All Networks Java Bedrock What's the future of CubeCraft?

[Eli]

​

September 1st, 2022, The Future of CubeCraft Java is posted, detailing massive changes coming to the Java Network effective September 5th, including the deletion of multiple gamemodes and maps across the network. Along with it the conditions which had to be met for the Java Network to continue to exist:

​

At this time, Java needs to grow beyond 1,000 players or we will need to close it.​

An unexpected notice that surely took many players by surprise. This thread, alike the prior Big Changes (see what I did there?) to Java certainly gave birth to some controversy, and even saw feelings of anger, sadness and disappointment. However, not everything was lost, since the thread implied big plans were on their way, perhaps to delay the day CubeCraft's leadership had to sit down and take a decision on the matter.
​

This is sad news but rather than come to you today to tell you we are closing Java, we are here instead to unveil some of our big plans to deliver amazing experiences to even more players, to inspire them like I was way back in 2014.​

However, as you go back and read the statement again you cannot help but wonder, well... September 1st, 2022 wasn't the day we were told Java is closing, but... when will THAT day come? will it come at all? or will we be stuck in a limbo for years on end concerned about the underlying threat of our beloved network's deletion?

We are at a point where trying to find the answers to these questions is extremely confusing, the Java network is certainly not hitting the 1k player benchmark that was told would be a necessity, yet it is STILL receiving consistent updates and content overhauls.

And to add even more factors into our soup of uncertainty, CubeCraft's community strategy seems to have shifted massively from what was established in THIS thread by @Zed from two years ago, where a solid Community & Volunteering Team was set in place, out of which, only 1 member remains. And not a single update thread regarding the big thing that matters the MOST, CubeCraft's relationship with the community, has been posted since, community talks seem to be a distant memory of the past, and responses from the admin team on threads has become a rare delicacy few are ever lucky enough to experience, and what once felt like a company who had finally understood the importance of community, seems to have once again drifted apart from it.

All of this has led me to believe that I cannot be the only player who can't help but feel a little anxious and sad not knowing about the direction CubeCraft wants to take, I am sure a big part of the community would appreciate setting some ground rules and priorities once again, just how Cube has done in its many years of existence.

There are three important messages that I hope to communicate as I end this thread:​

• If you agree with the points I have exposed in this thread, I encourage you to join me in positively pressuring CubeCraft's leadership to provide the community with a snapshot of the network's status, overall direction, and perhaps making some commitments to not allow this communicational divide to grow bigger.​

• I encourage the Bedrock community (of whose network I'm unfortunately too ignorant to have opinions of) to resonate this message within their own struggles as well, for I am sure Bedrock could also benefit from more direct and participative communication.​

• I canot end this thread without emphasizing the importance of keeping conversations and feedback civil and constructive, for we all share a common passion for this place, and working together is always better than unnecessary conflict.​

 

[Laura]

Ok so...
It shouldn't really have been unexpected. When you have a server which is scaled up to run for 20,000 players over the years and are then only running it for 800, there's a lot of costs which won't be able to be maintained.
As I've explained before, we had two options;
- Shut down completely, remove all risk and focus just on Bedrock.
- Scale back the number of games and game modes so that costs are lowered and there's less code to maintain, but risk it still not growing.
We chose option 2, because we want to give java a fighting chance.

Java is still receiving consistent updates exactly because of this. What helps is that with the 1.19 update our codebases were unified between java and bedrock, meaning any code we write for one is immediately ready to run on the other, the only thing which needs tweaking are things like menus. So we only have to write an update once and it can roll out to both networks, that's why java is still getting updates. It wouldn't make sense to say "We're going to push for java to grow" and then not provide it with updates.

As for when the decision to keep java or close it down will come; we specifically didn't set a date, because we feel it's not accurate to set a deadline for something like this. The decision can only be made fairly by watching and monitoring the numbers in context to what's happening at the time. When we feel like we've given it a solid chance to grow and there's not much more we can do to help it, that's around when we'll make the decision. But we're still coming up with ideas on how to try to help it.

 

[Salty_Shadows]

Ok so...
It shouldn't really have been unexpected. When you have a server which is scaled up to run for 20,000 players over the years and are then only running it for 800, there's a lot of costs which won't be able to be maintained.
As I've explained before, we had two options;
- Shut down completely, remove all risk and focus just on Bedrock.
- Scale back the number of games and game modes so that costs are lowered and there's less code to maintain, but risk it still not growing.
We chose option 2, because we want to give java a fighting chance.

Java is still receiving consistent updates exactly because of this. What helps is that with the 1.19 update our codebases were unified between java and bedrock, meaning any code we write for one is immediately ready to run on the other, the only thing which needs tweaking are things like menus. So we only have to write an update once and it can roll out to both networks, that's why java is still getting updates. It wouldn't make sense to say "We're going to push for java to grow" and then not provide it with updates.

As for when the decision to keep java or close it down will come; we specifically didn't set a date, because we feel it's not accurate to set a deadline for something like this. The decision can only be made fairly by watching and monitoring the numbers in context to what's happening at the time. When we feel like we've given it a solid chance to grow and there's not much more we can do to help it, that's around when we'll make the decision. But we're still coming up with ideas on how to try to help it.

But all these changes to Java have not done much to keeping the player count over 1k all it did was decrease it, How many more updates can you do to a already dying server. It is inevitable and i don't want to be negative about it purely because of how old the server is and it would be sad to see it go. But there will be a time soon i think within the next 1-2 years where the team have to make that difficult decision unless a player boost comes out of no where as i know it wasn't cheap running Java while the rank store was disabled for 10+ months and effectively running it off the funds generated through Bedrock edition/Marketplace. I do hope something can magically happen again soon and the player count rises again

 

[Laura]

But all these changes to Java have not done much to keeping the player count over 1k all it did was decrease it, How many more updates can you do to a already dying server. It is inevitable and i don't want to be negative about it purely because of how old the server is and it would be sad to see it go. But there will be a time soon i think within the next 1-2 years where the team have to make that difficult decision unless a player boost comes out of no where as i know it wasn't cheap running Java while the rank store was disabled for 10+ months and effectively running it off the funds generated through Bedrock edition/Marketplace. I do hope something can magically happen again soon and the player count rises again

Player count is naturally down this time of year due to heading into winter.
That's why I'm saying we need to watch the numbers. We're currently only going off of a few months worth of data, we don't have a complete picture of how it's affected the player count yet.
The changes to java so far, minus the couple of game updates, have been more for us, allowing us to create content and updates faster. They have been the foundational updates needed in order to do the content and game updates to try and bring in players, of which we've only done a couple so far.

 

[Dualninja]

I do feel as though there is a divide between the staff and the players currently. However, thank you Laura for replying to this thread, it’s rare that a thread gets a staff reply. We aren’t asking for sweeping changes or major upheaval. We just want the staff to communicate to us more often. Whether it be in-game, on the forums, or through a community talk. We just want to feel heard.

 

[Salty_Shadows]

Player count is naturally down this time of year due to heading into winter.
That's why I'm saying we need to watch the numbers. We're currently only going off of a few months worth of data, we don't have a complete picture of how it's affected the player count yet.
The changes to java so far, minus the couple of game updates, have been more for us, allowing us to create content and updates faster. They have been the foundational updates needed in order to do the content and game updates to try and bring in players, of which we've only done a couple so far.

Its not just been this time of year though, its been seen throughout the entire year. The 1.19 beta was launched back in April so its nearly been 8 Months and over a year since the big change to fewer games.

I do understand that it takes time for the numbers to show, but how many more months of data is needed before a decision is made.

(note this isnt me trying to start an argument or anything im just curious how many more months is needed)

I do feel as though there is a divide between the staff and the players currently. However, thank you Laura for replying to this thread, it’s rare that a thread gets a staff reply. We aren’t asking for sweeping changes or major upheaval. We just want the staff to communicate to us more often. Whether it be in-game, on the forums, or through a community talk. We just want to feel heard.

I couldn't agree More with this. They pushed out a parkour update due to one person asking for maps (See thread here: https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/🦘-parkour-map-update.354838/ However big suggestions now a days don't get a response or even if there's massive backing from staff/the player base there isn't a change added or whatever the suggestion is. (see this suggestion by @xclutchingg as an example: https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/bring-back-capes-to-the-bedrock-network.354859/) It is now November and so far this year there has only been 1 implemented suggestion that was created this year (See screenshot of last 6 suggestions implemented) 1 suggestion out of the 40 pages of suggestions made this year is not good. There has been some improvements this year with community interaction with a couple QnA's being hosted around the time of the 1.19 testing but since then there's been silence in terms of updates to previously discussed topics and asking the community in reality what they want to see and answer any questions people have. Back a few years ago for all those new players there was something called Community talks which was hosted by an admin called Younisco and this was very effective in discussing things with the community and i know there's been talks about brining these back but with none happening in recent months it seems like they have dropped the matter again which i feel as a server this size and being the biggest server on Bedrock it should be interacting with its community more and not working on updates without using suggestions from the community, An example update that used tons of community suggestions was the QoL Update (see here: https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/quality-of-life-update-many-new-features.301165/) I Wont go on much more and staff feel free to counter points ive made, always down to discuss things as long as things dont get hostile <3 (been there done that, if ykyk)

 

[Dualninja]

If I were to change one thing about Cubecraft. It would be the reintroduction of community talks. I’ve talked about this in length before, and Hazard said that they’ll try and get one started. However, Hazard specifically said no promises. I do hope that we get a community talk by the end of the year. As Cubecraft is falling behind, the Java server is dying a slow death, sadly. But on Bedrock, Lifeboat is catching up to The Hive in player count. For Cubecraft to stay on top of the Bedrock scene, they’ll have to listen to the community more often. Again though, thank you Laura for responding to this thread and to others.

 

[UncleSpect]

I think a great injustice has been done to Java. I'm just a java player, I've never played bedrock before. I discovered Cubecraft in 2018 and started playing it. I made new friends, which was great, but as the years went by, updates were introduced and the game changed a lot. The last update officially ended the game, everyone stopped playing and the number of players dropped too much, then the admins removed the games and maps. Players who rarely played started not playing at all. Unfortunately we are losing java. I know Cubecraft will now become known for bedrock.

 

[Laura]

I think one of the core reasons for why it seems there's a gap is as follows;
For the last year, doing the 1.19 migration and GameFramework conversions for all of our games, our focus has been on making sure they're all running and all the systems are functional. Getting things running and staying stable has been our priority, bugfixes a close second, then polish. There hasn't been much room in the scope of tasks needed to be done to allow for community suggestions and additions to be incorporated.
The critical thing needed was to get the games working, keep the network stable, which was a huge task and took the overwhelming majority of time. (So big we overshot our estimate by several months.)
That's where all out time and energy has been.

We're starting to get into a rhythm now where the protocol and server side of things are nearly 100% resolved, and now focus can go back to looking into community suggestions and feedback. We just didn't have room in the scope for it over the last year, due to how many tasks and challenges were revealing themselves as we worked through the migration. Community talks haven't been a thing because we just haven't had the capacity to incorporate the suggestions.

The dev team is arguably the smallest size it's been in years, and we've been trying to do one of the most ambitious and complex tasks in Cube's history. We've still had capacity to do map updates and some cosmetics because those don't require much dev input.

 

[Dualninja]

I think one of the core reasons for why it seems there's a gap is as follows;
For the last year, doing the 1.19 migration and GameFramework conversions for all of our games, our focus has been on making sure they're all running and all the systems are functional. Getting things running and staying stable has been our priority, bugfixes a close second, then polish. There hasn't been much room in the scope of tasks needed to be done to allow for community suggestions and additions to be incorporated.
The critical thing needed was to get the games working, keep the network stable, which was a huge task and took the overwhelming majority of time. (So big we overshot our estimate by several months.)
That's where all out time and energy has been.

We're starting to get into a rhythm now where the protocol and server side of things are nearly 100% resolved, and now focus can go back to looking into community suggestions and feedback. We just didn't have room in the scope for it over the last year, due to how many tasks and challenges were revealing themselves as we worked through the migration. Community talks haven't been a thing because we just haven't had the capacity to incorporate the suggestions.

The dev team is arguably the smallest size it's been in years, and we've been trying to do one of the most ambitious and complex tasks in Cube's history. We've still had capacity to do map updates and some cosmetics because those don't require much dev input.

Does this mean that we might possibly just maybe see some community suggestions being looked at? Or should we not get our hopes up?

 

[Salty_Shadows]

Does this mean that we might possibly just maybe see some community suggestions being looked at? Or should we not get our hopes up?

probably best not to get hopes up, this happens often lmao

 

[Eli]

Ok so...
It shouldn't really have been unexpected. When you have a server which is scaled up to run for 20,000 players over the years and are then only running it for 800, there's a lot of costs which won't be able to be maintained.
As I've explained before, we had two options;
- Shut down completely, remove all risk and focus just on Bedrock.
- Scale back the number of games and game modes so that costs are lowered and there's less code to maintain, but risk it still not growing.
We chose option 2, because we want to give java a fighting chance.

Java is still receiving consistent updates exactly because of this. What helps is that with the 1.19 update our codebases were unified between java and bedrock, meaning any code we write for one is immediately ready to run on the other, the only thing which needs tweaking are things like menus. So we only have to write an update once and it can roll out to both networks, that's why java is still getting updates. It wouldn't make sense to say "We're going to push for java to grow" and then not provide it with updates.

As for when the decision to keep java or close it down will come; we specifically didn't set a date, because we feel it's not accurate to set a deadline for something like this. The decision can only be made fairly by watching and monitoring the numbers in context to what's happening at the time. When we feel like we've given it a solid chance to grow and there's not much more we can do to help it, that's around when we'll make the decision. But we're still coming up with ideas on how to try to help it.

Thank you for your response, I am sorry if you had explained this before, I would've thought something as important as this would be easier to find on the forums/would be placed in an update thread directed toward the entire community. Does this response serve as confirmation that the deletion of Java is not really a consideration anymore? Granted that it's effectively been downscaled and is now actively being worked on?

Player count is naturally down this time of year due to heading into winter.
That's why I'm saying we need to watch the numbers. We're currently only going off of a few months worth of data, we don't have a complete picture of how it's affected the player count yet.

Whilst I do agree it might be a contributing factor, the occassional summer increase shouldn't be massive if the server is consistently reaching playercounts that are on the lower side. Especially now that there seems to be so many other Minecraft servers getting more attention than CubeCraft, last time I checked servers sorted by playercount, Cube was in the 30th place.

I think one of the core reasons for why it seems there's a gap is as follows;
For the last year, doing the 1.19 migration and GameFramework conversions for all of our games, our focus has been on making sure they're all running and all the systems are functional. Getting things running and staying stable has been our priority, bugfixes a close second, then polish. There hasn't been much room in the scope of tasks needed to be done to allow for community suggestions and additions to be incorporated.
The critical thing needed was to get the games working, keep the network stable, which was a huge task and took the overwhelming majority of time. (So big we overshot our estimate by several months.)
That's where all out time and energy has been.

We're starting to get into a rhythm now where the protocol and server side of things are nearly 100% resolved, and now focus can go back to looking into community suggestions and feedback. We just didn't have room in the scope for it over the last year, due to how many tasks and challenges were revealing themselves as we worked through the migration. Community talks haven't been a thing because we just haven't had the capacity to incorporate the suggestions.

The dev team is arguably the smallest size it's been in years, and we've been trying to do one of the most ambitious and complex tasks in Cube's history. We've still had capacity to do map updates and some cosmetics because those don't require much dev input.

So although this is may be a perfectly reasonable explanation amongst yourselves for now, I'd encourage you and the rest of the team to really think if severing your relationship with the community was worth the technical advancements you achieved, and... was mantaining a relationship with the community REALLY incompatible with your ongoing efforts?

Having been around CubeCraft since 2017 and knowing bits and pieces of the server's history from even further back in the day, this has NOT been the first rough patch that CubeCraft has had to go through in its existence, yet it seems like CubeCraft's behavior alongside all of these rough patches has always been the same, mantaining an unhealthy distance from the community, and at times adopting a stance, alike your own, where every action seems perfectly justifiable, so responses to threads become a matter of defending a position, rather than being conciliatory and adopting a series of compromises to mend their relationship with the community.

So... one does wonder how many MORE times does Cube have to cycle through these periods of uncertainty, make systematic mistakes and then have to go back and apologize and try fixing the damage done for them to realize that their way of managing difficult situations is not working out?

 

[Ethan]

 

[Ethan]

Though sometimes it doesn't seem like it, we are genuinely actively reading discord and forums. We talk several times each week about what would be good for the community. We understand the issues the community have and we are are working very hard to thin down the backlog of tasks that we have. We are a very small team working to creating a fun experiences for thousands of players. Our devotion to the community has not changed and despite the small team we have made some incredible strides in improving CubeCraft both internally and in ways the player base can see. We appreciate that you guys care enough to make posts like this, please do not think we ever forget about the community, you guys are a big part of every decision we make, even when we make mistakes, we recognize those mistakes and we try to fix them.

 

[Salty_Shadows]

Thank you for your response, I am sorry if you had explained this before, I would've thought something as important as this would be easier to find on the forums/would be placed in an update thread directed toward the entire community. Does this response serve as confirmation that the deletion of Java is not really a consideration anymore? Granted that it's effectively been downscaled and is now actively being worked on?



Whilst I do agree it might be a contributing factor, the occassional summer increase shouldn't be massive if the server is consistently reaching playercounts that are on the lower side. Especially now that there seems to be so many other Minecraft servers getting more attention than CubeCraft, last time I checked servers sorted by playercount, Cube was in the 30th place.



So although this is may be a perfectly reasonable explanation amongst yourselves for now, I'd encourage you and the rest of the team to really think if severing your relationship with the community was worth the technical advancements you achieved, and... was mantaining a relationship with the community REALLY incompatible with your ongoing efforts?

Having been around CubeCraft since 2017 and knowing bits and pieces of the server's history from even further back in the day, this has NOT been the first rough patch that CubeCraft has had to go through in its existence, yet it seems like CubeCraft's behavior alongside all of these rough patches has always been the same, mantaining an unhealthy distance from the community, and at times adopting a stance, alike your own, where every action seems perfectly justifiable, so responses to threads become a matter of defending a position, rather than being conciliatory and adopting a series of compromises to mend their relationship with the community.

So... one does wonder how many MORE times does Cube have to cycle through these periods of uncertainty, make systematic mistakes and then have to go back and apologize and try fixing the damage done for them to realize that their way of managing difficult situations is not working out?

i think one thing they need is a dedicated Community manager as its all left to the Management team at the moment and they are WAY too busy to be dealing with interacting with and everything that the community manager comes with and this is similar with other aspects of the server that is community side.

Though sometimes it doesn't seem like it, we are genuinely actively reading discord and forums. We talk several times each week about what would be good for the community. We understand the issues the community have and we are are working very hard to thin down the backlog of tasks that we have. We are a very small team working to creating a fun experiences for thousands of players. Our devotion to the community has not changed and despite the small team we have made some incredible strides in improving CubeCraft both internally and in ways the player base can see. We appreciate that you guys care enough to make posts like this, please do not think we ever forget about the community, you guys are a big part of every decision we make, even when we make mistakes, we recognize those mistakes and we try to fix them.

I do get that but at the same time, We (The community) cant see that you guys are discussing things privately since they're private and from a public view its seeming more and more like the community isn't cared about. Back along there was the focus groups for specific gamemodes which i remember as i was apart of the eggwars one and it was working, i still don't know why they were closed as it was beneficial in getting a community opinion in upcoming eggwars updates (Eggwars season one was initially discussed in the group) but with less community interactions and just pumping out game updates with little community input into those updates it can seem that there is a gap widening between server and Community and i know none of us want that. I do appreciate how you two devs have responded since its not your typical area to be dealing with the community. but at the same time something needs to be done about this before it gets worse

 

[Eli]

Though sometimes it doesn't seem like it, we are genuinely actively reading discord and forums. We talk several times each week about what would be good for the community. We understand the issues the community have and we are are working very hard to thin down the backlog of tasks that we have. We are a very small team working to creating a fun experiences for thousands of players. Our devotion to the community has not changed and despite the small team we have made some incredible strides in improving CubeCraft both internally and in ways the player base can see. We appreciate that you guys care enough to make posts like this, please do not think we ever forget about the community, you guys are a big part of every decision we make, even when we make mistakes, we recognize those mistakes and we try to fix them.

Thank you for your reponse, I insist on making the tone of my first message very clear, I do not intend in any way to suggest a lack of care/interest from your team, I just want to express my concern in a constructive and careful manner.

It's fantastic to hear that you're having weekly meetings to discuss the community, that's great! But it seems like a counteproductive dynamic to adopt, if the end goal is caring for the community's interests, why disallow the community from being an ACTIVE part of the conversation?

 

[Blom]

am sorry if you had explained this before, I would've thought something as important as this would be easier to find on the forums/would be placed in an update thread directed toward the entire community.

and... was mantaining a relationship with the community REALLY incompatible with your ongoing efforts?

This is exactly what this entire issue, which has been addressed more than once. What is holding CubeCraft Staff (namely admins) back to simply reply to a thread with "that would be a lovely idea for the future. Currently, we do not have the time to incorporate this suggestion due to the polishing that still has to be done, but we might come back to this thread on a later moment."? Wasn't there a moment where Cube could've made a thread stating they are making good progress on updating backend stuff on the Java network?

We would like to know where you stand in the progress to make our experience as good as possible, as well as where we stand in the progress to achieve this.

I am glad to have some developers in a thread like this, but I miss talking to admins too. They seem absent. Not just now, but since the start of this year, after all the chaos was calmed down a bit following the thread about Java's future, there have been tons of threads alike this one. All information given was never made public by any announcement, even though this would've been a huge inprovement in communication already...

 

[Dualninja]

What I have learned from this thread is that the developers are extremely busy, due to the small size of the team. But that leaves me with a big question; why is the team so small? I know a lot of staff quit this year, but why have new staff not been hired. Are money and resources tight? Can Cubecraft not afford to hire more devs? Do Cubecraft not have the time to organize interviews. If the answer to these questions is yes, then that's completely understandable.

As for the matter of a community manager, I do think Cubecraft should have a community manager. Younisco was the community manager up until last year, but with his resignation that position has been vacant ever since. I also know Hazard works on customer support, which is the closest thing Cubecraft has to a community manager.

 

[Laura]

What I have learned from this thread is that the developers are extremely busy, due to the small size of the team. But that leaves me with a big question; why is the team so small? I know a lot of staff quit this year, but why have new staff not been hired. Are money and resources tight? Can Cubecraft not afford to hire more devs? Do Cubecraft not have the time to organize interviews. If the answer to these questions is yes, then that's completely understandable.

Basically. The time it takes to reach out to agencies, put together specs and communicate with them, go through candidates, reach out to shortlisted candidates, organise interview plans and programming tests, go through the interviews, reschedule because people miss them or don't show up, go through it all again weeks later when all candidates either are unfit for the role or drop out.
There just hasn't been a moment for it during the migration.

 

[MrTommy]