EDIT by Howard: To all - Please pitch into this discussion. Ideas are desperately needed!

Due to the way things are being managed, the server is dying. New people log in and log off in a matter of minutes to never come back again. Players are suddenly leaving and returning months later, and people in power just stopped playing or just don't care anymore. This has to stop. The way the server runs has to be remanded. I must give thanks to Frimple with the Lists; that was a huge step in changing how we manage the server, but that is not enough.

Losing Players

I started a page for the server on Planet Minecraft but haven't gotten around to finishing it. The server is not being advertised otherwise, and even if we did, we can't keep the new people that join. The current registration system and Bedlam repell new, contributive players from the server, however, the way Homestead is run is fine. A new graylist system needs to be used.

My Suggestions:

The spawn should be some sort of tutorial system that teaches the player about the server. Another tutorial area should be added elsewhere to educate current players about plugins. Similar to AcceptRules, there should be some sort of test to get out of the tutorial area. There the player should be taken to a traditional spawn city/area. The spawn area needs to be more simple and/or the tutorial area needs to be clear about how to start playing.

I really liked the idea of ships taking you places, and the spawn is very impressive, but it's currently unclear for where new players need to go.

Remove Bedlam, and possibly let guests fly or have creative mode (but be unable to give items) so they can look around the server. Do not let them build, pvp, or open containers.

Everything should be centered around the spawn. Spawn needs to be able to be traveled to with reasonable ease (perhaps not just /spawn) Spawn should house everything: admin shops, warps, additional information for the server.

There should be PvPArena, MobArena, and also, scheduled boss fights or pvp events to keep people interested.

Managing problems:

Simple problems are not being taken care of. It only seems like mbl and I are trying to push for changes or fix stuff. The AcceptRules problem wasn't fixed until mbl finally fixed it for us, there's still shop signs in bedlam though, and did anyone notice that the Homestead boat in the desert has movement turned off? I did. Nobody is on to notice these kinds of problems.

I understand that Howard promoted two people to Trustee somewhat recently to make up for his absense, but it obviously isn't enough. Howard himself won't go out of his way to fix major problems though. I had a brief chat with him on IRC after adressing a problem to him, and he would not handle the problem. He said that he was "just done" and spent "A stupid amount of time on SMP"

This is to Howard:

I can understand why you would want to stop managing the server after so long. Maybe you don't feel appreciated about the hard work you've put into the server, and i'm sure we'd all be sorry if that is the case. But to blantantly ignore problems without officially resigning does not leave a good reputation. We need you to make sure someone else is in charge, or help us fix the server or set up a new one entirely, and i'm sure all of us would be happy to help you out.
--
Maybe people have been aware of these problems but just hasn't thought of a way to fix it, like me who had thought of making this post several weeks ago but havent gotten around to doing it. If so this is a call to arms to everyone to help fix the server.

I can provide more detailed plans on anything i've mentioned if you guys really like the idea

We need to have a meeting on Mumble someday. We would probably get a whole lot more done than a forum discussion.

I've been a part of this community since Beta 1.0, and I just wish I could do more to contribute.
Everyone that reads this needs to show their opinion on the manner.

Ok, I'm still coming up with ideas on ways to improve our guests gameplay. Here are my ideas. There probobly a-tad extreme but I think we can get it to work in our advantage.

- Combine old style smp spawn (The days when we had 'iron city' as spawn), and our current "new" style of spawn together to provide a impressive user friendly spawn.

- Basicly our main problem ( one main problem ) is that spawn city acts like a maze towards guests. I know it's fucking obvious on how to use boats to jump around the server, but when looked at from a new guests perspective, it's mind-fucking them.

- We are trying to separate guests from everyone else on the server. We're being to rational towards them. We think that they are going to grief the shit out of everything, but that's why we have the res plugin and ops+. Remove bedlam it's getting stupid, everyday I have 5 guests asking me how to get registered, how to become member, how to build, how to do this and how to do that, honestly this is bullshit remove bedlam and look for a better idea to keep guests in order.

- Everything is to complicated, remember we're dealing with little 9yr olds here, they brain has a limited capacity to understand the obvious. Let's simplify things.

Anyway this is all I've got, now discuss!!...

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Hi. How's life?
- Blue

let guests fly????? what??? its smp not a freebuild server where you can fly around and do whatever its supposed to be you survive off the land

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"Do you hear that?"--Sarge
"Yes, that noise is called water. It is very wet and very sloshy."--Caboose

Accept rules kinda went into this well, but then there is that 'dish' where all the guests end up getting stuck and since no one ever seems to type /rules ... Even though it says clearly on the signs in the 'dish' To type /rules no one ever does, Then they end up aasking how do i get out of the dish, which can usually be fixed by simply telling them to type /rules. Also letting guest fly around to see what we have to offer could be a good idea, if we can alter it so they are not allowed to build or give out items would be great!




I Agree on this point aswell sometimes I dont even know how to navigate around the spawn. Its a Wonderful build, I will admit that, but as BlueFlame stated it is a bit confusing for the guests that join our server at a younger age. Iron city had mostly everything put into one jolly good place. It had shop and warps. It was the best of both worlds. If we could somehow replicate the the old iron city it would be wonderful and we could see how the guests seem to like it? Old Iron City if you will.


Also What is everyone opinion on Registered rank, I used to thin kit was a wonderful idea, now, i am begining to doubt myself on it, Because if a guest doesnt register, what they never get member? I have see some people that are still guest because they never went to apply. Sometimes it may be becuase there parents wont let them, or maybe it becuase they dont understand how to, then they post in the worng section and people start to Bitch at them for posting there application in the wrong place.

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Howard:You have no doubt learned by playing your MoronBox, being a douche while tea-bagging other 8 year olds in Halo.

Saintk: Bet those people are americans
Howard: Course they are american; one big religious nuthouse

There is a plugin that adds a "fly" flag to residences, that could be used for spawn

Link: http://dev.bukkit.org/server-mods/resfly/

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What are you looking at?

if we have guests flying around the server well thats just stupid thats all but if we keep them in one area then i suppose but around the whole map no way

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"Do you hear that?"--Sarge
"Yes, that noise is called water. It is very wet and very sloshy."--Caboose

I guess you missed my point. The only reason why I mentioned the word "creative" is so new players can see more of the server and have more opportunity to gather information about the server. Flying would let them get around much easier and see the spawn and other cool builds.
Well of course, there's no reason why guests need to see the survival area of the server.

You also need to give some better reasons other than "that's just stupid"
Perfect! Hopefully It overrides NoCheat or permissions can be rearranged for this
I agree completely. However, we should not have to simplify things so much that a 5 year old can play. On the other hand, it shouldn't take a genius to figure out how to play. We only want somewhat intelligent people (or better) to be able to play on the server

You have to keep in mind, AcceptRules was broken for a long time. New players spawned under the dish and the lapis sphere and without being prompted, they typed /rules, which tells them to type /acceptrules. Typing that command actually put them IN the dish. AcceptRules is a good plugin but I think there should be more of a test to be released to the rest of the server.

The registration system was a very good idea, but people are not given enough information. We have the infamous tinyurl that everyone tells the guests, but there is no information ingame or on the thread that the link leads to. The big barrier that stops people from registering was the age restriction. They need parental approval or to be over 16 to post in these forums, but yet they tell the truth about their age. It does not say anywhere that they must be 16.

For the flying thing, People can fly around up untill the point where theypress a button or something that ranks them to a guest rank that allows them to build and such, but they loose GM1 and flying abilities

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jhvirik: you... get new one befour I get red in my face of hate
saintk: you have to send a DNA sample to Google these days in order to be able to reply on youtube

well the reasons why i feel that the flying option might not be a good way is that there could be many things where maybe there are mistakes made and we have guests flying around the server, i just feel it isnt the right way to go with the server just having people fly around even just at spawn

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"Do you hear that?"--Sarge
"Yes, that noise is called water. It is very wet and very sloshy."--Caboose

I agree..

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Hi. How's life?
- Blue

Out of everything I said in my original post, you are completely against this one tiny idea I had. I see you actually gave a reason this time though.

And you actually have a point, but the residence "fly" flag is foolproof. It lets people fly like creative mode while in survival mode within a residence. Only in the spawn residence is where guests have a chance to fly. Unless, of course, the plugin is just broken. Only THEN should the whole idea be thrown out.

Flying might cause some issues with people asking how to use it, why does it not work anymore, and so on. So personally I don't think flying is something that necessarily should be put in or allowed. Mainly due to potential issues and that the server is Survival.

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"Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving."

Ok fine, It was just an idea that seemed to engulf this thread...

I really hoped that OTHER THINGS would be discussed though.

well we were discussing flying, now we have we will discuss other things, if they will be implemented thats another thing because just getting things fixed with plugins and what not would be good just to start off but im fine with your other ideas sorry if i seemed a bit snobby with flying just diddnt really see the server going that way but you have some good ideas here i agree on moving bedlem as at the moment it has turned into a place where we throw guests and we dont get to know guests that could eventually be really good for spa as a whole

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"Do you hear that?"--Sarge
"Yes, that noise is called water. It is very wet and very sloshy."--Caboose

Me leaving (though it has taken a very long time to notice that that even happened) was nothing to do with not being appreciated. The reason I left is because the role was unbearable. Having an entire server full of people who were afraid of me and utterly unwilling to argue or discuss anything meant that I not only had to manage the server but create everything that went in it, rule on every judgement, come up with every suggestion and implement any new ideas. I was on MC, on average, for 6 hours a day dealing with all the shit that went on there and at the end of every day all I would see is complaints.
No matter how carefully I listened to everyone and then went on to implement exactly what it was they asked for, everyone of you - every last one - still bitched and moaned and said I was doing it wrong.
The current SMP server is in place not out of some random set of thoughts I had one night, like 99.99% of the ideas that get put up on this forum, but it is there because I studied how everything works and understood the server.
The reason the server is failing now is because you lot are never there. Period. Its that damned simple. People have simple vanished for months at a time. We were without trustees and SupOps for weeks on end and for the longest time the one and only Op on was the last one I promoted before quitting. If everyone was on, being active, welcoming guests and solving problems as they arrive then the server works. If no one is there to MAKE it work, it wont work. Even worse, as soon as something does work you all take what I ahve officially named the "Rose Amazon Fix-it Method" ie. you just CHANGE everything with no consideration for what is wrong or what you are trying to solve.

The server is empty: let's make a new spawn! That'll help! Or let guests fly 'cos its what they want! What you don't realise is that what the guests want is to have their own server where they can do as they please so they will bitch and moan until they get that. What you have to do is know where the logic stops, where suggestions are no longer for the benefit of the server but are for the glorification of the players. Sure, the server should function as its players want, but it has to actually function too! It has to have rules, it has to be autonomous: it has to be controlled.

Now I know that it has all fallen apart. The three people who I made Trustee and left in charge have clearly had very little spare time and so very little has gotten done - if anything at all to be frank. Someone has to keep running the server and I am asked constantly why I don't just put "x" person in charge but its just not that simple. The person in charge needs to stick to a damned plan, not run off, screaming into the hillsides with every tiny idea that gets put forward. The server has to be for the community but the person that runs this server needs to know that the community talks a lot of crap.

Changing everything again will not help. How the server currents stands offers a good balance of all the possible configurations of the server. Does it need tweaking and fixing? Hells yes, but you don't need to reinvent the wheel.

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"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

I had noticed that you were gone weeks before I made this post. And the people of the server are not afraid of you...you tend to be harsh and brutal against those who defy you, but honestly, If you had a good reason to, you could have a friendly conversation with anybody on the server. Your "rants" are a meme within a community; a joke. There should be no reason for normal members to be afraid of you. But I digress...

I realise the problem. We are running out of suitable canidates to put people "in charge". There's no real reason for it though, real life stuff, loss of interest, there's not much that can be done about it except to ask people to come back. This was sort of the whole point of my thread. Losing people = Problems aren't being taken care of.

About setting up the current server, you have me lost. I don't see anywhere that people suggested Bedlam and removing Babel. You said that you came up with every suggestion for the server but yet you listened to people and also did what they said? (You may want to rephrase that) At the time I was not an OP and I had no say as to what this server would be like. But unaminously, I think everyone agrees that this time around was a step back from the previous server.
You pretty much gave up on the forums for suggestions, and that was probably a bad move. Not that you were in the wrong, but If I get everyone to use the forums, then please share with us, I'm open to suggestions and hopefully everyone else is too.

I have to agree with you about this part, and I must apologize, when i said "set up a new server entirely", I meant setting up new plugins, new permissions, new map, for 1.3. New map for 1.3 has been the plan since the start of all of this. But anyways, you're right. We should focus on getting new people and getting the server live FIRST. Then worry about little things like, for example, shops. The flying thing was just something I had thought of that was most relevant to the problem, other people had taken the suggestions overboard and tried reinventing the wheel. The server may need more than a few tweaks, It needs a few hits with a hammer too; there are mutliple problems on our hands.

But the bottom line is that we need you. We need you to handle the technical side of things until Trustees or other people rise up enough to assist you enough. 6 hours a DAY fixing the server? That is mad. I, personally, would like to do as much as I can to help to reduce that number.

But thanks for finally replying, I had feared that you had just completely given up on SMP and didn't care anymore.

@Pizza - I wont quote all that again as we end up with 50foot threads

Ok - I am glad to see we are on the same page. Now, when i say that I implemented what was asked of me I mean the following:

After I took over and created the first New SMP, a lot of things were wrong. There were some good ideas there and it worked for a good while but it fell apart in the end, largely (I believe) due to issues that were simply invented by Rose - but I digress.

During those times and, especially in fact, during the times we had temp maps, I would talk to everyone in game and in Mumble and ask them what they thought was wrong and what they thought we needed. A few things cropped up all the time and became my main focus:

1) People were sick of others not knowing the rules are being able to storm into the server and do as they like
2) People wanted an area that had no rules, making it more like the temp maps in which they could self-govern without server side protection.
3) People wanted a far more grand Spawn City that would impress visitors and make it at least LOOK like we knew what the hell we were doing.
4) People wanted guests removed entirely from the main world so that the risk of griefing was greatly reduced
5) OPs wanted to have to spend a lot less of their time micromanaging and dealing with every griefed block and every single complaint
6) An area to build large projects, possible with cheats or "server funding"

To address these I therefore proposed the following (as detailed here):
1) The AcceptRules plugin so no one could deny they had read the rules
2) Bedlam - it works like a temp map in that there are limited rules (originally it had no ranks either making everyone equal but the OPs argued against that)
3) I built Spawn City
4) Again, Bedlam and restrictions on building for guests
5) Clear rules about greifing - if you get griefed in Bedlam, no one cares. If you get griefed in Homestead, the Griefer loses their rights to access Homestead but YOU get nothing back as you should have res'd!
6) Theme Zones - the single biggest failure of the server as NO ONE used them correctly

This covered every issue and concern. Every play style from the hardcore adventurers to those who wanted to live in peace to those that essentially wanted FreeBuild in SMP were covered. It could have worked. Hell, it should have worked.

But it didn't. Sure we had issues with Notch updates and sure the permissions fuckups threw us through a loop, but they were MY worries, not everyone else's and I dealt with them as best I could.
The real issues were that a) no one was ever quite "happy and b) no fucker was here!

Is there a solution? Dunno. I have lots of ideas but...how well has that played out before?

Will I come back? Dunno. I am technically unemployed so its not like I don't have the time but I ended up spending my life at my damned desk, getting no writing done. Every day I would turn on the monitor of my server and find 15 people trying to complain about something to me in IRC and every day I would get 10 messages in the forum - be they complaints or threats of attacking the server. I would post over and over, asking for ideas, asking for discussion, asking for input and while some people would turn up and some people would want to help, no one would ever decide anything (look at all the threads to decide how to handle Theme Zones). I needed to know what YOU, the PLAYERS, want and not just have it all left down to me. Every poll I would put up would, if I was lucky, get 12 responses yet everyone seemed to have opinions.

So I left, not 'cos it was all too much, but becasue I thought that I was the issue, that you lot could not come to me and talk things out with me. I picked 3 people (Spike as he was the most active and engaged and would not shut UP about all the ideas he had , Green as he is calm, methodical and highly tolerant and patient and Frimple as he is just flatly very smart and slightly batshit, giving me the "off the wall" slant ) and gave them full control over the server and said I would step back as the visible leader but still bet here to run all the tech side of things. This worked great....for about 2 weeks I think? I am not sure what did or did not happen.

I really want to see SMP (and FB for that bloody matter) work - I have spent a stupid amount of time setting it up and it would depress me a great deal if it collapsed. But, like I keep saying, it not up to me. You guys (and the rest of the players - not just the OPs) need to work out what YOU want on YOUR server.

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"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

Well, damn. You had so much support back then; we would be lucky if that many people read this. And logically, that plan should have worked, but I believe that the main problem was the lack of playerbase. Bedlam is just wasteland, one or two souls are there on a good day, It's not all that "anarchy"-ish with 2 people.

Like I suggested before, there should be a tutorial area that teaches about the server before they are prompted to use /acceptrules. Iron city wasn't grand enough though? I remember it being rather nice.

The big question is do people still want Bedlam? Maybe you should ask people again and come up with a similar list, but this time, be careful about your reactions. Most of the issues may be covered already, but we need more opinions, but there is nobody. We're pretty much stuck solving this problem ourselves unless we ask the member+.

Due to low traffic, there is rarely any grief. Releasing griefers back into the main world is not going to help the server, but if we don't, what do we do with the guests? There are more than enough ops for the amount of R+ players at the moment; an op should not be too occupied to help others. However, too many griefers could discourage players.

Just one question though, What did Rose exactly do? From what I remember the previous server was more sucessful, but It sounds like Rose really screwed it up.

What do I want? I want a good amount of active, contributive players, a balanced economical system, neccesary plugins for moderation, and more interesting things to do than vanilla SMP. Exactly how we do all of that would take some crunching, but It's possible If we think far ahead and trust people that are willing to help you.

I thought Iron City was ok too but I received nothing but negative feedback for it - literally from everyone.

As to Rose - I shouldn't wail on her given she cannot defend herself here. Safe to say that she began to derail anything I did, questioning my motives and declaring me to be an uncaring overlord who just abused his players. I tried for months to get her to talk to me but she never would until right at the end, just before she left, and even then she simply would not listen to me or offer any good reason for why she was treating me that way. Oh well.

Since we are discussing ideas though, one thing does occur: The maps are backwards. What we should have done is have everyone spawn in a start city in Bedlam then, once they were ranked, they can go explore Homestead. Would have made Bedlam far easier to find and far more active.

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"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

I took me a long long time to figure that out. All the beneficial aspects of Spawn City are only of utility to experienced players who will by choice travel to there [or through there]. Spawning players need only to leave, I didn't think of that at all until this latest round of talks.

As for Iron City, I liked it but what does that say I keep liking all these spawns. Even the original dead Iron City was nice to look at.

As for: the management and actions of the triumvirate, I think we have fallen straight into a committee role with each waiting for the other to begin actions. Our decision might be wiser [in theory] but it's academic without a motivating agent forcing them into effect. Ideally that should have come from within but manifestly it did not. We all had reasons [for myself, travel, technical ignorance I still haven't fixed] but there'll always be reasons it doesn't really matter that much how valid they were.

With Howards assent/consent I/we'll set a date to conclude these discussions at which point community input will be at an end. I would invite Ops to tactfully ask the player base what they want and [dis]like. From there we would take this to a higher forum, mash the ideas together conference committee style and present a finished plan of action here. Setting dates for the completion of the server revisions I hope would be a motivating factor for their enaction. Without being to hastily arbitrary I was previously thinking this would all be done structurally by July 1st.

As usual my post kind of detoured there...

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骨

What do people think of moving this to a more public section of the forum so everyone can read it and pitch in?

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"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

Go ahead, it would be much better to get vets to see it as well as others that arn't op+

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"Do you hear that?"--Sarge
"Yes, that noise is called water. It is very wet and very sloshy."--Caboose

*cough*Survival Games*cough*

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Procrastination is like a credit card: it's a lot of fun until you get the bill.
-Christopher Parker

Thanks for moving this to the public forum, and sorry for such a delay in my response

It seemed like Rose was a threat to your progress and I agree with the outcome.

I had thought about the spawn being in Bedlam for worldwide permission differences, but what would the difference be between walking through a portal or out the front gates?

i like the system how it is, it is keeping most of the griefers in one world to make them realize that this server is harder to grief than on other servers . It sifts out the ones that r most likely to become members to show that they r commited to this server. I have another idea how about another way of hiring ops+sup ops on the server, like elections or a point system for people that deserve it, and be a little bit more lenient on the ranking proccess after they get registered. like people who are on almost everyday of the week.


take these thoughts into consideration please
Gardoure

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don't die its not good for your health.

-I think we should add "warps" to make easy for guest. It could help them get around and get to bedlam a ton of a lot easier for them to understand. Since a lot of other servers use it, and they are probably used to using it. We could keep the boats and just add the warp commands to take you to the boat's portal. exp: /warp bedlam and it takes you to the bedlam boats.

-I dont think the flying wouldn't be that great because we'd get tons of guest asking on how to fly around like they did in the res.

-I think PvP Arena or a Mob Arena would make it interesting (Even though I never seen the Hunger Games, We should add that because tons and tons of people are looking for things like that, Since it is a hit book and movie).

-Like Pizzaman said make the spawn easier for the people to understand.

- I think we should maybe make a spleef arena since it is the "official" game of Minecraft!

-I think that guest should be able to lock and res items since of most them quit because of They've been raided and/or griefed.

-We could advertise the server in Fb since there is some people who have the bought game who don't play on our smp server. It seems there is no connection of the two (Fb and Smp). It is hard to find our smp server unless you look through like 1,000 servers. We could add the connection between Fb (Which is easy to find and VERY Popular) and Smp (Not so much).

Erm and thats all I can really think of at the moment.

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[Halexboom8] Coppertone :3
[adog114] I say that's a winner
[AP4rk3dC4r] I'm sure doing a giant picture of a dog pulling off a girls bathing suit would be popular here...
[Halexboom8] ^^Cat likes those things.

we used to have a portal system; the tower of babel or something, it was very useful and to be quite frank i miss it, it helped people build visit and increases trade among player made cities, i think it would be cool. A suggestion would be to have only really good builds to be able to own a portal.

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don't die its not good for your health.

[/quote] we used to have a portal system; the tower of babel or something, it was very useful and to be quite frank i miss it, it helped people build visit and increases trade among player made cities, i think it would be cool. A suggestion would be to have only really good builds to be able to own a portal.[/quote]
There would be to many portals since everyone would want to make one.

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[Halexboom8] Coppertone :3
[adog114] I say that's a winner
[AP4rk3dC4r] I'm sure doing a giant picture of a dog pulling off a girls bathing suit would be popular here...
[Halexboom8] ^^Cat likes those things.

There would be to many portals since everyone would want to make one.[/quote]

should i highlight the part that says "only really good builds to be able to own a portal"

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don't die its not good for your health.