- Hello everyone! I have been wanting to do this thread for a while and I finally brought myself to sit down and write it. So here are my thoughts and criticism on CubeCraft since the Big Change. I do this for multiple reasons, mainly because these topics I will be talking about on the thread are of my interest, and I believe they deserve to be discussed properly. Secondly, the forums has been lacking real discussion and debate lately, and hopefully this thread can give us all something to talk about for some time. I encourage you, since you’re already reading this to leave your little grain of sand on this discussion, don’t think your opinion is not worth sharing, all perspectives are welcome and very much appreciated, doesn’t matter if someone already said it, it’s your individual opinion that matters. I’m most certainly expecting someone to contradict what I’m saying, that’s sort of the point.
The first, and I’d say the currently most relevant topic I want to talk about is the situation around Sentinel and /report, but it’s mostly about cheaters in general.
For context, many of you may have noticed that it’s been an increasing trend to write rants/complaints about Sentinel. A “nice” example of these complaint threads is this one: https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/sentinel-no-vale-para-nada.224704/. In this particular example, the thread owner was complaining about Sentinel being ineffective. He says he’s tired about finding 2 to 3 hackers every game he plays in, and proceeded to share a video of two hackers fighting each other in a SkyWars match. First of all I’d like to say that I chose this example because the Thread Owner was particularly nice and diplomatic about his complaint, getting his point across without using swear words or insulting anyone. And the first reply to this thread is in Spanish, but I’ll summarize it quickly. The thread owner was basically told that while Sentinel isn’t the perfect anticheat, if he reported them himself, he’d eventually end up seeing less hackers. And it’s here where you can find the problem.
Every single Sentinel rant is replied to with the same old line, “Sentinel is constantly being improved” and “Please report them on the report site”. Which is, the way I see it, the most conformist and hypocritical position that can be adopted. I myself have been one of these people, yes I’m calling myself a hypocrite but I’m endorsing it and write this expecting to see a change beginning with myself and any other people who might agree with me.
I’ll say it, all those self-proclaimed hackers that have made Sentinel rants and have criticized the anticheat are right. They’re all right and it’s about time we stop ignoring the real issue, it’s been enough of blaming them as the problem. Since they insult, harass, hack and whatnot their arguments aren’t valid? No, they’re right to dislike Sentinel, they’re right to complain about it. (I’m not justifying their troublesome behaviour. I in no way agree with presenting their ideas the ways they did, doesn’t mean I didn’t agree with the essence of their complaints. Which is why I’ve written this, to prove it is possible to talk about the same problem, in the same position, without sounding disrespectful and ridiculous) Sentinel is not working how it should, it is highly ineffective, it doesn’t deal with hackers in time, and it’s getting the community upset. Because outside of the ecosystem of the forums, players do like to speak with the truth when it comes to Sentinel. Sentinel is inefficient and requires a lot of attention. The player cannot be blamed over not liking to have to waste their time reporting hackers, since the only thing that a player might want to do, as their name states, is playing.
I’m not an anticheat developer, I barely know how to tell Python to print something. I have never used hacks in my life, but it is far beyond any technicism to see that Sentinel is not working how it should be. I invite you to try to play a game of SkyWars in the 1.8 version of the server. Chances are, you’ll find a hacker every 2 to 3 rounds. Two to three rounds. That’s an insane amount of cheaters! And do you think people will want to stick around because they’re loyal to the server? Well no. Players will eventually get tired of being chased by a bhopper every 10 minutes. Do you think it’s fun to have to waste 3 minutes of your life every time you record and report a hacker? Do you think that having so many cheaters is contributing to the gameplay experience of CubeCraft? No, it’s corrupting it, it’s killing it. It’s making CubeCraft seem a great place to hack on for hackers, and a horrible place to play on for legitimate players.
The situation is in no way eased with /report either. It already didn’t work when it was limited to plus rank players, now that the reporting perk has been given to all paid ranks, you will most probably only ever have your report attended in 1 of every 14 cases. Although I would not associate the staff team with it being ineffective, since they do the best they can, they just have very few people to be checking reports constantly. But that cannot dismiss CubeCraft of giving us a solution, because currently it’s all schemed up like this:
For context, many of you may have noticed that it’s been an increasing trend to write rants/complaints about Sentinel. A “nice” example of these complaint threads is this one: https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/sentinel-no-vale-para-nada.224704/. In this particular example, the thread owner was complaining about Sentinel being ineffective. He says he’s tired about finding 2 to 3 hackers every game he plays in, and proceeded to share a video of two hackers fighting each other in a SkyWars match. First of all I’d like to say that I chose this example because the Thread Owner was particularly nice and diplomatic about his complaint, getting his point across without using swear words or insulting anyone. And the first reply to this thread is in Spanish, but I’ll summarize it quickly. The thread owner was basically told that while Sentinel isn’t the perfect anticheat, if he reported them himself, he’d eventually end up seeing less hackers. And it’s here where you can find the problem.
Every single Sentinel rant is replied to with the same old line, “Sentinel is constantly being improved” and “Please report them on the report site”. Which is, the way I see it, the most conformist and hypocritical position that can be adopted. I myself have been one of these people, yes I’m calling myself a hypocrite but I’m endorsing it and write this expecting to see a change beginning with myself and any other people who might agree with me.
I’ll say it, all those self-proclaimed hackers that have made Sentinel rants and have criticized the anticheat are right. They’re all right and it’s about time we stop ignoring the real issue, it’s been enough of blaming them as the problem. Since they insult, harass, hack and whatnot their arguments aren’t valid? No, they’re right to dislike Sentinel, they’re right to complain about it. (I’m not justifying their troublesome behaviour. I in no way agree with presenting their ideas the ways they did, doesn’t mean I didn’t agree with the essence of their complaints. Which is why I’ve written this, to prove it is possible to talk about the same problem, in the same position, without sounding disrespectful and ridiculous) Sentinel is not working how it should, it is highly ineffective, it doesn’t deal with hackers in time, and it’s getting the community upset. Because outside of the ecosystem of the forums, players do like to speak with the truth when it comes to Sentinel. Sentinel is inefficient and requires a lot of attention. The player cannot be blamed over not liking to have to waste their time reporting hackers, since the only thing that a player might want to do, as their name states, is playing.
I’m not an anticheat developer, I barely know how to tell Python to print something. I have never used hacks in my life, but it is far beyond any technicism to see that Sentinel is not working how it should be. I invite you to try to play a game of SkyWars in the 1.8 version of the server. Chances are, you’ll find a hacker every 2 to 3 rounds. Two to three rounds. That’s an insane amount of cheaters! And do you think people will want to stick around because they’re loyal to the server? Well no. Players will eventually get tired of being chased by a bhopper every 10 minutes. Do you think it’s fun to have to waste 3 minutes of your life every time you record and report a hacker? Do you think that having so many cheaters is contributing to the gameplay experience of CubeCraft? No, it’s corrupting it, it’s killing it. It’s making CubeCraft seem a great place to hack on for hackers, and a horrible place to play on for legitimate players.
The situation is in no way eased with /report either. It already didn’t work when it was limited to plus rank players, now that the reporting perk has been given to all paid ranks, you will most probably only ever have your report attended in 1 of every 14 cases. Although I would not associate the staff team with it being ineffective, since they do the best they can, they just have very few people to be checking reports constantly. But that cannot dismiss CubeCraft of giving us a solution, because currently it’s all schemed up like this:
- Sentinel has its flaws yes, but you can report hackers on the web! You only gotta record the player, upload it to youtube, and file the report. Pretty easy right? It most definitely doesn’t interrupt your gameplay at all.
- Reporting on the website is too tedious? We got you covered! You can report hackers in-game, although it probably will never be attended. If you wanna make sure they end up being punished, record and report! Your round of EggWars is guaranteed to be ruined regardless!
I mean, I can sort of understand that CubeCraft’s interest as a company may have migrated from the Java edition to the Bedrock edition, since it’s seemingly five times bigger in playerbase. And that’s understandable, but at least invest something on your anticheat? Or are you already doing something for the anticheat? Please tell us about it at least, otherwise people will continue to complain and the community will continue to believe Sentinel is simply not worked on. It’s all about establishing proper communication and providing concise results. I cannot say “oh you need to fix this specific check” or “maybe try this code!” Because I know nothing about it, but I can in my position as community member be the one to enforce pressure on the topic, demanding results and improvement. Because I don’t need to be an engineer to ask the electronics store to fix my newly bought, already broken PC right?
The second thing I want to talk about, is the current situation of CubeCraft’s forums. And this topic comes together with a suggestion. Because currently, it seems like the only people keeping the forums alive are a few dedicated community member that are very loyal to the server and like hanging out on the forums. Together with the occasional suggestion, most threads seems to be more forums community related than server related.
One could attribute the deterioration of these forums due to CubeCraft’s player base having seen a reduction. But that’s not true at all, didn’t Bedrock have more than 10,000 players this summer? Why aren’t they flooding the forums? Maybe because most of them probably don’t even know it exists.
While this may be a very personal interpretation of the situation, and there might be multiple other reasons to blame. I’ve come to the conclusion that the forums has lost its purpose. Forums are supposed to be a place to exchange ideas, to discuss, more concisely, to debate isn’t it? And debate has two very particular elements, an issue to debate on and a result prior to the discussion. In the case of CubeCraft, two sides should be the one providing results, from one end, the community with suggestions. And from the other, Management with updates that take into consideration such suggestions. If there’s no results then there’s no point for debate, and if there’s no point for debate then people don’t have the initiative to participate. And if people don’t have the initiative to participate they don’t provide suggestions from their role as community members.
I can imagine someone saying that the past year hasn’t had good suggestions, while it most certainly has (Examples: https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/suggestions-about-experience.216149/, https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/minerware-microgames-ideas.220914/, https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/blockwars-kit-revamp.220074/). Not many since there's not much to even talk about, but there have been a few quality suggestions put out there since the Big Change. And most haven’t made it, since Java is not important anymore, so are suggestions apparently. Discussions are very few, and the few there are, are rapidly extinguished by the staff team and later on ignored by the community, respecting the staff’s authority. So what is the point of continuing to make suggestions for CubeCraft? Since you’ve been given the impression it as a whole doesn’t really matter, because your input will most probably never be the reason for change in the actual server. Sure you might get a few internet points in the process of talking to yourself on a really long thread only a few will read, but fact remains most people will desist if they realize they’re not even being heard. Because the basic stage of the exchange of ideas isn’t being fulfilled.
So since Management’s interest has migrated over to Bedrock, and we could expect to see a greater abundance of updates for Bedrock rather than for Java. Then bring the Bedrock players over to the forums. Since they do have a reason to comment and share their ideas, because chances are Management would be more open about ideas for Bedrock. Hence I think the forums should be further advertised in the Bedrock network of the server, in an attempt of reviving the forums. This can be done in the shape of Server-wise messages and other in-game references to the forums.
One could attribute the deterioration of these forums due to CubeCraft’s player base having seen a reduction. But that’s not true at all, didn’t Bedrock have more than 10,000 players this summer? Why aren’t they flooding the forums? Maybe because most of them probably don’t even know it exists.
While this may be a very personal interpretation of the situation, and there might be multiple other reasons to blame. I’ve come to the conclusion that the forums has lost its purpose. Forums are supposed to be a place to exchange ideas, to discuss, more concisely, to debate isn’t it? And debate has two very particular elements, an issue to debate on and a result prior to the discussion. In the case of CubeCraft, two sides should be the one providing results, from one end, the community with suggestions. And from the other, Management with updates that take into consideration such suggestions. If there’s no results then there’s no point for debate, and if there’s no point for debate then people don’t have the initiative to participate. And if people don’t have the initiative to participate they don’t provide suggestions from their role as community members.
I can imagine someone saying that the past year hasn’t had good suggestions, while it most certainly has (Examples: https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/suggestions-about-experience.216149/, https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/minerware-microgames-ideas.220914/, https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/blockwars-kit-revamp.220074/). Not many since there's not much to even talk about, but there have been a few quality suggestions put out there since the Big Change. And most haven’t made it, since Java is not important anymore, so are suggestions apparently. Discussions are very few, and the few there are, are rapidly extinguished by the staff team and later on ignored by the community, respecting the staff’s authority. So what is the point of continuing to make suggestions for CubeCraft? Since you’ve been given the impression it as a whole doesn’t really matter, because your input will most probably never be the reason for change in the actual server. Sure you might get a few internet points in the process of talking to yourself on a really long thread only a few will read, but fact remains most people will desist if they realize they’re not even being heard. Because the basic stage of the exchange of ideas isn’t being fulfilled.
So since Management’s interest has migrated over to Bedrock, and we could expect to see a greater abundance of updates for Bedrock rather than for Java. Then bring the Bedrock players over to the forums. Since they do have a reason to comment and share their ideas, because chances are Management would be more open about ideas for Bedrock. Hence I think the forums should be further advertised in the Bedrock network of the server, in an attempt of reviving the forums. This can be done in the shape of Server-wise messages and other in-game references to the forums.
The Featuring System was a genius idea, and the person who came up with it deserves the biggest congratulation and recognition. At first I didn’t really understand the dynamics of this system but now that we’ve got more than a year to get to know it, I must say I am extremely happy with how it turned out.
The Featuring System was proven to be very effective when it comes to giving previously dead games a player base. It brought life back to many game modes that had been struggling before. Which most importantly includes, BlockWars, Survival Games and Slime Survival, amongst others. It’s given me, and many other players a reason to look forward to something CubeCraft related. Because I’ve personally enjoyed BlockWars more than what I used to now that it’s only available for limited periods of time.
At first I was completely opposed to the idea of making BlockWars a featured game. In fact, I made a thread about it, this thread: https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/bring-block-wars-back.212629/. Fun fact, that thread is the current 18th most liked thread in the suggestion sub forum, amongst 16k other threads. And it received a huge amount of support with 68 votes in favour, and while Management was very much aware of the success of this thread, they decided to not implement it. And well at first I didn’t understand this position, I was told I wasn’t giving real reasons, only saying “bring it back because I like it and these other 67 people like it too” wasn’t enough. And I understand this now, I’m glad I’m able to say this on my own thread. I accept that the idea of the featuring system was a great one, and it sure was very successful and I would like to congratulate CubeCraft about it.
The Featuring System was proven to be very effective when it comes to giving previously dead games a player base. It brought life back to many game modes that had been struggling before. Which most importantly includes, BlockWars, Survival Games and Slime Survival, amongst others. It’s given me, and many other players a reason to look forward to something CubeCraft related. Because I’ve personally enjoyed BlockWars more than what I used to now that it’s only available for limited periods of time.
At first I was completely opposed to the idea of making BlockWars a featured game. In fact, I made a thread about it, this thread: https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/bring-block-wars-back.212629/. Fun fact, that thread is the current 18th most liked thread in the suggestion sub forum, amongst 16k other threads. And it received a huge amount of support with 68 votes in favour, and while Management was very much aware of the success of this thread, they decided to not implement it. And well at first I didn’t understand this position, I was told I wasn’t giving real reasons, only saying “bring it back because I like it and these other 67 people like it too” wasn’t enough. And I understand this now, I’m glad I’m able to say this on my own thread. I accept that the idea of the featuring system was a great one, and it sure was very successful and I would like to congratulate CubeCraft about it.
The translation Team has acquired most of its importance and impact on the server during the past year, and it has brought a lot of translations for multiple languages. The most important part about the translation team is that it has made the CubeCraft experience accessible for many more people, regardless of the language they speak. It not only is a very important project in my eyes, it has also become a very special place for loyal community members to bring their efforts together into doing something good for the server. The Translation Team is one of the things that has helped me keep faith on the future of CubeCraft. And hopefully CubeCraft will continue to appeal to multiple communities around the world. There’s some other steps I consider CubeCraft should take toward this goal of becoming fully international, and there’s more detail about it in this thread: https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/international-growth.219703/
Establishing that team, was a very big step in the right direction, and deserves another congratulation.
Establishing that team, was a very big step in the right direction, and deserves another congratulation.
In conclusion, this past year since the Big Change leaves me thinking Java has become mostly unimportant. It leaves me expecting nothing for the future updates but Skin Packs for the Marketplace. But with a sense of hope, since I am confident the server can still take the right steps into preserving this amazing community I so love and appreciate. Because CubeCraft’s content has an amazing potential, its games are very high quality, and the server in general has a very distinctive feel, of wanting to bring new experiences to an otherwise stereotypical market of Minecraft servers. But it’s a few things like the Anticheat that are affecting CubeCraft’s success.
Thanks for reading this! In this particular thread, I’m expecting that since you’ve finished reading, you’ll go ahead and leave a reply. Your input is highly important!
