[Giveaway] 10 Years and 5000th Post

Hello Readers, Friends and EMC citizens!

This is my 5000th post and I wanted to celebrate me coming back to EMC (while I was in college - gaming hiatus) and on Aug 2nd is my 10 year anniversary on EMC

Something I've always enjoyed doing in the EMC forums is read and create new threads in the Empire Suggestions section. So my idea is to create a place so that people can share their latest thoughts on what EMC needs right now... so here comes a giveaway!

Giveaway!

Grand Prize - Permanent Derelict Protection Voucher

1. To get your first entry for the grand prize - share a creative/unique idea which could benefit EMC right now, it could be an event, mob idea, promo whatever you like! Maybe even something related to Empire since Chicken has hinted to a release soon
2. To get a second entry for the grand prize - give feedback to another player's idea -constructive criticism or just compliment another person's idea! (max of two entries for grand prize per player - no alts, but be sure to contribute to discussion more than once if you like!)

Other Prizes!

Diamond Supporter Voucher - Most liked idea

Gold Supporter Voucher - Most liked feedback post (2nd entry)

(remember paying for like or using alt accounts is illegal according to EMC rules)

Ore Buster -

Idea that I, Tuqueque, like the most (creative

or detail wise)

1,000,000 rupees - will be distributed equally among participating players!

The giveaway entry closes at 11:59 PM on Aug 1st - Will send prizes (hopefully) on my first day of my 10th year here on EMC!

Hope everyone is having a lovely July month so far =D

Reserved for something, probably

UPDATES

1.o
I’ll set up a post or a docs to see if you qualify for both entries and such, later today or tommorrow.
‘
If you make your two entries in the same post, thats fine, but if you win most liked, it will only count towards one prize

I’ll probably redact all post into a file and submit it to staff - for like a condensed suggestions file - this file will be public

If you have made recently or want to make a post in the suggestion section to accompany your idea - you can just summarize or copy paste it with link attached here

As far as similar ideas go, as long as you add your own 2 grains of salt of the idea “ocean” its enough for me, I just didnt want to see “add more promos” without an actual idea attached to it, hope this clarifies any confusion

2.0

Created a quick excel sheet on the phone to tally entries and idea topics.
Here you can see if you already qualify for all possible entries dm if any concerns

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-zxRTbS0POCLmmA7DzAxEILpWuh9XhKchKbzowg9L_A/edit

Congrats! Both of those are huge! I just hit my 10 years a few months ago.

Couple of ideas:
For Games:
- I'd like to see a version of tag, kinda like MurderThatMoople - where someone is randomly 'it', and when you punch another player in the game zone they're then 'it'.
- I'd also like to see a humans vs zombies game - where one person is the 'infected' and must kill the other players in the zone to turn them into a zombie, last surviving wins - zombies can only hit - humans can have weapons w/ no health respawn.
- Capture the flag would be cool - where there's a banner at each side that someone needs to hit as a command block in order to score a point - could boost some engagement.

Other:

I would like to see a revamped tutorial for joining the server - the most common thing I see when people join is asking how to complete the tutorial... I haven't been through it in a while, but something more interactive, like starting on a 'tutorial island' and having to complete tasks to get put in the main server instead of just answering questions.

and finally -

I'd like to see the EMC social media make a comeback - it's been sitting idle, and would be awesome to have return - not much of a suggestion, however.

Congratulations on a decade of EMC and your prolific posting!

My ideas for improving EMC

One of the most complained about aspects of EMC nowadays is the economy. I think I speak for most of us when I say that making rupees is simply not as easy as it used to be if you aren't in the promo flipping business (and I'm pretty sure even those guys are suffering). The main reason for this, I believe, is an oversupply of materials and a lack of demand due to inactivity on the server. Many of our players have left due to simply having been around for so long that they fulfilled everything they wanted to do, but I also believe it's because the spirit of the community kind of died. People who stuck around for the unique feel of the community won't stick around if that feeling of community starts to die out. To remedy this we need a multi pronged approach.

More staff

One of the huge draws of EMC is our moderator team. They are one of the most professional moderation teams on any Minecraft server I've ever seen, but their numbers have been dwindling along with the rest of the community. The staff make the server feel alive. They host events and are helpful to new players who often join on servers full of afk players who can't answer their questions (not criticising anyone here, I'm regularly afk) and having that player with the official looking green name makes new players feel like there's an active management team there for the community.

More Marketing

In a similar vein to what Enigma said, we need to increase EMC's presence on the wider internet if we want to attract new players. One way to do this would be, like Enigma said, revamping EMC's social media. This responsibility could be given to the stream team, or if there was a large enough contingent of players willing to volunteer, we could create an entirely seperate socvial media team (with proper vetting by staff of course). Another strategy for increasing outsider exposure to EMC could be to encourage voting by distributing promos or bonus rupees to all players if we achieve the top spot on a site like TopG, similar to what happened with the Lucky Bow a couple of years ago, or bringing back the voting competitions of old and giving out Voter's Block. (As a side note, it would be great if EMC would bring back some more unique items. Most that are released these days are promos for big holidays, which while great, don't feel quite as special as items made to commemorate something unique to EMC. I know there are still some of these, but I feel like there's room for so many more.)

Revamp the UI and Misc QOL changes

EMC's graphic design has remained the same for years. Shaking up the general design of the UI and making it more cohesive across all the various systems would add a layer of professionalism to EMC that might help make new players stick around. To add to this, there should be another QOL update which fixes many longstanding bugs and adds, well, quality of life changes.

tl;dr: EMC's economy is dying because our community is. If we want to revive the economy, we need to revive the community. These are some ways I believe we could.

My suggestion is a revamped ad campaign. I found EMC on a MC website years ago, I think a better advertising plan or maybe using a spot on one of the big server websites would bring in a lot of new players.

I would like to see that too, tho maybe instead of a command block they throw it into a hopper or place it and it recognizes that and the points are awarded that way.

I joined this server because of its Shop/Plot system. I've always loved the idea of shops in real life and it was very fun ingame.

Sadly there are a lot of shops just derelict. It sucks searching the Shop tags over and over only to find empty places.

My suggestion would be to change the ways you can find active shops ingame. I think a temporary Tag or board/list ingame that you input your shop to every week or two or so. This would be a nice way to always find active shops ingame. Also the ability for others to be able to add to the list would be good, for players that don't get on often but still have an active shop.
______________
Congratulations!

We started pretty close! I'm a few days as well from reaching 10 years. Wow time flies!

I find it difficult to suggest something that has not already been mentioned.

It is indeed true that without a community there is no economy, and I can say the following:

- new players need to know what to expect before they even join. I see lots of players expecting teams, \tp, pvp, and whatnot that we do not have. Maybe not everything can be addressed with new banners, but at least some of these points could.
- the tutorial should/could address the points that can't be put on a banner (e.g., the danger of enraged mobs, the lack of \tp, you need to gain someone trust before joining a "team"/outpost, we are not that youtube series server, etc.)
- I have the impression that some players don't want to use the website, but is practically unfeasible to fully participate without using it (e.g., giveaways, auctions, discussions like this). People should be made aware that lots of the community life happens here. [For me, even more so, given my non-US timezone]
- an in-game shop directory is sorely needed, and something that automatically removes (public) flags from a residence if it goes derelict/the owner has not logged in since the last MC update. Katy's shop/farm thread is great, but I think something more accessible in-game is needed (again, some players do not use the website)

I kinds disagree that it is so difficult to make rupees without flipping promos. I am not flipping promos and I managed to put aside a decent stash of rupees in this year and a half I've been here. Sure, maybe it's just an illusion and "making rupees" for you all means having 100 million in the bank, but for the moment I'm satisfied with where I am.

I have the impression this is already part of the plan. The call for moderators is going since months, so I would guess that either they are not getting candidates, or are not getting the right people.

Updates
I’ll set up a post or a docs to see if you qualify for both entries and such, later today or tommorrow.
‘
If you make your two entries in the same post, thats fine, but if you win most liked, it will only count towards one prize

I’ll probably redact all post into a file and submit it to staff - for like a condensed suggestions file - this file will be public

If you have made recently or want to make a post in the suggestion section to accompany your idea - you can just summarize or copy paste it with link attached here

As far as similar ideas go, as long as you add your own 2 grains of salt to the idea “ocean” its enough for me, I just didnt want to see “add more promos” without an actual idea attached to it, hope this clarifies any confusion

I really like the idea of this being something that's handled by EMC. Historically it's been something players have volunteered to do, but players come and players go, so a permanent structure or perhaps an interface you can pull up with commands as a directory would be very useful. In addition, as other players have said many times before, the +mall and +shop tags should be monitored by staff and you should have to 'renew' it like a license every now and again, maybe with a system similar to how you redeem a supporter voucher. This would prevent players being sent to shops that are no longer stocked.

I would like to see an enraged water mob, not the drowned, a new one. Or it could be a new seasonal mini-boss celebrating summer.

"Lava Shark" is an old suggestion that would use the normally obnoxious dolphin, the one that steals your blocks when working in water :| Those darn things zip around so fast, surely it would be a difficult thing to catch a "Zipper" that will not slow down and possibly inflicting with pufferfish damage to the player.

Using the squid AI to make enraged would pointless, and yet the mob would be oh so very cool for a "Kraken", but squids do not fight, they run away. And somehow the chicken was turned into the Super Turkey, so I leave the idea as in the realm of possible.

Another possible is the "Electric eel" using a fish mob for a base and doing serious damage, more so than the pufferfish.

You can have a look at the current tutorial with /tutorial

It already is a tutorial island that is separate from the main server. There are 5 questions that are answered by walking the correct path through the maze. The players who complain about the tutorial generally just want to walk into survival and start smacking things and they don't want to hear that there are rules to abide by. This is (very sadly and unfortunately) the troller/ the griefer very often, in my experience. Of the other servers that I have taken a look at, the tutorial consists of hallways or tunnels to walk through with the text holograms on screen giving blurbs of information. Such as, this command will get you a job, this command will vote the server, use the resource world for making currency, and this is how you buy keys/chests/special items. There are also armor stands or characters standing in place to direct you somewhere or to interact with. For instance to choose a job or a daily chance at a key.

I believe that staff agree that a new tutorial would be beneficial. It's always easier to say something needs changed than to actually change it. I wonder if someone wants to take a crack at making a mock-up tutorial? Put your blocks where your mouth is -- so to speak.

I think peeps should have to pay for their shop tag status each month. If they don't have the rupees, then the tag quits working. Like a subscription. Or, when they've been gone for say 3 months, their shop tag is removed automatically. Same for +mall.

Personally, I would like to see the voter gear revamped. It's a little too under powered at this point.

I think that a good idea for the Games Server would be something like Quidditch. It could have a flying style and a strictly ground based style of play. Maybe a switching back and forth. There would be Teams set up for the match and maybe make it either Tokens or Rupees as the prize for the winning team. You could even allow the players to vote for the MVP for each team and they get an additional bonus. Another thing for it, with regards to the talk about Empires, could be different Empires could challenge each other to matches.

You could have set positions that get a special "tool" to allow them to cover their position. One tool would freeze the person for 2 seconds, another would force them to drop the ball if hit a set number of times, and maybe one that unfreezes players. Basically have a few different types of positions that are designed to help that team or "hurt" the other. No actual damage or anything like that.

As for the new players, not sure if this is covered already, but a book could be made that lists basic commands, the website to go to for the wiki, what the different zones do, and stuff like that. This would give new players something that they could look through to answer basic level questions about the server and also give them something unique. Similar to the New Player Gear. Not sure if this has already been done or how hard it would be to code something like this, but it could be a basic /newplayerbook command that would spawn it for them. That or make it part of the /promo listing.

Just a few thoughts.

I think having something where you pay to advertise would be pretty neat. Maybe make a central area on each server where the people that are actively paying for their shops have them listed there with teleport buttons to take people directly to the shop. Maybe have them have a book on a lectern that lists what they sell. This would give people the ability to go there and browse the different shops and then choose the one that they want.

As for the voter gear, I definitely would like to see something added in. Once you get the diamond gear there is really nothing beyond that. I would like to see some slightly better voter gear added in just to help motivate people to keep voting. Doesn't have to be crazy, but something a little better than what we have now, but not something that would be close to how nice the promo items are.

The only issue I see with a water based mob, aside from maybe an enraged drowned, is that if it moves super fast then it will just make people not want to do things in the water or simply shut off the spawning of the enraged or bosses. A squid might be cool as they are not fast and could be fought, but a dolphin would drive people crazy trying to fight it.

I would also love to see the enraged silverfish get a change so that it doesn't leave little fires all over the place. Setting you on fire is cool, but the fires left on the ground are super annoying as they have destroyed drops for lots of people. I know dead horse there, but still I really hate those things just for the loot that has been lost.

I like these ideas as they would encourage new players that are looking for that pvp aspect of minecraft. I have seen something similar in other games and it can be quite fun. Not sure if it has ever been brought up, but a Hunger Games style game would probably be fun for people too. Tons of people like those battle royal style games. Unless this has been brought up or already exists. I honestly forgot what all the games are in the Games Server.

More staff would be awesome, but you need to make sure that whoever you put into that position will do it right. Having been staff twice, I know how much time it can take in your day to do the various tasks you need to do to help maintain the servers. If there were more maybe then there could be tiers to the staff where each tier had a specific job to cover. Maybe break it down to forum monitoring, grief reports, build reports (checking to see if something is ok to be on EMC or not), and things like that. Each staff could monitor the chat and help out with that, but maybe making the job have tier levels would make it easier to bring on more people to cover areas where there is a shortage. Just a thought.

Created a quick excel sheet on the phone to tally entries and idea topics.
Here you can see if you already qualify for all possible entries dm if any concerns

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-zxRTbS0POCLmmA7DzAxEILpWuh9XhKchKbzowg9L_A/edit

Maybe in the past that would have helped, but with EMC's dwindling population I'm not sure dividing staff into specific categories other than the ones we already have is necessary.