betty's oldies
Forum Expert
Disclaimer: No sarcasm is intended at all. This thread is here to highlight the current issues of this month (some traced back to January). This thread has been updated as of March 31st (added parts to staff section).
So, let's begin.
Introduction
A few updates were added to this server over the past 3 months. Let's begin with a few:
-Before 2017: Major hacker problem. While fewer hackers appear in games, a lot still cheat and go unnoticed for a long time.
-January: Lucky Islands update
-February: Eggwars update + speed eggwars added. Also SG update on the last day
-March: Sentinel introduced and UHC re-added.
Looks great, doesn't it? But what happened besides that?
Issues
Why is our player count going down? What's with hypixel, our competitor, doing at 50k+ players (sometimes 60k)? Let's look at the major issues that have surfaced over the last month, starting with how many staff have left and how many have joined.
1. Former staff as of 2017 (I might have missed a few).
-HackersDontWin
-Aimee2323
-Jespoe
-Stefanvld
-Saradabaschi
-Mac
-CARDAN18
-Cheez
-PinkSparkleWolf
-Snap
-Snodia
-dwayne
-FalseHonesty
-504Errors
Counting at least 14 staff, here's how much power staff have lost. That's 1 head admin, at least 1 dev, 1 admin, 6 mods, and 5 senior mods. 3 new staff (Buuuddy, hub3rt and skifby) came to replace 3 members, but that's still 11 major staff gone from the server. My theory here is that staff applications are too difficult (very small window) for applicants to get in, thus keeping the server heavily understaffed. Additionally, for the head admin (an interactive one in fact, not just a regular one) to leave, that's a lot of interaction lost between the playerbase and the staff.
The apparent "fix" would be to recruit more staff members. That's good and bad. We don't want to have too few, but we also don't want too many. There's something called "diminishing returns," where adding a new staff member to a project (when, say 1 is working on it at 100% efficiency) doesn't add another 100%. Every member the server adds will always be less than the ideal output. In this example, that's less than 200%. Add too many and some will not have any work -- this is past saturation and will do more harm to the server than good.
2. Marketing (credit goes to @ronnielei for her rant)
-People are leaving. Not only are prices high (see subpoint #2) but too many hackers means many will be frustrated with the server and leave. More people leaving translates to fewer potential customers and affects the server's revenue. Don't make enough revenue? This server will close just like MCSG did. People advertise this server by word of mouth too, not just from streams or videos. If they didn't have a good experience, more people will learn about their bad experiences.
-Notice what makes the other servers shine in terms of cosmetics. Cheap ranks, right? This is because they keep their prices low with a long sale (at least 50%+ off on their ranks). What do we have? The opposite: ranks and prices are much more expensive and we're roughly the same size as Mineplex. Let's leave this up to you: where would you buy your stuff if both stores gave you the same items but one cost a lot cheaper than the other?
-Lack of votes and advertising. Where are we? A mere 40 votes compared to Mineplex's 30k+ votes? Although the server has other means to advertise, more ways to promote the server can attract new players to the server. Here's a comparison between the two in terms of voting.
CubeCraft's: http://minecraft-server-list.com/server/108375/
Mineplex's: http://minecraft-server-list.com/server/218820/
3. Updates
While the server did a great job releasing new content, how did the community respond? Let's look at what other releases were not stable on the first day:
-Eggwars update: speed eggwars achievements were broken except for the one-time only ones (e.g. win with a helmet only).
-SG: broken border
-UHC: broken achievements, custom generation instead of vanilla, short grace period, fixed ore locations
While I understand that first releases aren't polished, some are game-breaking. For example, the first few days of SG forced a stalemate by pushing the border too close to spawn -- this separated the last few players from each other. It gives an impression that these updates were made from what the server wanted, not what both the players and the server wanted. It took weeks just to fix speed eggwars' achievements and in the meantime there's still other projects on the work. We don't need more games or updates the people want -- we need current projects to be fixed first before releasing completely new content.
Conclusion
We dug ourselves into a deep hole. How will we get out? We're in at least 3, if not more, issues: marketing, update quality, and staff. Something needs to be done about all of these. We might still have a chance to return back to a successful server. Make your choice before it's too late.
So, let's begin.
Introduction
A few updates were added to this server over the past 3 months. Let's begin with a few:
-Before 2017: Major hacker problem. While fewer hackers appear in games, a lot still cheat and go unnoticed for a long time.
-January: Lucky Islands update
-February: Eggwars update + speed eggwars added. Also SG update on the last day
-March: Sentinel introduced and UHC re-added.
Looks great, doesn't it? But what happened besides that?
Issues
Why is our player count going down? What's with hypixel, our competitor, doing at 50k+ players (sometimes 60k)? Let's look at the major issues that have surfaced over the last month, starting with how many staff have left and how many have joined.
1. Former staff as of 2017 (I might have missed a few).
-HackersDontWin
-Aimee2323
-Jespoe
-Stefanvld
-Saradabaschi
-Mac
-CARDAN18
-Cheez
-PinkSparkleWolf
-Snap
-Snodia
-dwayne
-FalseHonesty
-504Errors
Counting at least 14 staff, here's how much power staff have lost. That's 1 head admin, at least 1 dev, 1 admin, 6 mods, and 5 senior mods. 3 new staff (Buuuddy, hub3rt and skifby) came to replace 3 members, but that's still 11 major staff gone from the server. My theory here is that staff applications are too difficult (very small window) for applicants to get in, thus keeping the server heavily understaffed. Additionally, for the head admin (an interactive one in fact, not just a regular one) to leave, that's a lot of interaction lost between the playerbase and the staff.
The apparent "fix" would be to recruit more staff members. That's good and bad. We don't want to have too few, but we also don't want too many. There's something called "diminishing returns," where adding a new staff member to a project (when, say 1 is working on it at 100% efficiency) doesn't add another 100%. Every member the server adds will always be less than the ideal output. In this example, that's less than 200%. Add too many and some will not have any work -- this is past saturation and will do more harm to the server than good.
2. Marketing (credit goes to @ronnielei for her rant)
-People are leaving. Not only are prices high (see subpoint #2) but too many hackers means many will be frustrated with the server and leave. More people leaving translates to fewer potential customers and affects the server's revenue. Don't make enough revenue? This server will close just like MCSG did. People advertise this server by word of mouth too, not just from streams or videos. If they didn't have a good experience, more people will learn about their bad experiences.
-Notice what makes the other servers shine in terms of cosmetics. Cheap ranks, right? This is because they keep their prices low with a long sale (at least 50%+ off on their ranks). What do we have? The opposite: ranks and prices are much more expensive and we're roughly the same size as Mineplex. Let's leave this up to you: where would you buy your stuff if both stores gave you the same items but one cost a lot cheaper than the other?
-Lack of votes and advertising. Where are we? A mere 40 votes compared to Mineplex's 30k+ votes? Although the server has other means to advertise, more ways to promote the server can attract new players to the server. Here's a comparison between the two in terms of voting.
CubeCraft's: http://minecraft-server-list.com/server/108375/
Mineplex's: http://minecraft-server-list.com/server/218820/
3. Updates
While the server did a great job releasing new content, how did the community respond? Let's look at what other releases were not stable on the first day:
-Eggwars update: speed eggwars achievements were broken except for the one-time only ones (e.g. win with a helmet only).
-SG: broken border
-UHC: broken achievements, custom generation instead of vanilla, short grace period, fixed ore locations
While I understand that first releases aren't polished, some are game-breaking. For example, the first few days of SG forced a stalemate by pushing the border too close to spawn -- this separated the last few players from each other. It gives an impression that these updates were made from what the server wanted, not what both the players and the server wanted. It took weeks just to fix speed eggwars' achievements and in the meantime there's still other projects on the work. We don't need more games or updates the people want -- we need current projects to be fixed first before releasing completely new content.
Conclusion
We dug ourselves into a deep hole. How will we get out? We're in at least 3, if not more, issues: marketing, update quality, and staff. Something needs to be done about all of these. We might still have a chance to return back to a successful server. Make your choice before it's too late.
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