All Networks What Cubecraft Can Learn from the 1.19 Update

[UndexdZombie]

Absolutely agree with this.
Feedback from the community is crucial for the survival of anything only if the feedback is constructed in a way that CubeCraft can understand, not just "it's bad" There is no value in that feedback. It's one of the most important ways to know if something is wrong and what needs to be improved on.

And if you are also no longer committed to something, you risk a downgrade in quality. The 1.19 update is best summed up as "Quantity over quality" Not everything was bad about the update but I believe it lacked the quality a lot of players were used to before the release on 1.19.

This is definitely fixable, and I hope CubeCraft can see what they need to do to get themselves back on track, I know they put work into this. This is what I think about this and I hope you can all understand

 

[Clovate]

Introduction​

It has been roughly four months since the official release of the 1.19 update. It left the community in the dark with a promise that it would “one day” be released. Half a year later than the expected release date, the 1.19 beta update went online. The community had its initial meltdown and rode the hype of negativity, but to this day there are still comments pointing out its cons - especially in EggWars. The update has its many flaws, and not just in the game. The update was a combination that exposed some areas Cubecraft must reflect on and change. I want to use this post as a reflection, to look back at the release of the 1.19 update and focus on what Cubecraft can learn from it, to not repeat the same mistakes next time.

Where was the update hype?​

Cubecraft fails to generate excitement and anticipation for updates that have more than enough content to be labeled as something big. The release of the 1.19 update, for instance, was missing the expected hype due to its beta status. The absence of pre-release promotion and engagement with the player community left the update feeling underwhelming and poorly received.

Awful Release Times​

Another significant flaw in Cubecraft's marketing strategy is the choice of release times for updates. Releasing the 1.19 update on a Tuesday morning seems counterintuitive, as this timing did not align with the optimal availability of players. Why was the update not released on a Friday morning or Sunday? I understand the devs want enough time during the week to fix the bugs, but the lack of hype and no given public release time was very underwhelming. This decision could have negatively impacted the initial reception of the update, diminishing its potential success.

1.19 Beta Hidden from the Public: Disregard for Community Input​

The decision to hide the 1.19 Beta from the public contradicts Cubecraft's claim that community input is only a small portion of decision-making. If the community is such a “small input” compared to its overall player count, why was the beta update deliberately hidden? This move raises questions about transparency and the server's commitment to valuing the opinions and feedback of its player base. Is the feedback of the community worthwhile or not? If so, why is feedback on the forums completely overlooked? This is where you receive the most thought-out suggestions from your most dedicated members. Not the comments on a YouTube video or Discord threads.

Neglected Social Media Platforms: TikTok, YouTube, Instagram​

Cubecraft's negligence of key social media platforms, including TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, is noticeable. Cubecraft has a large social media following, yet the server's lack of active maintenance on these platforms reflects a disregard for potential avenues of growth and engagement.
I would also like to point out a time Cubecraft successfully created hype for an update: The Release of Skyblock on Bedrock Edition. The highly anticipated update included a timer that would count down to 0. Players joined the server and waited in excitement to see the timer hit 0. How did an overhaul as big as the 1.19 update not have a count-down or any sort of anticipation?

Inability to Recruit New Developers​

Cubecraft's excuse of not having time to reach out to potential developers is a severely overlooked flaw. In a previous post, Laura noted how difficult it is to find new developers due to the large amount of time it takes to find new potential candidates. If the issue is finding candidates, why not have the candidates come to you? The server's decision not to actively seek new talent through platforms like jobs.cubecraft.net raises concerns about the commitment to enhancing the player experience and maintaining a competitive edge. I can only imagine how difficult the entire 1.19 overhaul was with the size of the development team - and I commend everyone involved in the incredible amount of work, but without a doubt, more help would have been beneficial.

Conclusion​

In conclusion, Cubecraft had missteps from the 1.19 update, ranging from poor update promotion to neglect of crucial social media platforms, that have collectively contributed to a decline in its overall appeal. To ensure sustained success and player satisfaction, Cubecraft must reevaluate its marketing strategies and adopt a more proactive and professional approach for future updates.

Thank you for saying this. Hopefully THIS will be enough for cube to finally make a change. The amount of backlash they received from the community while there has been little change in response still blows my mind

 

[TheMrRevZ]

I can see why a lot of people can agree on this opinion and, to be honest, I agree with you. The update did ruin the experiences for others (In my case, not liking Eggwars as much as I used to), with many of the player-base leaving the CCG community and server itself, it does look like CubeCraft is in quite a sticky situation with tying loose connections with their former followers who left the community to look for more fun things to do. I think if they would have spent more time considering on how the fans would feel after the update released, then they would have not lost as much of their community's loyal members.

 

[xFqbz]

I would say eggwars first, when I watch the stream about the q&a 1.19 test on event discord server, when I see the eggwars update, my honest opinion I would say no, if ppl say no then why cubecraft add it then, when cubecrafter don't like the opinion about the eggwars 1.19, it's a test server you know if u don't like the opinion just change it make it better that's why. Tbh agree jaja

 

[deathtrapzu]

I can see why a lot of people can agree on this opinion and, to be honest, I agree with you. The update did ruin the experiences for others (In my case, not liking Eggwars as much as I used to), with many of the player-base leaving the CCG community and server itself, it does look like CubeCraft is in quite a sticky situation with tying loose connections with their former followers who left the community to look for more fun things to do. I think if they would have spent more time considering on how the fans would feel after the update released, then they would have not lost as much of their community's loyal members.

I quit after cubecraft updated. There was almost no warning, and i fell like they had’nt really throughly thought it out.

 

[Veoliax]

I do agree with your opinion, but besides the update, there were a few things that CubeCraft also did. Like unbanning everyone, the following days playing anything, felt to me like a lot of players would be using some cheats. That also was a time for me which I farmed successul reports. But I also quit for a while shortly after, since it made no fun at all.

 

[deathtrapzu]

I do agree with your opinion, but besides the update, there were a few things that CubeCraft also did. Like unbanning everyone, the following days playing anything, felt to me like a lot of players would be using some cheats. That also was a time for me which I farmed successul reports. But I also quit for a while shortly after, since it made no fun at all.

Yeah, unbanning everyone might not have been the best idea, that was one of the reasons i quit. there was an outrageous amount of hacker and cheaters

 

[Redned]

Hey, thanks for the detailed thread. I have some comments to add and some clarity to a few points you have brought up.

Where was the update hype?​

Cubecraft fails to generate excitement and anticipation for updates that have more than enough content to be labeled as something big. The release of the 1.19 update, for instance, was missing the expected hype due to its beta status. The absence of pre-release promotion and engagement with the player community left the update feeling underwhelming and poorly received.

We deliberately did not hype up the update at this time. We intentionally launched the update as a beta as we knew there would be many bugs and stability issues for some time. For some context: this is the largest update we've ever done to CubeCraft; not only from a content side, but updating nearly 10 Minecraft versions is no easy feat. Our server platform was completely redone and much of our backend systems had to be written.

No amount of internal testing and QA would have revealed many of the issues we experienced at launch.

We had already rolled the update out to Java a few months prior, and even with a playerbase of nearly 1,000 CCU, it wasn't enough to reveal a lot of the issues we saw at scale with 20,000+ players. We also wanted to gather feedback about a lot of the changes we made during the 1.19 update and make changes, including the EggWars update.

However, when we took the server out of beta, we put a lot of energy and effort around promoting the new content and updates. This came in the form of our Party Update followed with an anniversary animation. This was one of the largest marketing pushes we had done in quite some time. After all the changes we had made during the beta period, we have seen far more positive results

Awful Release Times​

Another significant flaw in Cubecraft's marketing strategy is the choice of release times for updates. Releasing the 1.19 update on a Tuesday morning seems counterintuitive, as this timing did not align with the optimal availability of players. Why was the update not released on a Friday morning or Sunday? I understand the devs want enough time during the week to fix the bugs, but the lack of hype and no given public release time was very underwhelming. This decision could have negatively impacted the initial reception of the update, diminishing its potential success.

For similar reasons as I mentioned above, this was also not the "entire" update. There is more that happens behind the scenes and at the time, releasing on a Tuesday was the most optimal. We'd much rather release an update at a time where the most people can be available and can patch bugs as quick as possible. Releasing on a weekend for instance would have been a poor decision since it means bugs and stability issues would have not been resolved at a time when the most players are on the network.

As I mentioned earlier, we anticipated there would be bugs with as massive as a release as this was. Releasing on a Tuesday allowed us good time to fix a number of major stability issues and by the time we hit the weekend, with the most players online, the network was in a far more stable position than it was on day 1 or 2 after the release.

1.19 Beta Hidden from the Public: Disregard for Community Input​

The decision to hide the 1.19 Beta from the public contradicts Cubecraft's claim that community input is only a small portion of decision-making. If the community is such a “small input” compared to its overall player count, why was the beta update deliberately hidden? This move raises questions about transparency and the server's commitment to valuing the opinions and feedback of its player base. Is the feedback of the community worthwhile or not? If so, why is feedback on the forums completely overlooked? This is where you receive the most thought-out suggestions from your most dedicated members. Not the comments on a YouTube video or Discord threads.

The update was not entirely hidden from the public - we saw many hundreds of players join our testing network and helped us find some pretty major issues before release. We also hosted multiple testing sessions on Discord and were very communicative about these sessions. I will say we could have been a bit more visible ingame with our NPC (i.e. in the beta lobby), but we were certainly not trying to hide this update from the public.

I've mentioned in more detail on another thread that forums are not our only source of collecting feedback. Unfortunately, they are not used by a wide number of users and therefore should not be our only consideration for feedback and suggestions. We do still read the forums and do implement ideas and suggestions from here still, but again, exclusively relying on the forums for feedback misses a lot of the big picture.

Neglected Social Media Platforms: TikTok, YouTube, Instagram​

Cubecraft's negligence of key social media platforms, including TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, is noticeable. Cubecraft has a large social media following, yet the server's lack of active maintenance on these platforms reflects a disregard for potential avenues of growth and engagement.
I would also like to point out a time Cubecraft successfully created hype for an update: The Release of Skyblock on Bedrock Edition. The highly anticipated update included a timer that would count down to 0. Players joined the server and waited in excitement to see the timer hit 0. How did an overhaul as big as the 1.19 update not have a count-down or any sort of anticipation?

I also discussed this a bit in the thread I linked above, but we've actively been using our socials in recent months a lot more than we have in the past (i.e. polls on YouTube, Q&A's on Instagram, etc.). There was not near as much activity during the 1.19 migration since we did not have as much to talk about in terms of updates, but now that we're actively releasing content, they have content posted on them quite regularly.

A few examples:
- Mini win stream update on Twitter
- Mob Vote hunt on Instagram
- MinerWare update on Twitter
- Backrooms Bundle on Instagram
- Lucky Islands update on Instagram
- Chaos SkyWars weekend on Twitter

I will admit our YouTube and TikTok are definitely not as utilized as Twitter and Instagram. Some of this is a balancing game and there's other factors to consider as well. Engagement on YouTube vs Twitter vs TikTok looks way different. I'm not an expert here (don't ask me to make a TikTok video xd) and I work primarily in development, so I don't have a lot to add here unfortunately.

Inability to Recruit New Developers​

Cubecraft's excuse of not having time to reach out to potential developers is a severely overlooked flaw. In a previous post, Laura noted how difficult it is to find new developers due to the large amount of time it takes to find new potential candidates. If the issue is finding candidates, why not have the candidates come to you? The server's decision not to actively seek new talent through platforms like jobs.cubecraft.net raises concerns about the commitment to enhancing the player experience and maintaining a competitive edge. I can only imagine how difficult the entire 1.19 overhaul was with the size of the development team - and I commend everyone involved in the incredible amount of work, but without a doubt, more help would have been beneficial.

This seems to imply that "more devs = more (or faster) updates" which is not necessarily the case. There is often an optimal level to strive for. Having 20 devs work on a single EggWars update for instance would likely have not only disasterous results, but would also result in large amounts of additional resources being placed on project management to ensure everyone had work to do, people weren't stepping over each other, code gets tested and deployed properlty, etc.

There is also a overhead that comes with bringing on a new developer. Considering the scale at which we run Minecraft servers, we have a lot of code. Training new developers and them learning our codebases can take a couple months, and typically this is something seen for any company bringing on new team members.

In our case, bringing on devs during the migration would have meant more time has to be spent from existing devs who might otherwise be working on the migration to help mentor and train new developers. It would have been very unwise for us to bring on new developers during a time when major parts of our codebase and infrastructure were being redesigned, and ironically would have caused even further delays, rather than reduce how long the migration took.

In terms of the 1.19 migration, many of the delays we encountered were not particularly caused by the size of the dev team. We've learned a lot from our 1.19 migration and ways to better approach updates in the future.

Conclusion​

In conclusion, Cubecraft had missteps from the 1.19 update, ranging from poor update promotion to neglect of crucial social media platforms, that have collectively contributed to a decline in its overall appeal. To ensure sustained success and player satisfaction, Cubecraft must reevaluate its marketing strategies and adopt a more proactive and professional approach for future updates.

And to wrap this up, we've learned a lot from this migration period. Hopefully, we don't find ourselves in a position where we have to pause regular updates for nearly 9 months again, and we've taken many steps to ensure that we can avoid this (i.e. keeping our server software up to date).

We've also learned a lot about incorporating feedback from the community and have actively been looking to do more outreach. We made a lot of changes to EggWars after we saw a lot of initial dissastisfaction with the changes brought along in Season 2. We've also done a lot of outreach for our upcoming FFA update, asking the community directly what they wish to see in the update and are also hosting a kit competition which will allow community members to get their kit ideas right into FFA.

So far, we've seen very positive results with many of the changes we've made in recent months and direction we've taken in terms of updating and how we handle community outreach. I recognize that we are also not perfect in all of these areas and feedback on ways we can improve is most certainly welcome. I also want to stress that we will make mistakes. Nobody is perfect, but the important part is that we learn from our mistakes.

Thanks for the detailed points you brought up and I hope this answers some of your questions or offers some clarity as to why some decisions were made the way they were.

 

[chicogamer6543]

It is quite true that the update hyped many players, but for me what was wrong was that they did not say exactly what it was going to do to cubecraft and other modalities such as the case of eggwars, I hope that the cubecraft people learn from this mistake and that they release better updates in the future.

Greetings, Chicogamer6543

 

[TheMrRevZ]

"I quit after cubecraft updated."

Exactly what I'm pointing out, I think it should have had been thought out more carefully to ensure a stable and loyal fanbase. Another thing I can point out is how much bugs there were at the start. I'd say there should have been at least one-two month(s) more of work put into the game's code and then could've been released, knowing that the community won't have much issues and if they did find a bug (Which I will say now, mistakes do happen in coding); It wouldn't have been much of an issue to tackle them. I'd say the staff team were working extremely hard on patching bugs and getting rid of hackers after release which could mean there should have been more preparations before release. I'm not really against the update, but just think that it could've been planned out more.

 

[thatonebufftoad]

Tbh, I completely agree with this post, I used to play CubeCraft every time I got on MC but now I don't even remember the last time I played it. The update was so sudden and so "game-changing" that I just decided to quit. I know many friends who were very disappointed to the point of being mad/angry and who completely quit. One of them even switched versions and started playing Hyixel more than he played Bedrock. All in all, I think that both CubeCraft and the community would benefit if this update was reversed and if CubeCraft took our suggestions and put more thought into their future updates. Bc...yk we are their player base after all, shouldn't we have a sort of say in what gets added/changed?

 

[Reesle]

This seems to imply that "more devs = more (or faster) updates" which is not necessarily the case. There is often an optimal level to strive for. Having 20 devs work on a single EggWars update for instance would likely have not only disasterous results, but would also result in large amounts of additional resources being placed on project management to ensure everyone had work to do, people weren't stepping over each other, code gets tested and deployed properlty, etc.

There is also a overhead that comes with bringing on a new developer. Considering the scale at which we run Minecraft servers, we have a lot of code. Training new developers and them learning our codebases can take a couple months, and typically this is something seen for any company bringing on new team members.

In our case, bringing on devs during the migration would have meant more time has to be spent from existing devs who might otherwise be working on the migration to help mentor and train new developers. It would have been very unwise for us to bring on new developers during a time when major parts of our codebase and infrastructure were being redesigned, and ironically would have caused even further delays, rather than reduce how long the migration took.

In terms of the 1.19 migration, many of the delays we encountered were not particularly caused by the size of the dev team. We've learned a lot from our 1.19 migration and ways to better approach updates in the future.

I’m not an expert when it comes to the dev process, but here’s what I’m thinking :

Now that the migration has been complete you should try to hire new devs.
There are many updates that have been planned or postponed for years, such as a replay system, randomized favorite loot selection, Skyblock End update, Blockwars classes, etc.
Once fully trained, you could assign a new dev to these long overdue projects and then at least there wouldn’t be as much of a risk of “people stepping over each other” and then Cubecraft can finally implement long awaited updates.

Once again, those were just my thoughts and I don’t know much about the process, but I’m curious to see what you think of this idea.

P.S. I’ve noticed a larger amount of staff activity/replies throughout the Forums, and I really appreciate it

 

[pelt]

Its just weird how, when and why it was released. When we got to test it everybody hated it and instead of delaying it and waiting for more feedback they pushed it through on a damn Tuesday morning, like, it makes no sense at all.

I remember playing later and was like 'what is this this is horrible' and that day like 90% of the grinders quit because it was unplayable and still is. Yes there are new strats but netherite armour is just dumb and strength pots are just too cheap.

THIS!

My point of view is kinda biased because I hate the update but
some of the argument I saw was the number of people on cubecraft increased:
while they did the update on summer vacation near the moment they got their record of people connected and they removed their afk kick system on lobby.

except emerald update (which make price go crazy in shop) their nothing good in this update, if someone know one good thing tell me

Veoliax said:​

I do agree with your opinion, but besides the update, there were a few things that CubeCraft also did. Like unbanning everyone, the following days playing anything, felt to me like a lot of players would be using some cheats. That also was a time for me which I farmed successul reports. But I also quit for a while shortly after, since it made no fun at all.

why would they do that at a close timing. they try everything to justify a bad update.

 

[TheMrRevZ]

"All in all, I think that both CubeCraft and the community would benefit if this update was reversed and if CubeCraft took our suggestions and put more thought into their future updates. Bc...yk we are their player base after all, shouldn't we have a sort of say in what gets added/changed?"

They won't be reversing the update as far as I know. It took them ages to make and would have been a pain to take in watching it all get removed...

 

[HoppyFrog]

I agree with many things said in this post.

I personally noticed many changes that the community was begging CubeCraft to do after the 1.19 update and many of the changes just weren't added, no matter how many people wanted them. I do like how CubeCraft has been more active with their updates recently, but they need to listen to the community's feedback on those updates more or else we will just have repeats of the 1.19 update outcome again with other updates.

I hope that CubeCraft takes this thread and all the comments in it not as a complaint against CubeCraft, but instead as legitimately helpful information about what they can do better next time. I think that CC just needs to listen to what the community is saying.

 

[TheMrRevZ]

THIS!

My point of view is kinda biased because I hate the update but
some of the argument I saw was the number of people on cubecraft increased:
while they did the update on summer vacation near the moment they got their record of people connected and they removed their afk kick system on lobby.

except emerald update (which make price go crazy in shop) their nothing good in this update, if someone know one good thing tell me

I can agree with you on the new use for emeralds, I do like how they created a discount system for their shop. It can come really useful at some times. Apart from that I don't see many changes that fans like from the current update. As they won't be reversing the update, I think it could be best to start sprucing things up on their games to make it feel "normal" for the people who've had issues with the update or players that just quit. We've seen an improvement on Eggwars after the update in Discord's Changelog stating that the generators produce tokens twice as fast than before. Quite a lot of players were pleased by this change. If they would take the same approach for other things, we can see many players coming back to play the server and more players having a more enjoyable experience.

 

[Laura]

I’m not an expert when it comes to the dev process, but here’s what I’m thinking :

Now that the migration has been complete you should try to hire new devs.
There are many updates that have been planned or postponed for years, such as a replay system, randomized favorite loot selection, Skyblock End update, Blockwars classes, etc.
Once fully trained, you could assign a new dev to these long overdue projects and then at least there wouldn’t be as much of a risk of “people stepping over each other” and then Cubecraft can finally implement long awaited updates.

Once again, those were just my thoughts and I don’t know much about the process, but I’m curious to see what you think of this idea.

P.S. I’ve noticed a larger amount of staff activity/replies throughout the Forums, and I really appreciate it

Unfortunately due to NDAs, personal data, and it being a business operations thing, we couldn't tell players if we're hiring/training new Devs.
And these are also things which take 3+ months due to the training and probationary period, so we could be training people, and the community wouldn't know about it for months.

Secondly, if I may be so curt, it's not someone's place to tell their local MC Donald's how and when to hire new staff, it's the business' own responsibility and process.
Feedback on the food and drinks, the atmosphere, the cleanliness? Sure, absolutely speak your mind. But the operations is up to the business.

 

[VanHouten]

Unfortunately due to NDAs, personal data, and it being a business operations thing, we couldn't tell players if we're hiring/training new Devs.
And these are also things which take 3+ months due to the training and probationary period, so we could be training people, and the community wouldn't know about it for months.

Secondly, if I may be so curt, it's not someone's place to tell their local MC Donald's how and when to hire new staff, it's the business' own responsibility and process.
Feedback on the food and drinks, the atmosphere, the cleanliness? Sure, absolutely speak your mind. But the operations is up to the business.

I don't really see how you can compare McDonalds to CubeCraft. One of them has a community that deeply cares about the company and one doesn't. Every big Minecraft server, including Hypixel, takes feedback on what happens behind-the-scenes very seriously

 

[thatonebufftoad]

They won't be reversing the update as far as I know. It took them ages to make and would have been a pain to take in watching it all get removed...

probably but they will have to face the consequences that the new update brought with it mainly the unhappy playerbase

 

[Laura]

I don't really see how you can compare McDonalds to CubeCraft. One of them has a community that deeply cares about the company and one doesn't. Every big Minecraft server, including Hypixel, takes feedback on what happens behind-the-scenes very seriously

The comparison is only there for the point of giving feedback on business operations. That's strictly up to the business.

Feedback on products and experience is absolutely fair game, that's what you're exchanging your time and money for.