There have been FCs contracts in the past that have been difficult and stir up conversation, but SA was always achievable through patience, effort, and sharing strategies. Yes, there have been some sour grapes (why shouldn’t one feel a sense of pride in their submission), but ultimately the FCs were selected by Clemens.
The issue with the Sponsored Contracts is that it strongly appears that 5, and 5 contracts alone were submitted by each group, with no curation by Clemens. I am going off of the fact the Minmax submissions were sequentially numbered.
Majority of the Sponsored Contracts were crude. Minmax were the only ones I enjoyed as it seemed there was some thought put into them with the story and variety (even though they weren’t overly difficult). KindaFunny contracts were a mixed bag. EasyAllies were junk, only Brand Manager was decent and Media Blackout could have been good if not for awful conditions (I recreated it with better condition that greatly improves it). And Eurogamer contracts are meh.
There is an art to creating contracts. There are a lot of great creators on the HMF, and I continued to observe and note what they did to have a good flow in their contracts. I noticed a huge improvement in my submissions from when I started submitting until the end of H2. Unfortunately, the Sponsored Contracts creators don’t have the experience with the creation tool or time in the game to fully grasp the nuance of the game or understand the obsession of the SA rating in the community.