Honei's Suggestions ♥

Hey there, Honei here! ♥

And yes, I am new. You can find my introduction here if you want to know more about who is writing this suggestion. One thing I didn't put in here, is that any server/community I join and actually like, I like to be involved in, so yes, I already have some suggestions.
________________________________________________________________________________
Disclaimer: Everything said or stated by me is strictly my opinion, I am open for comments and feedback, but please do not attack me for speaking my mind. Dank je. ♥
________________________________________________________________________________

MeepCraft.com/Wiki

Make one. A lot of your current, faithful players are requesting one and it's a great way to organize important information.

Edit:

So, I'd seen it requested on the server, but it appears I should have done more research. MeepCraft does, in fact, have a Wiki. you can view it by clicking the link in the above quote.

Now, it is there, but it's lacking recent and updated information. Some pages are blank. Perhaps someone wants to take the time to fill it out.

Forums

As a new player, the forums were fairly easy to navigate, sign-up was easy and so far the community on them has been welcoming and friendly. However, I do have a list of things I believe could make them even better.

1. Make the forums more interesting to look at.
♥ Make it look less like a wall of text and more colourful and engaging.
2. Add a ShoutBox.
♥ Not sure if this has been suggested before, did a quick search and couldn't find anything. But I thought it'd be nice to have a ShoutBox which players who can't be in game, but like the feel of live chat, on the server's website might be interested in.

Despite negative responses, I still think this would be a good idea. It isn't going to be active as the forums, so its not as big of a worry to monitor as it might seem. Those loyal to Meep aren't going to break the rules anyway. It brings more users to the website. Some aren't even registered.

3. Remove privileges of players to post in certain threads or edit how they can respond.
♥ While opinions are nice, some people's posts in certain threads are just hateful and/or unnecessary.
♥ Remove privileges of normal players to post in Donation Help. Creates unnecessarily long threads that distract from the original issue. There are threads there that have been sitting for quite some time and statements are being made by players that they would rather dispute via PayPal.
♥ Create a form for responses in threads such as the Staff Recruitment sub-forum. This will reduce the number of arguments and unnecessary spam that distract from the thread's original purpose.
4. Make a general reports sub-forum.
♥ For reports that deal with unknown players/parties. I.E. Griefs, Potential X-Ray Holes, etc.

I was given valid reasons as to why these should not happen and I will respect them.

One thing that may help with all of the above would be to add some dedicated forum staff to help with this. Takes the load off the staff handling requests in game and enables the forum staff to focus solely on the forums.

Server

Now, the server is great. I love how it's organized into separate worlds and whatnot, but what I have noticed is that it is not very new player friendly and it can also be overwhelming considering the volume of players you have online.

Some of these may be incorrect, I tried to get some information in game, but the chat moves so fast I noticed that a lot of things are often missed.

1. Give players the option to switch into which chat channels they want to talk in.
♥ I asked about this and was told that as someone who has donated, that my default should be /g, however it is not. Donation aside, someone should be able to switch into whatever channel they want by typing /channel* without a message. Because I can't count on one hand the amount of times I've accidentally typed in local.

*1 /channel being which ever channel you want to switch to. I.E. /g /L

This isn't that difficult of a problem to solve and other players would appreciate it. I think this suggestion was missed or often skipped over.

2. Give the option to leave certain chat channels. Global never slows down. Sometimes you don't want to read all that gibberish, but you don't want to completely disable your chat, either.

Once again, all the important information could still come through. I.E. Server announcements or /Shouts by staff.

3. Figure out a way to reorganize chat so that different things are distinguishable.
♥ Maybe give a command to put certain questions for staff in red, in chat, without the player having access to colour codes. I see questions that go unanswered on a daily basis.
4. Slow down the chat to help reduce spam. Perhaps simply add a cool-down.
♥ No
♥ one
♥ needs
♥ to
♥ talk
♥ like
♥ this.

At least get a plan going for this, maybe some feedback from players directly asked for by the staff so it's official. It's a big undertaking, yes, but it's a necessary one in my opinion.

5. Give new players something to work with.
♥Some bread and some basic stone tools would do. As stated by different players on server review sites and even the servers own Facebook, this server really gives off the "pay to play" feel. Give new players a chance to enjoy the server and what it has to offer and, in turn, want to donate to support it and show their love.

It's not about what they can obtain in /wild. It's something nice to show that Meepcraft appreciates them joining and a little extra to make them decide to stay.

Other Suggestions

These suggestions don't necessarily fall under any of the above categories.

1. Create a Donation Staff Team.
♥ They could handle Rank Disputes and will be the direct line from player to staff when Donation specific questions need to be answered or requests need to be handled.
2. Meep Bot Announcement made in game.
♥ I'm not a grammar freak, nor do I claim to be perfect. But this one kind of bugs me and it wouldn't be that difficult to fix:



Would look much neater as "Need help with crafting? Try /recipe to see how something is made."

It's the Craft and not Crafting, that bothers me. Once again, most people wouldn't notice this, and you could choose to ignore this, but I wanted to put this here in case you'd like to know.

Valid points were made on these as well, and I'm okay to let them die.
________________________________________________________________________________

As the creator of this thread, I reserve the right to edit, add and update my opinions or points at any time.

Once again, the opinions expressed in my posts are mine and are not assumptions or demands to be made.

MeepCraft Staff know what they are doing and will know better than anyone if an idea or suggestion expressed cannot be made into reality and I respect that.

If you are going to provide feedback and/or criticism on suggestions, I welcome it! I am more than happy to admit when I am wrong, but please, read everything on the suggestion you are going to discuss and ask me to clarify before you assume! It's the same courtesy I would give to any of you.

Thank you for taking the time to read the wall of text brought to you by a new soul! ♥

Sincerely,
Honei. ♥


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Updated on 4/4/15 based on feedback and clarification from other players and server staff.

 

almost as good as @K scheik

 

I like you, but I don't agree with all your request.

 

Comments are in red.

 

howmanyforumsaccountsdoyouhave?

 

Look in the sig. This is a merged account. So I wouldn't have 2.

 

oh weurd

 

http://meepcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Meepcraft_Wiki

Please specify, what is your consideration of "more interesting"? Personally the forums look decent, and uncluttered, which to me constitutes "more interesting"

My concern is a live conservation about something wholly innapropriate, it's not an issue if it's not here.

Unless a comment violates a rule, mean is something we're not necessarily here to, or can moderate, it's something you just need to get used to when you frequent the internet. As far as making posting restricted, this would be difficult to do on a player vs player basis, and not practical to implement on a mass scale, because those restricted threads often still need the input from non-staff. The payoff isn't worth the work as of yet.

The same applies to Donation Help, the issue isn't worth the workload as of yet, imo.

I like the staff application as is, it's nice to see how silly or oblivious comments are taken by the applicant. If one of those comments get the applicant in a tizzy, then we know they are not fit as of yet for staff.

It's easy enough to put complaints in Report a player and just say you have no idea who did it. As one of the people who has to do player reports, it's working fine as is.

Sure

Yes

Maybe, I would say a majority of players would disagree with this statement, and imo the issue it's solving isn't worth the massive fight to implement it as of yet.

Perhaps, but it seems that it's fairly easy to go to /warp wild, and just dig down for stone for stone tools. I think help for new players should revolve around monetary issues right now, because that helps them, stone tools or bread really doesn't.

 

I'm going to number your comments to address them.

1. -1 to removing the ability for players to post in certain threads.
This does not apply to all threads, but more so for threads that only staff can handle such as refund and donation threads. I've seen a lot of just out-right arguments for the sake of arguing and other unrelated spam that just makes more work for the staff.

2. "There's no reason for this," in response to removing normal player perms to post on someone else's thread in the Donation Help sub-forum.

I present to you, exibit A.

You can view where it originated here.

A quote from a Mod saying it is easier without all the unnecessary posts in a thread.

3. Specification for providing a form in certain threads.
For example, Helper Applications. A simple copy and paste form would help clear up a lot of unnecessary posts.

Could be something as simple as this.

IGN (Yours):
IGN (Of the Player Applying):
Reasons why this player should get Helper:
Reasons why this player should not get Helper:

That's it, you don't need people attacking other people's comments, that's just a lot of negative attention that does no good and is probably incredibly frustrating for the person applying. Not saying that no from the community should give their opinion. We just don't need the their opinion of someone else's opinion.

4. In response to the general reports and them being handled by /modreq.
Not everything can be solved by every single person who has access to modreq's.

5. In response to staff having the ability to moderate the forums.
Yes, they do, but they don't necessarily all have the time to do this on top of everything else they have to handle.

6. Switching chat channels to default in.
It does, yes. But it's just less convenient and some people might like this feature.

7. "NONONONONNONO. You have NO idea what the server will miss with this! I'm VERY against the toggle of chats."
I can understand your concerns. But important information such as announcements made by the server can't be toggled, and what might be missed should be left up to the discretion of the individual player.

I don't think I need to comment on everything else you just gave a +1.
Thank you for taking the time to read everything, though. ♥

 

Meepcraft already has a wiki; back when I was staff reggles, some others, and I helped make it. Although I didn't really do that much, I did write the Halo section. The thing is, if you look closely, you'll see that it hasn't been updated in quite a while. To me it's a lost cause, as it takes too much time that could be spent on other more important things. It's not a bad idea to continue working on it, but there's too many things to be done.
http://meepcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Current_Staff_Members

Switching chat channels was already suggested. I think it's fine as long as there aren't a humongous number of channels so there's few people in each one.

The ShoutBox idea also seems nice, but is it easy to add in? To be honest, I'd have to say I'd prefer btilm to rather fix Boomo, (ty you're already doing it <3) and other things like that than spend weeks working on a ShoutBox. There's already MineChat for players where they can see the chat, so personally I wouldn't find it all that important.

While removing certain player privileges to post in threads may be beneficial under some circumstances, if you want to remove the privileges of all players, it isn't worth it because of some players actually having things to say. A lot of the time players are actually trying to help in Donation Help, and if staff don't want any more chatter, opinions, or non-staff thoughts on it then they can just lock it. If certain players are causing trouble, then they can be forum banned.

Slowing down the chat is not something people really like. Meepcraft isn't even that spammy of a server, and if a player spams, they get kicked. Continue and they receive a ban. What if you need to type a two message long message? Back when staff had signs they click on to advertise, some message took two messages long. Not only that, but it already has a plugin that doesn't let you say something if it has already been said before, or something similar to it.

This is an idea that I would love to be implemented. No large comments on this, because it's self-explanatory- it's like a starting kit.

TBH I think that the number of people handling the situation right now is fine. Too many people might mess up the entire thing. If one person makes a stupid decision then many things could collapse on each other.

The announcement isn't that big of a deal, but I see what you mean. +1.

Edit:
I didn't realize you posted like the same thing as me Deinen, hehe. I just like big blobs of text

Also, for the staff recruitment part, there shouldn't be a format to follow since it would seem too strict, or restrictive. Part of the time when I was applying for staff, I was wondering if I would see any dumb comments. Those comments can be deleted, no need for a format.

 

Oh, thank you!
This morning there were about 5 or so players all agreeing that one was needed.
Guess I just didn't look hard enough.

In my opinion, the current colour theme of the forums reminds me of the pale pastels of a hospital. MeepCraft seems to be lacking a visual theme. Perhaps creating one is where it should start. Something as simple as this reminds others when they see certain images, or colour combos that MeepCraft exists and their website/server should be visited, if not frequented. It's hard to post examples without "advertising" other websites.

I understand what you mean, but you could say the same for global chat. It's not that difficult to give server staff permissions to delete inappropriate content in the ShoutBox.

But once again, I see your concerns.

It's not so much restricting it as it is setting up to auto-lock on completion of the post.
Then only the people who should post are the ones able to unlock and be able to.

This is a valid point and the opinion of those from the staff are best suited to respond to it.
Thank you.

This is also true.

Installing one plugin isn't really a massive fight.
Unless you are stating that getting to an agreement on adding it is, in which case, yes, I agree with you.

It's not that they can't do this.
It's just more of a "hey, we care about our new players, as well," sort of thing.

Thank you for taking the time to read and comment on everything! ♥

 

Adding or removing anything with this crowd equates to a battle of good and evil, complete with the world's destruction......

 

If you're looking to change the forums theme, look right above the copyright at the bottom of the page. It should say either MeepCraft or Core. I doubt this is what you really want but it may make things a little better.

 

Good luck in all your future endeavors..I know just how much of a war that can be..

Why are there faces falling from the sky?!?
Sorry, I had to..ahem..yes, I was aware of how to change the theme, thank you.
But you are right, I am/was looking for a little more.

 

Actually, I think this is a great idea and will turn down the number of useless app. responses.

 

I'm probably going to edit this later when I have the time, because I've been pretty extraordinarily busy today.

However, I do have the time to mention that this is out of context; I meant that posts about something completely different are unnecessary, which is what those posts were.

 

Ah, I understand.
But, that's why I quoted it.
It's just part of the reason why I suggested posting should be restricted.
It would keep out unrelated posts.

 

We as staff can deal with unrelated posts. The thing is, is that we have tons of things to do on the forums, and oftentimes non-staff players get to Donation Help first to help the people out with putting up receipts and stuff. That's why we shouldn't restrict it. It's the same reason for report a player's and ban appeals, except with proof.

 

I understand your point.
Fair enough. C:

--- Double Post Merged, Apr 4, 2015, Original Post Date: Apr 1, 2015 ---

Updated thread to include response from staff and focus more on the points I believe are still needed.
Comments are in a lovely shade of purple.