Lack of events?

[FlyingJesus]

I'm sure it used to be HALF of ticket sales since managers who sell them get to keep half the coins they raise...

[Inseriousity.]

The main lotto has always been 100c and has always been intended to raise a profit to help pay towards Habbox's running costs and increase funds for departments that desperately needed them. Relying on Jin to come online when you need credits isn't always reliable when he's so busy and I never had to ask him again once the lottery was in place. Managers kept half of what they sold and paid the other half to me. It was supposed to be 100% but to pay for it each month, I'd have personally needed to sell 150 tickets consistently each month, so it was decided managers would pay half to help cover just in case that didn't happen for whatever reason. I believe that managers now keep 100% as Jade uses the grabber to help recuperate the cost so that's a welcome step forward.

[Lewis]

The main lotto is fixed at 100c so 100 tickets need to be sold for it to break even. Only 90 tickets were sold last month. This sounds like a challenge but it really isn't and it never made a loss when I was running it - even sold out several times. When I was competitions manager, I found that people weren't disinterested in ever entering competitions, they just needed a little push and it's the exact same with lottery tickets. They want to buy them but they're not likely to go out of their way to ask to buy them, you need to ask them and they will get snapped up. I also noticed that Jade didn't sell a single ticket so it's perhaps not surprising that managers are also starting to slack. It's a shame because it really is a great way to raise funds for competitions, room designs for quests, events etc. The grabber and lottery combined could then be used to create a sustainable system to fund the events organisers' prizes.

when I first read the few words, I thought you meant fixed as in rigged lool.

I always thought the Habbox lottery made huge profits.

[FlyingJesus]

So there's all these credits floating around in manager's pockets and yet the only department that gets funded by management is comps... not sure how that works. The only departments that need creds are comps and events (potentially HxL but I don't often hear big cred comps on there) so any other managers making ticket sales ought to be helping them out, especially if the grabber is now making enough to run the lottery properly by itself or near enough. Surely that also shows that more grabber events would be a brilliant and proven way to build up funding for events - allowing senior events hosts to have their own Hx grabbers would boost this even more, and grabbers are from what I've seen pretty damn popular despite the ridiculously low payout

[Bails]

I reckon this is the main problem here.

I hate attending Habbox Events because basically the only people in there are the "ev3nts crew" and they just chat to the host so they don't pay attention, meaning the game can't get played properly. I know EOs are supposed to go into other events to get the room popular, but it's really annoying when you can't attract the host's attention because they're too busy messing about in front of their friends. I hate to say there has been more than one occasion where the host has tried to impress their friends by being horrible to the newest Habbos in the room. How in twelve types of instant soup are we supposed to attract new members when we are literally making them leave our rooms in embarrassment?

I know HxHD isn't perfect, but at least we don't intimidate other people to the point of them not wanting to come in the room anymore..

I'm not here to join in the argument but I'd just like to point out the red text in the above quote as I feel this is one of the primary problems we have here. This is coming from someone who has been in Events twice before and has seen this happen way too much.

[Inseriousity.]

Generally only community departments sell lottery tickets anyway. Rosy, who was the best seller, managed to sell roughly 60-80 tickets each month (so less than a gold bar each month for her department) and the money was largely spent on funding the seasonal events that HxHD put on/sourcing furni for layout changes.

I say all this because I think there's a strong argument that if different departments got involved in the act and used their earnings then it'd mean more community involvement and a wider range of activity from different corners. I was always disappointed at how reluctant some managers can be towards doing larger events/comps. A large part of why they are able to get away with that is they can say they don't have the funding and now there's a system in place where that excuse doesn't work. I believe strongly that content departments need to get involved in the community too and content managers should use the lottery to help them do that. For far too long they've been happy sitting behind the scenes (I noticed the content department did the traditional pumpkin hunt this year so kudos to them for that) and not integrating with the community. Perhaps now there's another AGM Content, there can be a better kick up the bum from them.

I've already said how I'd host the grabber but yes, using it to build a system where events is fully funded would be a huge step forward, make Habbox unique (I don't believe any other fansite does so and for good reason, it's not exactly cheap!) and bring some good events organisers who won't leave due to lack of funds.

[sex]

Generally only community departments sell lottery tickets anyway. Rosy, who was the best seller, managed to sell roughly 60-80 tickets each month (so less than a gold bar each month for her department) and the money was largely spent on funding the seasonal events that HxHD put on/sourcing furni for layout changes.

.

err hxhd hardly put on any events apart from maybe two a yearand any furni borrowed for layouts was taken from users who designed it... me kyle and kirst usually were asked for furni
i dont remember any recent layout where rosy spend a large amount of credits on a layout.. i assume she got the furni back and kept it so essentially they are being paid if they dont use it to fund events

[Inseriousity.]

Not always, I remember helping out searching for deckchairs and various other items for the summer one. No-one's getting paid because no-one's allowed to keep it for themselves. It's made very clear it's for your department and needs to go into improving that. How that is done is up to the manager but I know that hxhd were able to give away a lot more credits than other departments because rosy was so good at selling them.

[sex]

Not always, I remember helping out searching for deckchairs and various other items for the summer one. No-one's getting paid because no-one's allowed to keep it for themselves. It's made very clear it's for your department and needs to go into improving that. How that is done is up to the manager but I know that hxhd were able to give away a lot more credits than other departments because rosy was so good at selling them.

Yeah thats because no one submitted a layout and they where forced to go with one years ago, they could hardly borrow the furni off someone who doesn't play. That's what? One layout out of the last 5/6 lol

[Smurfed-]

Maybe start by outright banning any form of pathetic event for a few weeks - pod racing/don't hit my wall, don't roll a 6, 5 4 3 2 1, don't get a carrot, fridge game, mocha/fridge races (unless you're gonna add some obstacles to make it a bit harder) ETCETERA ETCETERA and actually get staff to try and host a remotely difficult event (I know that word must be whispered in fear around these parts of fansites I do forgive). I wouldn't say make it a permanent thing as there are people who enjoy such events, but the extent to which they're hosted today is ridiculous.

Hi Hayden, a lot of the points you've raised are things I've already spoken to you about. Elliot gave us this idea last week. We haven't done it yet because the people we feel would benefit from this the most are currently away. We've started planning this and will be starting it from the 8th - 14th November. If we feel its a success (perhaps we'll ask the public's thoughts on how the week went too) we will start doing it more often. All of the events you have mentioned are already on the list, let us know if you think any more events should be added.

Increase minimum. It's either 2 or 3 at the moment which isn't good tbh - I know it's voluntary work on a site and every little bit counts, but staff should be expected to do at least 5 events a week if I'm gonna be honest. It's not directly 5 hours as we can remove 10 minutes for room getting full, and 10 minutes if you want to finish early = 40 minutes = 200 minutes a week = just over 3 bleeding hours.

Agreed, we've already discussed raising it from 2 events to 3 events per week, this will be coming into practice on November 1st. We did consider raising it to four events but we thought it would be better to start small and then to work up.

Go around to random small event rooms, adding the owner and asking if they'd be interesting in hosting for a fansite. I don't know if managers do this, but they really should and should encourage all other staff members to go round and do the same thing. Damn the only reason I only ever joined a fansite in the first place was because someone did that^ might actually be beneficial and a boost to the Habbox events team

This is a great idea, I know this idea can be really effective as I see it working for other fansites. I have done this occasionally but no where near enough for it to be affective. We'll start aiming to do this for 2-3 hours a week at the least. Like you say, we'll start encouraging other EOs to do the same thing.

Have a group room where you can host wired events. Just get EOs to drop spare wired pieces they know they won't need soon into a giant group room and they can experiment by seeing what events they can come up with. I'm surprised there are so few wired-based events now considering the huge possibilities that are available with wired furniture. Better yet get some actual tutorials for how to create certain wired games in the events staff forum.

I love the wired guides idea. This is something I haven't thought about doing before. There are a few people in the department who are wizards with wired and who I know wouldn't mind making a few guides. I know HxL have them (I used them quite a lot when I was staff) and they were really popular and were used reguarly. I'll post a thread after I've posted this asking if anyone would be willing to help management and seniors create them.

I agree so much with what everyone else has said about Habbox staff groups in events and I did complain about it before when I was in events as it's utterly ridiculous. I don't think there's a lot you can do to drive it away, but I only ever see Smurfed- actually communicating with non staff and attempting to build rapport because he probably knows how poor his staff are at doing it. I'm not even sure how you can encourage staff into doing it because they should all know how much it sucks when nobody knows who you are and you're just there all shy.

Again I couldn't agree more. I love talking to new people because it makes being at the event and hosting the event a lot more fun and worthwhile and more importantly, benefits Habbox. The problem is there's not really anyway you can encourage people to do it. Remember the events screenshots? I think this really helped hosts to become more interactive and certainly helped other non regular members feel involved. Shouting Habbox.com was a nice way to bring everyone together with the additional bit of advertising. I know screenshots are the reason thesubettaneg started regularly attending as she herself said she really enjoyed taking part in them.

I hate to say there has been more than one occasion where the host has tried to impress their friends by being horrible to the newest Habbos in the room. How in twelve types of instant soup are we supposed to attract new members when we are literally making them leave our rooms in embarrassment?

I know HxHD isn't perfect, but at least we don't intimidate other people to the point of them not wanting to come in the room anymore..

I really hope the above isn't true, if so why on earth did you not take screenshots and send them to us? Management aren't always in the events room so we can't always spot every problem, that's why we encourage people to send complaints in a pm. If you could PM me and Martin when this was and who the host and people involved were then that would be great.

It's true that HxHD don't intimidate people. Then again I don't see staff communicating with non regulars that much nor do I ever see any advertising from anyone behind the bar.

I'm sure Jade wont mind me saying this but she's now allowed us to keep 100% of credits gained from the lottery as she can raise just as much in the grabber. This now allows us to give more out in the monthly prize fund, at the moment they gain points for doing certain tasks such as hosting an event, hosting more than 5 events and hosting a weekly event. The value of prizes they receive depends on the number of points they gain. Now we can keep the lottery money we'll start thinking of ways they can get more from this. Then it will hopefully become more beneficial to them as a decent prize fund really is needed.