Hello friends,

On Tuesday December 29th at 5:30pm EST we held a town hall meeting with Fuzzlr and a number of other staff members regarding the concerns the community had. Here are the main points we addressed:

The new spawn
Holiday unbanning
Recent resignations
Towny additions
Minigames
Stock Market
Dungeon
Bugs

To ensure this info is relayed to the rest of the community, @iMelXP took notes of the meeting and summarized it for me to highlight the main points. Below you'll find notes regarding each topic.

New Spawn

Concern: The design.
Response: The old spawn's layout had little ease of access and new players found it difficult to locate all of its features. Upon joining, they will first go through the tutorial then spawn at the center of the spawn with all the warps clearly labeled. Other attractions such as the donor lounge, donor shop, bank, spleef, and airship are all localized within the same distance of each other. Aesthetic improvements have been made and will continue to occur over the next few weeks. There are plans to add other attractions for our players as well.

Concern: The cost.
Response: The rumor the spawn cost the server $5000 is false. It was under $3000 which not only included the spawn by Blockworks (Hydraxus), but also a contract with them for more building in the future. Even with regard to the cost, it is thwarted compared to the budget for advertising and development.

Concern: How does the spawn increase player retention and donations?
Response: By creating a spawn that is easy to navigate, new players are able to find each attraction without any problems. With a confusing spawn, players will most likely not spend time on the server. Player retention automatically translates into donations.

Holiday Unbanning

Concern: Why?
Response: As a gift to players we gave people who had minor offenses a second chance at belonging on the server. Some with greater offenses were allowed as well, but all ban history is still taken into account. When one of these players commits an offense it will be weighed with their history in mind. Most players have proved they are happy to be back and haven't committed any more offenses. Those who have were dealt with accordingly.

Recent Resignations

Concern: What's happening?
Response: The holiday unbanning, Fuzzlr explained, was rushed to get it done for the holidays. There was little communication to the rest of the staff team, especially the administrative team, in this process. There was also concern within the staff team in general about the flow communication between Fuzzlr and the rest of the team as well with high staff and low staff. The holiday unbanning problem caused two high rank staff members to resign along with the communication problems. @CyborgZeroX has returned after a long discussion about how Fuzzlr plans to improve this situation. Fuzzlr admits fault and will be open for more communication to the entire staff team. The whole team is now encouraged to personally message Fuzzlr with any concerns when that option wasn't apparent previously. Additionally, the supermods have extended communication to the lower staff encouraging them to speak with us about any concerns.

In that same vein, the community is encouraged to continue to use the numerous channels of communication for concerns about staff or server development. Suggestions (for big development), modreqs (for immediate concerns), forum messages to supermods or the Staff Comment section (for positive/negative feedback on staff members), and even Fuzzlr's personal skype (username: fuzzlr) are a number of ways to address any concerns.

Towny additions

Concern: Are there any plans on updating towny even to a custom plugin?
Response: @DBLOSEVN has made a number of custom additions to our towny plug-in as well as bug fixes that were inherent to the plug-in itself. There are plans to continue development, but the details of which are not quite ironed out. Here is the master Trello card that has numerous additions both completed and uncompleted that we hope one day to develop as Towny is our main attraction.

Minigames

Concern: Halo.
Response: Development for Halo is still in progress to make it 100% custom. The previous version only had a small portion of custom code. However, it WILL be back, we have no plans to keep it down as it is our most successful minigame. In this same discussion, the value of Laser (being so similar) was discussed but no decision will be made until the development of Halo is completed. Laser discussion will continue upon Halo's release, but we have no date for this.

Stock Market

Concern: Is it coming back?
Response: The exploitation of the stock market spawned in millions of meebles and we were forced to remove it to investigate how to resolve it. Unfortunately, we see no resolution to the exploitation bug despite our best efforts. If it is to be 100% removed, all stocks will be able to be sold at the price they were purchased at so no one will lose money. Additionally, a similar venue will be introduced with the hopes to have regulation but still the same enjoyment. For now, we are unsure about the nature of it, but discussions of the gold exchange were brought back.

Dungeon

Concern: Is it coming back?
Response: Dungeon will be returning when all of the bugs are ironed out. Numerous people were randomly dying, the random portal didn't always work and people were camping, permissions were not accurate, and people inventories were disappearing. Hopefully we get this resolved as soon as possible.

Bugs

Concern: Why not hire more techs?
Response: At this time we are not really in a place to hire more techs, but that is not to say we are in a bad place. @DBLOSEVN offers a lot of his time to us and fixes a number of bugs as you can monitor on our Trello. Fuzzlr also agreed to offer more time for development on his end in hopes to further development.

Thanks for everyone who attended the meeting and asked questions. We hope we answered some of your concerns and that we can have another town hall again soon. As stated already, all three supermods, myself (@shains), @Deljikho, and @CyborgZeroX are available for any discussion and Fuzzlr's personal skype (username: fuzzlr) is available as well.

Happy New Year!