A Change in Direction

A Change in Direction​

Today I browsed through the forums, clicking on threads, posting on a few, looking at suggestions.

And I feel that some of the additions that are happening are just... in the wrong direction.
We tried advertisements.
We tried a new spawn.
We tried hyping up donations.

These worked, but no where near enough. It's obvious that we need to focus our priorities.
Advertisements worked the best. We simply need new players. That means better minigames.

As @Deinen said very well:
"The answer it seems is to avoid spending thousands on advertisements, and new spawns until the games you host have content. Keep updating the game-modes, adding content, to keep your regular players here, and attract new ones. Doesn't matter how pretty your apple is when you're selling the same apples everyone else is. Get a better apple."

We need to get these minigames to be better. They need to be the main focus. Especially Halo, Infected, and Laserstrike. Halo is massively outdated. It's still using snowballs for heavens sake. The guns are hilariously messed up in when you unlock them and in their strength. People bounce around the map for the duration of the game. My halo suggestion was partially accepted, and the main parts were, but some weren't, which I still believe would be good additions and changes. Infected, is fun but a little dull. I haven't played too much, so I can't say a ton, but it's difficult to get into. Infected players, comment some good ideas. Not buffs and nerfs, but actual changes. And Laserstrike. Fun, new, updated plugins. But, as well as Infected, a little dull. Still fun though, it shouldn't be the priority.

But Halo, that's the priority. That should be the main focus. Its great for youtubers, its fun, its original. Imagine, just imagine, a updated Halo. One with cool new armors, balanced, cool looking guns. Cool audio. Better reloading *Edit: Not people randomly switching to holding a big R in their hand* . No more snowballs, no more frantically bouncing around swiping at each other with hammers and swords. Just imagine.

There are infinite possibilities. So many things we can do to improve the server, by using our big moderation team coupled with the architects and techs, all being showed off by the media team. We have a big staff team! All of this is possible. With enough dedication, enough work, we can get so many players back. A new spawn doesn't change that. Advertising? Worked. For a day. Then the new players slowly left. We need to get those players hooked. And I think that Halo is the fishing rod. (That was bad)


I care about this server. My 4th anniversary here will be in a month. I've seen so much here, so much potential, used and then wasted. There is so much that can be done, so much that can be accomplished. But we need to focus. We've tested. We've discovered. We know what we should be focusing on. Advertising brought back Meepcraft, for a second, to its former glory. Lets do that again, but keep it that way.

 

Can you provide an example of any success MeepCraft has had as a hub server?

Additionally, can you provide an example of any success MeepCraft has had as a primarily towny server?

 

I think that a 'change in direction' is needed. But this is not it. Sure, improved minigames would be great, get new players to stay, but I don't think that it is the most effective method of doing that. As said above, Meepcraft was most successful as a primarily towny server, and the effort that you said should go into halo and other minigames should be going into towny. There have been very, very few changes to our towny plugin over the past years, which can make the game boring. With newer features to our towny plugin we can keep old players entertained and hook newer players with interesting and unique aspects to the gamemode.

We are the supposed 'largest towny server in the world.' It's time to start acting like it.


EDIT: Adding on to this, if meepcraft were to focus more on minigames and become a primarily hub server, why would players choose to stay here when there are so many other hub servers that have thousands of people playing daily, better staff teams, better development teams, and better games? Towny makes Meepcraft unique. Although the number of minecraft players that the towny gamemode can appeal to is less than that of which a hub server would appeal to, we have have the potential to be the best towny server out there. We will never be the best hub server out there. Too much competition.

 

I think it would be really good idea to finally make the player referral thing, I could probably make the plugin in less than an hour, and the best advertisements are player based.

 

Usually I'd agree with Deinen, but halo is so unique that it can itself become quite a draw, if done correctly.

 

I see your point. I completely forgot to actually write what the goal was in my post. I totally agree that MeepCraft is a towny server, that's what it's based around. But the first step to getting people to actually play towny is getting them to stay. And that, these days, means minigames. I also think that the towny plugin should be expanded and improved, but for now I think that getting players to join and stay is the top priority.

 

Infected players post comments?
Update Laserstrike?

Dude, Laserstrike was removed 3 months ago. Infected has been down for repairs almost as long.

And you're wrong. We don't have a huge staff team. We have one tech. _one_ tech. That is why there is no returning Meep to its former glory. One tech can't do it.

And you really contradict yourself in this thread. You start out by saying how much you agree with Deinen, and then you quote him on advertising clearly doesn't work with what we have. Then you use the rest of the thread to explain how advertising is what will revive us.

There is no reviving Meep. I logged on yesterday, and there was an *astonoshing* 23 players online. In a Timezone that, just a year ago, had over a hundred.

The community right now is crap. Half are 8-11 year olds who think they're the sh*t. The rest are either toxic or just too stupid, with a tiny, tiny handful of people who actually just want to have fun.

Let me say it again. There is no returning Meep to it's former glory. I can say the same for many servers I used to play, and still do. They have all gone massively down in player numbers. It isn't entirely Meep's fault, we just hurried up the process a little. The problem is that Minecraft is becoming so unpopular so fast that soon the only people left will be the die hard fans. Oh yeah and all the 8-11 year olds, who's moms go out and buy Minecraft for them thinking it'll turn them into an engineer.

 

Alright, I'll take it one by one.
Sorry, but I didn't realize Laserstrike had been taken down. My mistake. I knew that Infected was down for maintenance, but I didn't know how long it had been. I just don't play it much.

I agree with the problems with the techs. That, it seems, is definitely the actual priority. That's why tech applications were added. Hopefully, we can gain many more, and from there we can move into my plan.

Well, I meant it in a different way. I don't 100% agree with Deinen. Advertising worked, for a week. Then all the players left. This is just a way to say that we could get those players to stay. Advertising DID revive us, but it didn't last.

I disagree. MeepCraft is a server that can come back. People are still playing this game. I agree that it's becoming less and less popular, but that doesn't mean we can't get new players. There is still a MASSIVE Minecraft community.

I disagree again. The people who stay are the people who are here to have fun. There are plenty of the people who you talk about, but I don't think it's that many. And if you are right, if really the server has that many 8-11 year olds, then who cares? If we get enough good players, it's fine to have a few annoying kids. They'll donate. Server will get money. Done. Any player is a good player, as long as they stay. If they get too toxic, we can ban them.

I agree with you on many points. The reasons you stated ARE the reasons why MeepCraft has lost so many players. What I don't agree with is your idea that we can't bring the server back. It's possible, IF we start moving ourselves in the right direction, IF we get techs, IF we focus on what needs to be done instead of spending our time on musical chairs (which is fun btw) I think it's still possible.

 

IF IF IF... This is why we will never recover. Remember back in the first half of 2014, literally nothing got done. In those 6 or 7 months we went from 500 players to 300 players. My point: Now we are at 50 players. We have been wanting to bring Meep back to it's former glory since the day Fuzzlr made a new Meepcraft. Many people have made long threads about it, a few have even done something about it. But the truth is, we can't recover. For 2 years now we have tried this and that but nothing ever really gets done. Look at your sentence. IF we get techs. We won't. You say you hope many people will apply for tech. Who is going to apply? Our huge non-existent playerbase of thriving students with a passion for java? Or the massive playerbase of 8-11 year olds who think that because they know a bit of HTML they're the next Bill Gates?

Hope and if. The two words you should never be using when planning anything.
Meepcraft is doomed.

 

Simply put, I think that MeepCraft should regress into a primarily focused towny server, that does have other game-modes. There should not be a focus on consistently updating, creating new game-modes. The focus should remain on towny and it's expansion. Advertisement overall is a bust, and a social media (free) campaign, and word of mouth campaign could do a lot to restore older players.

 

But the problem with Towny expansions is that there isn't enough players. People who join the server don't know about how towny works. But people who join the server will most likely know how minigames work. And from there, they migrate over to the other worlds like towny. Tutorial doesn't even have a single word on towny.
People are lazy. They'll go to something they know when they have freetime to play Minecraft. So they'll play minigames. We'll get more players, and from there, the towny server will expand.

It is an if. IF we start dedicating our effort into getting these three things, we can come back. Of course it's an if, because there's a possibility that we won't focus on these things, and THEN Meepcraft will be doomed.

 

No offense but isn't a helper supposed to know something like this, especially since laser has been down for over a month? (edit: two months)

 

I think what drives most players away from the server is that it's too hard to make money as a new player. I played on a server with a relaxed economy, but the cost to make a town was 5 mill. It was really easy, but it still took a some time and effort to make the money. People just want to make a town and play the game, not grind forever for money

 

I just hadn't been to the main spawn in a while, hadn't noticed that it had been fully removed. The last I had heard was that it was down for maintenance.

 

True. People, like I said, are mostly lazy. Maybe reduce town cost to 200k again, but still have the 50k deposit into the bank.

 

No but like, it's kinda big thing... People talk about it etc. I am with metr0, I definitely feel that you should have known.

 

I think that this is a really good point.
There is no good, simple way to make money when starting out. Look at other servers that have an economy. An example is that you farm sugarcane, and sell it at /warp shop. When you have enough money, start farming melons, then netherwart, and so on. Simple. We need more items that can be sold at /warp shop for new players to make money from, and this needs to be the known way to start out on meepcraft. I see nothing in the tutorial about how to make money.

 

We aren't hub server. CTF is a fun game that meepcraft astonishingly ruined, badly. Meep needs to pick a few minigames, make them the best things ever and focus on the main draw... Towny. Focus on what we do well and stop trying to be a hub server.

 

In my opinion, meepcraft should focus on towny and a few core minigames, such as Halo, HG, KitPVP, SB, and CTF. As of late, there has been an effort to diversify content. However, bug fixes, map additions, and overall maintenance to new content has been sporadic at best, giving an overall negative impression, and creating an atmosphere of decay and neglect. Since the development team has been stretched so thin, I suggest that the we choose a small number of minigames to focus on, which must then be maintained and kept in shape. Any attempts to diversify content without repairing existing content will be wasted as long as existing content isn't maintained. For example, if you join the server and see a new promising minigame called AAA, you'd want to stay. However, if you explore the rest of the server and see the bugs and glitches that abound, you would quickly realize that any bugs with AAA aren't likely to be fixed in a looooong time. Then you quit.

If you look at the most successful servers, they repair bugs very quickly and prioritize repairing existing content over giving a half-assed effort on developing new content. Come on. I don't even get why there's a debate over this--it should be simple.