Java How to improve the new update!

[LEO_KILLER_01]

Well to begin with this thread related to the new update, I personally think the update is ok, yes I don’t like all the changes that have been done to CubeCraft in this update, for example: the compass, it was a useful tool to travel between game modes but now, we have the NPCs which are better in my opinion. Game modes removed: speed eggwars, minerware, arcade... but let’s be honest many of them didn’t have that many players and you had to be for like 15 minutes waiting to join a lobby.

Many critics from players have arise on the past hours, but most of those critics are only base in one sentence for example, “bring back old cube” or “revert this update.”

Today is the first day of the update and of course there are going to be bugs and other kind of issues, many are not gonna like the update that’s understandable, but I don’t think they are gonna remove this update, instead of just giving destructive critics of how bad the update is, we should as a community give constructive critics: ideas on how to make this update better, points where to upgrade, bugs that need to be fixed. Not just complain like what happen in the discord a couple hours ago by spamming in #staff help. I understand that we have to express our opinion about it, but the way we are expressing it is just not the right way to do so. No one wants cube to crumble down, therefore we should help by adding ideas here on the forums.

I will suggest you guys to upgrade the game modes that we already have making them better maybe adding more maps, experimental game mode more often, polls on the forums for ideas that should be implemented to the gamemodes, etc. If you have any other suggestions please comment below with support to your ideas. Thanks!;)

 

[Deleted member 426365]

i dont know if you have ever even played minerware, but that game really did fill up. Even though u’d only be able to choose one map that had players in it, you’d still be able to play the game. the map doesnt matter that much anyway. i really liked minerware. it was like a quick minigame to play whenever i got bored with sw or ffa.

but whateverrrr... the staff doesnt listen to us anyway. might aswell delete minecraft rn and buy another game to play

 

[LEO_KILLER_01]

i dont know if you have ever even played minerware, but that game really did fill up. Even though u’d only be able to choose one map that had players in it, you’d still be able to play the game. the map doesnt matter that much anyway.


bUt whateverrrr... the staff doesnt listen to us anyway. might aswell delete minecraft rn and buy another game to play

Yes, minerware sometimes filled up, but how much time you had to wait until it did? Staff do listen, but if you don’t give ideas on how to improve it how are they gonna know? They don’t read minds, we should make our points on where to improve, but sadly sometimes we don’t.

 

[Thiemo]

I copied my reply from the main update thread, but I felt like it adds on to this discussion.

TL;DR:
Got a little excited by typing my feedback.
They had to do this as a marketing point of view, but the way they brought it, or did some things are just not good at all.
p.s: no hate on mie grammar pl0x me Dutch.

For everyone who is complaining about it, they had to.
Every server playercount is dropping, they get a lower income, and they still have to pay the full amount for all the extra lobbies and unused games. I get their point of view in a marketing perspective for sure, after all they're still a company.

The way how they brought this update, let's just say it couldn't be worse. You should have announced it way back, and have done it in small steps starting to announce a game removal for example. Not just, SIKE WIPED ALL OF YOUR FAVORITE GAMES. As I said, it's a company after all, I get that, but you wouldn't be one without a community, and by doing this you just show no interest in player feedback, since there hasn't even been a single public discussion about this.
I've asked multiple staff members their honest opinion and even they said they dislike parts of it a lot.

I get it, I get it, you can't just base everything on community feedback. And yes the average age is slowly decreasing so you're trying to make it more easier, but this is still Java and not Bedrock. We don't want 100 players with a quadrillion particles in 1 small place in a lobby, it's just badly structred in my opinion, you could have kept the server selector, and made portals further away from eachother and let that server selector teleport you to the game it's portal, in that way you could have added holographic leaderbords, villagers as shops, multiple NPCs (example EggWars team modes), or anything. This just feels like you're slowly forcing Java players to have the same bedrock experience, but we don't play on small little iPads, we play on a PC with a keyboard and a mouse, moving around is so much easier and faster, so no, we don't want NPCs right in front of our face.
It just feels sooo poorly designed and not even any back-up thought on it, yeah you can add back games in a 'rotation queue', but what's the point of removing it then, or even playing it if it's temporary, you removed games that weren't even dead.

As a developer myself, I know it's hard to find the perfect balance in community feedback, but atleast try to listen to it, and not ignore every fact of it, I'm sure some people like it, but I can guarentee you atleast 50% of the players think it's bad.
It's also mostly just getting used to, but getting used to this small, rushed, and just 0 detailed structure will make more players quit then trying to get used to it.
Like I said, my best option would be, spread it out the lobby, bring back the selector and make a lobby with a small place for every gamemode rather then just pushing NPCs in front of our faces, or atleast, for the sake of everything, move back the NPCs atleast 20 blocks...

It does look more organized in some ways, but like, the shop, leaderbords, statistics, it's all so poor, and so basic, and so not CubeCraft. I'm not trying to roast the management or anything, but like this just feels like you did whatever you wanted, in the fastest and easiest way possible. You could have done a little more on working things out, giving it a little twist, making it look more exciting, but nope, you just did everything in once, and gave us a lot less in return.

I stopped playing Minecraft a while back, but I always followed the process of CubeCraft, and it was finally moving in a good direction (i.m.o) with the Arcade update, the new beta gamemode lobby, and everything, and then out of no where you take away most of the players their playing experience and just make it feel less fun to be at the server in general.
This update could have been so much more, with the same way of working, you can combine an easy experience with a good looking detailed strucutre, trust me. At points like this I just get upset about choices CubeCraft is choosing to do. I'd love to see CubeCraft going a more proffesional direction like this with a less messy structure, but don't take that too serious by removing every little detail you ever had. And if you do not have the man power to do that, open the Jr. Developer process again, it was such a good project, recruit Jr Builders for example, just use the Junior project in general, they're all free anyways.

I agree on the NPCs, good job on that, the Armorstands just looked, yeah, bad. Also using NPCs in the Mainlobby is a +1 from me as well, it looks really smooth, with the banners behind it as well, just wrongly positioned at the lobbies rn i.m.o

In general, good update, way too less thinking behind the structure. I like the idea behind it, but as explained in this message, could have added some more details, and made it more cubecraftish.
Just to add on to this, I still don't think the update is bad, some games shouldn't have been remived in my opinion, but I do not have any insight on how the playercount was. It's a good update but it's just a little too less at this point :(, It does look good though.

 

[Deleted member 426365]

i actually didnt have to wait long at all. Sure if you join a map with 0 players when there is another map with 2a3, it’ll take longer. but if u just joined the map which already has a few players, it only takes like 1 and sometimes 2 minutes.

 

[SrSeed]

Hello there, I was chatting in discord with some people (including this thread creator), and i came up with some good ideas on how to improve the server's daily number of players.
If im not mistaken, the main demographics of the people online are from Center of Europe (mainly Netherlands and Sweden), Uk, Spain, and Turkey. I do believe this is due to the ammount of youtube channels there are in those expecific countries. I'm from Portugal, a very small community in Cubecraft to be honest, but still we are there.
I believe the way to get more people to play on Cubecraft is to get other demographics Cubecraft lacks, this might sound like a shot in the dark, but if you go look at the numbers and statistics, the top 2 bigger minecraft communities are Brazil 1st and (English countries, mainly America) 2nd.
What I'm trying to say, is that we need to get those people attention to the server. And to do that we need to advertise the server to them, and what's the best way to do it you ask? The asnwer is Youtube...
We need to make youtubers from those demographics play on the server, we need to make their followers aware that we have a good server with a pretty good potencial to accept them... To do that, we need to talk directly with some of the Big content creators, like Prestonplays and the others (from USA) and the Brazilian community, like RezendEvil and all the others. All of these youtubers at some point played on the cubecraft server and they are the ones that made the server so big in the first place.
For example, when the speed eggwars game released, I saw a small but noticible growth in the player base, because some youtubers played the game. (Grapeapplejuice for example, a not so big channel, but did make a change). We need to bring back these youtubers, and what those youtubers are searching for is basicly new content*, something that brings them views and attention to their channels, and if wants their attention we gotta change some things and create others.
Minecraft 1.14 is right around the corner. I prupose the Cubecraft team to come up with new ideas regarding this update changes. We need to create a game that includes these updates, like the new swimming mechanics in 1.13, but at the same time, make that game contain the "player vs player" competition, with a new leaderboard type system. Something that makes people wanting to keep playing, because that's what makes a new game popular! A game that encourages you to play against your friends, giving it an rivalry feel any good game has.
Concluding all this, Cubecraft needs to talk to the big Youtubers, try to convince them to play on the server and post 1-2 videos on their channels, and to do that we need some new game ideas that involves the new upate mechanics (1.13 swimming for example, or even the elytras) but make it pvp based with an healthy competition between players. Or else the game will just be forgotten and players will be bored to play it again. I sincerely talk from the bottom of my heart when i say i want to help Cubecraft... This server is my childhood, and this might sound stupid for a 18 year old to say, but I would like to come to the server in 10 to 15 years later, and still experience they joy this server provided me... Ive been playing here since 2013 when you guys still had the skyblock game... I love this server...

Don't let this memories die...


Pls reply to this if you would like to hear other ideas, because I have some more.

Sincerely, SrSeed

 

[LEO_KILLER_01]

Maybe, what they can do is create more tournaments between the community so that more players get interested again. For example, Eggwars, Skywars, Tower Defence, PvP. I'm pretty sure people will participate in the tournament, maybe give little rewards to winners or players who participate like: points multipliers or double experience just during the tournaments. This is a good way of promoting the server in my opinion.:)

 

[God.]

Maybe, what they can do is create more tournaments between the community so that more players get interested again. For example, Eggwars, Skywars, Tower Defence, PvP. I'm pretty sure people will participate in the tournament, maybe give little rewards to winners or players who participate like: points multipliers or double experience just during the tournaments. This is a good way of promoting the server in my opinion.:)

If I'm not wrong there was a eggwars tournament already.

 

[LEO_KILLER_01]

If I'm not wrong there was a eggwars tournament already.

What I am trying to say is to create more tournaments more frequently. There can be many ways were tournaments can improve this server player base.

 

[TheFastBowler]

I totally agree with this update. However, I don't think it can be improved. The update has been created as a way to save money. A couple Administrators have admitted to me that they aren't willing to invest the same amount of money as they used to/could.

But it's also true that this update is going to create a further decline. If we could get a look at the server analytics, I would like to know the number of players playing all the removed games combined, then the average player count before the update. When I last checked, the player count was 1.9k. It's part of the product life cycle, Cube was the product, and it's slowly going out of the market now, like it should, like it deserves. They hit their maturity stage around 2016 and have been in the saturation stage for quite a while, and now is the decline. I love it. I've been waiting for such a day when Cube would begin it's decline, some would argue it has been on decline for quite a while.

CubeCraft was the server that really hooked me onto Minecraft. While it is sad that the player count has taken such a huge hit, and it is rather unlikely Cube will be around for the forseeable future, I did enjoy my time here and all good things come to an end. If I were to point to the exact moment where I felt that it was time, it would be on February 20th, 2017 (if you want to know why, DM on Discord TheFastBowler#7233) because I don't wish to raise controversy of the past.

Cube was fun, but it's time for it to go. This update will ensure it happens quicker. No changes need to be made. I think Cube should continue the way it's running with a few game updates here and there. Maybe something will click, but it's hardly likely to be enough to bring me and many of my friends back to Cube due to several other reasons.

 

[SnowyZaFon]

Update bad "

 

[LEO_KILLER_01]

Update bad "

That doesn't help.

 

[SnowyZaFon]

That doesn't help.

In your opinion it is good ? The Old Update Good

 

[LEO_KILLER_01]

In your opinion it is good ? The Old Update Good

My apologies I didn’t read the question correctly. In my opinion Yes, the old update was better than this one not gonna lie, but I also don’t dislike this update. I think this update is also good, it’s easier to find lobbies and you don’t have to wait long periods of time to join one.

 

[SanCookie]

They have said multiple times they are not going to bring the old update back.

3Loshii didn't say that.

 

[LEO_KILLER_01]

He didn't say that.

My bad, I’ve already fixed the answer.

 

[SanCookie]

I clearly said "they," not him, staff said it many times in the Discord they are not gonna remove this update.

Edited my comment so you hopefully will understand it.