Competitions Feedback

[MissAlice]

I've listed below the current competitions, and their prizes.

Halloation! - Ends Halloween
An alt comp with one prize of 2 HCs

My dog ate it...!
Simple to enter comp with one prize of 2 HCs

Halloween's A Joke!
Another easy to enter comp with one prize of 2 HCs

Room with a View
One prize of 2 HCs only

Got the time? Let's rhyme!
One prize of 3 HCs

67th Weekly Free Habbox Lottery
Prize = 1 HC Sofa and a Gold Trophy

Can I ask why the prize for an alt competition is identical to that of a simple to enter phrase/joke competition? Alteration artists can spend a lot of time using their skills to enter competitions, and are worthy in most instances of a really good prize.

Also is there a reason why the prizes are so low, and why there aren't any 2nd or even 3rd prizes.

When I donated over 100 HCs my hope was to boost prizes and therefore encourage members to enter, which is exactly the same reason jrh2002 donated, we didn't want the donations to be used sparingly. With 5000 credits you could easily afford to give away 50 credits per competition based on the fact that only 5 main competitions are posted a month.

I'm sure you have a good reason for starting all the competitions at the beginning of the month and ending them at the end of the month, but that means you only need to visit the competition forum once a month to enter. Would it not be better to encourage members to visit more regularly by spreading the starting dates and thus encouraging more visits throughout the month. Which hopefully would boost the number of entries.

Finally i think the competitions that are run are very good.

[Con]

I completely agree with you MissAlice,

Certain competitions should have a bigger prize instead of being equal to that of a simple to enter competition.
It makes you wonder what they have planned for all this donation furniture.
I thought most competitions have prizes for 2nd and 3rd place...Evidently not.

I do agree the competitions are very good though ;)

[Alex3213]

I definitely think now there's been A LOT of HUGE donations in the past few months, there needs to be a 2nd and 3rd on MOST comps. It'll be good if the prizes could be a bit bigger too, otherwise they're just going to last 6 years or so. What's the point in that? Habbox might be dead by then (hopefully not)

Unless there is something a bit BIG happening in the next month or two, what's the point in having it? There isn't a point.

Again, I agree with Connor and MissAlice about the things we've all mentioned plus the comps are run very well, it's just about the big donations lately.

[DieselShaq]

Funny how I've been wondering where the mass donation of 10,500 Credits went recently. Apparently 5,000 went to each the HabboxLive and Competitions department and 500 for Habbox in general for later use. Personally, I don't think that many Credits have even went to HabboxLive. As for Competitions? Maybe they've spent them all on buying trophies? You'll need to buy 416 Gold trophies and 1 Bronze trophy in order for them to be spent.

I totally agree that the prize for the alt competition and joke competition shouldn't be identical. Prizes should be given depending on the amount of effort required for that competition. For example, if the prizes are the same, which competition do you think will get more entries: a competition which requires a new room created and fancily stacked with a lot of furni, or a competition which only requires a joke that can be searched on the Internet? That was a rhetorical question, of course the latter!

Prizes do need to get bigger. One or two Club Sofas per competition simply is too small, considering the amount of donations Habbox receives. I remember, before my hiatus, that the Habbox Lottery prize got bigger and bigger by 1 Club Sofa per week if nobody won. Once somebody wins, the prize would restart at 1 Club Sofa. Why couldn't you bring that back? That would definitely get more entries as the prize gets bigger.

I'm now really interested in where all the Credit donations really went. Could someone (most likely H0BJ0B) please answer me?

[MissAlice]

Funny how I've been wondering where the mass donation of 10,500 Credits went recently. Apparently 5,000 went to each the HabboxLive and Competitions department and 500 for Habbox in general for later use. Personally, I don't think that many Credits have even went to HabboxLive. As for Competitions? Maybe they've spent them all on buying trophies? You'll need to buy 416 Gold trophies and 1 Bronze trophy in order for them to be spent.


I think the donations just haven't been used yet!

[DieselShaq]

I think the donations just haven't been used yet!
Yeah, I know that, but it seems to have been a long time since the Credits were donated!

[MissAlice]

Yeah, I know that, but it seems to have been a long time since the Credits were donated!

Yeah I agree it does seem so :)
25th August I donated 100 HCs
5th September jrh donated 5000 credits.

[H0BJ0B]

Hi there,

Firstly, a big thanks for your feedback. I'll answer some of your questions below. I'll also be taking all points on board and putting them in action next month. It must be remembered that we also have to run staff competitions and VIP competitions so each month at the moment we are giving away (on average), 15 HC Sofas.

The main reason the alteration competition prize is low is because when we had high prizes (say 3-4 HCs), we had entries that weren't worthy of a prize so high. We rarely get an excellent entry in our alteration competitions and so it was decided to lower the prize. I will however be looking into raising the current alteration competition prizes and future ones upon receiving this feedback.

2nd and 3rd prizes could easily be implemented and so they will be done for relevant competitions next month.

All the competitions are released at the start of the month - this is because getting in contact with everyone, getting them to reply, making announcements, sorting new competitions, etc. is a very demanding job and so it's much easier to do all at one time - where it is still a lot of work. I will look into setting up a system so some are released on the 15th too.

Diesel - all the credits are locked up on an account that very few people know including myself so that they aren't hacked or whatever. All the HCs can be found in my room along with some of the credits. We do indeed use prizes sparingly so that we always have something because when I joined the competitions department, I think we had close to zero.

Where you mentioned having a roll over where the HC goes onto next week making it 2 HCs, etc. - I don't think I've ever seen that at Habbox in my 3 years, certainly not in my time as Competitions Staff. Making the prize bigger and bigger would mean the winner would get about 20 club sofas for doing nothing but typing in 3 numbers. I don't think the Lotto prizes need increasing at all - the popularity of our Lotto has been increased with the introduction of a HxL DJ covering it and also a show for it.

Once again, thanks for your feedback - you'll seem some changes next month! ;)

[e5]

Prizes do seem to be a little bit short. There is alot donated and the prizes should be more. I also though comps should be more spread out so you get visits more often as different comps come out at different times.

[jrh2002]

Hi there,

Firstly, a big thanks for your feedback. I'll answer some of your questions below. I'll also be taking all points on board and putting them in action next month. It must be remembered that we also have to run staff competitions and VIP competitions so each month at the moment we are giving away (on average), 15 HC Sofas.

The main reason the alteration competition prize is low is because when we had high prizes (say 3-4 HCs), we had entries that weren't worthy of a prize so high. We rarely get an excellent entry in our alteration competitions and so it was decided to lower the prize. I will however be looking into raising the current alteration competition prizes and future ones upon receiving this feedback.

2nd and 3rd prizes could easily be implemented and so they will be done for relevant competitions next month.

All the competitions are released at the start of the month - this is because getting in contact with everyone, getting them to reply, making announcements, sorting new competitions, etc. is a very demanding job and so it's much easier to do all at one time - where it is still a lot of work. I will look into setting up a system so some are released on the 15th too.

Diesel - all the credits are locked up on an account that very few people know including myself so that they aren't hacked or whatever. All the HCs can be found in my room along with some of the credits. We do indeed use prizes sparingly so that we always have something because when I joined the competitions department, I think we had close to zero.

Where you mentioned having a roll over where the HC goes onto next week making it 2 HCs, etc. - I don't think I've ever seen that at Habbox in my 3 years, certainly not in my time as Competitions Staff. Making the prize bigger and bigger would mean the winner would get about 20 club sofas for doing nothing but typing in 3 numbers. I don't think the Lotto prizes need increasing at all - the popularity of our Lotto has been increased with the introduction of a HxL DJ covering it and also a show for it.

Once again, thanks for your feedback - you'll seem some changes next month! ;)

I donated prizes for members which mean VIP are also allowed to enter those. I hope NOTHING I donated has gone to any special VIP comp and especially to staff comps as in no way was my donation intended for those purposes.

If you offer crap prizes you are going to get crap entries im afraid. Who will spend hours or even days creating something to win 2 crappy hc?

A new comp should be released weekly surely :s have one comp run by each staff member and then its fine? god knows what the rest do unless their jobs are to do vip and staff comps. Demanding job if there were few staff but theres more here than there has ever been so should be easy to run many comps all starting at different times.

I thought the lottery comp did roll over :s why does the nationaly lottery get more entries on a roll over? because theres more to win which would also be the case here i would imagine.

After reading your reply it makes me wonder why i bothered donating im afraid because it was to help promote habbox and do some good for the members not to line the staffs pockets because they cry over not being allowed to enter proper comps.

My next 10k in gold can go to the illegal immigrants or drug addict rapists as they were hard done to earlier in life.

:eusa_wall :eusa_wall :eusa_wall

[Dentafrice]

What happened to the old competitions department, that offered high prizes, and got high-quality entries?

If you don't make the prize high enough, the desire to actually make something good.. isn't going to be there.

[MissAlice]

Firstly I have to say I'm disappointed, and shocked that donations are used to run staff competitions and to benefit VIPs who are able to enter the main competitions. My donation was for the benefit of all members and not to benefit a minority at any time.

There appears to be 9 staff in the Competitions Department, so I can't understand that it's a lot of work to organise competitions to be released at different times of the month. Surely if you closed competitions one week apart and made good use of the department staff there would be less of a burden on yourself. You have I think 2 senior staff, not sure what they do, but they could deliver winners prizes and ease the pressure on you.

Better prizes for alt competitions will encourage members to be creative, as for them it's not always about winning the prize but more about winning the competition. Prestige ;)

DieselShaq mentioned the lottery, here is some proof that there was always a rollover and you can see for yourself how successful it was. Of course it's an easy to enter competition and it doesn't matter that by typing in 3 numbers you can win a lot of furni. It's all about the thrill of winning and the very fact that anyone can enter, because you don't need any skills to do so, it's all about luck ;) Also if you don't own much furni rollovers are a great opportunity to win a bit more than normal. I see staff can enter this too! So why do they need members donations for their competitions?

http://www.habboxforum.com/showthread.php?t=87503 the fifth lotto
http://www.habboxforum.com/showthread.php?t=83966 the fourth
http://www.habboxforum.com/showthread.php?t=80584 the third
http://www.habboxforum.com/showthread.php?t=77367 the second

[H0BJ0B]

Hey again,

Thanks for your replies. Below are some replies to the topics brought up. They are replies to comments made in jrh2002 and MissAlice's post. Dentafrice - thanks for your comment, it has been noted.

In regard to both of you saying you do not/did not wish for your donations to go towards staff or VIPs - we had quite a few donations before both of your donations were made and so those are the prizes that go towards VIP and staff comeptitions. Your donations will be used in the public competitions.

As I said in my original post, we are going to be raising the prizes however there will need to be a leash on the amount we raise it if we are also going to be giving 2nd and 3rd places as requested earlier which will hopefully encourage some more high-quality entries as everyone here has stated.

Regarding the lottery - when I came to the competitions department, the Lotto wasn't functioning in a rollover way. Looking at the posts you've provided MissAlice, and seeing it get 14 pages of posts, maybe doing a rollover would help. Lotto's tend to be won after about 10 weeks though I believe and so a 10 HC prize towards someone who's entered with little effort seems a little contradictory towards the mention of bigger prizes for harder work.

Weekly seems a bit too often though however this may just be my opinion. I will look into getting a poll put up on Habbox.com and I'll also put one in the Competitions forum so that the people that actually enter competitions can have a say on it.

Senior staff do help with moderation and I might look into getting them to help with the winners however there are a few things which restrict the amount they can do.

I have got a few more ideas in mind after reviewing the posts made and as mentioned earlier, hopefully they will be ready to implement next month.

Thanks again for your time in giving feedback and helping me know what the members actually want.

H0BJ0B
Competitions Manager

[MissAlice]

Regarding the lottery - when I came to the competitions department, the Lotto wasn't functioning in a rollover way. Looking at the posts you've provided MissAlice, and seeing it get 14 pages of posts, maybe doing a rollover would help. Lotto's tend to be won after about 10 weeks though I believe and so a 10 HC prize towards someone who's entered with little effort seems a little contradictory towards the mention of bigger prizes for harder work.

Weekly seems a bit too often though however this may just be my opinion. I will look into getting a poll put up on Habbox.com and I'll also put one in the Competitions forum so that the people that actually enter competitions can have a say on it.


Thanks for replying :)

I'm pleased to see you will be raising the prizes, that's what I hoped for :) The Competitions Department has plenty to keep them going for quite a while ;) and just as importantly thank you for respecting that my donations are for all members and not for minorities :)

The Lottery is very different to any other competition that is run, you can be any age, requires no skills, and allows the whole community regardless of their ability to enter easily. How many competitions do you know that have that quality? It's an important competition because it draws in new members as well as old. You want to know if anyone has won it, and when they haven't the prospect of winning a rollover gives you the opportunity to try your luck again. When you have very little furni the idea of winning quite a bit can be exciting. So one competition that is regularly run that still amounts to only 1 club sofa a week isn't a great deal, and I'm sure everyone loves a rollover :P

With regards to polls, that's an excellent idea, asking those that enter the competitions to give their opinions as I'm sure those members will tell you what they do actually want, not too much I hope ;)

Keep up the good work!