Plans for the Community?

[Psycho]

Hi there, this question was briefly discussed in the January 6th Community Meeting with input from some of the staff related to SMP and other servers. I figured that there should be a thread since it's the beginning of the year and I'd really like to see more input from Staff and Players alike who are still interested in seeing this Community thrive.

Anyone that's willing to contribute with ideas/suggestions which could provide tangible results in improving this Community's current situation - anything really - would be nice to see. If your idea requires a a new thread then make one if you can.

There's an SMP in progress and it seems like it's doing well with the addition of new staff and an Update with what's going on. There just isn't a set release date, so who knows when it'll be officially released except for the SMP Admin. Although, it just seems like we're putting "all of our eggs in one basket" and hoping for this SMP to become successful by taking a strategic amount of time to make sure it's 100% ready. Which is fine, but considering that the other Minecraft Servers don't seem to be doing so well -- what happens between now and when SMP is official?

RoF was supposed to have a Prestige update that was teased back in May 2017. I suppose it's still a work in progress but I hope that there will be more improvements and shorter rounds to encourage player retention.

Create has a new Admin. I honestly don't know where it's heading anymore. The weekly ((̲̅ ̲̅(̲̅C̲̅r̲̅a̲̅y̲̅o̲̅l̲̲̅̅a̲̅( ̲̅((> color is getting old and I'd rather see updates related to the server instead of that. Anything to get new players and ways to keep to them would be nice.

AoD seems to be okay, I guess? It received nice updates during the previous holiday months. As with RoF and Create, AoD could probably use new or interesting gamemodes to encourage players to come back. I liked it when there were groups of people playing at one time and just going through a bunch of gamemodes/maps and having fun in general.

Then you have TTT, with a recent Thread related to it's whereabouts. It's been awhile since it has been out of service to the Community and according to that thread, it doesn't seem like there's a set date as the Admin seems to be busy with other aspects.

The Community Events with games other than Minecraft seem great. I don't really take part in them, nor do I see anything wrong with the events. Maybe another round of voting for Event suggestions would be good to get a bit more people interested in future events?

Advertising. I really like the graphic design and illustration work that's posted in the News/Events posts. It's refreshing and nice to look at. I just looked at the Twitter and Facebook pages and there's nothing related to EscapeRestart's 25 Days of Festivity. The weekly r/mcservers post for EscapeRestart isn't posted as much as it should be. Promoting Events and certain Threads on social media sites could be a bit consistent than what is happening right now.

Sorry if I'm all over the place on this post. I just wanted to convey my thoughts, or lack thereof, on the servers and what, if anything, could be done to help improve where we're at. Things could be better.

So, what are the plans for this Community for 2018? Staff?

 

[Catcocomics]

RoF was supposed to have a Prestige update that was teased back in May 2017. I suppose it's still a work in progress but I hope that there will be more improvements and shorter rounds to encourage player retention.

Stiiiiiiill waiting to hear about when the 5 special cosmetic effects I was promised will be implemented SirComputer

but considering that the other Minecraft Servers don't seem to be doing so well

Just because Mineplex is finally about to kick the bucket (or is at least just clinging on to dear life) doesn't mean everyone else is, though I have noted that some servers trying to bring about a revival to their community (us included) are having some amount of difficulty.


I think, more than much else, we need the SMP to work, and as I recall with the previous SMP, we had well over 100 players join (can't give an exact number).
Since I hear promises of making things work properly on launch and stuff, there is a very good chance that we'll retain most of whatever wave of people comes pouring in, at least for the duration of the SMP.
Of course, if we want such people to stay after the SMP, we've gotta update the other servers and give them some events, be they stand-alone and for that one specific server (like RoF LMS), or community-wide/cross-server (like the 25 days xmas).

I'm also kind of trying to get Youtube going for me (finally have something to convert AVI files to MP4 without some scummy "we say we're free, but because you didn't buy, here's our water mark"), which I'm already wanting to tie that in with this community. However, spring term has just started, and I'm making an adventure map on Terraria, so progress may be slow for a couple more weeks (and the holidays were no help at all, either).

 

[SirComputer]

Stiiiiiiill waiting to hear about when the 5 special cosmetic effects I was promised will be implemented SirComputer

I looked back through the forum PM and Discord, and I can only see you telling me everything was fine. I’ll add that to my todo list then.

Just because Mineplex is finally about to kick the bucket

This is intriguing - where did you find that?

—

As I’ve mentioned before at meetings, we will have a larger post out very soon about some staff changes (spoilers: I’m getting rid of CA!) and large changes planned to our server lineup. We’ve got the core things we wanted to do before we made the thread ironed out, so that might be next week or something. Ideally, it’d be at the Community Meeting, but it may be a bit close. We’ll see.

Prestige Update has taken far too long, mainly due to my management, the strain of being a CA and the need for lots of building (lack of staff could have been resolved). However, it’s getting to the point where we should be able to discuss release.

Just a short post while I don’t have much time.

 

[Catcocomics]

This is intriguing - where did you find that?

daily Mineplex playerbase at all-time low, and just about everyone I meet on there now says the server is already dead.
It will probably hold out maybe a few more months, but idk, I've only seen a server die once, and it was much smaller and died for a different reason.

 

[Infected_alien8_]

We should, as a community, have several weeks before the SMP release where we spam-vote the MC servers on the advertised websites.

I mean I don't really know a lot about these voting sites but I'm pretty sure that if enough people do it for several weeks, it'd significantly increase our chances of getting a wave of new players, and if the SMP is good, and we do other stuff at the same time, we can lock people in, if that's what people want.

Imagine a few weeks where everyone in the community decides to actually try to push for an actual, final revival, once and for all. One final spark. Put all the love you have for the community and all the frustration and all the nostalgia that you may have into that one final push before the SMP and see how far we can go. The final battle where we put everything we've got into it. Then we can't say we didn't try.

 

[Notme]

Add revards like 1000 cookies for RoF, 1000 money for AoD and 1000 topians for Create cosmetics as voting rewards.
Also shorten RoF rounds to like 10 minutes + "amount of player" minutes max up to 30 min.

 

[Iggish]

We should, as a community, have several weeks before the SMP release where we spam-vote the MC servers on the advertised websites.

I think we should try and get more people consistently voting now, instead of just before SMP.

How about everyone who has read / reading this thread votes? That'd be a good start.
VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE

 

[Infected_alien8_]

I think we should try and get more people consistently voting now, instead of just before SMP.

How about everyone who has read / reading this thread votes? That'd be a good start.
VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE

I'll bribe people with Jaffa cakes, worked like a charm in mafia!

 

[Danni122112]

Add revards like 1000 cookies for RoF, 1000 money for AoD and 1000 topians for Create cosmetics as voting rewards.
Also shorten RoF rounds to like 10 minutes + "amount of player" minutes max up to 30 min.

SMP will have a solid voting reward, so there is that at least.

 

[Hex]

Create has a new Admin. I honestly don't know where it's heading anymore. The weekly ((̲̅ ̲̅(̲̅C̲̅r̲̅a̲̅y̲̅o̲̅l̲̲̅̅a̲̅( ̲̅((> color is getting old and I'd rather see updates related to the server instead of that. Anything to get new players and ways to keep to them would be nice.

New Create admin popping in! I have... some interesting plans in store for the future of Create, which I have detailed somewhat with some other admins, and will be writing up something for Create staff to get the ball rolling. I don't really want to talk about it too much right now, as I'd rather keep this as a low-key thing - but you will definitely be seeing some fairly large changes soon. This all ties in with SirC's post, as I don't really plan on announcing much until we all announce the big changes that are upcoming.

If you or anyone else is at all interested in the future of Create, want to help - or figure out if you can help, PM me! I want this to be heavily influenced by Creates playerbase, and lots of ideas will help me start faster.

Advertising. I really like the graphic design and illustration work that's posted in the News/Events posts. It's refreshing and nice to look at. I just looked at the Twitter and Facebook pages and there's nothing related to EscapeRestart's 25 Days of Festivity. The weekly r/mcservers post for EscapeRestart isn't posted as much as it should be. Promoting Events and certain Threads on social media sites could be a bit consistent than what is happening right now.

I've definitely left this out, and I haven't made it necessarily public but over the past few months I had a serious family medical emergency which caused me to become the main caregiver to my Grandmother. This happened right around December, and things are now just finally smoothing out and I'm getting the free time I normally had. Granted, theres not much to do in Advertising right now besides encourage voting and posting to MCServers, I assure you the future of this will be better. I'm also stuck running ALL the pages practically by myself at this point, which also doesn't help. I'm super sorry for all of that, and hope you can understand.

 

[Naterger]

I rarely play on the servers anymore, and very sporadically check in here. All of that aside though.. for the past 6 months or so i cannot help but notice how inactive the forums are. I've counted 9 subforums that haven't been used prior to December, more if you count the ones that haven't been posted in within the last month. To a potential new member of this community, that would be rather discouraging. Why should we expect new people to join and start adding to the content here, when we ourselves hardly do. I rarely see any players online on any of the servers, and when i do it's only one or two of them. Create and Rof seem to the only ones i even notice traffic on anymore, Although i am sure with the return of SMP we will see an influx of activity server side.

Not to be rude, but very little about this community says; "be apart of me" anymore. Remembering back to The One's and to Blocktopia there was a much more engaged community, events that were tailored around the people who were here, not the ones who we wanted to attract. Minecraft has become big enough that attracting new players by advertising and voting systems just won't cut it, there are thousands of servers/platforms to choose from. We've always been more of a tight nit community, and something of that nature would benefit more from advertising via word of mouth.

Many of us have grown up quite a lot since we first started playing minecraft and interacting with the community. I believe that plays a big part in the decline of activity here. Perhaps updating the forums & branching out into more forum based inclusivity might help stir the pot and make the forums at least look more active. For examples boards based on real life discussions, (current news, opinions on trending topics, etc.) or even Music & Art (either stuff you've created or you're really fond of). Basically anything that could stir up conversation for those of us who have started to move away from gaming but still enjoy the banter of the community.

I only play minecraft occasionally on the xbox when i feel like building, so i definitely do not have the best insight when it comes to increasing server traffic. BUT, i think it would benefit us to create short videos advertisements. Show off some of our most impressive builders, some RoF highlights, maybe show off the smp server before it goes public, and use little videos to market each server individually. I know the community still has some fantastic builders tucked away inside and they would be a great advertising asset.

These are just some of my thoughts on the current state of the community. I'd hate to see us die out after all we've made it through.

 

[Vatumok]

I think most people are aware of the best state of the community. Servers are mostly empty and forums are kinda dead though discord is still pretty active and a very good way to stay in touch with people. The issue is, and has been for a long time now, that we don't get enough new people in the community while old members start to slowly lose interest and motivation.

Right now we do have some very big changes planned to our servers which are very looking promising already. Probably many people will like these changes while other people will not however I think ultimately it can improve the community significantly. There should be more information coming out about this soon. Besides that from what I've seen the development of SMP goes very well even though it will take time. Everything we have planned will take some months. I hope people have patience and stay positive in the meantime. If any members want to help out as staff member that would also be great.

Advertising and events at this point don't get us very far, once we have a stable base then we'll set up some things. Right now advertising is a waste of money.

 

[Psycho]

Naterger I agree that the forum doesn't seem to get much love from the Community anymore except from the Mafia/Survivor players and Notme. I think Discord also has a role in why the forum activity is low. It's easier to initiate conversations, big or small, on there and has a quick turnaround. Though I think forum threads are for more in-depth conversations and are left for posterity compared to Discord discussions that easily change from subject to subject depending on the randomness of the people interacting in it. Politics, Music, and Art seem to be active topics on the Discord server that we use.
A series of server videos would be nice, but those take time to create and resources that not many people may have access to. Honestly, I would love to get into doing those again, but it's a matter if they would be worth the time and effort.

@Admins Please follow up with what you guys have mentioned. There's a Community Meeting this Saturday (20th) and it would be nice to see updates and results on what you guys are discussing behind the scenes instead of having to wait another month or so. Soon™ should be used lightly.

 

[Aqua]

So here are Aqua's valued opinions on the direction of the community:

There's an SMP in progress and it seems like it's doing well with the addition of new staff and an Update with what's going on. There just isn't a set release date, so who knows when it'll be officially released except for the SMP Admin. Although, it just seems like we're putting "all of our eggs in one basket" and hoping for this SMP to become successful by taking a strategic amount of time to make sure it's 100% ready. Which is fine, but considering that the other Minecraft Servers don't seem to be doing so well -- what happens between now and when SMP is official?

delete it.

RoF was supposed to have a Prestige update that was teased back in May 2017. I suppose it's still a work in progress but I hope that there will be more improvements and shorter rounds to encourage player retention.

delete it.

Create has a new Admin. I honestly don't know where it's heading anymore. The weekly ((̲̅ ̲̅(̲̅C̲̅r̲̅a̲̅y̲̅o̲̅l̲̲̅̅a̲̅( ̲̅((> color is getting old and I'd rather see updates related to the server instead of that. Anything to get new players and ways to keep to them would be nice.

delete it.

AoD seems to be okay, I guess? It received nice updates during the previous holiday months. As with RoF and Create, AoD could probably use new or interesting gamemodes to encourage players to come back. I liked it when there were groups of people playing at one time and just going through a bunch of gamemodes/maps and having fun in general.

just fucking delete it already jesus.

Then you have TTT, with a recent Thread related to it's whereabouts. It's been awhile since it has been out of service to the Community and according to that thread, it doesn't seem like there's a set date as the Admin seems to be busy with other aspects.

delet- ohwaitnvm

The Community Events with games other than Minecraft seem great. I don't really take part in them, nor do I see anything wrong with the events. Maybe another round of voting for Event suggestions would be good to get a bit more people interested in future events?

These were a pretty fun idea and I'd like to see more throughout the year with maybe more variety and less centred on minecraft. The whole Christmas competition was pretty fun (shout out to Arelic) and I think with a bit more forethought and help from other staff it could be something to be repeated maybe even more often than just Christmas.

Advertising. I really like the graphic design and illustration work that's posted in the News/Events posts. It's refreshing and nice to look at. I just looked at the Twitter and Facebook pages and there's nothing related to EscapeRestart's 25 Days of Festivity. The weekly r/mcservers post for EscapeRestart isn't posted as much as it should be. Promoting Events and certain Threads on social media sites could be a bit consistent than what is happening right now.

Lmao psycho you keep bringing this up but who the actual fuck is going to look at the twitter or facebook of a dying minecraft community. This is beyond pointless and is just adding stress to the clusterfuck that is the community. If you desperately care SO MUCH about it, you make a 3rd party account advertising it jfc.

Either way, the obvious best solution for the community would be to become a gaming hub on discord for friends to chat and play games together with the occasional staff run event to keep interest.. Might be an idea to run a small dedi to occasionally host games like minecraft if popularity spikes but otherwise save money by axing off dumb servers that are already comatosed and brain dead. And hey, if this picks up and the community starts to grow as a social hub you could then invest in hosting servers on active games like gmod once we have enough players to form a dedicated player base.

 

[Catcocomics]

Might be an idea to run a small dedi to occasionally host games like minecraft if popularity spikes but otherwise save money by axing off dumb servers that are already comatosed and brain dead.

Cut us off from our roots, then we'll be naught but a tumbleweed bouncing around everywhere, dead and unable to grow anymore.

Honestly though, I'm pretty sure our minecraft servers are more active than our forums at this point.

I've counted 9 subforums that haven't been used prior to December, more if you count the ones that haven't been posted in within the last month. To a potential new member of this community, that would be rather discouraging.

I've tried to help mitigate this a few times by trying to start new RPs in the RP section, but no one really seems to want to join in if I host, and no one else seems arsed enough to be a host, and I think me trying to host a RP now is pretty much just a joke/meme (or at least, that's the impression I got the last time I tried).

 

[Danni122112]

Not to be rude, but very little about this community says; "be apart of me" anymore. Remembering back to The One's and to Blocktopia there was a much more engaged community, events that were tailored around the people who were here, not the ones who we wanted to attract. Minecraft has become big enough that attracting new players by advertising and voting systems just won't cut it, there are thousands of servers/platforms to choose from. We've always been more of a tight nit community, and something of that nature would benefit more from advertising via word of mouth

This is the reason I dont really care that much about advertising or voting at the moment.

We actually have a steady flow of new players, several new ones every single day, and several old members (havent been here since 2011 old), and also several people who was here more recently.

The issue? They just leave straight away.

I just think it would be better to use our resources on making it better here before we advertise. If we got an event coming up, sure advertise it, since then we have something to actually advertise. 3 empty servers wont be brought to life by advertising, no matter how much we advertise.

 

[Psycho]

This is the reason I dont really care that much about advertising or voting at the moment.

There has to be a correlation between how the servers were doing and the way players were voting over time. I think Raxo would know. Voting started when I was CA and I think the idea of voting was a nice and new idea for the players, especially when it came down to receiving new rewards. I suppose part of the influx of voting was from reminding and encouraging others to vote too.

Around that Jan '17 area was when Primordia was released. I don't think that the Primordia server had any /voting options and the majority of the playerbase was on that server most of the time compared to the others. The lack of /vote on Primordia has to be a good reason why voting declined during that time. Hopefully Danni's SMP will have good voting rewards to encourage players to vote daily.

After Primordia ended, I guess that's when the novelty of voting was lost to the players - I don't know if any new rewards were given or if staff encouraged voting, but that graph just shows a huge difference between Summer 2016 and 2017.

I'm certain that there are a few variables to consider why voting was lackluster during 2017, but one thing that sticks out is that there's obviously something wrong and if nothing is done then what's the point of continuing on with this community?

 

[Danni122112]

I don't think that the Primordia server had any /voting options and the majority of the playerbase was on that server most of the time compared to the others. The lack of /vote on Primordia has to be a good reason why voting declined during that time.

Ye, much could have been done different.

if nothing is done then

I would say quite a lot is being done with this community, and while you are very interested in voting and advertising, I am wondering if time you spent on this would have been better for the community if you hosted a movie night or some other event.

Other than that, how many people have you talked to that came here from voting pages, or came here from other advertisement pages?

I know about exactly 0 active community members that came here from those.

I would say we have a steady influx of new players (first join to the server) to this community, usually about 0-6 on our servers, every, single day.

I have spent some time trying to talk to them, and I would say that around 90% of the people that responded, and are old community members who has not been here in 5+ years.

The rest I have gotten a bit of different answers, some were reccimendd by friends. The rest found it browsing the internet.

Some found a YouTube video searching for lava survival, the others, I think this was literally like 2 people just said google, whatever that means.

I am not saying don’t vote, or anything like that, but from what I have not seen it being in a single new player that stayed more than 15 minutes.

Another issue is that they just leave, no one is staying anymore when they join our servers, because they are empty, and/or boring to them. I honestly don’t see the point in voting, I myself hate doing it, filling out what part of a picture is a street sign, does it include the pole?, doing this three times for what I don’t see as anything good for us. I just don’t understand how this will help us, even if it would bring in more players, until we release another server, what is the point.

SMP will have a voting system, because it can’t fucking hurt, and the players will get a reward for it so it’s not pointless to them, but my question is:

Have we anything to show for our voting efforts, a single active member in our community?

 

[Notme]

There has to be a correlation between how the servers were doing and the way players were voting over time. I think Raxo would know. Voting started when I was CA and I think the idea of voting was a nice and new idea for the players, especially when it came down to receiving new rewards. I suppose part of the influx of voting was from reminding and encouraging others to vote too.

Around that Jan '17 area was when Primordia was released. I don't think that the Primordia server had any /voting options and the majority of the playerbase was on that server most of the time compared to the others. The lack of /vote on Primordia has to be a good reason why voting declined during that time. Hopefully Danni's SMP will have good voting rewards to encourage players to vote daily.

After Primordia ended, I guess that's when the novelty of voting was lost to the players - I don't know if any new rewards were given or if staff encouraged voting, but that graph just shows a huge difference between Summer 2016 and 2017.

I'm certain that there are a few variables to consider why voting was lackluster during 2017, but one thing that sticks out is that there's obviously something wrong and if nothing is done then what's the point of continuing on with this community?

Well offline voting was broken and still is broken - it doesn't count all votes.
Sometimes servers don't see, that I voted on them at all.
Also reward on RoF is 10x too low and AoD - 5x too low.
Also Minecraftforums needs you to wait 24 hours before you can vote next time - it forces to remember players, when they voted last time.
PlanetMinecraft was like this too, but they changed it.
On MinecraftServers you can vote anytime you want every day.

 

[Psycho]

I remember asking new players how they came to find the server, whenever I was on one, just to see whether the voting pages were getting hits - yeah people say they found it through looking up "lava survival" but others found it through the PMC server list or when pages were setup in MF and PMC to promote server content. To be honest, without those voting pages and threads on MF and PMC, I think that there wouldn't have been a player influx back then. Hell, we were lucky enough to have players from another community migrate to our Create server because it was obviously better than where they came from.

I guess around that time, server content was fresh, especially with the resuscitation of RoF which subsequently had a refresh, Create's and AoD's new content, TTT being rereleased, and AoD 2.5. It was new content which brought players and increased player retention -- they eventually voted or told their friends, and that's likely how the servers were kept active back then. Same thing could be said for 2017, the servers received updates from time to time, but the correlation between the new server content and votes didn't compare to the previous year.

 

[Aqua]

Can we get a GMod SMP?

 

[Notme]

Can we get a Minecraft TTT?

Its good idea >:D

 

[Catcocomics]

had my Youtube channel sitting idle the past three years.
Think it's time to get things going so I can get AdSense going on my end (funny enough, I'm already eligible for monetization in spite of my low view count says I'm eligible when looking at the big thing of stuff I'm allowed to do, but then... well, whatever.) while also greatly aiding revival strength and chance.
Making thread elsewhere for more specifics.

If anyone asks, I've decided that I can't wait anymore just so I can prove to my dad that I don't need a fucking part-time job to get good at life (no offense to anyone actually stuck with one, it's just he's trying to fear-pressure me into getting one - regardless of all the other probably most certainly better ways to actually get money - and I'm having none of it).

 

[Aqua]

had my Youtube channel sitting idle the past three years.
Think it's time to get things going so I can get AdSense going on my end (funny enough, I'm already eligible for monetization in spite of my low view count says I'm eligible when looking at the big thing of stuff I'm allowed to do, but then... well, whatever.) while also greatly aiding revival strength and chance.
Making thread elsewhere for more specifics.

Hate to burst yer bubble pal but YouTube's new monetisation scheme requires 4,000 hours of channel watch time in the past 12 months and a minimum of 1000 subs.

 

[Catcocomics]

Hate to burst yer bubble pal but YouTube's new monetisation scheme requires 4,000 hours of channel watch time in the past 12 months and a minimum of 1000 subs.

I'm aware of this and wish to continue anyways.
You can either help by being in my videos or subscribing to my channel and helping me reach that goal, or we can live and let live; I don't have time to get derailed by nay-sayers, so either assist or stand aside, please.