Lets give the server a theme! Add more endgame! (Also, Server Satisfaction Poll)

Plain old survival in minecraft nowdays is a good way to find your server dead, especially with the many, MANY restrictions that SMC is finding itself with all the rules. The server is barely a month in and we are seeing large drops in people playing and the duration of their stays, especially with the people who have pretty much everything! Even the forums are taking a hit, going from dozens of posts a day to barely a one! I know, I know, people are going to disagree with me, but the numbers really do speak for themselves.

And so, the point of this thread is to ask what the community would like to see in the long run. Maybe fantasy mods, to extend that combat and pve environment? Builder mods, to let people make greater, more impressive works than what vanilla minecraft can allow? Fuck if I know, lets discuss!

Edit: Also, who keeps changing the poll to hide people's names after they votes? Why have the option if you are going to change it with moderator privileges

 

Based on my experience on many, many MC servers that I used to play and moderate on, I do think the server isn't dying. It's more of being in the state of "blandness" or its too plain. Plus, the things the server does for advertising(I dont know how you advertise them to get players) seems to be lacking, one suggestion is to actually make the people VOTE for the server more and you can achieve that by doing giveaways to top voters every month or so. Another suggestion is to expand the server's cover, in terms of game mode we only have Survival and Creative, and creative is not for everyone; only for those who voted 50 or so. Maybe adding Factions or Skyblock may help expand the player base of the server.

There are more ways that one can advertise and expand a server, and i think you guys have the knowledge to know HOW and WHAT TO DO to actually execute it.

That's all.







Put dank memes here to remove cerialness.

 

Honestly we have a faction less faction world. Saying it is survival is useless anymore. People obviously want factions so bad, that that's what they are turning it into. And unfortunately it sucks major balls.

 

Which makes it more of a reason to create other server game modes. You cant have CREATIVE players waiting for something to happen in survival or FACTION players wanting to kill everyone and raid bases for fun.

 

Although we have a mini games world, it doesn't seem to have much of a reward system to it? All it seems to be is you gaining points that are only valuable in that world. Maybe we can possibly get rewards useful to us in the survival world? Or even crate keys? Like little reward packages you get in the mail that have a chance of being good or not so good. I think it would be fun to open up the creative server to everyone or at least lower the voting requirements to unlock it. I definitely don't think that what the server is now will stay permanent, sometimes it just takes time and effort from the devs, staff, and the community to work together to better the server for everyone. I'm on board with the factions idea which it might give a new aspect to the game, and hopefully the new ideas we have can benifit the server and help it grow.

 

The Minigame world sorta gets boring fast even without rewards. Except for Spleef, none of it is really competitive. Tower of Doom is nice, but it gets annoying fast, and once you get through that's it. No replay value. Mob Arena is just endlessly running in circles, while occasionally turning to kill the mob behind you. I only die when I want to leave. And the 'rewards' for any of this are a tiny bit of cash that you can make in seconds with the terribly inefficient 'jobs'.

 

I would like to see more modded content to re-ignite my interest in the server. Something like new armor, weapons, upgrade systems, perks, new worlds, items or a million other things. I lost interest in Minecraft for the most part recently, and getting on to maintain being on mctop is a chore that's just boring to me now. I would personally be very interested in seeing new content become available for the servers, or at least anything that brings it a little bit something more than what it is now.

 

The problem with adding modded content, such as a Modpack like Tekkit, Feed The Beast, etc, is that they are a hassle to download and really discourage new people from joining simply because it would take too long to set the mods up the way we have them set up. This is especially true if we add small things such as extra armor, weapons, upgrades, etc like Graze mentioned. All of you guys would download them and play, but that's because you're already a part of this community and are generally interested in things that happen within this community. Random people that see the server for the first time probably wouldn't join the server unless they are specifically looking for a modded experience, which isn't really a majority of MC players.

Factions is something Dis, Irri, and I discussed when planning the server. We decided against it simply because of the crazy hostility it breeds. The server currently has quite a few restrictions on where you can and can't raid, who you can't kill etc, and yet there is still quite a bit of hostility. Imagine how much more hostility there would be when all of those restrictions that we've implemented are removed.

 

The reason I joined the server is because I hate all the servers with bullshit mods and gimmicks. I want to play survival. Claim my land, and sell items.
A theme/adding mods would personally make me leave the server.
This server stands out because it is mostly survival. It is how most MC servers were 4-5 years ago.
A month is not long enough to decide if the server is dead or not.
Advertise more, fix things that are in place, add chest shops, ...etc

The only problem I have with the server is
A. No chest shop
B. The Anti-Ray mod (because I will be strip mining and wont be able to mine the diamonds I find)
Other than that Server is great. Player count sucks, but I think that will go up once the chest shops gets fixed/put on.

Here are somethings to add to boost player count and experience while keeping the server simple.
A better "central hub". Have the market, plus an area to rent small areas of land where you can build anything and/or sell items (would only work well with chest shops mod).
A PVP pit/bridge at this "central hub".
Maybe even add a sky island thing for people that like that.
A Parkcore area in the "central hub" where you can host tournaments that have prizes.

 

At this rate, you're going to lose a server. There is no innovation, there is no pull, there are only some plugins into vanilla minecraft, with enough restrictions to make it arguably worse than an unchanged game. Anything that might make the server more interesting, you deny, simply because it MIGHT do something that people don't like, despite an almost overwhelming demand for it.

 

A month is enough to decide when we have people who were with it since the server founding already saying they are ready to call it quites, or even already have. To the other stuff, I'm mostly indifferent, but there needs to be something more to the server than "It's Vanilla with claims and a store" if you want people to stay around

 

So I don't think you really understood what Death was trying to say, or maybe he didn't really convey it properly. We're all for adding content to the server and making it a better experience for everyone involved. That being said, understandably we can't just drop the entire plugins directory, delete Spigot, install forge, and run the server again with mods.

 

Gotcha. I did misunderstand that a bit.

Also, why did my poll drop showing the names of what people voted for what? I'm assuming staff changed it for some reason

 

I honestly don't know, I can't even edit polls or give warnings as a developer.

 

I feel those(the majority) that are asking for more content via mods are experiencing a domino effect. This effect being caused due to plummeting numbers of players playing consistently, a general boredom of the game and Minecraft itself, and the noticeably slow roll-outs of things that were rumored/mentioned weeks ago(updated hall of honor, extended rules, and better cosmetic choices).

Yes, Mods will dissuade external players outside of the community from joining. However we could argue that that would likely only occur if we're using the wrong mods and the wrong approach. If we keep our selection of quality over quantity true and push Mods that are not only enjoyable but easy to download/easily made available in a quick .exe or folder, then we would undoubtedly see growth. To further your understand of what I mean, take a look at our TTT modded servers. Players are willing to sit through a potentially 10-15 minute download(first-time, slow internet) to be apart of an experience they're not even sure is fun. We even have random hackers and blatant RDM'ers sitting through the content download just to be swiftly removed. This argues that Mods can be a worthy investment.

I once discussed with Highwon of potential content and he said something that has stuck with me for years. "We want potential players to experience a low download time, and thus we take the care and time to carefully choose what it is that we add to the servers." This philosophy can be applied towards our Minecraft server as well. By selecting those key Mods and assembling them in a way that would make it nearly hassle-free to install, we open the doors that we once thought were impossible to pass through. Mods done right is our best shot.

In regards to a potential overhaul of what we already have, why not? We still have the world(that has been popularly argued is too big(which is great for a fresh start)) that has everyone's builds and items available. No one is losing progress, we are in fact gaining. Very few would be upset at as big of a content update as potentially this. We want content transparency, and above all we want the fun experience we were hoping for when the servers first started.

Minecraft is a fun game. But at this point it's more like playing Minecraft locally with a few friends. We need an impactful change.

 

For the people waiting on the sidelines, might we get a hard "Yes or No" to the potential of future mods? @irritatingness @Deathbyrussian @Disruptionz And maybe a 'how long until' if it is a yes?

 

I am still down with no mods. Servers like this are hard to come by. Took me awhile to find a good simple economy server with pvp. I think advertisement will help. I am a graphic designer so if anyone in charge of advertisement wants to get a hold of me. Message me here or in game and ill send you my email/discord/skype to talk about me designing advertisements for the server. For free because this will benefit me too and its not very hard for me to do a simple ad.

 

I'm not going to give a hard yes or no, but it's not currently possible on our version to run our world as it is with mods instead of plugins without starting from scratch. By installing forge we lose the capability to run spigot plugins alongside our mods (this means you lose your money, your claims, your homes, cosmetics, pets, mcmmo, etc). So... soft no? I don't see it happening on the current server as-is. Sorry man.

 

@Disruptionz might be willing to take you up on that for a PMC banner?

 

I don't think our server is going to be kept if we don't make some drastic changes. People enjoy this vanilla of minecraft for about a month or three, before they get everything and lose interest. We have almost every person talking about how they want more, and people have left in droves. Despite the large-scale of it, I'm fairly certain the castle-wars idea can be made without mods, which would add more endgame, but that's just my idea. Advertising won't keep retention. We'll just get a trickle of players that come, play a little, get bored, then leave.