I'm a Habbo... Feedback

[scottish]

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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?

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’.

Nope.

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?).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This, combined with a lack of incentives for the audience to be involved, and increasingly less activity from the contestants meant that there was less and less interest from the audience.

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.

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.

So generally, things to improve for next time:

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.

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.

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.

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.

I would much rather see management take risks and for them not to work so well rather than be plain and boring all the time – and with enough practice these events could become really successful I reckon.

I know I’ve mentioned a lot of negative points, but I think pretty much all of them could be improved/solved with more preparation/time.

And now, a TL;DR for those that can’t be bothered to read:

• Different tasks for different camps – this stops answer sharing
• No pure RNG tasks
• If prizes can be lost via tasks, you shouldn’t be able to lose prizes already won. (Losing prizes as a punishment is fine)
• Fairness between camps/contestants from hosts
• No outside contact (and help/information) between hosts and contestants
• Check for task errors before hand
• All posts (Tasks, Announcements) should be written before hand so they can be directly copy and pasted
• Check polls for vote irregularities (clone accounts etc) before the result is announced. Delay the announcement of results if in depth investigation is needed.
• Audience participation is crucial
• Have a set time for the release of tasks/evictions/poll openings
• Forum announcements for the release of a new poll, regular bumping of voting threads
• Plan tasks in full (With the initial post ready to be copy and pasted) before the event
• More than 1 task per day (Or at least more interaction during the game between hosts and contestants)

Posting on behalf of @Kardan; as he can't make it and @Kyle; wants to reply with his thoughts rather than post it

[Kardan]

Cool, I got back just now, so thanks for my post

[scottish]

Oh I looked through Online List to see if you're online first, but no ;l come on a second after I post it

[Kardan]

No worries If people react badly I'll just say you really wrote it

[scottish]

Lmao I said at the bottom I was posting on behalf of you though, so all bad credit goes to @Kardan; as well as good

[Phil]

Just making it clear that I'm not ignoring this or anything. I'm just getting everyone out of that forum, getting their perms fixed up and then having dinner so will be about an hour before I get a chance to reply properly (maybe longer because the length of it )

I know most of it is probably negative and I already know what's gonna be in it but I appreciate it all the same guys.

[lemons]

i agree with everything you said

let's do habbox big brother

[Kardan]

Just making it clear that I'm not ignoring this or anything. I'm just getting everyone out of that forum, getting their perms fixed up and then having dinner so will be about an hour before I get a chance to reply properly (maybe longer because the length of it )

I know most of it is probably negative and I already know what's gonna be in it but I appreciate it all the same guys.

That was clear to me at least, I didn't expect a reply tonight to be fair

[lemons]

also reveal voting statistics

[Kyle]

@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.