Do you think Guides or a similar system will ever return?

[MKR&*42]

I was browsing the uservoice forum..like 10 minutes ago and I spotted something (yes I know it was posted 2 months ago) about the possibility of bringing back Guides.

Here's what the person said: Bring back Habbo Guides. Nowadays the automated bots are just impersonal and they can't answer certain questions properly. The old Habbo Guides were actual Habbos volunteering their time to help out the new Habbos. In return, there would be badges awarded. Please support and bring this back.

And then I noticed, it's now 'under review' (I don't know how long it's been under review for..1 month possibly?) and 'anitra' (a staff I assumed) replied with this:

Thank you for your comment,based on the discussion, it seems the worst thing with the current bots is they aren't as intelligent and responsive to people's needs as real human Habbos are. We could improve the guide bot AI for example; however we would prefer to engage the community like we used to.
Could you please elaborate, what were the worst and best things in being a Habbo Guide, or as a new user, what was the best or worst thing in your human Habbo Guide; and are there any tasks that current Guide bots perform better than Habbo guides did?

I only joined in early 2009 so I missed all the eXperts and Hobbas etc. But I have an Idea of what they did, and that Guides had a lot less powers. Anyway, do you think they'll ever be brought back? I think they'll have to in the future, considering the Mods get 1000's of CFH's and get aload of **** from users because they have to use automatic responses to save time, so Guides would be a much better option of supporting Mod's work.

Do you think that they'll ever bring Guides back? I hope they do..I only considered 'becoming' a guide about a week before we all transferred to beta and the GuideBots are just useless..

Yeah, what do you think?

Here's link for the thread on bring Guides back; http://habbo.uservoice.com/forums/91831-habbo-uservoice-forum/suggestions/1517867-habbo-guides?

[Red]

I don't mind guides but I really do not want x's etc to be brought back. I agree completely with this comment.
'The proposed Habbo Officers/Volunteers programs both support elitism and favoritism. We've already had enough of the past Habbo staff's friends becoming HabboX's. Whenever time came around for Habbo X applications, the original ones would sway the community manager's decision to choose their friends. Plus, the Habbo X's abused their ability to get into full rooms. Don't forget their silly arrogance they wore proudly on their sleeve. If Habbos want to help the community they can do that on their own accord. They do not need special abilities such as alerting a room and they do not need to work closely with Habbo moderators. You need to bring back the Guide program because it gave everyone, not just Habbos with connections, an opportunity to help. Just don't give badges for helping people. That was one straw that contributed to the failure of the Guide program.'

Don't implement Habbo Officers/Volunteers (http://uservoice.com/a/1xWKq) vote :)

[MKR&*42]

Voted :P

But.. I already voted for the Habbo Officers one as well xL. I don't find anything wrong with it, but I do understand the issue of arrogance and control - people are obviously going to consider themselves more superior because they have a few extra powers..on a virtual game. I don't think it's that bad a concept though, but with every situation there's always drawbacks :S

Guides, would be pretty awesome as I said. All can join, and I looked on group page today - over 142,000 members :L.

[GoldenMerc]

I personally dont think they'l ever return

[Jordan]

I think something similar will return :P

[Aaron]

I'd like it to return, but I highly doubt it. Maybe another sort of system! :P

Let's just hope!

[hooch]

I personally enjoyed working my way through those achievements :]

[Kyle]

Even with habbo guide system there was some clear favouritism in the selection of the 'head guides'/wolves. as one of the few people that even got up to owl status and was shortlisted to be a wolf just before the system was removed i think the idea of giving badges for something like this is dumb.

If people want to help they can do it off their own back (as many do with help desks, etc.) rather than because they are given some kind of incentive to do so. I helped people with the guide system because it was an easy way to help noobs and I didn't have to sit in the welcome lounge and wait for them to come, I could go straight to them and they would auto get added to my f.l.

Part of the problem is that the mods are foreign and don't understand the concept of context. If you say a word within a completely innocent sentence and are reported, you'll get banned. Perhaps instead of some stupid pile of crap 'officer' system they should (re)hire literate mods who actually get involved a little more.

[MKR&*42]

Even with habbo guide system there was some clear favouritism in the selection of the 'head guides'/wolves. as one of the few people that even got up to owl status and was shortlisted to be a wolf just before the system was removed i think the idea of giving badges for something like this is dumb.

If people want to help they can do it off their own back (as many do with help desks, etc.) rather than because they are given some kind of incentive to do so. I helped people with the guide system because it was an easy way to help noobs and I didn't have to sit in the welcome lounge and wait for them to come, I could go straight to them and they would auto get added to my f.l.

Part of the problem is that the mods are foreign and don't understand the concept of context. If you say a word within a completely innocent sentence and are reported, you'll get banned. Perhaps instead of some stupid pile of crap 'officer' system they should (re)hire literate mods who actually get involved a little more.

I agree with your point about favouritism slightly - people who achieved owl/wolf are likely to be quite arrogant. And I also agree with hiring Mod's who's main language is English/American/Australian - not what they call 'Singlish' in Singapore (very 'loose' English) and Mod's who actually have an understanding of grammar.

But the point you mentioned about helping people with Helpdesks etc. I just don't think that's likely to happen. You don't see many helpdesks on Habbo anymore because 1. People have to take advice from a stupid, automatic 'GuideBot' who can respond to about 30 phrases and that's it. 2. Helping people seems kinda weird to most people now, if you go and ask a new player 'do you need help doing ...' then people are going to give you quite weird looks, whereas with the old Guide system it wouldn't have seemed weird.

Also, there's kinda no place for new players to go and meet people anymore. Due to the public rooms removal, they have to choose which room they wanna go in, and if it's like a shop and try and pay for something with pixels...then the guidebot obviously hasn't helped. If they look on the 'friends' or 'chat' category on navigator, aload of date rooms filled with sex addicts appear - so tbh. There's nowhere for them to go.

I reckon if Habbo encouraged more people to build helpdesks and at least replaced the GuideBot with a better system, then people would be less confused and wouldn't be asking "Plant for 2 pixels plz".

[Kyle]

Nobody even uses the guide bot by the way. I don't think many people even knew it still existed.

I'm not saying that those chosen to be head guides/ head xs/ hobbas were arrogant (although some were -- and still are... hi ardl) I just don't approve of giving people special badges cos it just enlarges their head. Only today I saw j-raviv (#1 habbo suckup, perhaps #2 after boot!) talking about how he got a "rare badge" from an event that only 13 people have. Seriously? And he's one of the guys who is holding the torch for this officer idea? Obviously just wants a badge.

Dating is one of the main focuses of habbo so obviously there are a lot of dating rooms, some of the adverts even promote it with pics of habbo guys saying stuff like hey i have 2 girlfriends on habbo... lol idk icr the exact advert, I'm sure it'll pop up if you refresh hxf a few times. It's not like they are forced to enter them, there ARE other choices, noobs dont HAVE to enter gay les bi chat if they dont want to. As much as I agree that Habbo doesn't have much in terms of public rooms, there are PLENTY of rooms that they can use to socialise so that isn't an issue at all.

[MKR&*42]

Nobody even uses the guide bot by the way. I don't think many people even knew it still existed.

I'm not saying that those chosen to be head guides/ head xs/ hobbas were arrogant (although some were -- and still are... hi ardl) I just don't approve of giving people special badges cos it just enlarges their head. Only today I saw j-raviv (#1 habbo suckup, perhaps #2 after boot!) talking about how he got a "rare badge" from an event that only 13 people have. Seriously? And he's one of the guys who is holding the torch for this officer idea? Obviously just wants a badge.

Dating is one of the main focuses of habbo so obviously there are a lot of dating rooms, some of the adverts even promote it with pics of habbo guys saying stuff like hey i have 2 girlfriends on habbo... lol idk icr the exact advert, I'm sure it'll pop up if you refresh hxf a few times. It's not like they are forced to enter them, there ARE other choices, noobs dont HAVE to enter gay les bi chat if they dont want to. As much as I agree that Habbo doesn't have much in terms of public rooms, there are PLENTY of rooms that they can use to socialise so that isn't an issue at all.

Yeah, the advert is "Check in and find your perfect match today!" and it's got like 2 people snogging..and getting married I think? Which is kinda disturbing...

And in regards to 'big-headed people due to the special badges'. Well that's kinda a common problem on Habbo - some of the people who have 100% Habbo are nice and caring people, but then there's also quite a lot of them who are absolute arrogant ***** because they've been on a virtual game for a few extra years? It kinda happens all the time, not just with badges - achievement scores .. if people have a high achievement score, they think "Im kwl bruv" when it just shows how addicted they are, especially a person I saw who had an ach. score of 34,000.

So, no matter what happens - arrogance/big-headed people will always be there on Habbo. And there is bound to be some big-headed people who were guides and got the 'higher level' badges, so I don't think Sulake really cared that much about that issue, because it occurs quite a lot.

In regards to 'plenty of rooms', well there's sorta an issue there still. If you search 'chat' or 'meet' or whatever, you get the date rooms, the gay bi les rooms and the 16/18+ chat rooms. There are occasionally some chat rooms for all users, but they're not that popular and some noobs are bound to go in and ruin it by asking 'ASL' or 'Add ____@____'. New people don't really have much benefits when deciding where to go. If they go to a game, they won't get the rules. If they go to a trade room - they won't understand credits and pixels etc. If they go to 'Aberina Park' or whatever, then they immediately become 'Zeds' according to Habbos. (I don't believe that)

Also, tbh. Badges never bothered me.. If I got a badge that only 13 other people had, then it's not that big a deal - it's just a image. Don't understand why it's such a big issue to have a virtual image >.< I also looked at the Habbo officer idea and DID vote for it, but then I looked at a different idea - the bringing back of Habbo Guides. So I removed my vote from Habbo Officers xL, Guides seems like a more suitable option.

...I also had no idea how to get a guidebot to my room for like 6 months xL

[Kyle]

We certainly need SOME kind of system that helps new users but integrating the 'community' (staff suck ups and badge hunters) is not really ideal. Improving the guide bot most definitely, perhaps even reverting back to the welcome mat system - where you could get a maid to come to your room and teach you a thing or two about falling furni as well as getting a lovely little green mat for your room - could work. Who knows?

The trouble with chat rooms is that since the age range is rising by the year, there isn't really a lot for younger users. I agree that the majority of chatchilldiscussion rooms are aimed at 16+ but that's just cos all the 12 year olds are busy in aberina park feeding the ducks or training to be a model at gucci fashion house. There really is something for all ages and anyway everyone has been a zedda at some stage And Typed Like This 0r Thiiiis,x3. It's part of growing up (in habbo)!

The problem with inflated egos in habbo will always be a prominent but what I'm saying is that bringing a new 'guide', 'officer', 'helper', (insert-synonymous-word-here) system that offers special badges for only a handful of players isnt going to help that. If it is brought back there'll be major problems and if it isn't habbo will continue to become less and less engaging for new users and eventually spiral into bankruptcy... or something. No real solution really... Oh wait, HIRE BETTER MODS.

[MKR&*42]

We certainly need SOME kind of system that helps new users but integrating the 'community' (staff suck ups and badge hunters) is not really ideal. Improving the guide bot most definitely, perhaps even reverting back to the welcome mat system - where you could get a maid to come to your room and teach you a thing or two about falling furni as well as getting a lovely little green mat for your room - could work. Who knows?

The trouble with chat rooms is that since the age range is rising by the year, there isn't really a lot for younger users. I agree that the majority of chatchilldiscussion rooms are aimed at 16+ but that's just cos all the 12 year olds are busy in aberina park feeding the ducks or training to be a model at gucci fashion house. There really is something for all ages and anyway everyone has been a zedda at some stage And Typed Like This 0r Thiiiis,x3. It's part of growing up (in habbo)!

The problem with inflated egos in habbo will always be a prominent but what I'm saying is that bringing a new 'guide', 'officer', 'helper', (insert-synonymous-word-here) system that offers special badges for only a handful of players isnt going to help that. If it is brought back there'll be major problems and if it isn't habbo will continue to become less and less engaging for new users and eventually spiral into bankruptcy... or something. No real solution really... Oh wait, HIRE BETTER MODS.

Ok, I sorta agree with basically..everything you just said for some reason? XL

But... Do you think, if they brought back the Guide system, without levels and badges, or maybe just 1 badge e.g. "I am a Habbo Guide". None of the stupid levels or arrogance, or extra-powers. Do you think then, that the Guides should be brought back? - because then you would almost single out everyone who wanted to be a Guide for a badge, and only end up with Guides who actually care about helping people XL

So yeah, without levels and all 11 previous badges. Do you think that Guides should come back then?

[Kyle]

No, because without an incentive, nobody would use it. And if you did use it, you wouldn't get any recognition for doing so, so what's the point? If you want to guide or help people you'll do it regardless of whether habbo publish a group encouraging you to or not. The encouragement would be helpful, but where is encouragement without incentive? Nowhere.

[MKR&*42]

No, because without an incentive, nobody would use it. And if you did use it, you wouldn't get any recognition for doing so, so what's the point? If you want to guide or help people you'll do it regardless of whether habbo publish a group encouraging you to or not. The encouragement would be helpful, but where is encouragement without incentive? Nowhere.

Alright then, do you think there's anything that can act as an incentive and attract people to become a Guide? Badges I think were the 'lowest' form of incentive to make people become Guides, so I don't think you can really go any lower...

So, you're completely opposed to Guides? XL. I completely agree with better MOD's though..I'd actually like some that visit people on the hotel and don't just stand in a doorway and not talk to people -_-

[Kyle]

Completely opposed. Any kind of incentive - badges, furni, extra powers - just for helping people? Stupid. That's why they hire moderators. It's getting better, though, what with those two new hotel managers coming on the scene. They're doing a really great job and actually interacting with the community like in the old days.

It would be nice if mods did their job as 'community staff' and did the same is all.

[Re-Call]

Habbo has gone down hill too much, Doubt anything will be a success