Why I really left Blocktopia, and why others will too.

[Kordra]

Now obviously I haven't been on Blocktopia in ages and lots of people never really got to know me anyways, but there lies the problem. You see, whether people want to admit it or not, there are lots of cliques on BT. And I mean lots. If you don't believe me, just open teamspeak. There is an apparent and infectious cliquey behavior that people tend to develop after spending a fair amount of time on BT. Most people will stick with the same group of people and very rarely, if ever, branch out. These anti-community and anti-social behaviors isolates and dehumanizes new players. Nobody wants to play on a server that treats them like an outcast; it doesn't matter how fun your games are.

Secondly, content has grinded to a utter and complete halt. Sure, Infection is fun for a day, then maybe you can go build something cool in BB all by yourself to be judged and critiqued by "the community" for a rank that is essentially meaningless. Followed by playing the same game of RoF with the same AFK players for what feels like an eternity. No new game modes have been released in at least 6 months and players are only coming on for the small group of friends that haven't already left.

These are the two main issues that plague Blocktopia, the first being the most important. I know lots of people will just dislike this and go about their day, but I promise BT will go nowhere until these are at the very least addressed by the community as a whole.

too da loo for now

-Kordra

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Edit: This thread had gained way more traction than I ever thought it would, and I don't want to incite any arguments so I'm going to go ahead and put this up here.

Blocktopia is lacking content and needs to put something out that can bring the community closer together. New content doesn't have to be amazing, just anything creative & participatory enough to bring attention to everyone and hopefully help people bond closer (i.e. UHC Event, Teamspeak event, Capture the Flag Event, New Gamemode for BT)
Also, people just need to be able to be accepting to others, especially when it comes to new players, as they are what fuels new innovation and ideas. And also create unlikely friendships that will last for a lifetime if allowed too. If everybody in Blocktopia could mutually agree that there are in fact cliques, then maybe we could start making steps against that, since nobody likes to feel neglected. I'm not trying to attack the server, I just felt that something needed to be said, or BT would go down in silence, and that's not okay to me. I hope everyone makes an attempt to reach out to people in the future, so maybe we can become the bigger and better Blocktopia everyone likes to talk about so much.

Thanks for reading,
Kordra

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Final Edit: I won't be returning after I write this, so I suppose this will be my official goodbye or whatever. When I made this thread, I'd hoped that I would maybe get a little acknowledgment and it would be over in a day, but obviously it didn't happen as I had expected. It's gotten to the point where people are just circlejerking and pointing out other people's flaws to make a vague sort of argument that others can get a hard on about. If you want to know why I made this thread you can read the paragraph above this one, but here's the thing. I've realized now that BT isn't going to be any different. People will always complain about this and be put down for trying to make a change for the better. The same stupidity among the masses will condemn the obvious truth because they don't like the way it looks. People will take sides and argue and bicker, only causing unnecessary drama. I'm sorry to end this on such a upsetting note, and I'm sure many people would love to see me gone anyways. Despite what I've said, it will ultimately be up to the admins to make the right choices in the future that will determine the path that not just this server will take; but also the people within it.

It was fun,
Kordra

 

[Ltin]

Despite having nothing to do with ts, I think I can agree with you here. Now thats its been brought up, its rather clear even to me, a guy who spends most of his posts in the mafia forum, and rarely ever plays Minecraft anymore.
And i think part of this is each server appeals to different people, and the only play on that server.
I spend most of my time on BT in AoD. I know a good amount of people there, and its usually a fun time.
I used to occasionally go on BB too. I dont anymore. For one: I get bored of big projects very easily. Two: when I had something I wanted to do, I was bored. I had never seen alot of the names, and people done talk much to people they dont know.

As far as content.
Coding is difficult, time consuming, and real life takes priority over an internet community of 80 something members.
People dont always have time, they wont always have time, they may not have the expertise or efficiency of coding down yet. When Mojang releases new content for minecraft weekly, they have at least 4 guys working, for a full work day, 5 days a week.
Most of blocktopia's servers have one, maybe two developers.

 

[Jivvi]

ahem me and Lee_scar are making you nice fancy 1.8 things to keep you occupied

 

[Wink]

Hello Kordra,

Thank you for your concern about the 'downfalls' of our community, but I would like to go in depth on your two main points.

1. Cliques and their consequences:
I see where you are coming from here, and it is a reasonable standpoint. But for the non-private ts groups, they are often festive and very open to new members, such as the LoL room, usually filled with people who wouldnt mind a new face. The private room convos may be where you are deriving the 'cliques' from, but they are often used (if not the staff room) for staff orientated or personal things, usually lasting a few minutes then disbanding. All the other rooms are very inviting from my experience, such as the game server channels or other games.

2. Lack of Content
We are very aware of this. But I wouldn't worry about our state of operation of content, the higher ups (and maybe even some lower staff (; ) are content generating machines, all you have to do is keep your eyes peeled. And in between the content releases, there are often competitions and other fun ways to stay involved in the community other than RoF. Try one of our game nights, maybe a movie night. Hop on after a meeting and have an informal discussion on Fallout New Vegas Vaults and their experiments. Just dig into our community, and you are sure to find some decent people to spend some time with. (not superstein )

 

[Kordra]

As far as content.
Coding is difficult, time consuming, and real life takes priority over an internet community of 80 something members.

New content brings new people, new people brings new content. No content brings no people.

 

[Ltin]

New content brings new people, new people brings new content. No content brings no people.

Would you like to take 96 hours out of your day 5 days a week?

 

[JtTorso]

New content brings new people, new people brings new content. No content brings no people.

I think you've really neglected to take into consideration that time, effort, and resources go into making new things, not to mention that we are in a deadlock with updating our servers due to the issues with bukkit. It's easy to sit there and say that you don't like the way things are and you want more but change doesn't happen overnight.

 

[Kordra]

Would you like to take 96 hours out of your day 5 days a week?

I think you've really neglected to take into consideration that time, effort, and resources go into making new things, not to mention that we are in a deadlock with updating our servers due to the issues with bukkit. It's easy to sit there and say that you don't like the way things are and you want more but change doesn't happen overnight.

No, of course I won't be doing anything, but I'm not an admin. I didn't dedicate my time to this server by taking an oath to do exactly that.

And also, content doesn't have to take 96 hours, content can be as simple as a weekly event that is inviting and creative; and even large projects aren't done all in one sitting as you described them.

 

[Ltin]

No. of course not, but I'm not an admin.

So Admins cant have lives outside BT?

I didn't dedicate my time to this server by

I never heard of an oath

Bottom line: people have lives outside BT, and ensuring one has food and shelter is more important that anything on the internet.

and even large projects aren't done all in one sitting as you described them.

I basically have no choice but to try and finosh large projects in a few sittings, otherwise I lose interest.

 

[Kordra]

So Admins cant have lives outside BT?

It's called time management

I never heard of an oath

I believe it's implied by signing up for the highest ranking position

Bottom line: people have lives outside BT, and ensuring one has food and shelter is more important that anything on the internet.

If you can't afford to take a hour or two out of everyday to help the server you uphold, I honestly don't think you should be the person representing it.

 

[Iguana]

At this point, a lot of the older members really have no incentive to play on any of the servers that are being pumped out. We've experienced all the types of servers, whether it by lava survival, or a PvP SMP, or TNT wars and what not, and it's nothing really ground-breaking or revolutionary. Nowadays Minecraft servers are going way out of the way to create completely different experiences than what has been seen in the past (whether that be the stuff on Shotbow, TheHive, or something like DungeonRealms, a project I used to work on). I put in my own request to host a server for Blocktopia using my own resources but have yet to get a reply, so I don't think they're really lacking in community help. These other servers put time, effort, money, and hire people to create these next experiences, something that Blocktopia is severely limited in doing due to financial constraints.

With this, people aren't really here for the servers anymore and are really only here for their "cliques" or friends, whether it be on Teamspeak or on the forums. If any of the people that I regularly talk to all migrated to another Teamspeak, I would probably do so too. I'm not really missing out on anything as I can still hop on the Blocktopia servers had I ever wish to, and if anything I could see some more lax Teamspeak rules had I fully moved away.

At this point, I've deeply rooted my connections on the internet to many different places and have exposed myself to a lot of different and interesting people, but what I've noticed is just people inevitably get bored of playing essentially the same content with a handful of minor variations. I don't claim to do anything original, so I'll just use my original Solitudes for example; the first few were pretty amusing with the whole RP part, but variation 2 was essentially the same with a different map, variation 3 with another new map and like a couple new features, and so forth, and as you could see the population gradually got smaller and smaller with each iteration. There would be large amounts of people near the very start just due to everyone else's friends playing to experience that "new server opening" feeling, but again, no real incentive to stay.

I have no idea whether or not I'm even hitting the same subject, but just thought I would act like an adult and type seriously for once.

Edit: only reason I typed that out was just a thought that's plagued my mind for a couple months, and as a fairly veteran member of the community I thought some people might be interested in an opinion

 

[Ronaldo]

Secondly, content has grinded to a utter and complete halt. Sure, Infection is fun for a day, then maybe you can go build something cool in BB all by yourself to be judged and critiqued by "the community" for a rank that is essentially meaningless. Followed by playing the same game of RoF with the same AFK players for what feels like an eternity. No new game modes have been released in at least 6 months and players are only coming on for the small group of friends that haven't already left.

I agree with this issue here; it's been a concern of my own in this community for a long time now. Events can a temporary solution to this (game nights, movie nights, etc.) but the same events (such as TF2 week) happen SO CONSECUTIVELY that it really gets dull after a while. To be honest, at the current point of the community and Minecraft, it's pretty much difficult to bring any sort of new content in. Even when the admins try to bring in new content (such as what they did bringing in TTT) there's always going to be flaws that will result in lack of players. With TTT, there were new faces in that server, but 90% of those new faces were griefers/RDMers/trolls. Everyone that's been a part of the community for a while didn't want to play with those type of people obviously. For our current Minecraft servers it's actually very difficult to try to come up with something new that old players will very much enjoy and attract new players from it. I had this issue when I was a Director of RoF and didn't want to disappoint the current playerbase from lack of content, but when good ideas are brought up the staff try their best to implement it.

 

[Mia]

I am very happy that this topic has been brought up because it is something that I feel Blocktopia needs to change or at least acknowledge. Now I know that people cant pump out a brand new server in a day but even when we do get new servers they seem to just be essentially the same thing with a little bit of something new. Sometimes I ask myself what even was the point of even making a new server that has essentially the same features.

1. Cliques and their consequences:
I see where you are coming from here, and it is a reasonable standpoint. But for the non-private ts groups, they are often festive and very open to new members, such as the LoL room, usually filled with people who wouldn't mind a new face. The private room convos may be where you are deriving the 'cliques' from, but they are often used (if not the staff room) for staff orientated or personal things, usually lasting a few minutes then disbanding. All the other rooms are very inviting from my experience, such as the game server channels or other games.

I tried joining a room filled with almost no one I had really known too well and honestly they didn't seem all that inviting, yes they said hi and all but then they don't seem to acknowledge you at all and seem to just go back to their own little group of friends. They may be open to new players but it doesn't mean that they actually want to have anything at all to do with them. I sometimes try conversing with players I don't usually see around but then they just move off to their usual group and I have to go back to mine. I think new players on the servers might have some trouble trying to fit into this community as it is now. New players don't want to have to try and fit in, they should just be welcomed by everyone. I believe this is the reason we just have lots of old players and not many new ones.

As Kordra said to me earlier, this isn't much of a community any more. More just like groups of friends. Whilst this can be a good thing, when the community doesn't talk to each other as a whole sometimes it feels like you have to stick to your own group and not even try to make new friends. This doesn't feel all that inviting and welcoming to me and when your friends leave, you do too because no one else really wants to talk.

Honestly this is the reason I have started to move away from Blocktopia into new communities unless this changes at least a little bit I see no reason why players wont begin to leave the community as well.

-Notice how its all the players with no ranks who believe there needs to be a change whilst op+ thinks everything is alright-

 

[Edgar Harford]

I tried joining a room filled with almost no one I had really known too well and honestly they didn't seem all that inviting, yes they said hi and all but then they don't seem to acknowledge you at all and seem to just go back to their own little group of friends. They may be open to new players but it doesn't mean that they actually want to have anything at all to do with them. I sometimes try conversing with players I don't usually see around but then they just move off to their usual group and I have to go back to mine.

Spoiler: Damn dude

I mean, here's just one of a couple of pictures I have of people's aggression when it comes to conversation...

 

[Jayfeather]

Don't destroy cliques just encourage clique interactions

 

[Jayfeather]

Fine if cliques are incapable of communicating with each other than what we have isn't cliques

edit:
This post was a response to a deleted post made by Kordra that cited the definition of a clique and the definition of a cliche. He began it by stating that I was mixing the two up

 

[Mia]

Fine if cliques are incapable of communicating with each other than what we have isn't cliques

Sometimes it feels as though this isn't the case.

 

[Kordra]

Fine if cliques are incapable of communicating with each other than what we have isn't cliques

A clique doesn't want to communicate with other cliques, thus being classified as a social group who doesn't want to invite others into their group and generally sticks to themselves: a clique.

 

[Jayfeather]

A clique doesn't want to communicate with other cliques, thus being classified as a social group who doesn't want to invite others into their group and generally sticks to themselves: a clique.

Internally we have no real issue except for a small social boundary that is broken down by the day. In regards to new players, I generally agree with you but i think it's the age gap that really makes it difficult

 

[Kordra]

Internally we have no real issue except for a small social boundary that is broken down by the day. In regards to new players, I generally agree with you but i think it's the age gap that really makes it difficult

Let's just agree to disagree here, while you maybe haven't witnessed this yourself, I'm sure many could vouch for the latter.

 

[Jayfeather]

Let's just agree to disagree here, while you maybe haven't witnessed this yourself, I'm sure many could vouch for the latter.

I'm down with that

 

[CloudBryan9]

Here are my two cents. First off, I am happy Kordra that you care about this community enough to be willing to bring up this issue.

While it is easy to say people need to talk and include others, it is actually harder in reality to happen, as much as we wish it wasn't true. (Here is question for those who disagree: In real life do you try to include/invite new people in to your close friend circle?) I am sure Blocktopia does not want to strictly regulate people on who must be included in their friend groups or who must be talked to. Might be a good idea to encourage interaction with newer faces, but in the end of the day it is up to the individual.

As for new content, yes sometimes it is frustrating waiting for new stuff to come/happen. It does take time to write up code, build new areas, plan events, etc. Yes, sometimes it is frustrating to us staff (well at least me personally) that it takes such a long time. We want the best however, not something lesser in quality. Maybe we could do more events, it will take some time to plan, but it could happen.

-Notice how its all the players with no ranks who believe there needs to be a change whilst op+ thinks everything is alright-

Please, please, please. Don't generalize that the ops+ are blind to/refuse to see the issues in the community. I understand that you are frustrated, but the issues you listed are mostly with the "no rank" players. As I said before, I am sure the last thing Blocktopia wants to do is hyper regulate how old/new players must interact with other people. All it would do is remove any enjoyment of being in the community. Should it be encouraged, yes. Forced upon us... NO.

 

[Iguana]

Alright, time to talk about the biggest 'clique', or 'social group', or whatever it is. We all want to.
The LoL clique! Most people in this group aren't overly friendly in general, post overused and sarcastic things consistently and regularly, and have driven the notion of 'satire' from amusing up to downright irritating. Sure, you can have your own little group of LoL players, but it doesn't mean you can attack other people, such as harassing people over using private rooms simply because your clique has outgrown the maximum. A lot of them can be as unpleasant as all fuck when they want to be (Looking at you, Haysagar) and show a hostile front towards newer people, or people they mightn't like so much. Something something SnapFlash. Frankly, if you at least made the effort to be welcoming, that would be swell.


On a positive note, though, it's good that the community is branching out, even under unofficial thingymabobs. As it is we exist as a kind of general gaming community, we just happen to host a handful of Minecraft servers, and the occasional Gmod or TF2 server.

Really, while the castle of Blocktopia itself may be crumbling slightly, the community itself is keeping it held together, and isn't showing any signs of caving in.

Now I'm generally not one to start drama, but coming from a position where I don't really identify myself with one "clique" mainly and really just drift, let me just clear the air a bit.

First off, the LoL clique isn't really as aggressive as everyone makes it out to be, rather very sarcastic and dry humour. Of course it's a bit intimidating to anyone approaching it for the first time, but really when I came into their room for the first time, I really only knew of a few of their names, and only knew Jammy as a friend, so it's not like I was any different than how everyone else feels when they approach the channel/group. It's where you sit your head down upon arrival.

Secondly, these "attacks" on people for using private rooms isn't really for that, and I'm fairly sure you can't comment on that because I hardly see you on Teamspeak in the first place. I believe the reason people are criticized for that is because the private rooms are generally used to talk about private matters, generally pertaining to personal lives and the sort, and not really to avoid certain users like it has been used for in the past. I am not saying I have not done this, I am just saying this and am still not exempt from any criticism for it.

Next off, name calling/pointing fingers doesn't really put yourself in a good position either, where you are calling people overly aggressive. Are you not just as bad for doing the same thing as what you say Jammy does? Seems a tad bit hypocritical, and if you had genuine concerns about it then start contacting the admins. I know it's already been done before, so another complaint would not hurt rather than drying your opinions of people out in public hoping to spur someone else's hidden emotions on a certain subject and trying to get them to rally with you.

Next off again, the whole welcoming thing has been done already. They have been welcoming to me. They have tried to welcome SnapFlash after literally everyone else had already given up on him. He's been around the League room longer than any other server/channel and we've even played with him quite often on games. He's played Osu with people, he's played League, he's in our Path of Exile guild. We didn't exempt him from anything as we felt other people have, he simply sheltered him because he had nowhere else to go. Now, once you sever those last connections you have, with the people that gave you a chance, that's when you're taking a step too far, so that's why our attitude changed with him, and as an outsider to the whole situation and to Teamspeak in general, I really, REALLY, do not believe you can speak about that.

Edit:: Back on subject now, don't want to argue about the league room's treatment, let's discuss the Blocktopian community now

 

[Psycho]

Now obviously I haven't been on Blocktopia in ages and lots of people never really got to know me anyways, but there lies the problem. You see, whether people want to admit it or not, there are lots of cliques on BT. And I mean lots. If you don't believe me, just open teamspeak. There is an apparent and infectious cliquey behavior that people tend to develop after spending a fair amount of time on BT. Most people will stick with the same group of people and very rarely, if ever, branch out. These anti-community and anti-social behaviors isolates and dehumanizes new players. Nobody wants to play on a server that treats them like an outcast; it doesn't matter how fun your games are.

These "cliques" that you mention may actually be the type of people who have invested their time into this community and have made lifelong friends. And judging by your initial statement about not "being on Blocktopia in ages" it's makes sense to see why you feel the way you feel. You haven't spent much time in this community to really understand why these "cliques" are just really good friends who enjoy each others company.

Also, I've read a previous thread of yours here (
http://blocktopia.net/forum/threads/bye.14651/) and I found this snippet to be interesting.

But lately, lots of my good friends that I met throughout my time on Blocktopia have left, and I can't really enjoy myself anymore without having most of my good friends that I originally made here.

And now I would like to compare that quote with these two quotes from this thread.

Most people will stick with the same group of people and very rarely, if ever, branch out. These anti-community and anti-social behaviors isolates and dehumanizes new players.

... players are only coming on for the small group of friends that haven't already left.

Think about that for a second because the words in these quotes are coming from you.

 

[Kordra]

These "cliques" that you mention may actually be the type of people who have invested their time into this community and have made lifelong friends. And judging by your initial statement about not "being on Blocktopia in ages" it's makes sense to see why you feel the way you feel. You haven't spent much time in this community to really understand why these "cliques" are just really good friends who enjoy each others company.

Also, I've read a previous thread of yours here (
http://blocktopia.net/forum/threads/bye.14651/) and I found this snippet to be interesting.

And now I would like to compare that quote with these two quotes from this thread.




Think about that for a second because the words in these quotes are coming from you.

Yeah, I'll go ahead and respond to this. So, obviously those posts I made are months old when I was still active, but besides the point, I said those things because I wasn't saying what I am now, which is that there are in fact cliques. At that time I only had that group of friends, and because they left, I felt like I had nowhere else to turn for those very reasons; but I certainly wouldn't admit it.

Secondly, You pulling the "you haven't gotten the experience" card doesn't really apply. I have been on BT for over a year and active for a little over half of that. I haven't been on the server in months and I've had these experiences since day one. The only person who went out of their way to be kind was Natsubros, and that's how I joined that group of friends to begin with.