Suggestion/Feedback Summary, July 2023

Every month, by request, I will be making a post summarizing that month's anonymous suggestions/feedback, and my response to them. Each submission will have also been shared with the other admins for their feedback as well (especially if the submission specifically pertains to their job), and their views are also expressed here in my summary, as indicated. Feedback from other admins is in their words...I just copy and paste it into the post. 

All suggestions/feedback was anonymous, into the Google Form pinned to the top of this Suggestions section of the forum. The only two questions on the form ask what the suggestion/feedback is, and what today's date is, in order to help sort out when something was submitted. No player information is exchanged.

Submission #1: Why is Blitz allowed to use the database to accept her private shows? Isn't doing it by hand part of the process of playing? Just because she's an admin doesn't mean she should get special treatment when it comes to playing the game! Plus, what about during contests? Is she doing it for the mascot contest? That definitely means not everyone is on equal footing. Yes, it's super annoying - I can't imagine doing it for that many accounts - but that's the price you pay for having so many accounts!

Statement of fact: I have used the database to accept shows for years...even a few years pre-Sam having us admins take over. Sam was fully aware that I and at least one other admin accepted shows this way, and never saw a problem with it. After The Great Hack of 2019, Sam and I were the only two to have database access, so obviously at that point I was/am the only one who now does it that way.

I can see why you, anonymous player, and possibly/probably others might not agree with it, so I have a suggestion on how to handle this going forward. Would love to hear feedback on it on that linked thread.

Submission #2: Cap on amount of clubs a player can run in

(response from Koni) "Hey there HP! I've considered this feedback a bit, and thought about different ways to address this. It comes down to this. Club presidents are to be voted and elected in, which is why there is a monthly ballot. If you aren't a fan of seeing the same player be the president in more than a few clubs, then try running in one or two! You could also see if someone you know wants to run in one or two, and offer them your votes if you're not interested in running for president. Players are welcome to sell/buy their votes exclusively as well - meaning that they are sold for that club to one, and only one, player. Example: Say BV was running in Mythical, Hound, and Toy club, and Blitz was also running in all 3 clubs. BV could ask Neke if she would be willing to sell her votes exclusively to BV for those 3 clubs. This would mean that Neke would not be able to vote for Blitz in those clubs once she has voted for BV. Capping the number of clubs a player can run in takes away the challenge for becoming a club president and in the past, we have had clubs where no one runs in them, and Sam (#1) ends up as the president instead of a player. We will, at this time, not be capping it and encourage all players to take a look at clubs and their perks. I will also, for the presidents in the month of September, be offering 10 permanent energy on 1 animal per club won. So say you run in Gaited, Pony, and Warmblood clubs, and win in Gaited and Pony, you could choose 2 animals to get 10 energy on!"

Submission #3: I wanted to take a second to thank the staff for their work on the game, and for doing their best to handle the wants and needs of the entire community, one that has so many types of players with different and sometimes opposing wants and needs. My suggestion is more for the player base than the staff: If there's something you would like to see changed, perhaps offer suggestions on how it can be changed. For example, complaining about how boring the prizes are isn't constructive. If I've heard it as a player this often, I'm sure the staff has heard it a million times more. Instead, what kind of prizes would you like to see? Offer suggestions! Get the brain juices flowing, and change comes about much quicker and easier. It's much more motivating to receive suggestions than just a wall of complaints, and the suggestions might go a long ways towards making the changes you want to see!

Thank you, anonymous player, for bringing this up! Yes, we do hear this complaint a lot (about prizes), but never what people actually want to see. Plus...as you pointed out, not every player wants the same types of prizes. Some players want cash because they don't have other ways of income, while others don't want cash because they don't see the worth of the amounts we are able to give out as prizes without drastically affecting the HP economy. During Christmas in July, some of the staff tried offering options for prizes (ie. cash or points, player's choice)...is that something people would like to see continue in the future? 

Submission #4: When you first login to hp and your on the news page, what's the point of the "Samantha Says...8/29/2019 2:53 PM" on the right? That was almost 4 years ago. Why is it still there?

That is...a very good question lmao. Honestly, I haven't really noticed it, and I guess that's why it hasn't been changed before now? Thanks to your feedback, though, anonymous player, I've not only changed it, but did a bit of an overhaul of that whole page! You can see in the Change Log specifically what has been updated, if you want more info and/or don't remember what was there before I changed things.

Submission #5: I've thought about this and you can edit if too long.  My issue with the Mascot Contest is the futility of it. The same folks, who all seem to be staff, team up it seems every year. The same people make all the pictures for them, but seem too busy to make pics outside of that. It almost seems that there are some in the know who have layouts and pics up THE SAME DAY or before. How does this happen before announcements? The same people seem to have an advantage. Also, voting seems wonky. The backstory winner was basically a Wiki. It was the bio of QE2, basically and it won. What? Why? A lot of the stories were original and a cliff note bio won? I basically knew from the drop the past years who would win. It's discouraging and almost clicky. I know it's most likely not supposed to be like that, but it is. It's no wonder people don't want to participate. You can't compete with a team that has over 100 or more accounts, so any ordinary player is out of the ticket category. As for unticketed, how some animals get triple the points of others is beyond me.

(response from Broken Vow) "For the Mascot Contest feedback.

We can't edit players responses. Google Sheets doesn't allow responses to be edited by the form creator, so whatever response that gets submitted is all authentic by whoever the person that typed out the feedback. 

I'm sorry that you see the futility - pointlessness or uselessness of the Mascot Contest. However, other players may have to disagree with you. Many look forward to this event all year, competitors, artists, and spectators alike! You as well as everyone are under no obligation to participate. 

Mascot has been around for the past 10 years now, so it's not a new feature to the game. Little reminders are posted long before sign-ups open to allow players even more time to start preparing for the upcoming contest. We aren't a huge game, sadly! So you're going to see a lot of the same familiar faces entering. The same goes for those offering graphic services. Which for those services and how they are managed is entirely up to the individual artist. Some even solely reserve their free time to prioritize making Mascot pictures before the picture deadline is due. They are human after all and can only do what they can do and for what time allows them to do.

How some manage to have a picture already up and whatnot, is no leg up or advantage. It is that they were planning a head of time. In the history of Mascot no one has been restricted from not planning ahead of time. Either that be for finding an artist months in advance, trying to get tickets reserved, or finding show spots, majority of the successes comes from having a plan in place! Mascot is a doozy and has a lot of moving parts, it's meant to be challenging and a way to up your HP playing game. Many even start the wheels turning for how they want to navigate things for the next year's event right after it's ended. 

With the voting seems wonky for the Backstories...That one is how the players who chose to vote voted for. Did they take the time to read each story before voting? I would sure hope so! I can't demand players to vote for x,y,z, that process is entirely up to them. I just offer the platform for them to make their decisions.

Am I an English Major or teacher? Hahaha no. I do not possess the talent or grace required for those fields of study and sacrifice. However, no one reported to me that there might of been an issue with one of the backstories. No one mentioned anything about that up until this response. I can't do anything unless things are brought up early on. I'm sorry!

Ending with the un-ticketed animals getting more points than others. Some contestants in that category participate in all of the bonus activities and during the run of the contest also enter in all of the EC & Site-Wide activities. Those are entirely optional and up to the individual if they want to participate in those or not. Contestants might also choose to daily hand train their animals instead of using the enter-all feature to find the un-flooded shows. Un-flooded shows provide the chance for an animal to randomly place better for more automated points based off on how they place. All shows place entrants at random and therefore staff have no influence or power over how well or poorly an animal does per show. The only guaranteed outcome for all the best points would be by outright buying whole private shows and entering one animal in them, but that would only work for someone who's in the ticket/shows category or in game play in general."

Submission #6: When I go to breed a backup of my horses, I add the mare to the stallion's list, and then when I go to breed my final the mare is still on the list so I just have to hit breed and then I'm done. But for dogs, when I go to do the final breeding, the female isn't listed anymore. Is there any way to make it so the female sticks around on the list? 

Second, for horses, the mare's breed on the stallion's list of mare's he can breed with is always the stallion's breed. It doesn't show the mare's actual breed. Could that be corrected? I don't want to accidentally crossbreed, because it showed me the wrong thing.

First part: Surprisingly, I figured this out pretty easily while trying to figure out the second part of your request LOL. I was always under the impression that this was a bug, but in fixing it I've realized that no, horses just didn't have the few lines of code that dogs do to make their requests delete. I've commented out that bit of code for dogs, so they should now stick around. Maybe, though, try to get into the practice of deleting the lingering requests for your horses and dogs after your last breeding? Otherwise they'll just sit in the database for forever. Unless you guys would rather it be the other way around and have all requests delete automatically after the breeding happens? I could (probably) make that happen instead if that's what people would prefer.

Second part: -fist pumps- I am on a ROLL! This one was also surprisingly easy in that both the horses and dogs files for the breeding stuff were both missing a b in the code. Literally one letter b. Both should now be fixed!

Submission #7: please put something on the create a show page that tells us how many of each type of shows we have left to make for that week!

Well, I just spent a good 2.5 hours trying to get this to work on the Create a Show page and ultimately failed. I did, however, get it to work on your home page in the Shows divider further down the page, under where it lists all of the shows you've created that have yet to run! It should now show you how many of each you can still create for the week, and does change to reflect when you buy extra shows from the cash shop! It's also only viewable if you're logged into that account, like the dates on tickets expiring. That's the best I can do, sorry!

-bump-

Just noting that I haven't gotten any new responses with the 2023 HP Community Events Anon Feedback form since that one response from June.

A lot of this is really awesome!

Where are the shows we have left to make supposed to show up? I don't see it on my home page.

Hah. I just went to look at my own homepage and was like "wtf, where is it?!". 

Pretty sure I never actually copied the code from my test file to the real home file. Oops. #fail

https://prnt.sc/96GcJ9seuvz0

Should be good to go now!

Nifty! 

I never even considered that you may be database accepting for mascot contest. That's interesting. I have thoughts on that idea you posted, but I will post it over on that when I can type it out better than I can at the moment. Short of time and I don't want it to come across as too rushed.

Thanks for the shows remaining to be made. What a nifty feature I never would have thought to ask for!