Meep's main attraction is towny/economy. It's what the server specializes in.
Both towny and economy is crap without communication and community.
Both communication and community are necessary for One another. Without one, the other doesn't reach its full potential.
IMO, both communication and the community aspect of meep is severely weak. With a small sized active community, the server relies on new players joining the server.
Put yourself in a new players shoes:
1) You know little about towny/economy (if anything u don't know how to make lots of moolah)
2) You don't know anyone
If a new player attempts to join in with the rest of the community, he/she will shout a lot. Something new I noticed was that there's a 'shout tax' where you get taxed 200 meebles if u send around 3 messages in 1 minute. When the new player shouts a lot, he gets taxed, being penatalizd for connecting with the rest of the community. Then what does the player do? Most likely go to the wild and "make some money" most new players are directed to the wild by other players to make money. The new player goes mining solo for maybe a couple hours and gets bored then quits.
^ that's one of the directions new players go to. Now I may be wrong but I know I'm right when I say that meep isn't growing.
Communication Suggestions:
- Make shout free: New players need to be able to communicate.
- More tolerance: AKA more things should be able to slide. Recently I heard the word "damn" is now banable.… shout is literally so boring because pretty much discussing anything or saying anything is bannable. The server (at least shout wise) is literally catering to 7 year olds. I know that minecrafts player base average is not that low. If anything it's around 12-14 years old, which is old enough to handel some if not most swear words.
- Forums: Too many sub forums imo, it may be a little more organized but too much distance.
Community Suggestions:
- Staff: I feel like staff needs a lot more communication not only between other staff but with the player base. I've been online for a long time span recently and I never see staff talking with the community. staff should be reaching out to the community as it is important for many reasons. One of which is to maintain respect which is what I've seen recently. The player base is not respecting the staff as much as it should be. As staff you should question : is it our fault as staff or is it just the players. Once staff/players bond better community will start to grow
- We should make the number of towns limited? Large number of players in a town bonds them together instead of all being separated and isolated into small towns.
- forum/in game events should be implemented to crease a sense of community
Questions for staff to discuss:
As staff you need to be the change you want to see.
1) Are we going to be a towny focused server or mini game server. (I HIGHLY recommend towny since meep will not do good competing against other mini game servers )
2) How can we cater to new members?
3) Should we keep the server G rated
4) How can we make things easier and less complicated for new members.
5) What changes need to happen in order to steadily increase the player base.
~ @Dart_Knight
I agree with you for the most part, but there are a few things that I'd like to put my two cents on.
When you first start out, I'm fairly sure you start out with three tokens which you can spend shouting. If not, the time it takes for new players to just figure out the command to shout, or even what it does, will be long enough. Very few new players shout as constant as you mention. However, even with that, I don't like the token system. If you don't shout for 10 seconds after using your tokens, that means you regain one token. Does the tutorial explain the token system? Will new players remember it as something important? There isn't enough explanation for new players, and the guides and rules are too long for the majority of new players to read all of it. 33 pages in a guide. Wouldn't it be better to make the guide have the basic rules of the server, then have a full description if you click on it or something? Also, I think that the 10 second rule should be decreased to a smaller amount of time if not removed. Additionally, it should account for how new the player is. It's probably a wild idea, and it might take too much work, but it's just my thoughts.
- More tolerance: AKA more things should be able to slide. Recently I heard the word "damn" is now banable.… shout is literally so boring because pretty much discussing anything or saying anything is bannable. The server (at least shout wise) is literally catering to 7 year olds. I know that minecrafts player base average is not that low. If anything it's around 12-14 years old, which is old enough to handel some if not most swear words.
About this- I completely agree with this. The average age of Minecraft players is probably around 12. Yet players aren't really allowed to talk about things that 12 year olds and above talk about. To me, you won't be able to have a large amount of players in a server if it's rated G or E. I mean, look at any server near the thousands. They have less restrictions than on Meepcraft, but it isn't completely chaos.
Shout mainly consists of either really small talk, buying/selling, or players asking for help or a question. 100 players were on this night. Many of those 100 players don't even shout at all, or rarely do so unless they need assistance. To be honest, I believe that the reason for this is because of the limitations on what you're allowed to say and how much you can say.
4) How can we make things easier and less complicated for new members.
This is what I agree with the most. Let's say that I see the Meepcraft advertisement as the 10th most popular minecraft towny server, and come to join. I see how there's many minigames and such. When I go to the minigames section, I find some of the things broken. Wouldn't it be better to first fix the broken things, then add new things to increase popularity? To add on to this point, a new player most likely wants to start a town of their own and recruit their friends and/or other people that they don't know. Then they realize that they have to work for it, let's say a month. A game like minecraft shouldn't be where you have to work or donate to have the best experience out of the it. I'd feel a little betrayed if I came here only for Towny, then realized how much effort it takes to maintain a town, start one, and even recruit people.
TL;DR: Takes too much time and dedication to have a town and maintain it. Fix broken things before adding new things. Less limitations because most of the Meepcraft players are not 8. Make token system easier to understand, teach it to new players, make it less money-sucking or remove it. Make the guide and rules more basic, but be able to explain it in depth if they want to know more.
Yeah, I wasted a lot of your time, so I guess thanks for you read this.
