Full Habbox feedback woo

[FlyingJesus]

Oh I was thinking beta as in back when I signed up lmao

2009 doesn't seem very retro shouldn't it be 2003 if we're celebrating 10 years everything done in mode bars and pods with red chequered walls and white crosshatching floors woo

[Martin]

I think I'm gonna start with events because I think they have the most potential:

HFFM:

Looking at their calender, they basically never have more than two of the same event in one day (not including trivia/quizzes, but trivia can be played in lots of different ways). I also notice that there are a number of events on there that look exciting and a couple that I haven't heard of before.

They have three or four slots left empty for today, which is to be expected. I don't think anyone expects fansites to host events 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Now let's look at Habbox's calendar:


We have ten empty slots today.. Ten hours out of twenty four are unbooked. Literally nothing looks interesting on here. I would not (and do not) want to go to a single one of these events.

Actually can we just ban Falling Furni, Fridge Races/Don't Get a Carrot and Don't Roll a *insert number here*? These kinds of events are like the event version of streaming if you're a DJ. They are dull, unattractive and not particularly exciting. For example, I counted eleven different games of Falling Furni over six days. Stop this madness, please.

HFFM has 61 events staff altogether. We have 22. I think part of the problem here is just that we don't have enough staff. Perhaps, instead of promoting to get more people to come to events, get more people to try and apply to events. Even if we doubled the number of events organisers, we wouldn't even be halfway to what HFFM has. Plus, more staff would mean more people to populate rooms for us which would make it a win-win situation.

I think perhaps we could try some really exciting weekly events as well. Or at least make our current weekly events sound more exciting. I'm looking on habbox.com and we have four. Four... And I have never even heard of three of them. Honestly, Events Dept, it's almost as if you don't want people to play the games you set up for us? And then you complain when two people turn up?

Oh that's another rant: I notice all some staff do is sitting in their room going "NO ONE IS COMING SO I MAY AS WELL JUST LEAVE NOW". If no one is at your event, there is probably a reason for this. Did it ever occur to you to try and advertise or something? This isn't aimed at every events staff. I notice some come into HxHD five minutes before their event and make sure everyone knows about it, which is great. But sitting there saying "well I told the DJ but they're not advertising.." is not an argument.

I feel like I should tag the events manager. @Bolt660; @Smurfed-; (are they your names)

May as well tag the seniors as well. Don't even know what you do but: @Dilusionate; @.Cymru.;

One more thing: add international events staff please.

jesus christ my hands have worn down to stumps

I make it 7 empty slots not 10?

Whilst I can see where you are coming from and whilst most of what you are saying makes sense- I don't think its right to compare like that all the time. A lot of the events are exactly the same that we host, and I wouldnt have any clue what "TBD" means on some of their events so I probably wouldn't go.

I think if we are GOING to make the comparison, then we are doing pretty fantastic if we have a third of the staff they do and we're still able to get a calendar with the majority of the slots filled each day. 7pm and 10pm dont appear to be booked on their calendar at that moment in time, and I would consider those peak slots for the BST timezone. I'm just saying there is always things to nit-pick at because nothing will ever be 100% perfect.


If you go back to last year on the calendar, we were hosting HALF the amount of events per day we do now. I really don't see what has actually gone downhill in terms of that, since we've been hosting more events into the night/early morning than we have in years.

One comment I agree with you on is quality and community interaction. Myself, Alex and Mike had a meeting about this last night and I can confirm that we're introducing something soon which should hopefully increase that aspect of things and create more of a community feel again.

Staffing is certainly something we can discuss, in terms of perhaps getting more staff. One problem we've always had with the international side of things, is as soon as you hire international staff, they end up hosting events in BST slots mostly, because they find that the slots in their timezone are too quiet. I think its one of those things where you have to keep going until they get popular but half the time it isnt even given chance.


I think staff from other departments could come to events and help populate rooms, even if its just for the first 10 minutes so the room goes up the rooms list on Habbo and the room gets populated with newbies etc. That would be a REAL team effort and the community coming together and stuff.



I think the feedback we're gaining from this thread is really useful and will certainly help in some ways- however I believe that some of the issues faced here are issues that have been faced on and off for years, and not all of it can be controlled easily, as there will always be something that slips. If you notice a particular events organiser doing something inappropriate or not paying attention to those in the room then thats a serious complaint and it would be looked into of course. I'm not sure why you say none of the events look interesting, because there's a good selection there imo and I guess different people have different tastes.

I'm not sure how full the helpdesk gets these days, but if there are plenty of people in there, I guess they could be sent on to events too, since I think advertising within the helpdesk could be better sometimes too in terms of getting people to tune in etc.



Overall we're taking all this on board, but its an awful lot to work out and solve, and some of it will NEVER be perfect.

[Phil]

I think I'm gonna start with events because I think they have the most potential:

HFFM:

Looking at their calender, they basically never have more than two of the same event in one day (not including trivia/quizzes, but trivia can be played in lots of different ways). I also notice that there are a number of events on there that look exciting and a couple that I haven't heard of before.

They have three or four slots left empty for today, which is to be expected. I don't think anyone expects fansites to host events 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Now let's look at Habbox's calendar:


We have ten empty slots today.. Ten hours out of twenty four are unbooked. Literally nothing looks interesting on here. I would not (and do not) want to go to a single one of these events.

Actually can we just ban Falling Furni, Fridge Races/Don't Get a Carrot and Don't Roll a *insert number here*? These kinds of events are like the event version of streaming if you're a DJ. They are dull, unattractive and not particularly exciting. For example, I counted eleven different games of Falling Furni over six days. Stop this madness, please.

HFFM has 61 events staff altogether. We have 22. I think part of the problem here is just that we don't have enough staff. Perhaps, instead of promoting to get more people to come to events, get more people to try and apply to events. Even if we doubled the number of events organisers, we wouldn't even be halfway to what HFFM has. Plus, more staff would mean more people to populate rooms for us which would make it a win-win situation.

I think perhaps we could try some really exciting weekly events as well. Or at least make our current weekly events sound more exciting. I'm looking on habbox.com and we have four. Four... And I have never even heard of three of them. Honestly, Events Dept, it's almost as if you don't want people to play the games you set up for us? And then you complain when two people turn up?

Oh that's another rant: I notice all some staff do is sitting in their room going "NO ONE IS COMING SO I MAY AS WELL JUST LEAVE NOW". If no one is at your event, there is probably a reason for this. Did it ever occur to you to try and advertise or something? This isn't aimed at every events staff. I notice some come into HxHD five minutes before their event and make sure everyone knows about it, which is great. But sitting there saying "well I told the DJ but they're not advertising.." is not an argument.

I feel like I should tag the events manager. @Bolt660; @Smurfed-; (are they your names)

May as well tag the seniors as well. Don't even know what you do but: @Dilusionate; @.Cymru.;

One more thing: add international events staff please.

jesus christ my hands have worn down to stumps

Hey, thanks for the feedback! I'll reply to each point separately.

To start, forgive me if I'm wrong but I only count 7 empty slots of 24 in the calender you showed which I don't think is too bad. HFFM only had four empty slots and while that is three more events than we had, they have three times more staff which yeah I know may be our fault but the department is definitely improving! I was manager at this time last year and to have a day with only 7 slot empty would be unheard of a year a year ago, it has come along way but it still has far to go.

I'm not replying to argue each point you made or to back up the department, I completely agree with what you said about not wanting to attend any of those events. I would honestly say that there are only three events listed there that I would go to and that HFFM do have much more interesting ones that would intrigue current and potential users. I also agree that games like "Don't Get a Carrot" and "Don't Roll a *Number*" should just be banned as the are both boring to play and lazy to host and I have approached management about it before! In saying that, I don't think it's necessary to ban games like "Falling Furni" and "Fridge Game" as FF does provide some skill and can be fun to play and people still enjoy Fridge Game as a luck game, it's not as boring especially when say the ice cream is used to p2k.

I can't say a lot about the amount of staff because I'm not a manager and I'm not involved with recruiting. Events staff applications are ALWAYS open, they just need to be advertised in events which isn't happening (I'll admit that even I don't think of doing it). Maybe it'd be beneficial to have some sort of staffing drive?

Weekly events is definitely something that we're pushing as much as possible in events and people are coming up with new ideas. It's not something that's at it's peak at the moment but it is improving. The main problem here is cost so it does take a bit of time to get it running. I've actually been working on one for about two months now at this stage and it's still not finished! It's almost there but there's still tweaking to do.

Unfortunately, it is the case that SOME events aren't as popular as we would like but it seems to be getting a bit better over the past month or so. Sometimes the events host can be doing as much as they can to get people down at their event but it's just not working! In saying that, there has been a lot of hours recently where to numbers in our events have been on par with HFFM. I don't believe I've ever seen anyone give up and actually leave their event because people aren't turning up. If you've witnessed it, we'd love to hear about it

Thanks again for the feedback!

Phil x

EDIT:

Martin beat me to it

[Martin]

Was wondering why event rooms looked so cheap atm, apparently it's a "retro week" thing so looked that up and found

Which is a lovely idea but there's one small snag - absolutely nothing about these events are retro. One-way gates are relatively new and the rest of the furni in most of the rooms I've seen so far isn't anything that I'd consider retro, especially when we're talking about a decade of difference to Habbox.

It's not just events that are lacking though in terms of anniversary celebrations; there are 6 competitions running with vague relevance, the default skin has gone to classic (which doesn't affect anyone who manually chooses their skin ie: everyone), there are a handful of non-discussive threads open, and that's it as far as I can see. There is NOTHING on the main site about it, not even the shortest article or tagline mentioning it, and HxL is just HxL. Habbox has been around for 10 years and to say that the effort being put in to "celebrate" it is minimal would be more praise than necessary to be honest. This is a huge milestone and despite there being a number of dedicated staff around the place it seems that management as a whole is is just totally lacking - this is something that any well run fansite that claims to still be the best should be making a massive spectacle of with at least HxSS-esque work being put in and yet the biggest news of the week is that Justin Bieber drove away from paparazzi and Kardan doesn't want to get baptised. I've been unjustly accused in this thread of simply complaining where I've actually been giving suggestions, but you can now feel free to tell me that I'm moaning because now I am; this is an unjustifiably crap effort

Whilst I can't comment on other departments so much, I will briefly explain whats going on in events. Yes- its not so much retro in the sense of going back to 2003 etc, but its basically just not using modern furniture from after 2009. There has been heaps of furniture ranges released in recent years, and I guess it was just to create a feeling of events before wired and stuff was around. Which I think in itself provides a really different feel. We have invited some previous events staff back as you may have noticed too, and they've been a great help during this week and its so nice to see them hosting again. Especially considering one was a senior and one was an agm. I know one way gates aren't majorly old but they were released in 2007 werent they along with the v11 rares release? I may be wrong, but I do feel they are old enough for this kinda thing without making it harderto get in and out of rooms etc. There's a forum award up for grabs for winning an event during this week (I'm not too sure how many people really use the awards system etc), and personally I've just loved the fact that the events organisers have got behind it and made such lovely rooms in a short amount of time as it was a real team effort. I know its not the most fabulous thing in the world, but coming from one department we just wanted to do something to celebrate the past a bit. In terms of overall celebrations stuff that would be down to general management since there's only so much one department can do without taking over I guess.


I agree that its awful that there is nothing on the site to celebrate, on the whole I feel like the site itself is kind of retro in the sense that it doesn't feel up to date or that informative anymore, I hate to say it but it feels a bit stale but that might just be me. I definitely think more should be done with the site and radio in terms of interactive things and keeping things fresh but thats another story.

[MKR&*42]

I think I'm gonna start with events because I think they have the most potential:

HFFM:

Looking at their calender, they basically never have more than two of the same event in one day (not including trivia/quizzes, but trivia can be played in lots of different ways). I also notice that there are a number of events on there that look exciting and a couple that I haven't heard of before.

They have three or four slots left empty for today, which is to be expected. I don't think anyone expects fansites to host events 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Now let's look at Habbox's calendar:


We have ten empty slots today.. Ten hours out of twenty four are unbooked. Literally nothing looks interesting on here. I would not (and do not) want to go to a single one of these events.

Actually can we just ban Falling Furni, Fridge Races/Don't Get a Carrot and Don't Roll a *insert number here*? These kinds of events are like the event version of streaming if you're a DJ. They are dull, unattractive and not particularly exciting. For example, I counted eleven different games of Falling Furni over six days. Stop this madness, please.

HFFM has 61 events staff altogether. We have 22. I think part of the problem here is just that we don't have enough staff. Perhaps, instead of promoting to get more people to come to events, get more people to try and apply to events. Even if we doubled the number of events organisers, we wouldn't even be halfway to what HFFM has. Plus, more staff would mean more people to populate rooms for us which would make it a win-win situation.

I think perhaps we could try some really exciting weekly events as well. Or at least make our current weekly events sound more exciting. I'm looking on habbox.com and we have four. Four... And I have never even heard of three of them. Honestly, Events Dept, it's almost as if you don't want people to play the games you set up for us? And then you complain when two people turn up?

Oh that's another rant: I notice all some staff do is sitting in their room going "NO ONE IS COMING SO I MAY AS WELL JUST LEAVE NOW". If no one is at your event, there is probably a reason for this. Did it ever occur to you to try and advertise or something? This isn't aimed at every events staff. I notice some come into HxHD five minutes before their event and make sure everyone knows about it, which is great. But sitting there saying "well I told the DJ but they're not advertising.." is not an argument.

I feel like I should tag the events manager. @Bolt660; @Smurfed-; (are they your names)

May as well tag the seniors as well. Don't even know what you do but: @Dilusionate; @.Cymru.;

One more thing: add international events staff please.

jesus christ my hands have worn down to stumps

I have complained about the lack of varied events and how they tend to be pure luck most of the time, it seems to have improved recently but I would hope more happens, because I agree that Don't roll/get... are just the laziest games for anyone to host and require so little interaction with people it's ridiculous.

[xxMATTGxx]

Was wondering why event rooms looked so cheap atm, apparently it's a "retro week" thing so looked that up and found

Which is a lovely idea but there's one small snag - absolutely nothing about these events are retro. One-way gates are relatively new and the rest of the furni in most of the rooms I've seen so far isn't anything that I'd consider retro, especially when we're talking about a decade of difference to Habbox.

It's not just events that are lacking though in terms of anniversary celebrations; there are 6 competitions running with vague relevance, the default skin has gone to classic (which doesn't affect anyone who manually chooses their skin ie: everyone), there are a handful of non-discussive threads open, and that's it as far as I can see. There is NOTHING on the main site about it, not even the shortest article or tagline mentioning it, and HxL is just HxL. Habbox has been around for 10 years and to say that the effort being put in to "celebrate" it is minimal would be more praise than necessary to be honest. This is a huge milestone and despite there being a number of dedicated staff around the place it seems that management as a whole is is just totally lacking - this is something that any well run fansite that claims to still be the best should be making a massive spectacle of with at least HxSS-esque work being put in and yet the biggest news of the week is that Justin Bieber drove away from paparazzi and Kardan doesn't want to get baptised. I've been unjustly accused in this thread of simply complaining where I've actually been giving suggestions, but you can now feel free to tell me that I'm moaning because now I am; this is an unjustifiably crap effort

Because it doesn't turn 10 until the 1st July, we have something for that but you will have wait to the actual birthday date for it.

[Empired]

I make it 7 empty slots not 10?

Whilst I can see where you are coming from and whilst most of what you are saying makes sense- I don't think its right to compare like that all the time. A lot of the events are exactly the same that we host, and I wouldnt have any clue what "TBD" means on some of their events so I probably wouldn't go.

I think if we are GOING to make the comparison, then we are doing pretty fantastic if we have a third of the staff they do and we're still able to get a calendar with the majority of the slots filled each day. 7pm and 10pm dont appear to be booked on their calendar at that moment in time, and I would consider those peak slots for the BST timezone. I'm just saying there is always things to nit-pick at because nothing will ever be 100% perfect.


If you go back to last year on the calendar, we were hosting HALF the amount of events per day we do now. I really don't see what has actually gone downhill in terms of that, since we've been hosting more events into the night/early morning than we have in years.

One comment I agree with you on is quality and community interaction. Myself, Alex and Mike had a meeting about this last night and I can confirm that we're introducing something soon which should hopefully increase that aspect of things and create more of a community feel again.

Staffing is certainly something we can discuss, in terms of perhaps getting more staff. One problem we've always had with the international side of things, is as soon as you hire international staff, they end up hosting events in BST slots mostly, because they find that the slots in their timezone are too quiet. I think its one of those things where you have to keep going until they get popular but half the time it isnt even given chance.


I think staff from other departments could come to events and help populate rooms, even if its just for the first 10 minutes so the room goes up the rooms list on Habbo and the room gets populated with newbies etc. That would be a REAL team effort and the community coming together and stuff.



I think the feedback we're gaining from this thread is really useful and will certainly help in some ways- however I believe that some of the issues faced here are issues that have been faced on and off for years, and not all of it can be controlled easily, as there will always be something that slips. If you notice a particular events organiser doing something inappropriate or not paying attention to those in the room then thats a serious complaint and it would be looked into of course. I'm not sure why you say none of the events look interesting, because there's a good selection there imo and I guess different people have different tastes.

I'm not sure how full the helpdesk gets these days, but if there are plenty of people in there, I guess they could be sent on to events too, since I think advertising within the helpdesk could be better sometimes too in terms of getting people to tune in etc.



Overall we're taking all this on board, but its an awful lot to work out and solve, and some of it will NEVER be perfect.

I can't count sorry I had to rush this as well.

I seem you see you talking a lot about how we've drastically improved in the last year. This is great but not good enough? There is no such thing as perfection in things like this so we should always be striving to improve. Even if events are going swimmingly now, times are changing all the time and Habbos are constantly looking for new things. Instead of saying "we're doing well guys" it should be "we're doing well guys but let's try this". Don't get me wrong, I think events are doing pretty well but Habbox management (particularly managers of community departments) should always be on the lookout for new stuff. Forgive me if I'm wrong but I just don't see this happening. And if you attempt to say "stuf hapens behind da scenes uno111!!1!1one" (like I've been told by a manager before) this just is not good enough. One thing Habbos want is to see the changes for themselves. Otherwise we find ourselves just turning up to the same old events day in, day out.

Hey, thanks for the feedback! I'll reply to each point separately.

To start, forgive me if I'm wrong but I only count 7 empty slots of 24 in the calender you showed which I don't think is too bad. HFFM only had four empty slots and while that is three more events than we had, they have three times more staff which yeah I know may be our fault but the department is definitely improving! I was manager at this time last year and to have a day with only 7 slot empty would be unheard of a year a year ago, it has come along way but it still has far to go.

I'm not replying to argue each point you made or to back up the department, I completely agree with what you said about not wanting to attend any of those events. I would honestly say that there are only three events listed there that I would go to and that HFFM do have much more interesting ones that would intrigue current and potential users. I also agree that games like "Don't Get a Carrot" and "Don't Roll a *Number*" should just be banned as the are both boring to play and lazy to host and I have approached management about it before! In saying that, I don't think it's necessary to ban games like "Falling Furni" and "Fridge Game" as FF does provide some skill and can be fun to play and people still enjoy Fridge Game as a luck game, it's not as boring especially when say the ice cream is used to p2k.

I can't say a lot about the amount of staff because I'm not a manager and I'm not involved with recruiting. Events staff applications are ALWAYS open, they just need to be advertised in events which isn't happening (I'll admit that even I don't think of doing it). Maybe it'd be beneficial to have some sort of staffing drive?

Weekly events is definitely something that we're pushing as much as possible in events and people are coming up with new ideas. It's not something that's at it's peak at the moment but it is improving. The main problem here is cost so it does take a bit of time to get it running. I've actually been working on one for about two months now at this stage and it's still not finished! It's almost there but there's still tweaking to do.

Unfortunately, it is the case that SOME events aren't as popular as we would like but it seems to be getting a bit better over the past month or so. Sometimes the events host can be doing as much as they can to get people down at their event but it's just not working! In saying that, there has been a lot of hours recently where to numbers in our events have been on par with HFFM. I don't believe I've ever seen anyone give up and actually leave their event because people aren't turning up. If you've witnessed it, we'd love to hear about it

Thanks again for the feedback!

Phil x

EDIT:

Martin beat me to it

Um yeah, basically what I said above but..

Don't Get a Carrot and Don't Roll a 6 are by far the worst events I've been to. I disagree with the fridge game being exciting as well, but stuff like this is down to personal preference. I don't actually mind things like fridge races where you have to run up and then run back because that's slightly more exciting than a fridge just being passed around and the events organiser occasionally going "wd p2k" or "soz ex.it wivout the . plz".

Oh and while I'm on that subject I think it would be a good idea to remind your staff to type properly in events. I know in HxHD we are encouraged to type in full sentences with capital letters when helping users because it makes us look much more approachable and actually makes the fansite look better as a whole. I'm not sure if you have any rules or reminders on this but it drives me mad because it just makes Habbox look tacky. I know lots of EOs do type properly, but I've been to a couple of events where I practically need a decoder to decipher what the host is trying to say..

okthx

[AgnesIO]

Whilst it is good you guys are trying to be unique with the "retro" games, I think the point is users like to play WIRED and modern games now.

I still think more "expensive" rooms will attract players, friendly hosts will attract players too. Try and use the same event rooms - that way you might get regulars to your events by asking people to "favourite" your room (you could then update the room name with the date of your next event, or call it www.habboxforum.com). Lastly, I feel it is essential for each host to REALLY advertise everything Habbox.

I don't mean to just talk about events, as I think that is unfair - as there are certainly other departments that could and should improve.

[Phil]

I can't count sorry I had to rush this as well.

Don't Get a Carrot and Don't Roll a 6 are by far the worst events I've been to. I disagree with the fridge game being exciting as well, but stuff like this is down to personal preference. I don't actually mind things like fridge races where you have to run up and then run back because that's slightly more exciting than a fridge just being passed around and the events organiser occasionally going "wd p2k" or "soz ex.it wivout the . plz".

Oh and while I'm on that subject I think it would be a good idea to remind your staff to type properly in events. I know in HxHD we are encouraged to type in full sentences with capital letters when helping users because it makes us look much more approachable and actually makes the fansite look better as a whole. I'm not sure if you have any rules or reminders on this but it drives me mad because it just makes Habbox look tacky. I know lots of EOs do type properly, but I've been to a couple of events where I practically need a decoder to decipher what the host is trying to say..

okthx

Okay I agree with Fridge Game but I don't think it's worth banning whereas the "Don't Get a WHATEVER's" are. You're right in saying that it's be better running up to the fridge. Personally, I hate how it gets passed around and if I were to host that game (which I haven't since I've returned) I'd let people run (probs just me being lazy ). I think Fridge Races is a much better adaption of Fridge Game especially when you add rollers because it adds an element of skill as well as luck.

I actually agree with what you said about typing properly. When I joined I know it was a rule in the handbook and I made sure to do it but I don't think it's there anymore.

Whilst it is good you guys are trying to be unique with the "retro" games, I think the point is users like to play WIRED and modern games now.

I still think more "expensive" rooms will attract players, friendly hosts will attract players too. Try and use the same event rooms - that way you might get regulars to your events by asking people to "favourite" your room (you could then update the room name with the date of your next event, or call it www.habboxforum.com). Lastly, I feel it is essential for each host to REALLY advertise everything Habbox.

I don't mean to just talk about events, as I think that is unfair - as there are certainly other departments that could and should improve.

This is correct too! More expensive rooms do look better and are definitely more attractive. The difficulty with that is that it costs a lot of credits and it's unfair to ask events hosts to splash out on what they can't afford but we have a new system in place that may help that.

Same goes for wired stuff. Wired provides a fantastic opportunity for new and exciting games but it's very expensive. I'm working on a new weekly event atm and the wired for it cost around 130c before I even started on room decoration. There's also the whole 'coming up with the game' part which I personally find really difficult but I'm not very creative. Tyler was great for coming up with wired games, there was nothing like them. Hopefully we'll see something just as great in the near future.

[Chippiewill]

Why doesn't Content have an AGM? Pretty much all the other departments do, don't they?

There used to be a Content AGM, when the last content AGM left HotelUser took over in a different role as a Development AGM. Since David left Matt has been hesitant to appoint another Development AGM (Not that recursion would want that responsibility anyway), and seems to not care enough about the content departments to appoint a Content AGM which in my opinion is sorely needed as the content departments need some more oversight and TLC. The other upshot is it would add another person into the AGM mix so we might have someone capable of taking over from Matt at some point.