here who know firsthand about working in the workshop system, to voice any thoughts and concerns about the workshop in its current state, the pros the cons and what you would like to see improved.
Mainly my concern is two things,
1: I want single items to come back. Give regular, consistent $.99 single item chests a spot on the store.
The main store updates are sets sets sets. Courier and Wards and HuDs are sparely added, limiting the workshop artists focus and stifling a lot of potential creativity.
2: Separate Organisation addition to the workshop into their own category when being added. meet a quota per month of items added to the store which should not the cut into by Organisations, Tourney Tickets and similar event bonuses.
Not just to chests, but add some items to the storefront too.
The main store updates are sets sets sets. Courier and Wards and HuDs are sparely added, limiting the workshop artists focus and stifling a lot of potential creativity.
2: Separate Organisation addition to the workshop into their own category when being added. meet a quota per month of items added to the store which should not the cut into by Organisations, Tourney Tickets and similar event bonuses.
Not just to chests, but add some items to the storefront too.
Consistency is the key. if the playerbase knows to look out for one set chest, one .99 item chest and a couple of store items per month, as artists we can start to plan accordingly. I assume the playerbase will also enjoy looking forward to the regular additions.
Replies
I'd love to have single items come back, the weapon cache from TI4 was awesome but was the only one.
I hate how sets are now chested items with sets being "rare and super rare" I want to support the sets I want to use. I don't have the YYF BH set, so many couriers. I had to ask Danidem for a carty after shit luck at ti4.
So many good sets have been in the workshop for years now but some tournaments get to push lackluster sets/couriers in no problem due to their name.
I'm just a buyer, so this may not mean much to all of you but my 2 cents.
I would like to add something to this - Pro players and organizations being bundled with normal sets and rivals. We saw this with the pro Ti4 sets, as a fan of a player or a team, you're running into a situation of not being able to support them fully, making it much less valuable to work with a pro or a organization.
Here's a example of the current system.
I'm a Chelsea fan and walk into a store to purchase a jersey to support them, however the only available option is a closed box which can contain the following:
Manchester shirt
Chelsea shirt
Arsenal shirt
Liverpool shirt
There is no way that would ever happen in the real world, yet somehow its plausible in the digital world? (Bundles do of course exist, but not when they're monetized towards different brands)
If the idea behind it is to make the players equal and earn the same, and possibly promote the option / reward for working with lesser known players, then that is a dream world, certain players are on top for a reason, and win a million dollars for a reason.
As a massive dota fan since 2008 and fan of certain players I found this annoying, where is the sports culture monetization? When I commented on it in a old reddit thread I was hit with downvotes so I'm curious to see if I'm in the minority here.
I'm saying this as a gamer / fan over a artist, so not sure if its relevant to this thread.
2: Agree as well.
This doesn't fit too much into the singles category, but I felt it was important to bring up as well: Valve needs to adjust the whole rarity table going forward. Singles would act as a great way to sort of space the value saturation we're seeing at the moment. Specifically, in the Legendary quality. Legendary is now only reserved for sets that have full skill particle replacements. To some extent, sure that makes sense. You suddenly have sets that have more work behind them, and thus likely more value so you need to adjust for that. However, at the moment it feels a little too arbitrarily tagged, as in: 1. Slapping particles on sets makes a set legendary quality, and 2: Rarity is no longer an indication of overall quality (concept/design/textures/idea).
I guess it's more of an anecdote, but I concern over the saturation of the legendary quality and how that's pushing down other great sets in value and raising the work bar. I don't think that doing more work is unfair by any means, but I think the issue is that valve needs to widen the scope so it's not just sets going in, and the occasional wards/loading screen stuff. I think having things (new rarities) in-between will help a lot. Beside singles there are a lot of other great ideas: Animations? Skill changes not attached to singles? Emotes are a nice step forward for sure! Also moderating that legendary status will help to go a long way to create further value without disrupting the current ecosystem. Maybe limit two legendary sets per month or something like that?
EDIT @Plant, totally agree as well. I didn't mention it when replying to the second point anuxi made, but for sure pro teams need to have their stuff better divided from the rest of the store content.
A suggestion for the Organization part: since Valve wants to support the esports scene so much like they claim to, why can't they give a percentage of THEIR share instead of the artist's? They do it for service providers (like Blender, handplane, xNormal, etc), so why can't they do the same for orgs and players? Maybe add a separate slider so everyone can give their shares to any org/player they like, or just add them onto the service providers list. I don't think artists should be giving ANY shares to anyone unless the third party actually contributed to anything, which isn't true on most cases. Valve should be the one giving a split to orgs if they truly want to grow the esports scene, but I very much doubt Valve would be willing to 'trade' that cut with the artists. I hope I'm wrong though.
Since we only get a 25% share of the total sales of any item, and IMO organizations shouldn't take any more than 30% of an artist's share, Valve could 'easily' give up to 8% of their share to orgs.
I was actually thinking a lot about this the other day thought of some stuff.
1. Community workshop page
I think the easiest fix right now for community workshop page is to separate pro/tourney/popular creator items and individual/amateur items into 2 chunks. As well as filtering popular content. I think it really limits the workshop when 1 set is getting 10k + votes and it's still taking up most of the front page. Anything above 5k votes should just be filtered off the front page.
2. The store
I'm sure most of you agree that it's changed a LOT since the dota workshop started. But the way they are implementing items into the store has really evolved. I think the main issue is that they're not adding content to the store the way they used to. Back then it was, set, set chest, courier, set etc... Now it's just chests or Legendary/Arcanas/Tourneys. I know it's a tricky thing to get right, so I guess they'll just keep fiddling with it until its most efficient. Maybe they just don't have the man-power to add content the way they used to? I dunno.
Another thing, it's a bit of a wild idea, but I'd like to see a workshop tab on the main menu screen ingame. I think the visitor count will really go up if its implemented this way. It will allow people to browse while queuing, without leaving the dota ui.
Also, this could allow for some scaleform customization, to display workshop content a lot better, kind of like any online store, but for the workshop.
and yes.. bring back singles. It seems that sets now are the equivalent to singles a year ago. One path is to have a variety of content with various prices according to quality. Just some thoughts. Feel free to correct me as I'm not as educated about this as most of you all are.
I'm sure that Valve/Steam are working on something to make things a lot easier and more efficient for everyone. Well, at least I hope so. They added item voting on collection pages, so I think that's a good small step for now!
both points you mentioned, absolutely agree!
- Would definitely like to see a return of singles. People can say they aren't "dead", and while that's debatable, we can say we haven't seen them for months, and we haven't seen a consistent, reliable release of them in almost a year it feels like. It's to the point where many of us don't feel it's worth the time. Would love to hear anything from Valve regarding this (or hell, any public statements at all to the workshop community. They should make a workshop blog section that has all this info whenever they make decisions... even if it does change often and prone to experimentation, at least we'd be aware.)
- Agree about a separate 'org' tab. I hate the idea that a lot of regular workshop artists' sets are losing an opportunity to get in because of so much org/3rd party affiliated items. I feel like there should always be at least 1-2 artist only chests, regardless of how much org stuff gets added. But then we get into a different territory where one has to debate how they might cut into each other, which might bring some artists to feel bad if their stuff goes in at a similar time and potentially lose sales, etc etc. Blargh, there is a lot to it.
- Again, giff a 'Set' submission, so we can collapse icons together and clean up the workshop page so more artists can be featured overall. It's still a clusterfuck of a few things, often those with the most eye catching icons (which hardly ever actually represent the in-game item nor speak of it's true quality well), or items with the tag *PARTICLE* etc on it. Less icons overall would only be better for everyone involved IMO.
- Orgs should be on a separate slider in the same way service providers are, and out of the artists' share as much as possible. I don't think it's been a very beneficial situation for the workshop artist community.
Also, I just noticed that there's thumbs up and down on a collection's item list, which is great!
I also noticed that apparently workshop thumbnails are 'wide' now if you check your profile content section. Could this be propagated soon to the full public workshop?
- it would absolutely be nice to have some information on what a realistic submission would entail. It's kind of frustrating not knowing what is acceptable or not as it seems to change constantly (in terms of ability icons, particles, spell effects, etc.). If we're able to, let's have some guidelines so we're all on the same playing field. If it's a matter of 'only for player sets', etc. then take the time to tell us. Stuff like that. It would just be nice for them to reach out to their own community which I have to imagine they value and respect, even if they don't make the effort to show it outwardly. Also, it totally sucks when people put in a ton of extra work and effort only to have half of it get in and the community freaking out afterwards. Basically, if we had clearer guidelines regarding submissions with *extra*, it would make it better for everyone.
- older sets being ignored/passed up. There's a ton of really great and well made sets that seem to be getting overlooked. It might be because of all the org stuff happening lately, but I really hope valve keeps track of sets with ~200-1000 votes that are well made and fit the game/style. There's a lot of GREAT stuff with a very high vote % that simply didn't get exposure that deserve to be in. Quality extends far beyond the sets that get pushed and marketed by those with the ability. It makes me sad to see killer stuff get passed up because it didn't hit the front page and get a lot of attention (probably because of three sets and 20 thumbnails each, hah!
- lastly, the '3 month rule' now for selling or trading sets feels really harsh. I could see 2 weeks or even 1 month being a lot more friendly to everyone involved. 3 months though... yikes ! Makes me less likely to buy stuff now because I can't trade or sell
man, why do typing lot hurt fingerthings
I was thinking of doing a 1 Public - rest private submission on my next set that I upload.
You upload everything, Make 1 of the pieces public and the rest Hidden. I'm not sure where Valve would stand on this but it would filter out bloat, and if someone has comment on a certain item they can just comment on the visible product - valve can still contact you on specific items via dev comments.
This is of course a cool thing if everyone would follow suit - don't want to end up in a situation where its not agreed upon and not considered at all. The reason there is no "set submission" and just collections is due to the individual item ID's being linked to the workshop and market, so it can automatically keep track of all the sales. Whether they're private or public would be uneffected by this and cause no problems with the current system.
We actually did this with our recent Luna set. The only reason I haven't done it more since, is because we haven't seen whether or not it affects acceptance. It's a player set, but we've heard nothing regarding it nor the 'one thumb sub'. However, if you're OK with the "risk", I totally encourage everyone to do it, as it seems like we should take matters into our own hands at this point, at least until they do something official
Hah, consistency is the antithesis of Valve.
As a part time workshop artist, I'd love to see Valve have someone, actively critique and advise workshop artists as to what, and what is not acceptable, in terms of custom FX, theme/potentially lore breaking elements and or slight tweaks that Valve would like to see to make the best possible product, and so work and time isn't wasted. I think that's good for everyone including the players/consumers in a situation like the workshop.
It would be cool to see Valve implement a contributor platform where we can post our WIPs/proposed items for Valve and organisations to look at, before it reaches the players to vote on.
1. Valve can comment on the state of the item, if they would like to see improvements or if the item is completely off brief. I believe this could be good. Perhaps the textures are lacking detail or a certain item of a set isn't quite fitting, as artists we would have a second chance to better our product, it will reach the game at its best, and we don't waste too much time following an item that may not be what Valve want.
2. In this space, teams or player (organisations) could also view the work, and pitch to partner on it if they want. Maybe set these shares to no more than 40%, and multiple teams can bid for it. Or in reverse, artists can pitch to a team for a certain percentage.
This gives workshop artists and organisations direct communication, and a bit of competitiveness when organisations are looking for sets. It seems now as if organisations have a fair bit of leverage.
This could benefit organisation too, in the way that they get to view near on completed sets to consider, instead of commissioning a set from scratch where they may not have an accurate timeline. I know some teams sort of have a quota of sets they'd like to release a year.
3. This could also mean that the workshop page will be less populated, and sets that have a good chance get much more visibility.
That said, might be asking too much, it does involve much more work on Valves end. :P
My 2c
Cheers, and good thread!
I know Valve is specifically aiming to maximize revenue from all this tinkering but I feel they have to keep in mind that it comes at a price. The players are aggravated by it, the artists (generally!) are aggravated by it as well and it is putting a bad taste overall.
TL:DR; Give back singles, constantly consider old submissions, safer experiments, increase frequency of releases and diversity, improve store, don't heavily rely on organizations (if the game falls into this, there is no saving it!!!).
Unfortunately they also seem to have dug themselves into a hole.
I can't restate how important the single item submission stuff would mean to me as an artist. As a part-timer I simply cannot keep churning out set after set without knowledge of whether a set will be accepted. A single set of 5-6 item takes 2-3 months of after-hours work, and the last 2 sets I made I'm pretty sure won't be accepted, it's also unlikely that the next one will be. As a part-timer I simply cannot compete with better sets made in conjunction with players or organisations. With single items I can at least do one for fun over a week, if it doesn't go in so be it. I can move on to the next idea or concept.
To extend the whole single-items-more-for-fun thing, I think having single items in chests is awesome, and sets should not be sold in chests. It seems to me that together with the generous drop system placing sets into chests was partly responsible for the rapidly dropping value of sets as a whole. Even if they remove the chest system the new drop system should mean that set values should not drop as badly as before. Like Plant mentioned, if I want a set I'd also like to be able to buy it direct. Now there is no choice but to go to the market. With single items it was fine because it was just a small bit of fun on the side. Single items are just less "srs bzns" like that.
As for the organisations thing, a separate organisations tab would be cool. Alternatively perhaps Valve should have a section for tournament organisers and artists only that shows sets that have been accepted and are available for tournament use. So they go through the workshop process first, and then once they are accepted tournaments can choose from an already accepted pool. I get that this'd mess with having custom designs and all that, but I think maintaining the integrity of valve's approval process is more important.
In fact, perhaps having a separate "already accepted, but not slated to go into the game" section is a good idea even if organisations aren't involved. It'd at least give us a better idea of what has been accepted and what has not. Sets could just get a special "Pending" status without changing how the workshop functions right now.
Recently Valve has committed questionable decisions such as accepting bundles that didn't appear in Steam Workshop, which is clearly rule-breaking, leaving us puzzled. Sometimes we were informed from 3rd party sources that certain rules in Workshop has changed, e.g. single items are no longer accepted for tourneys. It's strange to see this news circulating among organizers. Why is this so? Wouldn't it be best for us hear what Valve has told organizers on any new rules together?
Whenever there are changes to any rules, we need to know. If not, it all seems like double standards.
I know they have a lot to do, but how hard is it to get more out into the communtiy. When the community clearly did a lot for them, and they for the community. But it seems a lot of ppl just want a bit of communication. A game without an communty behind it will fail bigtime.
@Cotton: Acsactly! I mean equality for all workshop artists is something really important, even if they are professionals, a group, tournament, company or pro player!
@snowstorm: I think the reason for sets being in chest is that they couldn't handle the amount of sets coming out. Look at a year ago, u might have 2 or 3 sets coming out in a week or two. These days u will probably have around 5 to 8 sets coming out in a single week. ofcourse not every week is the same.
For Organistations I think Valve should make something like they did for the TI4, a seperate workshop section. The problem here will be that a lot of uploads allready on the workshop is being used for tournaments because ppl are affraid they will never get into the game..
single items!
tourneys and orgs seperated from "normal" submissions
and all the other good stuff that has been said
but again and formost: SINGLE ITEMS!!!
Not entirely sure how long ago Mr. Reinhart made that statement or what his role is at valve but that at least seems somewhat promising.
Also got me thinking about the possibility of a group of you veterans getting together and talking to your contacts at Valve about doing another polycount chest/about the things being addressed in this thread. Would be amazing to have a monthly polycount single item chest (or more likely every other month). Along with, as Anuxi mentioned, a more consistent release of about 2 set chests per month. Regardless of org work being put in.
That quote was made a loooong time ago, when single items were still being sold directly from the store instead of from chests. It's also been in the monthly polycount contest post since the first one (or one of the first ones) I believe.
I just would like to correct you in that last year we would get tons of sets accepted per week and other times bi weekly. Along with singles, couriers and wards trickled in between. This year it is mostly 4-8 sets regular sets and 1-5 tournament sets offset by two weeks. With odd ward + courier each month. So your statement of 5-8 sets per week is very false. I can bring the homework I did to prove that if needed.
Singles/Separation between 3rd Parties
This is one main problem of the workshop that I see is how innovation changed it.
Particles/Ability Icons/Loading Screens
Innovation > Consumers love it > More artists join that innovation so more consumers love their product > [Repeat until it becomes the norm]
Even though its not mandatory in the workshop requirements, its basically a requirement to the consumers. These innovations aren't regarded as bonus content anymor. These innovations are good as a Bonus but not the norm.
Also the rarity system is 100% broken and should be redone to measured by how many items are out. An item with 10k units in circulation should not have a higher rarity than another item with 5k units in circulation. (Dynamic rarity system)
I think to change this singles should be top notch like Valve immortals. That would ofc mean you should work with fx artist and animator but singles were giving high profit that sharing it with more people is fair in my opinion.
Random drop from Bundles: I could definitely see an option to pay a little more to get specific drop from chest
Also we should be aware that one benefit of chest is that players making items for heroes other than Pudge also get some revenue. Because before if you were making items for less popular heroes you were out of luck, and I definitely don't want to see more Pudge sets :>
Organizations: I see 3 solutions here:
- items created by organizations are added to workshop, however not marked as something connected to organization. This however is impossible because of twitter/reddit/facebook.
- items created by organizations are invisible and judged only by Valve
- separate tab for organization items.
As far as profit sharing goes I think there should be different % share depending what is it for. For example pro player set only generate money for artist + pro player, however tournament items also to some extent generate money that will help/give salary to people running that tournament. And those 2 factors should be taken into account.
Another thing what is really confusing is in case of tournaments contribution to prize pool. Its also taken from our 25% leaving us with even less money to divide between artist and 3rd party
I think simple workshop rules 25/75 were fine for TF2, but now in dota with so many different scenarios I think we should have more options that could be set up by Valve. As for artists alone is hard to judge what is good for them if they can't even verify what was their profit because of lack of sales data.
Uff sorry for to long post ^^'
Valve has stated that they want to weed out low-quality submissions to the workshop. The trend by Valve to support this has been the encouragement to create almost entirely character-altering sets containing new character color schemes, loading screens, wards, custom HUDs, spell icons, new sounds etc.
If Valve continues to support this trend, I believe that the minimum amount of work a complete set will need will increase. The inflated, visuals-altering packages will become the standard to have your set accepted into the game.
If we follow this same line of action, single items will not be brought back in the traditional way. The way Valve has been accepting chests containing many single items seems to be the way for them to go, since it reduces cluttering and makes artists collaborate with each other, resulting in a higher quality standard.
I also completely agree that if there's no separation of items created by organizations and professional teams vs. items created by regular users, the regular users are at a great disadvantage. Especially worrying is Valve accepting sets behind closed doors, without any interaction with the community.
Unfortunately, as companies grow old and large, they also become lazier and more gluttonous.
Oh, I certainly don't doubt that! My Winter Solstice for e.g. was way more expensive on the market than any CM set item for months, up until the recent chest sales. That was in part because it was quite rare, but also because it was so popular. And the TI4 immortals are no doubt extremely popular.
How Valve sees single items may no longer be the same now as it was back then though, given how the marketplace has dropped the value of items so drastically. Set chests are now priced at what single item chests used to be, so in order for single items to command the same value they need to be something pretty special. To keep items special Valve put in all sorts of fancy particle effects and customised behaviour for the TI4 immortals. Dropping the price of sets any further is likely to devalue single items even more too. It happened with the single item chest sales, so that doesn't seem like a good option either.
All in all I hope I eat my words about how I believed single items were going away and we get them back again. I'm no economist, and I hope Valve figures something out.
Yup, i know! And I agreed :P
I especially agree with Konras and the view on the whole simple 75/25 split. Things have changed, and drastically.
The following isn't directed at Konras. Just my thoughts on pushing organizer splits into Valve's share.
I don't think it can be as simple as organizers being paid out of Valve's share, because things are already tougher for people who can't team up with organizers for submissions. Right now, part of that advantage, and it is an advantage for most... is that you pay for it out of your share.
Now, I'm not saying that's fair, especially most of the splits a lot of us have to deal with, but it is a small balancing factor, and if we think it's a bit of a predatory market right now, I can only see it get worse when the negotiations are out of our hands and organizers can exercise more favoritism without penalties.
Yet, Valve COULD get better at their biggest problem = lack of communication. Even though they don't owe us nothing, its our content that are helping their game being so popular! I bet that there were a lot of people going on the TI4 just to see Anuxi and other artists they love! So, would be nice to have a blog or something to tell us some guidelines. They have no obligation on doing it, but I think that we deserve some love
With that, most people could just "know"that they won't accept singles anymore for 3 months or so, so they won't spend their time creating awesome content for the game they love and will head for other stuff. It's simple!
Anyway, this is what I believe it's the top concerns here:
1. Give singles back!
But as Konras pointed, the singles would have to be f*cking awesome for the current level of stuff we have being submitted now.
2. Orgs must have their "own workshop tab"
Or being treated directly with Valve, as already happened with DC tournament. BUT, please Valve, let us know about this "rule" change.
3. Artists cannot be responsible to afford player's prizes.
This is an absurd.
4. New submission rules for sets, into a single thumbnail.
While it's not possible, as Bounch pointed, we could do it for ourselves! Max to 2 thumbnails, if the set have a mount or something like that.
The community never understands or knows what they want. You make something awesome, they'll want it, even if it's a single.
Many of the most popular items in the game are single items.
also what is rly popular are items with high raritys: arcanas, immortals, legendarys, mythicals... no matter if set or not. but ofc not all items can be those items, there must also be stupid commons and uncommons.
it even happens in most of the times that players do not equip the most nice "style" but the highest possible raritys no matter how ugly the items look or how bad they are modeled/textured.
I'd like to know a date for when that quote was said. If it's older then a few minutes, chances are it's outdated. You want another quote I heard less then a month ago. But then again, that was a month ago, chances are that's changed too. :poly142:
This was posted on the Dota2 blog at the conclusion of the Polycount contest in 2012.
Now obviously the workshop exploded to be much larger than it was 2 years ago with not only a huge increase in submission but also various types of submissions (particles, animations, loading screens etc) which would undoubtedly make it hard for them to follow through to the extent they initially imagined. But I still would love to see some more communication. Information on what is acceptable, what can be bundled, what is supported? It's frustrating to get the majority of this information from word of mouth.
I feel like many of my concerns have already been mentioned here but I would also like to see more inclusion of artists in larger projects like New Moon. The call out to artists with a consistent theme and style created some great work and having some additional psuedo-contests like this could create some more fantastic art and collaboration.
Right, pudge, pudge, pudge, immortal, imortal, genuine, genuine, genuine, genuine, genuine, all the imortals, as well as arcanas.
Chances are, it's less about the fact they're singles, and more about the fact that they're a sexy rarity. And pudge is always a free fat ride to riches. Rarity drives popularity, not the fact that it's a single. Chances are, we're looking a few possible reasons as to why we havent seen a singles treasures since June. They don't sell as well as set treasures, and thus aren't worth diluting an eco patch. They simply haven't had the room, given that leagues have had a much larger presence these last few months, releasing too much content is just as bad as releasing too little. They're investigating ways to improve how singles are acquired in the game. Or simply, they're not up to par with what valve wants, maybe they want singles to be closer to the level of TI4 immortals now, requring particles, ablity icons, and animations.
Maybe it's just me, but the idea of a $0.99 treasure, featuring 15 items, that drops 3 on purchase, with the chance of getting a rare ward or rare summon, turns me on. More items, more people getting items in, more happy artist. :thumbup:
here is the thread http://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/2k32f2/interessted_in_some_tiny_weapon_concepts/
i think as long that single item is anyhow a fency concept they will love it.
Singles apply pressure both ways, too. Making a set with a unique weapon these days can be challenging for certain heroes who have a lot of single weapons accepted, because there's just so much variety. Singles are also forced to be more and more unique and impressive, with particles etc. Maybe Valve thinks singles will damage the variety long-term.
I don't think anyone's arguing against singles, but no one knows what's up except for Valve, and they're not telling. Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing more singles in the game in some form or another, but it's hard to make an argument for it when we know absolutely nothing.
There will be a time when we go full TF2, and when that day comes, I will shed a tear, because that is the day I will finally get my rubber ducky morphling belt.
[ame="
You can't stop judgement day.
Throw in a shower cap and a scrubbing brush and call it done.
Seriously though, I can only throw in an "I concur!" with pretty much everything said in this thread. Even as someone who almost exclusively makes couriers, I agree that single items need to make a comeback. It's how I got started, and I'd love to see the workshop have a place for talented hobbyists again.
That and more communication. I know that it's largely futile to ask for, but I hate being kept in the dark.
Well, even a full set won't get in if it isn't insanely good in every department.
I think they could probably get away with removing the early 6-10 HUDs and accepting a new batch, or making a chest for them or something. Would be nice.
I still think item sets should get condensed on the Workshop page along with everything else, (Why do we need separate submissions for load screens for Huds/Sets? etc Or particles or anything else) Doesn't really seem to serve any purpose.
As for the snowballing problem...The only thing I can think to do is have some high-but-achievable threshold where you are entirely in Valve's hands and don't take up the Workshop space anymore? Like 2000 positive votes 95%+ rating or whatever it may be. Doesn't guarantee you get in but at that point there's not 10k votes going into something that would have gotten in with only 2k. Move anything that hits the threshold to a "community certified" tab or something until Valve decides what to do with it.
Anyway, glad this thread got made.