I’m so excited and grateful! ;;A;;

Congrats to all the winners!

Congrats winners, I can’t wait to see all the new sprouts! ;w;

I am wondering, however, if there will ever be a raffle where some slots are saved specifically for people who have never gotten a sprout and/or custom before? I forget if we’ve done this before (sorry if we have and I’ve forgotten- I have a terrible memory) so my apologies if it’s a moot point. It’s just something I think I’d like to see more. Not sure if anyone else feels that way, but I figured there’s no harm in asking ^^

congratulations to all the winners, wowowowowww so exciting!! y’all smell that?? it’s the smell of love and flowers and SPRING in the air :D

also, i like Wren’s idea! i think it’d be extra sweet if there were a raffle especially for people who’ve never won a sprout/custom/have no custom pets, something like that. as a person who’s been around for a long time and has a couple customs myself (edit: including one i won!), i wouldn’t feel left out one bit! maybe include something else exciting, like glowing changeshrooms? for those who would? two top prizes! yass spread the wealth haha but ahh the idea of a whole bunch of newer users (or even older, there are those people out there too!) getting something they otherwise may not ever be able to get like a custom or sprout? that gives me the warm fuzzies haha

edit: also, i totally understand the mixed feelings about staff entering! i like the solution myla announced before the drawing, that if 2+ staff get drawn, they’ll draw another ticket. altho maybe an extra drawing for every staff who wins in the future? that may be a lot on artists though, especially for something so work intensive like a sprout! but might be a good solution?

Vely That’s an understandable sentiment and a perfectly reasonable question!

Many members of our staff are also exceptionally active players as well, and given how many members of staff we have, it’s not at all surprising to see them crop up regularly on raffle win lists: if you made a list of the 20 or so most active non-staff players you can think of on Mycena Cave, it wouldn’t be surprising to see at least one of them as a winner on most raffles as well.

We’ve actually given this a fair amount of consideration over the years and experimented both ways — we have in the past had staff be ineligible for ordinary raffles, but having separate raffles for staff-only. In practice, having separate raffles ends up earmarking a number of prizes for these staff raffles, and especially with prizes that have limited production (e.g. customs and sprouts) this results in fewer prizes being available in non-staff raffles. We’ve also found that it can make players unhappy when sprouts and customs suddenly spring up on staff profiles seemingly “out of nowhere”. Through experimentation and discussion with the community, we’ve found that having staff participating in regular raffles, but but being prepared to draw extra tickets if “too many” staff winners are present, leads to generally better feelings among our non-staff players. :)

Wren Fie95 We’re always open to experimentation so see what people enjoy the most! If we did have some “reserved slots” in a raffle, we’d probably try reserving them for people who have not won a “grand prize” in a raffle, to keep it more in-line with “spreading the luck around” and not to disadvantage people who have purchased customs / sprouts.

We actually record all winning tickets and ticket draw ordering precisely to make this sort of thing possible, but as of yet we haven’t tried experimenting with it yet :) If we do, rest assured that it would be announced very clearly in the raffle announcement — we want to make sure people know exactly how a raffle will be drawn before committing any nuggets to it.

I think reserved slots for sprouts next time would be a splendid idea ^^
I always love seeing winners that haven’t had owned a sprout before! That first experience is always so exhilarating.

Congratz to the winners this time around ✨

Fie95
I mean, there’s definitely older players who don’t own any customs or sprouts ^^ For example, I’ve been around since the start and don’t have any sprouts! I just think even having a couple slots reserved for people who haven’t had the chance to win and/or cannot financially purchase something 100% unique and made just for them would be a nice gesture. I’m glad you also see where I’m coming from, though! I know staff would come up with something fair and clever if they decided to implement such a feature!

Miranda
I’m glad you think it’s a nice idea too ^^ I feel similarly- I personally wouldn’t mind there being a few less slots for me out of the pool or anything. But I know not everyone feels the same way! I’m just trying to brainstorm too ;w;

glitch
Ohh that makes sense ^^ That’d be neat too. Like I said to Fie, even just a slot or two reserved specifically for users who haven’t gotten a chance to win such a big ticket item would be a nice gesture. I understand if people would rather that not be done, but I just saw no harm in throwing that out there or suggesting it! Thanks for the reply :3

I really liked the time there was a raffle where each player got one ticket and then a raffle that was uncapped and players could spend as much as they wanted afterward (the winner(s) of the first raffle being ineligible for the second). I’d love to see it again with maybe one or two changes, the largest change being that the uncapped raffle would come first and the one ticket per person come second. The reasoning being that if somebody who was planning to sink a bunch of nuggets into the uncapped raffle won the free/cheap raffle, it would prevent somebody who didn’t have nuggets to sink in the uncapped raffle from winning.
Another change being that there be a flat rate for tickets instead of the percentage increase tickets we’ve had lately. (I miss the old days)

Congrats winners!

Congrats to the winners :D
I love watching all the lil flowers bloom at once. I’m happy for the most part with the way the raffles are run now, though I’d also be interested to see any changes that make it a little easier for newbies or people who haven’t won before get a chance. But it’s tricky to limit it, too. If too many people are ineligible to enter a given raffle, it’s not an effective nugget sink. If you limit it to “grand prizes” then some people might not want to participate in site events for a GCS if it means killing their chances at a custom later. I’d be interested to see how it goes. (I don’t think I’ve ever won a custom raffle? But I win lots of stuff here frequently so I’m happy with anything lol).

On Arintol‘s thought, I like the idea of only one ticket each - it does make it a pretty ineffective nugget sink, though. I’m not sure about the uncapped raffle - I honestly can’t remember how much i spent in it lol - but I did like the custom kelph auctions, and the raffles with smaller prizes. Oh and the flower event with the custom prizes!

I agree that there’s something a little extra frustrating to see the RNG favour staff so frequently. Yes, staff work hard, but they receive other benefits - including incredibly unique customs that regular players can’t ever have (I mean the “petpet” customs like Dreamer and fluii). So while I understand that staff are players too, and I don’t know or care to know if they get “paid” beyond that, it does make it seem a little more uneven than it would otherwise. It must feel really bad and unfair to get excited that you won a raffle and immediately have everyone side-eyeing and complaining about it, though, and I’m sorry to contribute to that feeling :(

It’s a little hard to talk about this kind of thing. I often bit my tongue or delete stuff I say that might be considered critical because 1) I like the staff and appreciate what you do for a site I love and think of most of y’all as friends, and it’s hard to criticize your friends; and 2) sometimes the response can be so swift and severe that it feels like I’m choosing between voicing concerns and getting banned/excluded-from-stuff-because-staff-think-negatively-of-me.

(for example, the staff response to Vely’s post saying the site won’t “impose restrictions on anyone for being lucky.” seems defensive and like a substantial misunderstanding of Vely’s concern.) <- I keep editing this because I’m worried it comes across too harsh agh.

Losty
I understand the premise of suggesting this, but to my memory I don’t recall them ever doing it for a raffle that involved a sprout, so it wouldn’t be fair to make them do it for this sprout raffle just because there happens to not be any other prize option

I think the one thing we need to remember about staff here on MC is that they are just like us: players. They do the daily things just like we do, and they still have to go through customs/edits/sprout queue just like the rest of us and pay for their orders all the same (though the method of payment may vary a little bit since…staff, and I’d assume they may have the opportunity to take payment in the form of PP or gems or something; IDK how/if staff on MC gets paid real cash or not B| ). While it may be somewhat upsetting to see staff “ALWAYS” (and I use this rather sarcastically)  winning something from the raffles that are held on site, they still go through the same entry process that the rest of us do, and then when draw time comes, it’s up to RNG what happens.

That being said, I really like the idea of reserved slots for users, old AND new who haven’t had the chance to actually win anything, as well as the whole “one ticket per user” kind of ordeal. As mentioned, nobody is really advantaged or disadvantaged, and some may feel like they have better odds as opposed to only being able to purchase say, ten tickets, while some 80-100 users have maxxed their allowable limits.

Anyways, what I’m getting at is that I enjoy the raffles and events that staff have held in my time being on MC as I’m originally from Flight Rising. The staff here interact with the community in a 99% positive manner, and play the same things we do to get the similar benefit. When it comes to large raffles like this, the odds will be against you rather than with you, and you cant get mad at RNG, or the players who didn’t win. I really wouldn’t mind the whole… one ticket per person thing though, that’d be interesting. Or tiered-winnings. Be happy in the success of others. Be excited alongside them.

Congratulations to all the winners! I am sure that the new sprouts are incredibly beautiful! :3

We actually record all winning tickets and ticket draw ordering precisely to make this sort of thing possible, but as of yet we haven’t tried experimenting with it yet :) Glitch

Assuming this kind of information is recorded, you might be able to do some interesting stuff related to ticket costs based on previous wins. If you’ve never won before (which happens if you’re new, AND if you’re unlucky), you might have a different ticket cap or your tickets might be cheaper than normal?
(There’s an “interesting” framing problem in terms of designing/presenting this kind of thing as “some people experiencing a discount” rather than “some people experiencing a prize hike”, though).

For the record, I’d be really keen to see this information, too. It would be cool to know how many times I’ve entered raffles, how many nuggets I’ve spent total, and what I’ve won. I have a feeling that I’ve been quite lucky, but maybe I’ll look at the number of nuggies spent over the years and go :O NEVER AGAIN lol

Losty
I’m a bit late to the punch here, but this has typically been our policy! In this case, due to the resources sprouts/semi-customs require as opposed to just adding an extra item to the pot, it was decided that if two staff members were to win, an additional winner would have been pulled. :) She mentioned it in her post here, but it is understandably a bit hard to miss!

An update:

I’ve received everyone’s information and the artists have been assigned!  The sprouts and semi-customs will be mass delivered together sometime around ~11 days from now. :)

First off, CONGRATS TO THE WINNERS. I cannot wait to see the babs/semi customs!

And…. this is like super late from the original conversation buttttttttttttttt I have some thoughts!

First off, I’m really glad the subject was broached and that staff was here to discuss it! I firmly believe that everything here is done very well, I love the staff here (its honestly one of my favorite things about the site), but I hope that it is understood why seeing staff winning in almost every raffle is disheartening to players. I know that its probably because the site population is small and inevitably the amount of staff means that its a likely happenstance where at least one will be present. But it does look disheartening and can easily negatively effect newer players, especially when you use all of your nuggets to enter a raffle and get nothing, people may become more inactive with not much left to do on the site but grind nuggets or buy with real money.

I do really like the fact that the staff does add in extra draws for most raffles when staff wins, and I do understand why its harder to do with stuff like this.

A few good ideas have come up here, and I really am glad that so many older users want to give newer/no custom players a bit of a bump!

My suggestion is perhaps two raffles running at the same time, with the same prizes. So for example, for the sprout raffle, one would only be open to users without customs, and one would be open to users with customs only. The drawing would be split in half between them (so 4 and 4) so that half the winners are guaranteed to be first time custom owners. Not sure how doable it would be, but I think it would be a quick and easy way to kind of.. equalize it?

anyway i look forward to new tweaks and experiments in the system and in the site in general in the future :)