Free Company members may submit a screenshot of an area within Eorzea for other players to attempt to make a guess about where the location is. If a player guesses correctly, they will win a gil prize that will be taken out of our Company Chest which will be mailed to them via Moogle Mail.



RULES

Each Free Company member may only submit one screenshot per week to the Free Company Master, or a Beta rank member if they choose to run the contest (details such as this will be posted ahead of time). If members have submitted screenshots for a previous week, but a member whose screenshot hasn’t been chosen submits one, they are a more likely candidate whose screenshot will be chosen. If a member’s screenshot is chosen 3 weeks in a row, they will have a 0% chance of being chosen the following week (unless they are the only player who submits a screenshot).

Players may dictate how they would like other players to guess the location answer! For example, with a difficult viewing area, you may simply announce the correct answer to be, "Middle La Noscea." Alternatively, players may request you to provide exact coordinates, camp names or other locations for the answer. However, you MUST decide what is acceptable as an answer. If you don't, then we will decide what is an acceptable answer, ourselves. Here is an example of how I would like players to send in screenshots:

Email: Kyousha@gmail.com (Yes, Email them to this Email address!)
Subject: Screenshot Contest #14 (just an example)
Attachment: Screenshot
Body: Hey, Nikori! Here is my submitted screenshot. Please let me know if it is acceptable. I would like players to simply answer the general area that I took this screenshot in, like "Hyrstmill" in Northern Thanalan. They can also give approximate coordinates, even if they are a few numbers off, that's fine! It just shows me that they actually found the place! But if they just say "Northern Thanalan," I will need something more specific than that. Thanks!

Please note that if a winner is chosen and a player has a discrepancy with how it was handled, or claims their screenshot was not considered/received by the FC Master/Officer, we will investigate it with the tools available to us and resolve it appropriately. Our decision after this investigation will be final. We can not and will not take back gil already awarded to winning players. We don't believe any discrepancies such as this will actually happen, but we try to take all situations into consideration.

CONTEST RESET TIME

I will stay in line with FFXIV's in-game reset timer of Tuesday for our weekly contest reset as well. I live in USA's Central time zone. However, for the sake of less confusion, I will use the Eastern time zone of Tuesday, 12:00 A.M., including daylight savings time.

Here is the schedule process that will happen: Beginning on a Tuesday, players will submit their screenshots throughout the week period. When Monday arrives, the submitted screenshots will be reviewed and chosen, and we will not be accepting any further screenshot submissions for the week. The next day, Tuesday, will have the chosen screenshot posted on our Free Company website's main page. From Tuesday to Sunday, players will have a chance to submit their guess, as well as submit new screenshots for the next contest. Monday will not be accepting any more screenshots or guesses and the winner will be chosen this same day.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding this schedule, please feel free to notify myself or an officer who chooses to hold a contest.

REWARD PROCESS

Once players have an idea of where the location is within the posted screenshot, they may privately contact me in whichever way they wish: via sending a /tell within the game, Moogle Mail, mail on our FC website, personal Email, etc. I strongly suggest that players notify me privately, in this way, so that no one else may view your ideas in fear that they may steal or grow upon them. However, I understand that it’s impossible for me to prevent group discussions about these topics.

Winners will be announced at our weekly meetings, where they will be publicly congratulated, following with a congratulatory statement being made on our website.

We may receive correct guesses from multiple people. If this happens, players’ names will be “drawn from a hat” in order to choose who wins the prize. So keep this in mind if you form group discussions over attempting to figure out the location of the area in the screenshots! These processes are implemented so that a player cannot win by means of, "first-come-first-served," within just minutes of a screenshot being posted, since other players may have a tight schedule and may not be able to even see the new contest until a later date.

Gil is the easiest item to reward players with. However, if our Free Company members can agree to decide on alternative, tradable rewards, we will also consider other options.

As far as gil reward amounts, I was thinking no less than 20,000 gil to the player who wins the contest.

Because I would like many FC members contributing to contests, I think it is necessary to give some kind of incentive for our players to participate! For the player whose screenshot is chosen for the contest, I’m considering rewarding them with 10,000 gil. In addition, there may be players who will be disappointed by not being chosen as the winner if they are one of multiple correct guessers. For these players, I will reward them 5,000 gil each. Unfortunately, wrong guesses do not win anything. Sorry!

**YOU MAY ONLY SUBMIT AN ANSWER ONE TIME** Any additional guesses, or "I changed my mind" will be disregarded. No exceptions.

IF NO ONE WINS

If no one correctly guesses the location of the screenshot, I will ask the player who submitted the screenshot if they would like to provide a different screenshot for the following contest, or continue to use the current screenshot. If no one correctly guesses two weeks in a row, the player who provided the screen shots will receive BOTH weekly submission rewards as well as the grand prize reward, totaling 40,000 gil received. That's as much as some tier IV materia that sells on the market boards, so think of it that way! Try your best to guess! This same player will then not be eligible to submit a screenshot for the following contest since they received a large reward (and to also give someone else a chance, lol)!

DIFFICULTY/SCREENSHOT RULES

You may be asking yourself if you should take a picture within a city, out in the wilderness or if you should capture something close-up or have a wide viewing angle. Any of these are acceptable! To prevent dead giveaways, however, I would suggest pressing the “Scroll Lock” key on your keyboard to 1) HIDE THE MAP, and 2) hide any PC/NPC names, if they are in the shot, before you take a screenshot. Everyone has their own definition of content easiness, so I can’t describe how a type of screenshot would be easy or difficult to guess, but just use your own judgement! The types of imagery I look for is to make the player think, “Hmm… I definitely recognize this area; I know it’s in Thanalan… Oh! I see that crystalline tower in the background! I know they’re facing east to view it, so I’ll try to travel to that area and I should be able to find it!” as an example. Try to give subtle clues that could lead to the player discovering where the location may be! But DON’T MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE!

SUGGESTIONS

• Don’t go into first-person mode and take a severely zoomed-in screenshot of something that no one will ever be able to recognize. I will not consider screenshots such as these:

• Consider pressing the “Scroll Lock” key on your keyboard to hide the names of Players/NPCs which can easily give away locations.

• Consider capturing objects or landmarks that will give the player subtle hints that may lead the player to discovering where the location of the screenshot originated!

• I would advise against notifying other players, “Hey, I’m going to take my screenshot for the contest, now!” …because we are able to then view you on the Free Company window and see where your location is. Basically, people can cheat, this way!

• Please try not to take screenshots in very well-known locations such as Revenant’s Toll or any of the city-states, UNLESS you can think of something creative.

• You may take screenshots of instanced areas such as raids, dungeons, primal fights, cut scenes and etcetera. However, I won’t consider contributed screenshots of personalized areas that players can change such as personal/Free Company housing, as I would gauge that as “impossible for players to guess.”

HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR ANSWER

• /tell Nikori Periyaha, For the screenshot contest, I think the location is ___________.

• Send me a private message on Guildwork/our Free Company website.

• Send me a Moogle Mail in-game to Nikori Periyaha.

• Send me an Email to: Kyousha@Gmail.com. with a subject line of, "FLOW Screenshot Contest Answer."

Please don't simply send me mail with the only content being something like, "Camp bluefog." I won't necessarily know that you're referring to our screenshot contest answer. Please be as specific as possible with what you're Emailing me about!

Once I receive your answer, I will immediately take note of it. If I am in an instance and you are unable to get a hold of me, please be sure to notify an officer if there is one online.

HAVE FUN!!!