The playerbase here is a pretty spade-y bunch, so I'd tend to agree that they spading contests don't do much other than reward people for doing stuff that they'd do anyway. (I'm certainly not saying that they're a bad thing! Such rewards are generous when offered and well-deserved when awarded.) If I had any good ideas about things to try to discover new skill, zones, items, or other exciting stuff, I'd be trying it right now just for the thrill of finding something new, and I'm sure that's true of most other players. Knowing there's a contest prize if I find something, though, isn't going to help me have any better ideas than I do now. In the absence of inspiration, the main kind of spading to be done is the painstaking, important and necessary but not-so-exciting business of nailing down precise numbers for enemy stats, technique power, consumable yields, etc. — the sort of thing that lacks the "wow" factor to win contests. Well, except yours. This time. :)
