Things Need To Change.

I think stability is the wrong word. The main thing in my opinion is the flow of money. Who ends up with the money currently and how can we get the money to keep flowing between players.

 

All of your criticisms and suggestions were spot on, but will you elaborate on a way to make it simpler? We need a fully fleshed out plan if this is going to happen

--- Double Post Merged, Dec 16, 2015, Original Post Date: Dec 16, 2015 ---

To be perfectly honest, I forgot that Fuzzlr existed until you said something

 

If Fuzzlr can not even take 5 minutes a day to atleast say "hi" or something to the community that is paying his bills, that saddens me. The least he could do is have a co-owner chosen from a collective of the server's community.

 

I'll preface my response by noting that anyone who doesn't think there's a problem here should look at what happened when the PrestonPlayz video went live. We had an influx of new visitors, and after a very short time, the user counts went right back down to previous levels. This server clearly failed to keep them around, so there's definitely a problem, and all that's left to discuss is the nature of the problem, in order to inform potential solutions.

I agree that there are community issues (and what community doesn't have issues?), but there are also technical issues that are not only easier to quantify and solve, I would argue, but they're also higher priority: fixing those issues would contribute to solving other issues among the community and help the server grow.

In my view, the larger problem isn't the number or quality of the tech staff (although there's one particular, essential skill set that appears to be missing on the tech team, more on that later) so much as there is a philosophy problem with the tech staff. It was announced this calendar year that they would take a new approach that would essentially eliminate beta testing, allowing for more agility in rolling out new features for the community. As an IT guy myself, you didn't have to tell me where that would go: crashes, rollbacks, plugins frequently enabled and then disabled, etc. The results are in, and they've been entirely predictable.

People come to a server with a certain set of basic expectations, and if those can't be met, they quickly move on. Among those expectations are that they should not find themselves in the void at least once per session (to give credit, time spent in the void per event has noticeably decreased, though the number of void events appear to be unchanged), that the server should not lag severely when there are few users, their expensive items should not disappear from their inventories on a weekly basis, their vshop inventories should not disappear under mysterious circumstances, etc. These are all basic technology issues that have nothing to do with the community or the economy, but they have a direct impact on both. How do you attract new users to stick around when you can't meet their most basic expectations?

Stability and performance need to become a priority. Modifying the current development philosophy is an obvious first step in that direction. If further improvement requires investing in server upgrades, then that should be considered as a potential return on investment, because spending money on marketing accomplishes nothing if the new audience doesn't stay on board and donate for perks.

Because lagging/crashing is such an issue, and based on reading a forum post where a helper quoted a tech as saying there was no server CPU issue due to total CPU consumption being slightly above 50% (which told me as a systems expert that the person looking at the server is uninformed on the basics of how single-threaded applications work), it appears that the tech staff largely consists of application programmers. I mean, it makes perfect sense: you don't get cool new games like Laser Strike without Java experts who can create that. But in the professional world, you don't find Java/C/COBOL/whatever programmers who are also experts in system performance/stability. That's a different team, with a different set of skills, whose role is, in simplest terms, to protect the systems from both users and developers... with the developers representing the greater threat. That's no disrespect to programmers, it simply reflects the reality that they have great power, which means they can (and will) accidentally do great harm.

Y'all need to reexamine your server hosting arrangement, and either get them to start providing system support, find a new hosting service who will, or consider self-hosting and adding the system skill set to the tech team.

 

someone TLR me on this whole thread

 

We're getting lots of new players, but the majority of them don't stay because reading signs is hard.

 

How about... another server?

It seems quite far-fetched... but hear me out here. All of the people who want to stay on this current meep and do whatever can do it here, and we can make a new server tailored towards what everyone agrees as good. Furthermore, the server doesn't need to be made by the current staff and Fuzzlr, the community and the former members of the meep community can make this server.

I believe it's possible, what about you guys?

 

There are a lot of reasons as to why I left the server. What you said explained was my whole thought process, along with other personal reasons. I will comeback if there is a reset. I want my meebles gone, and I want my rank removed.
When you have EVERYTHING, the game sucks. There is nothing fun to do, and nothing to work towards. I loved the game when I had first joined, when I had nothing, and I enjoyed working my way up the ladder. For the people who join today, there is no good way for them to go up the ladder, or at least no fun way. I was thinking of just throwing away my meebles, and never playing on my ultimate account every again. I experimented, and started to play on my regular account, and have a fresh start. I got bored in the first 15 minutes.
People are saying that people will leave when there is a reset. Well I can already smell the BS. Most of you guys devote half your fricken lives to this server, and I highly doubt that you just gonna leave. This is what you gonna do:
"OMFG, MEEPCRAFT JUST RESET. I HATE THIS SERVER!@(@(#$*@(Y(#(@*(@* I WORKED SO #(&@# HARD! IM NEVER @($&##$ COMMING BACK @)#@*$)*@)#(($#($*@(@#)(@_%(@&($)@*%@#(_~!!!!!!!!!!!"
The next day...
Comes home from school, after thinking about the meepcraft reset all day, sits down in front of the computer. "I said I would never play meepcraft again. I already gave my attention speech, and I said hated it, and it sucks, and all that jazz... Im going to go to a different server"
The next day or two...
"This server sucks... I miss meepcraft... I think I might just go on and see what's up.."Sees that everything is reset, tries out a few things... " Well, why not I just give it a shot, and see if still good" Realizes, that this gives him memories back when he/she was a new player, and understand how much he/she enjoyed the game. He/she realizes what the whole main reason as to why he joined the server in the first place, and decides to stay with it, and starts to play all night long
After 15 hours of playing and gather materials, the old meepcrafter, is once again addicted to the game!

 

Unfortunately, that is what has happened every single time.

 

If it is just minecraft, explain to me as to why mineplex and all these other servers with thousands and thousands of players, have a growing and stable player count?

 

pros and cons


pro | resetting the server will bring some old players back so they can have a fresh start
con | resetting the server will make some players leave due to lost builds, work and money(not real money)
pro | resetting the server will give the newer players a chance because atm, if you are rich, you only get richer(unless you gamble)
con | the economy is pretty 'k' now and if we reset, the economy might go in a bad direction


if the server resets i will probably play a lot more
if the server doesn't reset i don't really care

--- Double Post Merged, Dec 17, 2015, Original Post Date: Dec 17, 2015 ---

yeah but mineplex has toxic staff and community

atleast we have people who are nice

 

But what keeps the player count at an average of ten to twenty thousand+ everyday. Why do people always go to that server to play? What is it that has all those people interested? And that is a biased statement. "at least we have people who are nice" That is debatable.

 

Not to mention that Mineplex has been featured on many lets plays and stuff of that nature. Just more publicity in general. And just because something is popular does not mean it is "better" People like Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus are proof of that notion. People are like sheep in that sense, they will instinctively go with the crowd regardless of quality.

 

Exactly my point. After the most recent reset, I cannot begin to express my hate for the idea but coming back to a fresh start where it was fair game for everyone made it a lot more entertaining and it dragged my entire attention to starting again. I personally wouldn't want to lose my rank but my items, sure. I would love to lose everything because when you have everything like you said, it simply isn't worth it anymore. There are no ways for progression for new players, well, no easy ways. There is no money flow and the economy is already dysfunctional to say the least, so yes the economy reset may be a risk but what is there to lose? Ensure a plan is set in order to make sure this doesn't happen again.

 

What about the people who paid for meebles, via the shop or selling ranks?

How would voiding purchases with their money, by resetting the meebles they paid for, keep them on the server?

 

The server means a lot to many of us. I mean, why should it be resetted or lose things? The only reason why I even came to meepcraft was because I was looking for a server where I belonged. I made so many new friends, and I've been here for almost a year. A reset would make me incredibly upset, and I would probably be crying in depression for a few nights. And that, equals an automatic quit. After I even did quit, where would I go? Where would my true home be? And most of all, would I even see any of my friends?

 

Resting the sever may help with glitches, bugs, etc. But as said here, it will cause thousands of players to leave in pure hatred, as they have amassed YEARS of work. I know this cycle, it happened to me, and as I discover the architectural beauty of minecraft and all of it's uses, I plan to stay longer. This server is simple. It's easy enough to get rich with not too much work. Look at me. 6 months I have played here I believe? I earned 720,000$, and own a town worth over a million. You're just too used to the old server. We DON'T want to reset everyone. A many of severs I left for this reason, (Unless I was Architect or Mod). Great idea, but play in North American time zones, and so many more players will be on. At 3:00pm EST there's usually 90 on. Now, at 9:41 EST, 177 people are on. That's my suggestion at least.

 

Let me point out that 100+ players at multiple times during the day is something that some server owners would die for.

 

can I -1 on a discussion thread?
Resetting the server will just make the dedicated people who do play pissed off. We had a reset awhile ago after Meep Networks and I left for months after because it just ruined the game for me.

1 am is not prime playing time. About 6 to 10 pm is. We actually have a pretty active community right now.

Yeah I agree that we should be doing more internal upgrades instead of the other things time/money are being spent most on. But we did just recently figure out a media team that should take some pressure off of the advertisement funding.

Also I have no idea who you are and I've been playing since March 2012 so I don't know how that's possible lol


EDIT: I admit I did not read that whole thing

 

Unbanning all players won't exactly help. For one, players that were banned a while ago most likely aren't going to frequently check a server they were permanently banned on, and the people who do come back are simply going to mess things up again. There's a reason why they were banned in the first place.

Furthermore, having a true reset on everything besides payed perks will cause many people to be upset. You just can't say "let's have a reset on everything, it's going to make things work out better". If it doesn't, what consequences will happen because of that? It's such a huge change that you can't really test run easily.

What is there to lose? If you look at the server's prime time, there are still a good amount of players still here. What happens when those players leave?

If you compare just a few bad eggs and say all eggs are bad that's fallacious, same goes for players and staff.