DISCLAIMER: This thread is a satire. I will point out things that are true, I will point out things that are based off of my opinion and I will point out things I think are actually beneficial for the network. However, the general thread is written in a way that shouldn't be taken seriously. The general idea is obviously a joke, but to be sure that's also how this thread is perceived, I will also put this disclaimer up.
Hi everyone! In the past 10 years of CubeCraft, we have seen a lot of new games, good updates and in general great content. Sadly, we also had to say goodbye to most of that. There were two occasions in the past where we can all agree that the general goal was to remove gamemodes, for whatever purpose that may have served. These moments are (TW: personal trauma's) The Big Change and The Future of Java (also mentioned as The Big Change 2.0, but to avoid confusion, I will use The Big Future (seeing a theme here?)). During both of these updates, CubeCraft decided to remove a lot of games. In October 2018, they mentioned to bring back games if the player count would rise. It did, for no particular reason at all, even though the summer holidays of 2019, the rise of Minecraft manhunt start 2020 or that small virus everyone forgets the name of after that might've helped a little bit. Since manhunt was already invented and the summer holidays of 2023 haven't had the wished effect after The Big Future in September 2022, and also there is no virus visible with the sole eye, I don't expect this player count to rise again on its own. Time to help, and drastically. I suggest: The Big Experiment!The Big Experiment
So, what is it?
What a banger of a question! I have thought about this, as you could've guess since I am spending my precious time in which I also could've grinded for 10k logs that have to grow for a week in SkyBlock as well, but I haven't made my decision yet. The eventual idea is to make a massive change hoping to get a higher playercount than we currently have. Let's just go over a couple of options I thought of, then evaluate to eventually make a well-considered decision! Though I am betting 90% of you will still vote disagree, but I can only say that I hope both sides of your pillow are warm tonight
Option 1: Make everything MinerWare
MinerWare is a great game. In fact, it is not just me that agrees on that! I mean, mostly me, but you guys are so supportive! Look! On my post called Bring Back | MinerWare (one of my post in the Bring Back category, which earlier led to admins having to make a decision on Barn Brawl, a game most of you Gen Z'ers haven't even experienced before, and also made a lot of people upset that Bingo wasn't returning on the network either (or so I like to tell myself before I go to sleep, just like I tell myself that Translation Team will still return one day)) people have responded positively 27 times! On a normal suggestion, not made by a partner, a famous person or a mod, just an ordinary, tiger-skinned Minecraft noob, who's biggest achievement was killing @Dreamer one out of 35 matches in 1v1 PvP. That has to say something, right? But not just me, also people voted for MinerWare as the better gamemode over Among Slimes in this thread from @Rocks1, the Dev team works their butts off for positively perceived MinerWare Updates on Bedrock with @Laura in charge, and the most precious reward has also gone to MinerWare, in the by @Salty_Shadows hosted CubeCraft Awards 2023 (8:25), winning in the category for best gamemode.Okay, so with that being settled, MinerWare is simply amazing. The only big competitor on Java is 'Simon Says' on Hypixel, but let's be real, no one knows Simon anyways and we are done playing by his rules. Besides that, Hypixel is 1.8 and the games are just worse. Therefore we can take on that group. Let's get rid of ALL gamemodes we have right now and instead just reimplement MinerWare. This way we can build up a game specific playerbase more efficiently and we don't have to deal with the toxic PvP community, as we only have PvP games anyways. Only Parkour and SkyBlock are allowed to stay on the network, as one isn't getting updates anyways and the other is not development intensive as everything is done to it already.
Great option in my books, but let's move on to the next option!
Option 2: Put every game in a Featured Game Cycle
For the biggest game/map we currently have on Java Network, we need 24 people. On the worst times of the day, CubeCraft hits a solid 150 people (data). Option 2 suggests that all games would be put in a cycle, similar to what we had before The Big Future and after The Big Change (period from 2018 to 2022). Because all games are put into this cycle, no gamemode will be less or more played than another at the same time. All gamemodes are equal, though some might be more equal than others. This will mean that Games that turn out to be played more often will take more spots in the cycle, therefore occur more often. This is a great way to divide the players equally across the network. Also, people will be incentivised to try other gamemodes no one really likes, such as SkyWars, ew. If you want to add new gamemodes, this will be no issue, as all players will be sure to try it out.We had the featured games before in a game rotation system, which worked really well. People were sure to be online when their favourite games were featured, but didn't turn their backs when there was a gamemode they didn't try out before. Putting all games in it will only be beneficial, definitely if this means Tower Defence could return. Because, let's be honest, how much fun is it to place towers in the wrong way 'by accident' and then seeing the pro's and experienced players getting mad at you, after which you pretend not to speak english. Honestly, I have no clue, but I would love to try out! Moving on to option 3!
Option 3: Ban Feedback and Suggestions
The problems that are experienced by players are put on forums, Discord and DM's excessively. But people, listen, if CubeCraft cannot see there are problems, do they really exists? Like, I barely see Admin's play on the network anyways, so they wouldn't know. So, if we just remove all ways of making feedback or suggestions, the problems just magically disappear! Easy! Why haven't other people suggested this? Oh, wait, the irony...Anyways, suggestion 4!
Option 4: Remove all rules
Sentinel is the pride of CubeCraft's anti-cheat system. It supposedly should ban people for fly hacks, reach, one-shot bows, I've seen it all. We are nearing the 2.5 million sentinel ban milestone. 2.5 MILLION BANS. Do you hear that? To me, that sounds like 2.5 million people that could've been your playerbase. Sentinel is known for banning people unrightfully. But, we have rules, so we can't remove sentinel... or can we? If we remove all rules, Sentinel is not needed anymore, so no more false bans, no more people getting muted permanently for swearing or insulting anymore, which are all people that will keep playing. Obviously, it's not pretty, but ya know, ya gotta do what ya gotta do. As my grandmother used to say: I'd rather have 10 hackers in the game than 1 player in a queue. Amen to that.Now I asked a couple of friends as well for some good options, so the next options are all community driven. Not like the Translation Team, don't worry. How nice.
Option 5: Demote all Staff Members
This adds on the point above as well. If there would be no rules, no staff would be needed. But even on it's own, it would be a good option. First of all, staff looks at player reports. Players have to make evidence of the hacker or rulebreaker, leave the game, go to the website, make a report, go back to the game and only THEN they can play a game again. This time is all wasted for the player, but also costs the server active players to increase their player count. As reports now cannot be made anymore, since no one will review them, this will save the players a lot of time. Also, the rulebreakers cannot be removed from the network anymore by a mod, meaning 'inappropriate names/skins' are not a problem anymore. Think also about the dev time saved with thi- oh, nevermind.Besides that, how often do you see staff actually play a game? Barely. They are too busy cleaning up the mess you made of your report, by cropping your evidence, u silly goose. This will mean the ex-staff will now have time to actually play and enjoy the game, which would result in a slightly higher playercount. it's as easy as that. great option, but the impact might be a little smaller. 8,3/10.
Option 6: Change the software to fried chicken
Let's be honest, if you go offline, it's probably one of three reasons: you want sleep (nerd, sleep is for losers), your parents want you to touch grass (F for a fallen soldier) or you have to or want to have some food. Only the last reason is valid, so if we could solve that, there is less reason to go offline and therefore more players will be retained. If we change the software to fried chicken, there is a solution to this issue. It is not expensive, as you only need a fryer (an airfryer if you want to be healthy, but we are gamers so yk) and that's about it. no more hunger during the gaming, except for the 1000 golden apples you chug to avoid your inevitable death in EggWars.Option 7: Re-skin weapons to fluffy toys
The world of gaming can be a violent place sometimes. As CubeCraft Java almost exclusively features violent PvP gamemodes where your objective literally is nothing else than to murder other children or try to push them into eternal nothingness, this might cause parents to prohibit their children to play on CubeCraft. This is the opposite of what we want to achieve. Therefore, we should change the violence with something more family friendly to represent and attract all player groups, no matter their age. fluffy toys and lets say a bouncy castle as void would easily get rid of this violent status CubeCraft has right now. Pillowfight on Minecraft, how does that sound?Option 8: Rename the network to HyCubePixel
"He who can modify his tactics in relation to his opponents will succeed and win" ~Sun Tzu, The Art of War
The biggest Java server has been Hypixel for ages. I don't say we need to copy their network, but taking slight advantage couldn't hurt, could it? The name is beneficial in multiple ways. Starting off, players will be confused and check it out. It's that easy! It don't matter if they hate you as long as they shout your name, right? Secondly, People will enter the wrong IP address and accidentally connect to CubeCraft. This means we gain a lot of accidental members who then eventually will stay. Thirdly, HyCube sounds similar to HQ, and HQ-Pixel sounds pretty dope if you ask me. But, if you think the name would only draw in the worst players, we could also change the name to CubeHiveCraft so we get actual good players.
Besides that, CubeCraft is also losing ground massively to other servers, for example 2b2t. This server has their peek during EU nights, so with the rebrand this option suggests, we could also just change the entire server to an Anarchy Server every EU night, so we can steal their members. Rebranding is everything, people! Anyhow, we also have option 9.
Option 9: Release Minecraft 2 and make CubeCraft the only server
Everyone knows that competition can be your friend, but when you are behind it can be your enemy. The competition between Java servers is huge, with a lot of minigame servers coming online every year, which costs us dearly. Obviously, we cannot just nuke the other servers, even though that might also be worth a shot. What we can do however is make a new version of Minecraft. We name it 'Minecraft 2' and it must be fairly similar to the current Minecraft, so it doesn't take too much coding time. On Minecraft 2, there will only be one online server to play on, which will be CubeCraft. BUT, in case you haven't noticed, you fell right into my trap, HAHA! The server will be a direct portal to the CubeCraft on Minecraft 1, making sure all players that are so hyped for the new version will eventually end up on the old and trustworthy CubeCraft. Easy as that!Option 10: Advertise!
So this last option has been suggested quite a bit. We are thankful for the community to help us think of the best ways to advertise the server. Advertising the server would result in more publicity, therefore gain more traction with people from outside the network and hopefully draw more players in. The best post of 2023, according to the CubeCraft Awards 2023 (for link, see option 1), the thread mentioning this marketing by @RelatedNoobs has been voted for the best suggestion of last year. CubeCraft themselves are also trying really hard, opening up the ECO Program they killed themselves (which has a lot of servers, to be exact it has one) and just the revamp in general regarding the partner function. However, me and my friends thought we could go a little bigger.In the end, we ended up with two options we thought would really do the trick. If you have better ways to advertise, let me know! First of the two, we could sponsor Mr. Beast for a new video, which would be 'I helped 100 CubeCraft Leaderboard Players to TOUCH GRASS'. Mr. Beast has an audience from young to old, with a total subscriber count of 226 million at time of writing this. If we could only get 0.001% of those people to join the network, we have already doubled the playercount any moment of the day. Secondly, we thought to buy the most viewed billboard in the world, having our own billboard at Times Square, NY. This would not only make the news as the first Minecraft server to do so, but we also attract business people to try out the game, as well as fill up the oh so empty NA servers, which then would finally get some traction. We also thought of @Camezonda running for president of the United States, but as we believe he is British, we sadly had to bin this plan.
Concluding:
I absolutely crushed this list. CubeCraft doesn't do nearly enough to promote their network or increase their playercount. That's why we made a step-by-step-guide on how to increase the playercount.1. Get more players. This is the necessary thing to do to increase the playercount.
2. Use one of the above mentioned options to get more players.
3. Enjoy wealth.
that being settled, we have mentioned 10 options of which we only could hope CubeCraft would see this. My personal favourite would be to make everything MinerWare or to re-skin the weapons to fluffy toys. Let me know what your preferred option is or if I left one out by accident. Thanks for
