The question is: Do you want more players; do you want better players or do you want your current players to be happy?
For the first, simply give them as much stuff as you can. Give them a full iron kit, give them TP, give them a free storage house, give them free zones, give them cheap blocks and loads of money per mob killed. Because that's easy, and since people are lazy, they will like easy. They want to have cuboid and make a fucking ugly cobblestone cube, they really want to. Loads of players, none of quality.
For the second, make it restricted, you want people who can build nice stuff, who can make theme builds, who can work together to create good things, be it towns or huge buildings, be it markets or communist societies, whatever it is, with good people it can be achieved. So good people will want to experience the game, it would be close to vanilla, of course it would have a couple of game enhancing mods, money for instance, mcmmo would be nice too. You want your chests protected? Make traps. You want your stuff to be zoned? Too bad, griefing is a ban, so if your stuff is walled you shouldn't really care. This would be a small server, only a few would be willing to play here.
Now, for the third it's much harder, IMHO. Of course, not everyone can be happy, we all know this... But the vast majority could. To be honest, I quite like how the current stuff works, the owners are good-cop and bad-cop, there are residences, you can manage your own stuff, you can fight mobs and live off it, you can mine and live off it, you can trade and live off it... Although I personally do have some suggestions.
1.- I really, really, really think the admins in general should be more friendly towards the players, help them out, answer their questions, etc. You only want to have fun with your game and not help people around? That's fine, just don't be an op.
2.- Rules should be made clearer; I do NOT like the "if an Op says so, you must do it". I really think rules written in detail are the key to maintaining order; no ambiguities or shit, just say what you want to say. Also when someone asks for a clarification on a rule, I'd like Ops to answer...
2a.- There should be a way to read the rules in-game, if you type /rules, it should say type /rules <page_number> to read them in-game or go to the URL to read them.
2b.- All Ops should have the rules clear too, what is allowed to do, what isn't; they should also know how to use commands.
2c.- I also think more in-game help for mods would be really good, and a list of all mods when you do /help.
3.- I'm not completely sure of how the rules work, but I read on this same thread that people should only have a single shop. I have seen 2 shops in the SAME market owned by a SupOp, so yeah... Again, clarification on the rules. Do Ops get special treatment? Are the over the rules? If so, I don't like that, they should follow the rules just like a regular player.
4.- Simply enhance the community, host a small special server that changes every month or 3 weeks or 2 weeks or whatever. Have a faction+mcmmo server for a month, have a survival server for 2 weeks, have a constant pvp server where people receive tools and armor and just have to survive, where grief and pretty much anything is allowed for a week. Have events to strengthen the community, like a big server-build where everyone can help out, or a big pixel art section where people can add theirs, or a contest like treasure-hunt organized by the server admins with a nice prize, or a war-hub thing where people can fight like gladiators and whoever wins gets a small prize... Pretty much anything. Even a Nether month could be cool, even on this side server you could add incredible stuff like the Aether, or mods that require client sided modifications, since the ones joining will be regulars from the main server. I really think all this would make the server better.
Now, and I know this is half off-topic... WTH is it with destroying your own building being considered grief on Freebuild? That's plain dumb, IMO. (Feel free to ignore this part, it's directed at the server owners.)
_________________ I'm new. Or Old. Either way, I'm too awesome for a sig right now.
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