I'm a Habbo... Feedback

[Kardan]

@Kardan; I'm still writing my reply :eek: !!! it's not too long yet but I have a few things to add onto the points you've already made. hope to see the views of some of those that weren't actually involved so a more rounded feedback thread can be created.

I agree - it would be very handy to have feedback from someone that didn't take part and did watch quite often - @cupcake; (Don't know anyone else that regularly paid attention other than habbic)

[Inseriousity.]

Things that could be improved

- Preparation
I was shocked to learn that it was being done as it went along. This explains a lot of the huge gaps between tasks. All the tasks should've been thought out beforehand really.

- Team work
Where were all the moderators? It is sad that 99% of the event was placed on Phil's shoulders. If the moderators got involved more, there could've been a lot more done. Also general management (sam in particular but anyone could've pitched in I suppose) could've helped out a bit when it became apparent that Phil was struggling to maintain momentum alone.

- Audience participation
A lot of potential to use the audience here. Jungle Discussion forum, more involvement with secret tasks (someone ordered to do what the audience decides, for instance). I've always personally been against doing the 'limited events' - events that are limited to a certain number of people - I prefered hosting the events that anyone could join at any time but the success of the Mole means there is room for both. Would be better to give outsiders a reason to get involved too though.

- Skype
Other camp used Skype to chat tactics giving them a distinct advantage and allowing others - hi zebbadi - to see our tactics and feedback to the other team with no knowledge that its been received.

- Dingo Dollars
Could've had a seperate forum that you forced 2 people into to do small challenges just like the real show. It's a good way to isolate people and get a different perspective than it would when they're all together in one.

Things I liked

- The beginning.
Unlike Kardan, I thought it was a good system and the flaw that he points out was fixed straight away when you realised that Kardan had access to the task early.

- Battleships.
I really enjoyed this task as well. It lasted a long time, sure it was luck-based but being luck-based isn't necessarily an inferior thing imo. It was fun and a task that meant the teams had to work together. As I mentioned teamwork earlier, I think it's only fair that I point out Calum helped out with this task.

- Secret tasks
Sure they were all crowded together but they were good. Liva's random argument, Martin talking bout random topics just to get the answers to his questions, Ross' forgiveness thread and kyle being wtf

- Team plasto
We were the best team woooo.

- Doing the event
I agree with Kardan completely here. It is great that this event was put on after a long time of inactivity in this area. It is good that Phil took that risk and I hope to see many more in the future.

Congratulations Liva, a well deserved victory

[Matthew]

I agree - it would be very handy to have feedback from someone that didn't take part and did watch quite often - @cupcake; (Don't know anyone else that regularly paid attention other than habbic)

Yeah I'd love to offer an opinion but I really didn't take any notice of the event, probably because of the reasons mentioned in the first post @scottish;

Apart from the creation of that forum, what else really was there to advertise the event to the 'audience'? With the exception of voting it almost turned into a competition for the select 'lucky' few who were accepted in rather than (what IMO would have been better) a forum wide event, at least where everyone can take part in something.

Anyway I don't want to criticize or anything as I know the planning and stuff has been going on for some time, although maybe it needed more planning still! I'm sure Phil will take the positives from the experience and next time will be great .

[scottish]

Ok I'll reply to each bit and put my thoughts on it

Right, let’s start at the very beginning. The competition started by putting Mike into PP and Cassie into LL, and the idea was all the other contestants wouldn’t know they were in the competition until they were picked or rejected. Cool idea on paper, but a slight flaw when it actually played out.

Cassie managed to get the first task correct first and picked Aqua, so I would join Mike’s team when he finished Task 1. Cassie and Aqua went straight onto task 2, meanwhile, whilst I knew I was going into the jungle later, I could see LL’s Task 2 and solved it. A few minutes later, Mike solved Task 1, I got put in, we got the same Task 2 and I just pasted my answer within seconds.

We then solved tasks 3, 4 and 5 before Cassie and Aqua got task 2 done, and I imagine Bolt could have done what I did, and told them the answers to tasks 3, 4 and 5 that we had posted.

So if this is done again in the future, either just tell the people who are in the jungle (personally I don’t think the twist of not knowing who was in till launch night added anything to the experience), or give each camp a different task (So a different Sudoku, a different anagram) – this is pretty much a big theme throughout the feedback post really.

I didn't really follow it at the start as I had absolutely no idea that it was even up, was I just completely blind or was there a lack of advertisement on the event? The first I had heard of it was when @buttons; told me she got in the jungle and I was like what.. So towards start I didn't really follow anything that was going on but I'd have to agree, if they knew beforehand who was going into the jungle then either isolate them from the forums (even if it means changing their own user perms so they can't see the forum then change back once they've been picked) so they can't see the other groups users and find the answers to the competitions that have already been answered. So it's basically putting the faster / more active / smarter / etc users at a disadvantage because they can complete it quicker than the others.

Or at worst, as you said djuts put them all the group so there isn't a build up to them being entered, but it wasn't that great anyway as I imagine not many people were sitting with anticipation waiting to see who had been put in and who hadn't? Maybe they have as I said I missed the start of it so.

So eventually we were put into two different camps, I can’t comment much on what happened with LL, I did get a brief time to view their private forum after I got evicted though, so I’ll try.
Our team voted and gave buttons an exemption, and the other team voted and kicked Emily out, seems strange to kick someone out so early when they’ve not really had the chance to do much, but meh, not the end of the world. Made things interesting.

Again I agree, there should have been a few days before anyone had been getting any exemptions or getting kicked out, what's the point getting put in if you're basically out the next day. I also believe exemptions should have been a rare thing rather than one person getting one a day, but then I suppose you wanting each group to vote for something so gave them that.

Task 2 I think was the battleships. The first of the RNG tasks. Personally I’m not a fan of RNG tasks, especially when it results in one team being up for eviction, but in the end I didn’t get evicted from it, so not the end of the world for me. There was the case of LL somehow getting 4 more turns than PP, and whilst it may have not made much of a difference, it still sucks when another team is getting a significant advantage, once again, I feel this will be mentioned quite a bit later on.
Also worth noting, that buttons had the exemption from Day 1, so how lucky it was that we lost the task the next day so buttons’ exemption would actually have a purpose. I wonder what would have happened if PP had won Day 2’s task.

RNG tasks are fine if they're a one-off so maybe like 1 or 2 in the entire event (1 or 2 if there was multiple events a day, not the way it turned out), I doubt they've planned enough to know what would have happened if your team has won the second day, so the exemption would have probably been useless.

Task 3 was I think was one of the few days to have more than one task. One was a simple drawing task which decided eviction. Plain and simple task really. The 2nd one was the anagram one. And basically, what a screwed up task that was.

PP managed to solve one of the anagrams, and a few hours later LL manage to pull the answer out of thin air. Clear and obvious cheating, and we lost some of the prize fund due to that. Good job that the other team (well, really both teams) were punished for that. They were also asked to provide a chat log as evidence, and nobody could. The other anagram was even more of a disaster really, there was an error. PP for hours thought there was an hour, and asked (and tagged) all the hosts multiple times to get an answer, but we got ignored. However, Phil decided to tell Bolt over Skype that there was an error and where the error was, and they managed to figure it out! Now, in the end it didn’t matter as they acknowledged the error and we got the prize, but it is a serious issue.

Not only does the task have an error that makes the task impossible (Also happened in the word grid for Day 1, and the logic puzzle White/Red Wine puzzle), but Phil actually gave information out to Bolt, and Bolt only – and they used this to their advantage. At the start of the competition we were asked to not have any outside contact, so whilst PP is busy posting on the forum, LL is busy only having outside contact (on skype) and not only with each other, but to the people hosting the competition in the first place. It’s pretty obvious that the hosts should remain impartial and not favour any contestants. Now, as I said, PP didn’t lose out because of that, thank god, but we all now knew that Bolt was getting information we weren’t, which is probably why PP felt a bit sour about the whole deal. (This also gets mentioned again later).

At very least, the SMOD's should have been attempting each task to make sure it's actually correct and do-able before putting it to the public/jungle. I posted the answer to the first one in spam and as you said *~*mysteriously*~* Cassie knew the answer without any working out in the Skype convertsation. While you were in the jungle I made a post in feedback asking for the Skype conversation, Skandair posted but then within about 10 minutes removed it again when I asked how she suddenly knew the first answer with no working out. There was a few lines of them actually attempting to get the second one and as you said, bolt660 pasted in a chat log from Phil over skype saying that there was an error and lawrawrrrr was indeed in it (iirc).

Something like this should have been instantly posted in the appropriate threads rather than something relayed over Skype as it's completely unfair on the other team who are asking (constantly) if it's an error and getting no reply.

[quote]Here is probably the time to mention a few things: Cassie and her vote begging. A shame to see that happen really, but she got an appropriate punishment for it. I’m very glad that the hosts didn’t less this slip by. Would still love to know who the other two people that asked @Empired; to vote for them though./quote]

I'd like to see the voting statistics (for every vote) but also specifically for that period where Cassie was begging for votes via skype and asking HxL DJ's to beg in the staff forums to see how much it actually impacted her voting and see if the punishment was actually fair (say she had 30 and next person has 5, hardly fair with a 50% reduction ). I highly doubt anyone else did as no-one from the other group speaks to Empired so it's most likely just Empired trying to stick up for Cassie so she doesn't look as pathetic.

Skandair’s clone account – as far as I’m aware, nothing was done on the matter at all – would be very interesting to see if @ghcgh; ever voted for anyone during the evictions. What happened with this then? I’m pretty sure the whole forum suspected it was Skandair (he didn’t do much to exactly deny it either), but as far as I’m aware, nothing was said by the people organising the competition?

Another reason we'd like to see who voted who on polls to see if this was infact Skandairs clone or Bolts, as both were in our 'suspect' list but then we limited it to Skandair due to bolt660 not knowing what a proxy is let alone use one, but when we did ask on Habbo he just laughed and tried to pass it off, so most likely was. I spoke with MattG about it and he said SMOD's were told about it, so I wonder if the vote was taken off in the voting thread, or if it was just used to view the other forums?

Luckily these two aspects didn’t impact much on the competition as a whole since they were both out pretty early on, but it really took the shine off the competition for me, and probably the rest of PP. We were playing by the rules, having a good time whilst LL were pulling answers out of thin air, only talking on skype, having clone accounts and begging for votes. At the time, I thought to myself, ‘At least it will get better when the camps merge’.

I'm not sure, as it would have impacted a bit if the people Cassie begged to vote kept voting (obviously not enough to keep her in but yeah, she should probably have been out before then)

The camps merge, and you might as well have renamed ‘Base Camp’ to ‘Plasto Plateau ft. guests’ because the others talked so very little (Maybe they were still talking on skype?).

I'd hope not, they were warned not to use it. The only time they seemed to post was when everyone else was out, even then it was limited to like once a day other than tasks..

Day 4 Task, The dice poker. This was complete and utter 100% RNG. At least in Battleships you could eliminate certain areas and not rely wholly on luck, but this was pure and random chance, and rather predictably we lost everything (pretty sure there’s a mathematical theorem that states if you stay in a casino forever, you will eventually lose all your money if you keep playing). Now, my personal thoughts are that the previous prize fund shouldn’t have been touched – instead we should have had a specific pot awarded for just that task. But that wasn’t the case, and it made all the previous tasks pointless. This also meant that the future tasks had to have ridiculous high rewards compared to the early tasks, to try and make up for the loss.

Again, I agree with you that having too many RNG tasks is just silly in something like this. As well as the method that was used (using prize already in the pot rather than having a pot). I believe it should have worked something a long the lines of you have 50 of everything in the pot, leave it or bet it. Bet it you win 2x, whatevers left end of day you have it in your prize pot including what you had before. So you can bet but you're not losing rewards you have already achieved.

Day 5 Task, this was the last one I did, and it was a good task (essentially a repeat of a task I’ve done before in the Mole) – but once again, the puzzle was impossible to solve because of an error, despite apparently it being double checked with various people. Now, it was annoying when one of the first tasks had an error (especially when we were in a race with the other team), but with the amount of errors over the whole competition, it just sucked – and really, I guess it all comes down to preparation. Apparently Phil was creating all these tasks the night before they were posted (which I guess means a higher chance of errors if they were being rushed), but I don’t understand why that was the case. These tasks should have been created before the competition even started, or at least in the week between the competition being announced and it getting under way.

Again with the comment I made before, at least the SMOD's should be testing (maybe a few more people from before the event started that you could trust to do it), but then again that would require preparation where as this all seemed last minute rush rather than carefully thought through. I don't see why it had to be rushed either, @e5; posted saying the plan originated in January, so you've had 3 months to come up with ideas for tasks and plan it out, and instead you're rushing the tasks the night before the day you have to post it. This is why the 'jungle' was dead essentially, there was nothing to do and when there was it was wrong.

I guess the rushing of tasks also meant that they only managed (most of the time) to have a task a day, and this wasn’t a good thing either I don’t think. Look at the Day 6 task for example, Kyle solved it within 3 minutes of being posted, so for the rest of the 24 hours, all the other camp mates had absolutely nothing to do. And that’s really what contributes to people not being interested in the competition, and the lack of posting from contestants from then on really. There was nothing to do.

Yup, short of talking the tasks were the main thing in the jungle, having 1 a day just made the environment of the jungle dead. When there was tasks there was a lot of discussion and it was going fine (except with errors, and of course the Lodge Lake group who kept everything to Skype).

Then of course, the competition is a popularity contest, but I’m not going to say anything negative about that. Everyone knew it would be a popularity contest, and I’m not sure how the competition would work without a ‘Vote to save’ or ‘Vote to evict’ – but because it was a popularity contest, it meant that the most popular people would be kept in and not the most interesting/active people. So considering Inseriousity, myself, Kyle and buttons were probably the most avid posters in the competition, activity certainly dropped a lot when we got evicted in that order. Now, as I said, there’s not much that can be done – but it certainly meant reduced activity as a whole, and maybe something could have been done to try and counter act this somewhat. You did try secret tasks, but people simply weren’t online to do it (except Liva) – and whilst Liva had 12 hours to carry her task out, Bolt ended up doing his over a few days? The secret tasks were a good idea, just needed some improvement.

Yeah when I seen it, the tasks were given out then people were like well how long do I have? I think it was Liva? then she was given 12 hours, no-one else asked how long they had so had no time limit imposed on them, and as you said Bolt spent a few days going over it which is unfair as Liva only has 12 hours (which she managed easily enough). It also meant that people would have been voted out before he could find the answer. Like one of the questions was about Kyle but he had been voted out the day after so obviously he couldn't find out the question regarding him.

Another thing I wish to add was the timing of things. When we were in the jungle we pretty much had no information. We had no information when the new task would be, no information when voting would start, all we ever got told was when voting would end, so that was the only time we could actively decide to all be on the forum at that time. I felt it would have been better if certain times would have been set, so everyone knew the polls would open and close at the same time, and that tasks would start and finish at the same time.

Again I agree, there should have been a rough plan of stuff so for example 12PM Midday - Task 1, 6PM - Task 2, 12AM Midnight - Tasks close vote opens, 11AM - Votes close, 12PM Midday vote announced and next task.

Although as it was only phil 'winging' half of it obviously didn't expect it to be planned and as he was working around his work schedule there was no specific time for anything. I also think 24 hour for a task was way too much.

Of course, this really depends on the availability of those running the competition. From what I understand, Phil was busy with work (or at least that’s what he told Bolt to tell the rest of the group). Now, clearly you can’t do much if you are busy in real life, but why would you hold a forum competition if you are really busy? I think the forum SMODs had access to Ant and Dec, but I feel maybe they should have had access to KK as well, so things could move slightly faster.
The last few tasks aren’t much to talk about (Except that the ‘Men in Black’ theme is apparently from a TV programme?), and there wasn’t even a task on the last day (I was expecting a task per person like in the TV show), so I guess I should talk about things generally now.

I have a habbit of agreeing with you, but again I agree the SMODs should have had access to KK and been given the list of tasks (which didn't exist as it was unorganised) so they could work to the schedule and not have everyone wondering whats happening now..

Audience participation was promised but nothing happened. It was even re-promised when it was brought up that nothing happened, but still nothing happened. Would it have improved audience interest? For sure. Would it have improved it enough? Who knows? But from what I gather, there was very little interest in what was going on in the contest – there was also supposed to be a jungle discussion forum, but that never happened, so any discussion took place in spam and wasn’t really organised. I’ve spoken to a few of the forum members about how they felt about the competition, and the general consensus I got was that they didn’t know much about it – didn’t know what was going on, how to vote etc.

I think for the first few days we spoke a little in spam regarding Cassie's cheating etc then after that there was very little talk about it in spam as it seemed no-one was interested as we had no impact on it or anything to do really, sure we could read it but for what we're just watching people guessing a task then get nothing out of it essentially. If specific people weren't in it I would have instantly added the forum to my ignore list.

and I agree again, at the start I never even heard about the competition let alone any information regarding it after it was released.

And I guess I can understand this – as a contestant, I hadn’t got a clue what was going on either. We got barely any information relayed down to us, and clearly the audience didn’t either. If you wanted to vote (or at least know that voting was open), you would have to be online at the time the thread was posted, otherwise it would fall behind all the threads with new posts. No reminders were posted in the voting threads to bump it up the ‘new posts’ or ‘activity stream’ results, but there were no general forum reminders that I expected people would get either. Also, looking at the ‘Jungle Announcements’ forum now – Day 6’s vote is locked and stickied, whilst the final voting thread isn’t really noticeably visible from the rest of the threads.

The forum was also poorly organised, the voting poll for old posts should have been archived or unstickied, but instead we had out of date ones as the sticky and the latest ones down the bottom behind other announcements and votes.

Now, just to reiterate my main point from all of this really, preparation. I don’t know if @Wispur; had anything to do with this event before he left the FM position, or if it was all down to @Phil; and him wanting to do something interesting in his first few months as FM (I’ll mention this later as well) – but I feel like more time should have been spent on this before hand. I say more time should have been spent, but I’m not sure what work was even done on this before the competition started. Even just a week of planning tasks, making sure they all worked, and were ready in a forum to be copy and pasted as a task would have improved the quality of the event.

I agree it was a good idea and something nice to do for a change, but you also shouldn't be expected to be able to wing it and just go with the flow, it should have been carefully planned and executed accordingly, it should also have involved more people on the management behalf rather than just Phil if he's busy with work.

A few other things that are cropping up in the last day or so: Turns out Dec voted in a poll, but it didn’t change the result – clearly that means that at the time of the polls closing, it wasn’t checked who voted for who (so to check for clone accounts etc) – this should be done before the eviction starts, because if we did have a case where someone shouldn’t have been evicted, and the game has progressed significantly when that gets found out (Imagine Inseriousity being told he shouldn’t have been evicted, but only being told in the final day for example), then that would make the competition void pretty much. I assumed that this would have already have been checked.

I think so much has been screwed up with regards to polls, we really need to have the voting results posted so everyone can see. None of the people behind the event should be voting for anyone on their own account, let alone 'accidently' voting on an official account used for the organisation of the event. The management team should have been checking who was being voted and if anything abnormal occurred (such as @ghcgh; voting or any other seemingly obvious 'clone'). So much has gone wrong I was expecting them to say ms.aqua actually won it and they accidently announced wrong...

Planning and prep – Make sure the event is a good quality before it even gets mentioned on the forum. People involved should know what is happened and when rather than making it up as it goes along. Error checking is essential.

It should have been advertised within the hotel (HxHD, events, etc), it should have been advertised on Habbox.com (banned, page about it, etc), it should have been advertised on the forum (community announcements, a notification at the top, etc). Not sure if it was any of those but I certainly didn't see any, so if it was there wasn't enough.

There should have been more people involved in the preparation to come up with unique tasks, to test the tasks and to follow a schedule for tasks/voting.

Audience interest – Make the forum want to know what’s going on. Perhaps enter people that vote into a prize draw for VIP? Perhaps get people to vote for which twist they want to happen in the competition. Maybe even a competition in the comps department: ‘Design Day 7’s Task’ or something.

There should have been a public area in the jungle forum for everyone to discuss, there should have been daily bulletins on what's happened in the jungle that day, there should have been competitions or other ways for the audience to get involved rather than just having a vote each day. Not so sure on coming up with tasks as then that could lead to cheating, but yeah. Even involving other departments in the jungle events (so for example a habbo maze/quiz they have to complete to get the answer or part of the answer).

Fair play – None of the contestants should have contact with anyone organising the competition, let alone giving information out. It annoys other people and doesn’t look good. Also ensuring similar punishments for similar offences.
And now, I want to end on a positive note, because I’m not completely mean.

Again I agree, it's completely unfair on the other team if one team is received information the other team isn't, I'd go as far as saying that's cheating and should have been punished for it, but yeah. They shouldn't have contact with anyone really outside of the competition regarding the competition (even with your own team).

[Kardan]

Unlike Kardan, I thought it was a good system and the flaw that he points out was fixed straight away when you realised that Kardan had access to the task early.

Ahh, was this flaw fixed? Makes sense, I did wonder why bolt didn't just copy our answers (since he wasn't in the jungle when we finished all the tasks) and they didn't do the last tasks within minutes of each other. Good job for fixing this.

[scottish]

Also, with regards to the 'secret visitor' or whatever, how did that come about?

It just seemed to be completely random then he just randomly got stuck in?

Should have been more audience participation on that behalf as well, maybe the winner of some public task got put in rather than just random, and they had to do something for you to win the chance to be put in, rather than just randomly planting you in.

[Inseriousity.]

Yeah that was sorted. As soon as we'd completed the task, he must've known what had happened - I didn't have a clue I was like "WTF" LOL - and then he removed perms before posting the next one (that's why task 3 took a while to get posted if you recall).

[scottish]

Also another thing under the preparation, the groups and forums.

Soon as the groups got merged to the Base Camp forum, the forum wasn't set up and @Phil; had to rush and mess about to get the perms working so public people couldn't post but jungler's could. This should have been set up wellllll in advance and just hidden the forum from everyone until the right time. As it was a massive screw up at the time allowing any of us to post in it, then you removed it, re-added it then the jungler's couldn't post in other peoples or view other peoples. Then you eventually fixed it.

[Kardan]

Oh, I agree about the battleships task. The task itself was good, there was some RNG involved, but it wasn't wholly RNG - you were able to organise tactics etc. The only thing that I could criticise about that task was one team got more moves than the other. My RNG annoyance was more with the dice task (but again that wouldn't have been so bad if we were allowed to bet a prize pot for that task, rather than the whole prize fund so far).

- - - Updated - - -

Yeah that was sorted. As soon as we'd completed the task, he must've known what had happened - I didn't have a clue I was like "WTF" LOL - and then he removed perms before posting the next one (that's why task 3 took a while to get posted if you recall).

Nah, I was too busy stressing about the test (that I did fail )

[Phil]

Going to answer this bit by bit, it's gonna take a while so if I've posted and not mentioned your post it's either because it's been posted since I started writing a reply or there's nothing to reply to it.

Right, let’s start at the very beginning. The competition started by putting Mike into PP and Cassie into LL, and the idea was all the other contestants wouldn’t know they were in the competition until they were picked or rejected. Cool idea on paper, but a slight flaw when it actually played out.

Cassie managed to get the first task correct first and picked Aqua, so I would join Mike’s team when he finished Task 1. Cassie and Aqua went straight onto task 2, meanwhile, whilst I knew I was going into the jungle later, I could see LL’s Task 2 and solved it. A few minutes later, Mike solved Task 1, I got put in, we got the same Task 2 and I just pasted my answer within seconds.

We then solved tasks 3, 4 and 5 before Cassie and Aqua got task 2 done, and I imagine Bolt could have done what I did, and told them the answers to tasks 3, 4 and 5 that we had posted.

I thought the entry of everyone was quite good if I say so myself. I know there was the flaw with @Kardan; knowing all of the answers already and I just completely over looked it and it was solved straight away. I don't think it made a difference to the end result since PP finished hours before LL.

So if this is done again in the future, either just tell the people who are in the jungle (personally I don’t think the twist of not knowing who was in till launch night added anything to the experience), or give each camp a different task (So a different Sudoku, a different anagram) – this is pretty much a big theme throughout the feedback post really.

I wasn't doing this for the twist as such but more so the contestants wouldn't be leaked ahead of the competition starting which is something that happened in Big Brother.

Task 2 I think was the battleships. The first of the RNG tasks. Personally I’m not a fan of RNG tasks, especially when it results in one team being up for eviction, but in the end I didn’t get evicted from it, so not the end of the world for me. There was the case of LL somehow getting 4 more turns than PP, and whilst it may have not made much of a difference, it still sucks when another team is getting a significant advantage, once again, I feel this will be mentioned quite a bit later on. Also worth noting, that buttons had the exemption from Day 1, so how lucky it was that we lost the task the next day so buttons’ exemption would actually have a purpose. I wonder what would have happened if PP had won Day 2’s task.

Battleships isn't really a RNG though. Sure the first few moves of each team will be random guesses but there's also skill to it which you showed with the Graphics you posted in the task? Looking back I agree I should have done PP, LL, PP, LL etc. but I didn't think of that at the time because I thought it'd be unfair to keep one team waiting. Pretty much the whole task ended up being PP, LL, PP, LL etc. but the reason for those having the four extra moves was you guys were talking tactics and worrying about taking in turns (which wasn't a criteria for the task) while LL were just posting guess after guess.

Task 3 was I think was one of the few days to have more than one task. One was a simple drawing task which decided eviction. Plain and simple task really. The 2nd one was the anagram one. And basically, what a screwed up task that was.

PP managed to solve one of the anagrams, and a few hours later LL manage to pull the answer out of thin air. Clear and obvious cheating, and we lost some of the prize fund due to that. Good job that the other team (well, really both teams) were punished for that. They were also asked to provide a chat log as evidence, and nobody could. The other anagram was even more of a disaster really, there was an error. PP for hours thought there was an hour, and asked (and tagged) all the hosts multiple times to get an answer, but we got ignored. However, Phil decided to tell Bolt over Skype that there was an error and where the error was, and they managed to figure it out! Now, in the end it didn’t matter as they acknowledged the error and we got the prize, but it is a serious issue.

Not only does the task have an error that makes the task impossible (Also happened in the word grid for Day 1, and the logic puzzle White/Red Wine puzzle), but Phil actually gave information out to Bolt, and Bolt only – and they used this to their advantage. At the start of the competition we were asked to not have any outside contact, so whilst PP is busy posting on the forum, LL is busy only having outside contact (on skype) and not only with each other, but to the people hosting the competition in the first place. It’s pretty obvious that the hosts should remain impartial and not favour any contestants. Now, as I said, PP didn’t lose out because of that, thank god, but we all now knew that Bolt was getting information we weren’t, which is probably why PP felt a bit sour about the whole deal. (This also gets mentioned again later).

Drawing task "plain and simple", does that mean it was a good task or what?
I know the anagram task was a bit of a disaster and I know that is could have been resolved by writing all the tasks in advance but that'll be addressed later. The morning I was heading out to a funeral and then to work that evening so it was very rushed. This answers your query regarding the other hosts not knowing. When I came home from work, Martin messaged me and told me there was an error in the task. Straight away I told him that it is indeed and error and "lawrawrrr" is a word in the anagram but I do not accept you telling me that only LL were told because the second I got that information from Martin I came online and I posted in that task thread.

Here is probably the time to mention a few things: Cassie and her vote begging. A shame to see that happen really, but she got an appropriate punishment for it. I’m very glad that the hosts didn’t less this slip by. Would still love to know who the other two people that asked @Empired; to vote for them though.

Very disappointed by this. It was really fowl behaviour and I really was not happy at all especially with the thread that was posted in the HxL Forums which I have recently discovered was actually moved out of the staff's view anyway.

Skandair’s clone account – as far as I’m aware, nothing was done on the matter at all – would be very interesting to see if @ghcgh; ever voted for anyone during the evictions. What happened with this then? I’m pretty sure the whole forum suspected it was Skandair (he didn’t do much to exactly deny it either), but as far as I’m aware, nothing was said by the people organising the competition?

Wen this came to late, I investigated this as much as I possibly could. As it is rumoured that he used the account in school there were no IP matches. I couldn't ban the account because I hadn't any proof aside from some suspicions. Once he was evicted from the competition I've kind of pushed it to the side but now that it's over, it's on my to do list and I will look into it some more shortly.

Day 4 Task, The dice poker. This was complete and utter 100% RNG. At least in Battleships you could eliminate certain areas and not rely wholly on luck, but this was pure and random chance, and rather predictably we lost everything (pretty sure there’s a mathematical theorem that states if you stay in a casino forever, you will eventually lose all your money if you keep playing). Now, my personal thoughts are that the previous prize fund shouldn’t have been touched – instead we should have had a specific pot awarded for just that task. But that wasn’t the case, and it made all the previous tasks pointless. This also meant that the future tasks had to have ridiculous high rewards compared to the early tasks, to try and
make up for the loss.

I agree that this was an RNG but it also required some team work in terms of talking about the bets, what you think you should do. I know you didn't want to bet it and stuff but did you mention that in the thread? Maybe you did and I just can't remember.

Day 5 Task, this was the last one I did, and it was a good task (essentially a repeat of a task I’ve done before in the Mole) – but once again, the puzzle was impossible to solve because of an error, despite apparently it being double checked with various people. Now, it was annoying when one of the first tasks had an error (especially when we were in a race with the other team), but with the amount of errors over the whole competition, it just sucked – and really, I guess it all comes down to preparation. Apparently Phil was creating all these tasks the night before they were posted (which I guess means a higher chance of errors if they were being rushed), but I don’t understand why that was the case. These tasks should have been created before the competition even started, or at least in the week between the competition being announced and it getting under way.

Again, this was down to failing to prepare properly which will be mentioned later on.

I guess the rushing of tasks also meant that they only managed (most of the time) to have a task a day, and this wasn’t a good thing either I don’t think. Look at the Day 6 task for example, Kyle solved it within 3 minutes of being posted, so for the rest of the 24 hours, all the other camp mates had absolutely nothing to do. And that’s really what contributes to people not being interested in the competition, and the lack of posting from contestants from then on really. There was nothing to do.

Yeah this was really unfortunate and again, down to the planning. I was working the next day so I didn't even have the chance to think about tasks and post them. The team mates not talking isn't really down to me though. In HxBB there were four tasks throughout the whole competition but the forums were always active.

[QUOTE=scottish;8140202]Then of course, the competition is a popularity contest, but I’m not going to say anything negative about that. Everyone knew it would be a popularity contest, and I’m not sure how the competition would work without a ‘Vote to save’ or ‘Vote to evict’ – but because it was a popularity contest, it meant that the most popular people would be kept in and not the most interesting/active people. So considering Inseriousity, myself, Kyle and buttons were probably the most avid posters in the competition, activity certainly dropped a lot when we got evicted in that order. Now, as I said, there’s not much that can be done – but it certainly meant reduced activity as a whole, and maybe something could have been done to try and counter act this somewhat. You did try secret tasks, but people simply weren’t online to do it (except Liva) – and whilst Liva had 12 hours to carry her task out, Bolt ended up doing his over a few days? The secret tasks were a good idea, just needed some improvement.[QUOTE]
It was a popularity contest but there's nothing any of us can do to stop that. I prefer put something on and have it as a popularity contest rather than have nothing at all. I did try secret tasks and they were done? The only person who wasn't online to do their task was Kyle, the other three completed the successfully. Yeah I agree they needed some improvement (and tbh I think I should have started them earlier). In one of the announcements I said if anyone has ideas for Secret Tasks to PM Forum God and you'll get some rep but I didn't receive any suggestions so didn't do any more Secret Tasks.

Another thing I wish to add was the timing of things. When we were in the jungle we pretty much had no information. We had no information when the new task would be, no information when voting would start, all we ever got told was when voting would end, so that was the only time we could actively decide to all be on the forum at that time. I felt it would have been better if certain times would have been set, so everyone knew the polls would open and close at the same time, and that tasks would start and finish at the same time.

Yeah, again, down to preperation and as you mentioned below, availability. Have no other reason for this, sorry about that!

Of course, this really depends on the availability of those running the competition. From what I understand, Phil was busy with work (or at least that’s what he told Bolt to tell the rest of the group). Now, clearly you can’t do much if you are busy in real life, but why would you hold a forum competition if you are really busy? I think the forum SMODs had access to Ant and Dec, but I feel maybe they should have had access to KK as well, so things could move slightly faster.
The last few tasks aren’t much to talk about (Except that the ‘Men in Black’ theme is apparently from a TV programme?), and there wasn’t even a task on the last day (I was expecting a task per person like in the TV show), so I guess I should talk about things generally now.

I hold a competition because I'm the Forum Manager and I want my management reign to be more Community based that it has been since whenever. Elliot had access to Ant and Nick had access to Dec. They would have had access to Kiosk Keith but there was simply no reason for this because the team didn't pull together and come up with tasks so the SMOD's didn't know any tasks so I had to make them up last minute every time.

Audience participation was promised but nothing happened. It was even re-promised when it was brought up that nothing happened, but still nothing happened. Would it have improved audience interest? For sure. Would it have improved it enough? Who knows? But from what I gather, there was very little interest in what was going on in the contest – there was also supposed to be a jungle discussion forum, but that never happened, so any discussion took place in spam and wasn’t really organised. I’ve spoken to a few of the forum members about how they felt about the competition, and the general consensus I got was that they didn’t know much about it – didn’t know what was going on, how to vote etc.

This is my biggest regret for the competition. When it came to audience participation, I literally had no ideas. You mention somewhere that I should have said that one voter gets VIP and I'm actually kicking myself for not thinking of such an obvious participation incentive. In terms of the forum this was pretty much down to me not being able to figure it out perms wise. You all know, even at this point I'm only getting used to the role and the admin cp is a complicated place Due to work and stuff, I was never online at the same time as Chris or Matt so I couldn't ask them (the only times I was on at the same time as Matt is when he was working but I wasn't going to bother him with something like this.) and by the time I actually had time to sit down and do it, it was too late.

And I guess I can understand this – as a contestant, I hadn’t got a clue what was going on either. We got barely any information relayed down to us, and clearly the audience didn’t either. If you wanted to vote (or at least know that voting was open), you would have to be online at the time the thread was posted, otherwise it would fall behind all the threads with new posts. No reminders were posted in the voting threads to bump it up the ‘new posts’ or ‘activity stream’ results, but there were no general forum reminders that I expected people would get either. Also, looking at the ‘Jungle Announcements’ forum now – Day 6’s vote is locked and stickied, whilst the final voting thread isn’t really noticeably visible from the rest of the threads.

My main reason for not bumping the threads is because the thread would always be displayed as the most recent post in "Jungle Announcements" on the right hand side of the Forum Index. I didn't want to clog up New Posts with bumps because a lot of the members on the forum just didn't want to see anything to do with The Jungle and I tried to minimise it as much as possible.

Now, just to reiterate my main point from all of this really, preparation. I don’t know if @Wispur; had anything to do with this event before he left the FM position, or if it was all down to @Phil; and him wanting to do something interesting in his first few months as FM (I’ll mention this later as well) – but I feel like more time should have been spent on this before hand. I say more time should have been spent, but I’m not sure what work was even done on this before the competition started. Even just a week of planning tasks, making sure they all worked, and were ready in a forum to be copy and pasted as a task would have improved the quality of the event.

I just want to clarify that Chris didn't have anything to do with this competition and all flaws are 100% my responsibility. The only thing he did was request the graphics but that was before I became manager. I saw Elliott arguing with someoen in Spam about "months of work" being put into this. The time was spent on it in a sense. I posted my first thread back in late January and between then and me becoming manager I was trying to pull tasks out of the dept but it wasn't happening and I assumed it was because I wasn't manager and I wasn't being taken seriously.

The very first thing I did when I became FM was set a date for this so there would be a deadline but still no tasks were posted. I thought if I set a date, it would put everyone under pressure and it'd get done but I was wrong. I thought of all of those tasks except for three (thanks to Laura, James & Sian for thinking of one each). I agree that better preperation of the tasks would have greatly improved the execution of the event.

A few other things that are cropping up in the last day or so: Turns out Dec voted in a poll, but it didn’t change the result – clearly that means that at the time of the polls closing, it wasn’t checked who voted for who (so to check for clone accounts etc) – this should be done before the eviction starts, because if we did have a case where someone shouldn’t have been evicted, and the game has progressed significantly when that gets found out (Imagine Inseriousity being told he shouldn’t have been evicted, but only being told in the final day for example), then that would make the competition void pretty much. I assumed that this would have already have been checked.

This should have been done but I'm going to straight up admit that I though that if the poll was hidden, it was hidden and end of story. I knew I could see the results but didn't know I could see voters via the panel. The first day I knew I could even do this was the other day when I messed up the polls and I was checking it everyday (although there weren't many left) since. I was running IP checks on all contestants daily, just saying.

So generally, things to improve for next time:

omg does that mean I'm nearly done!??!?!

[QUOTE=scottish;8140202]Planning and prep – Make sure the event is a good quality before it even gets mentioned on the forum. People involved should know what is happened and when rather than making it up as it goes along. Error checking is essential.[QUOTE]

Check.

[QUOTE=scottish;8140202]Audience interest – Make the forum want to know what’s going on. Perhaps enter people that vote into a prize draw for VIP? Perhaps get people to vote for which twist they want to happen in the competition. Maybe even a competition in the comps department: ‘Design Day 7’s Task’ or something.[QUOTE]

Check.

I’m very glad this event went ahead – for quite some time the forum department have only done the same usual events (usually finding hidden images in threads) and it’s good to see something different. And thank god! Usually when a new manager comes in, nothing changes at all within that department, so it’s good to see something different. I’m glad you are taking a risk by doing something different Phil, and I know this event hasn’t gone exactly to plan – but don’t let it put you off. This is a good learning experience and I would be very interested to see an event like this again if improvements were made.

Despite how I feel about it now, I am glad I did it. It was really time to see something a bit different. I had an idea for April which is why I wanted to get The Jungle over with (but that won't be happening now as the achievement system is coming in. It was basically that but a smaller scale). I know people think I probably should have waited a few months to get settled and then do this but I was already planning it and I wanted to start off with a bang (okay it's more like a 'toot'). I said before I want to make the dept more community based and this was just Step 1.

Thanks Aiden, I really appreciate it.

I]- Team work[/I]
Where were all the moderators? It is sad that 99% of the event was placed on Phil's shoulders. If the moderators got involved more, there could've been a lot more done. Also general management (sam in particular but anyone could've pitched in I suppose) could've helped out a bit when it became apparent that Phil was struggling to maintain momentum alone.

Dunno! The SMOD's were a help with the Bush Telegraphs, I didn't do so much of those and @Calum0812; was really great help throughout the competition and I can't thank him enough. For example, the Battleships trial was basically a 4 hour Skype call of me shouting "PLASTO PLATEAU B6, LODGE LAGE A10" and him creating a new graphic each time

- Skype
Other camp used Skype to chat tactics giving them a distinct advantage and allowing others - hi zebbadi - to see our tactics and feedback to the other team with no knowledge that its been received.

Agree with everything said in this point and really disappointed with everyone involved ngl.

- Dingo Dollars
Could've had a seperate forum that you forced 2 people into to do small challenges just like the real show. It's a good way to isolate people and get a different perspective than it would when they're all together in one.

This was the original plan but it would have been difficult in terms of getting people online at the same time especially those in different timezones. I was event going to call them Crocodile Credits We also didn't have the tasks done and lets face it, I probably would have messed up the perms.

Things I liked

- The beginning.
Unlike Kardan, I thought it was a good system and the flaw that he points out was fixed straight away when you realised that Kardan had access to the task early.

- Battleships.
I really enjoyed this task as well. It lasted a long time, sure it was luck-based but being luck-based isn't necessarily an inferior thing imo. It was fun and a task that meant the teams had to work together. As I mentioned teamwork earlier, I think it's only fair that I point out Calum helped out with this task.

- Secret tasks
Sure they were all crowded together but they were good. Liva's random argument, Martin talking bout random topics just to get the answers to his questions, Ross' forgiveness thread and kyle being wtf

- Team plasto
We were the best team woooo.

- Doing the event
I agree with Kardan completely here. It is great that this event was put on after a long time of inactivity in this area. It is good that Phil took that risk and I hope to see many more in the future.

Congratulations Liva, a well deserved victory

Just gonna reply to all these at once because I'm getting tired of quoting individual bits lmao.

Yeah I really liked the beginning too and I wouldn't change that if I were to do it again.

Battleships was my favourite task, was a lot of fun!

PP were the best team ngl wd guys lol

Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for the feedback Michael!

I've covered up to post #12. If I do not mention a point it's because I've replied to it elsewhere.