Hey guys

We will very soon be mass demoting everybody in these two showrooms. This means that every single chopper in Elite will be demoted to Advanced, and every single chopper in Advanced will be demoted to Pro Tuners.

We've decided to do this due to some issues arising regarding just how easy it is for choppers to be promoted. Over the past 3 years or so, Advanced and Elite have been a bit too relaxed on the quality you would come to expect whilst browsing the showrooms. We feel we should start from scratch with the promotions for those two showrooms. Elite should be a place for mindblowing artwork, but lately it has become the home of good chops - yes, but not much that we feel is worthy of the Elite status. The same goes for Advanced.

No new promotions to either of the showrooms will be made until choppers who wish to be promoted there have produced a NEW piece of art which we deem shows off their full capabilities. We also feel this will add a new incentive for people to open up Photoshop and get back to their roots - working their way up the chopping ladder. Staff will actively be taking a larger role in discussing promotions, and coming to fair decisions on whether we feel new promotions should be in order.

Nobody is exempt from the demotions. When they go in to effect, Elite will contain NO choppers, Advanced will contain ALL of the previously Elite choppers, and Pro Tuners will gain a lot of new friends for the time being. Please remember that we're not doing this for bad reasons, we're doing this to inject a bit of life back in to chopping and also to re-set the bar for standards I know a lot of people come to expect when clicking either one of the showrooms.

If you feel you should be promoted again in to the respective showroom, please put the effort you would otherwise put in to a pm to staff complaining about the issue, and instead redirect that towards your creativity - showing us what you're capable of. If you still feel like you should voice your concern, please do so via PM to myself.

Staff

Well, this seems legit, but there will be a big difference between choppers in pro showroom. Elite choppers and pro tuners are placed in almost the same showrooms now. I think that "Elite" has become something different than what it use to be two years ago. I just can't imagine how to put one of the best Advanced choppers in the same basket as the worst Pro tuner choppers, and imo, lot of elite choppers really deserve to be "Elite", I don't understand why would you demote everyone and bother about promotions all over again.

While there may be those who don't deserve to be moved down, there probably are those that do.
The idea is that if they really deserve that place then they should have no problem being promoted again...

The problem is that the standard of all levels has risen so much. What may have been considered elite 2 or 3 years ago, may only be advanced now.
Should be interesting to see how the new lineup comes out

onoes, now I got to make another chop... I thought I was set and could enjoy living the good life...

i agree, lets put more effort on the chops

just saying it how i think after reading all of this ... no harm ment towards staff with my following reply


in my mind i went like >>> this is the most wrong way of going about imo

i mean on all other forums its always been advanced being the highest level .....and no other forum had an extra section like elite ..
so putting all advanced people in pro atm is just stupid , those people (not talking about myself in particulair) have done a lot of work getting in advanced and they dont deserve to be just demoted because some dont match the level or criteria of a certain level..

imo it should just be elite back into advanced and for outstanding work there is a hall of fame

and your done ....and that would be fair

but degrading every single advanced member to pro .. sorry no thats just stupid (again just my opinion no harm ment)

just keep beginners > inter > pro > andvanced and merge all elite and advanced members into advanced , because tbh there are not a lot of active elite members and way more active advanced members

no cant agree for one bit on this decision....

sorry thats just how i feel

ps advanced is going to be very empty also because the ammount of elite and also active elite isnt that much.. the way to go would be to look at every chopper and deside what level he is , no matter if its a lot of work ...

i know it would be harder for you guys to look at who could be demoted out of advanced because you would have to become personal and also take time to look at every choppers work , but imo if you want to change the lay out you will have to put in the time and dont take a short-cut and get rid of the problem and then let it build up again gradually

i mean its pretty offending because people put in hours for this community and build up to a certain point and now its just your one of the sheep who gets kicked back .. just because some dont perform good enough

also i really dont see what you guys see .. your imo killing the forum more with this decision then doing autemo good ....

again dont feel offended just my hounest opinion , do as you please but i feel this could be a very big mistake for the health of autemo



just my 0..00000000000000000000001 cnt

I think you've misunderstood rich - you'll re-promoted if you deserve it. From what I understand, the 5 showrooms will remain. You just have to prove that you're worthy. Yes it's stupid if you've just been promoted (looks at self ) but then at least it's fair on everyone

Rich

Thanks for voicing your opinions. One thing I can't agree with you on is merging Advanced and Elite as this will have the opposite effect that we're looking for. There will be an even wider spectrum in the highest showroom making the talent pool even more diluted at the higher end. We're doing this for 2 reasons - to give choppers who work their asses off a reward for doing so and also to add a bit of an incentive for people to try harder.

The other thing we could have done (Which would achieve the absolute identical effect) is to create a new showroom above Elite, however I think 6 showrooms would be a bit much.
Another reason is we feel that some promotions to both of the higher showrooms in the past may have been... hasty. We know that the bar within chopping has been raised exponentially over the past few years, and if we accept the same level as quality as the best people can achieve, then in another 3 years we will have a full Elite showroom.

All we're doing is raising that bar a bit. Ask yourself this - if you're worried that you won't be able to regain your spot in advanced - then do you truly believe you belong there now? We realise people have worked hard for those spots - however these spots are Autemo exclusive. If you're advanced on Autemo, you're not automatically advanced on another chopping forum for example. What we're doing is just adding a bit more prestige to the higher levels as they seem to have lost that prestige they used to hold a few years ago.

Remember in 2005 or so... you would log on to your chopping forum of choice and click on the advanced showroom. You would do this fully expecting to be greeted with work that would make you sit in awe, you could spend hours drooling over the brushwork, discovering details that weren't immediately apparent. These were truly the creme de la creme of chopping, those names went down in history. It's not a mystery that nowadays, you log on and click Elite and Advanced, and yes there are some great chops that take a lot of work. There are also some which fall way below the mark in terms of what you're expecting, and this could be due to the fact that the title of advanced and/or elite has become too easy to acquire, thus making people too comfortable with not reaching their full potential. If you're on salary of £25k a year and you only have to do a half-assed job to earn that, you're not going to put more effort in for the same wage are you? However, increase the salary to £30k with the prerequisite of putting in more time, and you're more likely to do it.

Going through choppers and demoting them individually isn't something we want to do as that isn't great motivation, and would no doubt cause 10x more complaining than what we plan to do now. With a mass demotion, the people who truly belong in those showrooms will have no trouble regaining their spot and will relish the new challenge - I know I certainly will. Shooting individual people down, telling them they're specifically not good enough is much much worse than giving everybody an equal opportunity again, and a bit of community challenge.

nice idea

understand it a bit better now
still not sure if its a great idea but i understood it different the first time