Community

[Vatumok]

So lately there have been popping up some new threads where in my opinions basically non-issues are being discussed. I don't think language or moderation are a problem these days. The recent problems originates more from a gap in the community and some people get grouped (unfairly) with some trolls.I don't want to discuss any of those former things here, and I think it's pointless at all, but I want to talk about the gap in the community.

Yesterday after the staff talked for a while some actually important questions that were asked: "Why haven't we moved away from minecraft?" It seems like many people seem to share this opinion and this leads to a lot of fighting within the community. What people don't seem to think about is causality. Many people think that the community/other servers are doing poorly because we don't stop putting resources into MC. However, I think that a big part is the other way around. Because it's very hard to actually venture into other servers we still keep our minecraft servers up.

Why is it hard to just move to other games? What I see is that many people that play league or any other game are doing it with a group of friends that met -here- in the community. It's really hard to get a good inflow of players with these games except for new friends joining the group. To get more players the best way is to have good servers and honestly I am all for hosting other game servers if there is the interest. You can't just say this is league community as that is a group of friends, not a community. It's way harder to join a clique (yuck, hate using that word) than a community. Whereas minecraft may not be doing too hot there is still a decent playerbase and when you remove those servers (which is not necessary resource wise right now) you have even less ways to build the community up.

What we should try to do is host as many servers as there is interest in (interest should also mean more players and more donations of course) while also providing support for games like league, WoW, diablo. We provide servers to meet people and join the forums where they can join other members to play other games, while we also make friends/guilds in other games which brings them in the community. It becomes like a network where you can decide with friends to play or make new friends. People that meet in league can decide to play some minecraft when they feel like it or the other way around, every game can reinforce another game making a stable structure.

More community events was also brought up and I think this is very important because the gap isn't as big as it seems and it will make TTT and minecraft people more friendly towards each other by getting to know them. Really any fun way to spend an evening.

Most importantly though, is be respectful or people even if you really disagree with them, many people can learn from this. I dislike hearing stuff like: "Shut all MC servers down" or "League/TTT people are all stupid trolls and we should only do MC" while the opposite opinion isn't valued. You may still hold those opinions but respect that many people do not so bring it in a friendly manner.

Thanks for reading.

Kind regards,
Vat

 

[Enderfive]

So lately there have been popping up some new threads where in my opinions basically non-issues are being discussed. I don't think language or moderation are a problem these days. The recent problems originates more from a gap in the community and some people get grouped (unfairly) with some trolls.I don't want to discuss any of those former things here, and I think it's pointless at all, but I want to talk about the gap in the community.

If enough people think it's a problem, it's a problem. Let's keep that in the other thread, shall we?

***​

I agree that there are some rifts in the community. That's to be expected, I suppose, with us being a public community, having multiple servers and having groups of friends that think alike or play on the same servers mostly. People forming groups isn't the problem here. The problem is that some of these groups become detached from the rest of the community and find their laughs and entertainment inside that narrow group of people, never really venturing much further to become acquainted with the rest of the community and through that only deepening the rifts. It's like a tree, the community overall is the roots and the trunk, but the people and groups of friends become the branches, some further away from the other branches than the rest.

The way to fix this isn't to get rid of servers or to add new ones, in my opinion. Removing servers will only drive the playerbase of those servers away and adding new ones spreads the playerbase even thinner among the greater number of servers, thus bringing different players further away from each other. What I think we should be doing is hosting community-wide events, that could potentially draw the interest of as many people as possible. Hosting server-specific events is fine, too, but you gotta keep in mind that the people that don't particularly like that specific server are unlikely to show up. So for the purpose of bringing the community together as a whole, we really need to do things like movie nights and karaoke and other stuff like that which is fun and accessible to pretty much anyone. Looking back I see a lot of event servers over the last year, which is great, but those event servers only appeal to certain people, namely the ones that are interested in that particular gamemode or game. We have Discord, which is even easier to join than Teamspeak, why not use it to actually do stuff?

Now, when we're looking at ways to expand into other games, the one thing I believe we can all agree on is that we need people interested in that particular game we're trying to expand into, otherwise we'll be building houses that no one wants to live in. So the first and most obvious thing to do in that regard is to actually get an idea of what the people that are currently in the community are playing. That's relatively easy to do, just make a thread where everyone can suggest games they like to play and slap a poll on top with presumably popular options with "Other (please tell us below)" option at the bottom. From there, once we have an idea of the different playerbases that are represented in the community, the next step would be to single out the more popular ones and the ones with strong social elements. I don't have any examples of what this might be other than Minecraft, since I haven't actually played anything much for over a year myself, but you get the idea.

And then, finally, and this is important, we need to get the community itself actively involved. Staff and advertisers and such is cool and all, but if it's just the staff working towards a goal for everyone, we're not gonna get anywhere, since the manpower is that much smaller and people are always more interested in stuff they've put effort in as well, so if we could get the community in general involved with these attempts to expand, that would be absolutely awesome. Word of mouth is the best way of advertising we have, so we need to utilise that. Getting the players, not just the staff, to advertise the community has the potential to work wonders. If you're a player in a game somewhere and you play it with friends, either real life friends or people you met in-game, tell them about us. Just mention the name. If you're in a guild somewhere that doesn't really have an official community of their own, drop the link to our forums and tell them what a nice bunch we are. If you're in a game with your own group of people, and there's an event coming up here that could be fun, get the word out there. This relies on the people that are already here actually being friendly and welcoming towards newcomers, but it's not that difficult to achieve, honestly. A little effort in that regard goes a long way.

Straying a bit off-topic and onto the topic of the other thread, concerning the last point Vatu made, I'm personally curious as to what your definition of respect/disrespect is. "Shut down MC servers" is an opinion and in no way disrespectful towards anyone. "Shut down MC servers, the only people who play on them are stupid 11 year old idiots that make me cringe every time I see them", now that's disrespectful and should be moderated, not just discouraged, but if there isn't a personal attack towards someone, I don't really see how anyone's disrespectful by arguing that their opinion is better. That's literally discussion and debating, something which is obviously necessary to get clarity on some issues that people have different ways of seeing.

 

[Vatumok]

Enderfive

I think you made some very good points but I'm gonna have to disagree on the last one.
Even though a post may not be insulting that doesn't mean that it's not disrespectful. Like I said in the last part of the thread, it's okay to have that opinion but you have to consider context, a word you've used yourself a lot. Here are some reasons why that message is considered disrespectful:
- Several staff members are still working hard on improving every server.
- Often those posts are made in the wrong thread when it's about how to improve a server (that RoF thread, for example).
- There is no plan or idea on how to make the community, rather the problems are blamed on not moving away from MC.
It's perfectly fine if you make an opinion in the appropriate place and come with a good reason why it should be removed and ideas on how to go on.

"If enough people think it's a problem, it's a problem. Let's keep that in the other thread, shall we?"
Last word much? cmonBruh

 

[Enderfive]

Okay, good, I see where our disagreement on this stems from now.

- Several staff members are still working hard on improving every server.

I don't really see why the fact that people are working on something is a valid reason to not express concerns about it or to suggest a different approach. If the project is scrapped after people have put work in it, then yes, it sucks for these people, but if that ultimately leads to a better result, wouldn't it be better to scrap it earlier rather than later? It's entirely possible to respect the work someone has put in something and at the same time think that the project itself is a mistake and in no way does it imply disrespect towards the people that have worked on that project so far.

- Often those posts are made in the wrong thread when it's about how to improve a server (that RoF thread, for example).

In threads such as what you gave here as an example, it's necessary to first figure out whether or not the server could actually have any value, to avoid the exact same situation as you described in your previous sentence, where people work towards something and at some point find that their work is unappreciated or ultimately irrelevant. Then, if the answer to that initial question is yes, we can start discussing different measures to actually improve the server, if it's even viable at that moment.

- There is no plan or idea on how to make the community, rather the problems are blamed on not moving away from MC.

People don't always have a gameplan, that's okay, not all people can be creative. Even identifying the problems can be useful.

All in all, I don't think any of the situations you describe actually are disrespectful towards anyone in any way. If it someone truly feels like they're offended in situations like these, it's best to take a step back and try to figure out if any disrespect was actually intended, and if not, there really isn't any problem, is there?

 

[Aqua]

cmonBruh

Vatu's turning into PC Principal.

 

[Comp]

If we are not already, it is a good idea to have an announcement on every game server that the community has other servers available for different games. That way, if a player joins one server and is interested, they may decide to check out the other servers, which hopefully would gain the community as a whole some new members.
I'll go ahead and put the announcement on the list for aod now.

 

[Mastersten]

If we are not already, it is a good idea to have an announcement on every game server that the community has other servers available for different games. That way, if a player joins one server and is interested, they may decide to check out the other servers, which hopefully would gain the community as a whole some new members.
I'll go ahead and put the announcement on the list for aod now.

wow m8 stealing my idea? ggwp

 

[nitasu987]

As someone who has left Minecraft for other games but has still been active around here (at least for Survivor), I wouldn't mind seeing some support for other games like WoW/ESO (mainly cuz that's what I play). Really good ideas here, guys!!

 

[Jayfeather]

My problem is that Minecraft is extremely hard to pull off (fully noted and evidenced in the past couple years) but TTT got up and running without any effort. I don't think it's as hard as you've said for certain games (aka, GMod servers are easy as of right now)
Edit: Non hostable games only need a teamspeak server to function because it gives us the means to communicate with our clique