Best Posts in Thread: Preliminary Suggestions on Moving Forward

Reika, could you please provide us with your quantifiable proof that developing Skyblock would not be able to attract any new players? Do you have any data or relatable experience to support this claim, or is this just your personal opinion?

Putting the target demographic issues aside, it seems that you generally agree that mini-games will attract new players. I would argue that having any new players, regardless of age, is a good thing for the server.

A higher player count makes the server more appealing to other potential players; in turn, this increases server donations. This could be especially true when you consider the following:

If someone is used to instant gratification, then they may be more likely to spend $10 or $20 in order to get that instant "advantage" in Towny. I agree that many of these types of players won't stay in Towny for a long period, but any donation is a net positive for the server, right? Would these players be less favorable than more patient players that understand they don't need to spend any money in order to enjoy Towny?

I would argue that a healthy server needs a good mix of instant gratification (ig) players and patient players alike. The ig players will join for the mini-games, play for a week, explore towny, donate $10, play for another week, and then leave forever. Whereas the patient players will join for Towny, play for a few months, work until they can pay someone meebles for a $20 donation, and continue to play.

Both types of players fill critical roles that Meep needs: The ig players will continue revolving, thus creating a high, and appealing, player count. The patient players will keep the community strong and tight-knit. Most important;y, both provide viable funding options for keeping the server alive.

Resetting the server will always be a double-edged sword, and is never as simple as "doing a reset will fix all of our problems." A reset is a great tool to pave the way for new updates, developments, and other major game changes. However, every time the server is reset, it loosens the sense of security than any previous players may have.

When a player has invested hundreds of hours into creating their town, increasing their wealth, and obtaining their gear, then they typically don't want to see all of that work wasted away with a reset. Any resets that are done need to be justified for the hours that are being lost – meaning that it usually needs to come with a major game update.

What updates, and major game changes, do you propose should happen during the next server reset? Additionally, how do you propose the development staff split their time in order to make these updates possible? Will you please provide your proposals in a format ranking the importance of each, along with the hours needed to complete, and a detailed list showing how the tech hours should be split during this update. You may want to provide a Gantt chart to help the staff team visualize your concepts.

This is the only argument you've used in favor of a reset, and it's not a very strong argument to begin with. In any established economy, there will be people performing well based on their longevity with the game. It's the exact same way in real life. The more hours you put in, the more wealth you have – this is why the world is run by people around 65 years old, and why people that are 16 don't have any tangible net worth. You need to invest time into a game in order to get a sizeable share of the equity.

You're also contradicting yourself in this sentence. Let's have a look:

So which are you in favor of? Do you want mature players that are okay with a grind and the months it takes to build a metropolis? Or do you want instant gratification players that just want to be at baltop 1 in less than a few days of grinding?

Are you also able to provide us with any additional arguments as to why the server is in need of a reset?

Who do you think should choose who is in this assembly? If all of the current players are in one "friend group," and you don't trust that friend group, then is there really anyone that you would trust to pick and choose which old players should form this council?

So you agree that the current staff team has moderation skills. Is it shocking to you that moderation is almost literally the only thing that qualifies someone to be on the Moderation team? I don't remember it being called the Diverse Personality team, lol.

Essentially you're saying "staff does a good job at moderating, but I don't like that they all have similar personalities so we should downsize." But you're not presenting any of the cons that come with a large staff team (is it no cons?) and none of the benefits that come from a small staff team.

Also just so you know:

I am fairly confident that this quote from Deinen, about how Meep should be treated as a business, was in response to players demanding to have decisions on who should and shouldn't be staff. So it very ironic that you're using that quote but missing 99% of the context.

I honestly think you're just trolling at this point. You make baseless claims, you offer subjective opinions as unavoidable truths, you contradict yourself, you miss the context of your quotes, and you make no solid attempts to help reform the server. I'd applaud you if you actually put in some thought into your "suggestions," but that just doesn't seem to be here.

Maybe you should restart by listing your actual suggestions on a sheet of paper. Iron out the details yourself, since you don't trust staff to do it anyway, and then present it in a way that shows quantifiable evidence of the pros and cons associated with your suggestions.

 

The absolute dream team of references

 

why am i getting brought into this i made a dank discord for my friends

 

Everyone wants to enjoy the game; but I find it funny you think kids are the only ones fickle enough to enjoy quick fixes of dopamine in the form of minigames.

towny is a boring game when you play to the point of basic completion. Everyone reaches the point they have everything they need and the economy goes stagnant. Then everyone quits until there’s a reset

 

Now I realise you’re THAT player talking in Chillis recently you’re a cancer. You provide nothing but annoyance to this community, although I agree with some points you’ve made your behaviour is that of a 15yo.

 

i think its hilarious u kids talking shit about natsu. u wouldnt say this shit to him in person, hes jacked. not only that but he wears the freshest clothes, eats at the chillest restaurants and hangs out with the hottest dudes. yall are pathetic lol

 

You’ve made a few points that I somewhat sympathized with, but your thread turned worse than it already was when you made a fool of yourself by not being able to accept criticism. I also don’t understand why all these people, yourself included, who talk about how awful and immature the player base is on Meep still bother sticking around. If it’s so bad, just stay away from it, lol. Isn’t that the first thing you’d think of doing?

 

My bad.

 

Cute pic, where’d you get it?

--- Double Post Merged, Aug 18, 2020, Original Post Date: Aug 14, 2020 ---

His comments in this thread are low effort and only look to create drama in the community. Don’t bother wasting time on a troll.

If he wasn’t calling out staff at every opportunity then he likely would’ve had half these comments deleted because they’re useless and inflammatory with borderline harassment.

 

Because it’s where you chose to complain about Meep with some crap meme before you where mocked.

Edit: got you mixed up with shoue since youse practicly say the same stuff you sure yall ain’t the same people lmao

 

If you are really 19 and you have been going around commenting big chugnuts just to trigger some moderators I wouldn't be talking about skill or individuality.
Don't get me wrong though, my trust for the staff team has also recently been proven wrong. I suggest that the staff team acknowledge their mistakes, consult the community about important decisions, and form transparent plans. I also suggest they change the staff acceptance criteria to better fit current needs.
If they don't listen yeah this server is going to die, you and the top OSU player screwing around won't do any good

 

There is nothing constructive about this comment. Yes, the current staff team is problematic but your attacks against these individuals will only worsen the situation. I agree with most of your ideas but the way you present them is needlessly hostile.

If you don't trust the staff team in doing the right thing, you will feel the need to closely observe and control everything they do, which is the definition of micromanagement. Of course, solid plans need to be made, and the community needs to be consulted for important decisions. A real-time, public information source would be sufficient for all other purposes, whether it be Trello or the tool you prefer.

 

• (Reset) Consolidate the server into ONE towny world with minimal "distractions" like minigames

This might take the shape of spawn, towny, wild, minigame. The exact organisation should be ironed out, but what is absolutely unacceptable is having two towny worlds with a fifteen-player peak-time crowd, and then wanting to add fucking minigames on top of it! There is NO reason for skyblock to be in development. I don't really care how unique or interesting you think it is, it is not going to accomplish anything with regards to bringing new players on (it's literally already advertised because the server ads aren't actually updated, lmao)

This is also completely subjective, but I feel like minigames attract the younger crowd, which is used to instant gratification in games, and more generally doesn't want to invest the time required into building large projects in towns. It can take months to build a town into a metropolis or even into something one would consider large, and that isn't something that appeals to immature children, which is a good thing.

resetting the server appears to be the vastly popular opinion outside of the friend group, and even some of them agree with it bc they see that the server is dying

additional arguments include the fact that the economy is already completely controlled by anyone established. it will take new players hours daily of grinding to really compete, and with the server the way it is nobody's staying anyway

• Assemble a council primarily comprising older players and those from outside the existing influential friend group as a significant source of feedback and suggestions for the reset

This is going to anger the already existing "community" (one friend group), but according to basically everyone that played in the revamp but doesn't play anymore, they alienate people that aren't like them. Not only that, but the server's literal top in the past two months or so is ~25 people. Usually, it's between 10-15. Taking this friend group's suggestions is what got the player count down from maybe 70 when the revamp hit back to what it was before. They are clearly not who you should be listening to in order to grow the server.

Most importantly, CONCRETE PLANS need to made out of this. The community needs to know EXACTLY what is planned to be done. Almost nobody trusts the staff anymore because of their lack of transparency. Things need to be clearly outlined and then completed.

• Economy: Nerf gambling

this is pretty self-explanatory, it's absolutely retarded that people can get (consistently) to baltop just by gambling, and its actually nothing new. dicing should be way less effective. Frankly, I think gambling would be best off, at least against the server directly, severely favouring the house. Players will then make casinos that also favour the house.

@PseudoGod is very knowledgeable on this topic. i don't really care what the friend group thinks of him, I know that he is someone who should be consulted and worked with to make the eco as good as possible. From the beginning, this was a towny server with an economy. It needs to actually function in order for the server to be enjoyable. (so if you don't want his help at least find capable people and listen to them)

• Staff

The current staff team is too large. Moreover, when a lot of people in the friend group that has basically killed the server are staff, other people get alienated. I hate to use deinen's words, but this should be treated like a business. Just today, we were having a serious conversation regarding trying to revitalise the server and we had staff members come in saying random unfunny bullshit. (Specifically, it was calling another person a bean. You can't make this shit up.)
@7acespade has a lot to say about this (and he's right in that a lot of staff are literally just the same person copy-pasted) as well. @minetifa experienced this as well.

and i mean seriously? somebody joins with 9 posts, an application with like one fucking comma in three paragraphs, and gets helper? Why was this problem compounded? Because you wanted him to stay?
not to beat on the guy but his application would have been ripped apart years ago when ppl actually played, and the funny part is i'm pretty sure we had like maybe double-2.5x the staff for 40 times the playerbase

• Clue needs to assert ownership

Fuzzlr does nothing. That's the bottom line. I can't even remember the last time the guy actively played on the server. All he's done for the past half decade is log in sporadically, say hi, and leave. His ownership of the server consists of downright awful decisions like dropping the player count from 1,000+ to 300-350 literally overnight in 2013, and he seems to not care in the slightest that his server has died. That's fine, he's probably a busy guy and hasn't had the time to bother with the server. He should just give up, or sell, ownership, if that's how he's going to treat a server where the playerbase actually wants things to improve.

Simply put, when Clueless can't fix basic things like server list advertisements being literally 3+ years old because he doesn't have access, and Fuzzlr can't be bothered to do it even though it takes a matter of minutes at most, that's a problem.

i might edit this post in the future if i remember more things or someone brings up new ideas

 

Micromanagement never works. It increases work and stress for all parties involved while accomplishing nothing. What we need is an understanding between everyone or else any attempts will fail. That includes both staff and nonstaff. I wonder what happened to the meep Tello but keeping that public and up to date sounds like a good first step.

 

So for my actual input, your thread and your suggestions are like if somebody took a ton of psychedelics, heard what the vast majority of the playerbase wanted and then decided to vomit it on a forum post.