Edit: This post is now 64 days old and I am so depressed at how prophetic it was. In retrospect, why do I perceive so much “virtue signaling” in the replies? Is it just me?
TL ; DR - I am sad.
Given how many times I have seen posts like these I am very tempted to just delete this and give up like I did in the past. If you have something to add, please do so, trolling or not. The opinions of those who read this are the most important for THEY are the veterans and the loyalists.
The rhetoric discussing the current state of this server should be addressed sooner rather than later. The current trajectory is bleak and it needs to change. Someone needs to step forward and show leadership by providing us a vision for Meepcrafts’ future while at the same time actually acknowledging mistakes made in the past to foster trust with what is left of the community.
Stop deleting opinions you dislike on discord and address them instead. If you can’t develop a reasonable response that others will blatantly agree with, perhaps the person talking is onto a subject that actually merits time and thought. If they are a moron, the response should be a no-brainer, supposing it even needs a response.
Deleting messages on the other hand undermines staff as a whole as it serves to validate claims of bias, favoritism, and hypocritical censorship. That whole deletion of “trailing dislikes” a few weeks back is a great example. It can also be taken as evidence that some are well aware of the reality, are upset by it, but then decide to pretend it isn’t an issue, fabricate another reality, and feed it to us as the truth. It is unfair to the hardworking staff that actually put in the effort to operate appropriately and according to the actual stated rules. People notice, it affects the community negatively, you should do better.
It is quite unsettling to see assumptions, affirmations, and lazy excuses nonchalantly handed down and parroted as facts. A great example being “it’s finals week” in response to the player count hovering in single digits.
Why not survey the community? Topics like: their feelings about staff, why they quit, or what needs to change. Simply asking seems to be a logical thing to do when addressing the exodus of the community…
Also when I say "the community" I don't mean a town hall meeting on discord, that is a very specific subset of players that in no way accurately represents the community as a whole. Too much damage may have been done to accomplish this now but trying is certainly the better option.
So far we've got a single survey about the tutorial that didn’t even have proper words in the available responses. Invaluable or Valuable? Who honestly expected to get meaningful feedback from that survey? So many new players who have a bad experience will never fill it out because they are either gone or will never make a forum account. You are sitting on a data set made up of veteran players’ opinions about the “new” player experience… TF? I couldn't even fill out that survey, not just because of the grammar issues but because I don't remember what issues I had "starting off" seven years ago...
Saying “it will be better soon” without providing concrete details is no better than an airline pilot telling you to use the oxygen mask as you fall like a brick into the mountainside. We have windows.
This isn’t a multi-million dollar game company, there need not be secret projects, it might sound awesome to those working on them but to me it is just more of the same rhetoric with a bit of staff elitism thrown in.
The projects are for the community yet you leave them in the dark until the very last moment and rarely consult them about said projects? Seems a bit backwards to be honest. Had people known that hundreds of hours of work would go into extreme only for it to be left to decay three months later with no acknowledgement of the mistakes made, I am sure they would have voted the effort to go elsewhere.
I imagine the reason so many “projects” are kept secret is because the administrators don’t wish to be hassled about timelines and held accountable for broken promises. I submit that that is the problem in itself. Those making the decisions need to take accountability for their actions and mistakes. They also need to be transparent about them. It would be a lot healthier to tell the community why something is behind or shelved than to leave them in the dark for months while leading them with a carrot on a stick.
Players need to know the server is on a path and what the path looks like. That means solid information and timetables. If this isn’t provided then players and the community become hopeless. Sound familiar?
The lack of players isn’t a result of skyblock spawners existing or not existing nor is it based on the quality of the jobs plugin. “Revamping” the tutorial or adding a parkour map won’t do anything to retain players either. If you honestly think that player count is tied to such specific aspects of the server than you have your head deep in the sand.
Long term, players log on because they look forward to playing with friends and participating in what they perceive to be a great community. That community needs to be nurtured, cared for, and respected. Players need to feel that the people making decisions value the community and the prosperity of the server more than personal image and pride. I hate how much this mirrors American politics at the moment, it is sad that the two are comparable.
The player count had grown during the launch of extreme because people either heard or got a glimpse of the community starting to blossom again and they wanted to join in. After all, nearly all of us do want to see it blossom again, very much so.
Unfortunately, this time around the blossom was watered with Brawndo.
As has happened in the past, pride, bias, lies, special treatment, vague rules, and inconsistent management/moderation lead to large core chunks of the community leaving, which in turn discouraged others from logging on for any sustained period of time.
Only a select few people enjoy playing Meepcraft alone and if at all possible they should not be tasked with solely deciding its future as their perspective is typically incompatible with the idea “community focused”.
I implore you(administrators) to take a step back and rethink several things and try to extract some wisdom from the Extreme launch, KitPvP and the subsequent events before you just drop more things into Meepcraft. Simply adding skyblock won’t do anything if you don’t address the systemic issues at the top first. It will only result in another few years of the staff team wasting their real lives putting bandaids over broken legs.
It really won’t make a difference how much effort the staff team puts into specific projects if leadership continues the pattern of ignoring, silencing, mistreating, lying, disrespecting, misinforming, and failing to care for the single most important aspect of the server: the community.
