Constructive Criticism

Discussion in 'Community Discussion' started by SteamedEcko, Jul 12, 2015.

  1. It boils down to in the early days emc had around 1-2k players join per month and only 20-30% stayed because they were the more patient ones to accept emc old crappy join process.

    Now our growth is NATURALLY (as in baseline without us putting in advertising to gain more) is 10-20k per month with over 1k staying per month.

    Our growth rate is higher without this "accused" focus on new players (which we haven't done much for in a while even though there's tons of improvement to be had).

    The only way we could change anything to improve maturity would be to shut the doors completely.... That isn't happening, nor are we going back to iron door joining process as we lose just as many good players as bad when we were that way.

    The community needs to accept that mine craft is naturally, out of our hands, growing in popularity to the younger audience. If that bothers you, then you have an issue with the game, not EMC.

    I encourage anyone who feels emc has maturity problems to go try a factions server and compare.

    This is probably all I'm going to add to this thread
    ShelLuser, PenguinDJ, mba2012 and 5 others like this.
  2. Thanks for taking the time out of your day to reply to this, I greatly appreciate it. When I say focus on new players I'm not just talking about the advertisement side of things, I mean more in the community and such. It seems new players can gain very quickly without having to put in much work. Of course, these options are still open to older players, but we have already put in time and effort to get our feet planted. Also, we have the monthly referral contest, and while the participants can be anybody, it really only benefits the increase of players on the server. Same idea with voting, it increases EMC's publicity and attracts more players. More logins may result in more permanent players, but it also results in an increase of immaturity, rule breaking, and ignorance. It would be nice if EMC offered something that only players X number of days old could be apart or something. It would make it seem we have worth too and our dedication to the server is respected. I also don't know enough about the stats of new players over the years, however your opening statement:

    makes it seem like it was better the way it was? I mean 20-30% activity rate is much better than the 5-10% you mention we have now. You mention the old rate was higher because people actually invested time to just join the server, (that's how I understood it at least) and that adds to my point on the new player experience vs the old player experience. New players do not actually need to invest anything in order to start or to thrive on EMC, in fact I believe it is possible to completely skip the tutorial? Anyways, even if they completely finish it they are right away given a number of things that make it easy for them. I feel like it should be a bit difficult to become apart of the server, and its something that should just be handed to you.
  3. We don't speak our minds anymore? Please. We say what we want, we just get consequences, mostly, being harsher nowadays. I won't be specific into what I'm referring to as I don't want that to start up but I think a few of you might know what I am referring to. If you do know, please do not make this into that.
    Gawadrolt and SteamedEcko like this.
  4. It's not that people don't speak their minds, but if they do they often receive harsh criticism, like you said, which in turn leads to less people speaking their minds
    Dr_Chocolate14 likes this.
  5. Well as far as new players... it is kind of a necessity to operate a server or a game for that matter. Whether 10 percent or 30 percent stay is irrelevant, 1000% more are coming so its still 3-5 times as many people STAYING. ;-) older players get cool stuff, we get to say we are old, isn't that prize enough? *fyi im not old(well emc old) but apparently subconsciously identify as being an "older" player*
    ChickenDice likes this.
  6. theo wishes he has more accounts
  7. You're suggesting that we

    • alienate potential AWESOME players by intentionally making the process of simply connecting to our server frustrating, time consuming and unintuitive SOLELY to weed out immature players. No other server does this anymore. A player would be like "Why the hell would I do that" and just go to another server.

      EMC is not a server targeting a niche personality. We welcome all players who follow our rules. alienating a large set of users just to reduce the number of bad apples would never be considered.

      Again, there a TONS of players who are "Veterans", well known, and even staff who likely would of never even joined EMC under its old join process. I myself normally wouldn't have even bothered. The website was asking for peoples Minecraft password back in those days, which is a huge security red flag...

      What if I had never joined EMC due to the restrictive join process? EMC would of shut down in 2012/2013 (believe me, I've seen the graphs after Justin left EMC before I joined, it was a sharp decline and only stabilized once I joined the team and started fixing the incredible broken state EMC was in. Bugs and lag made the server unplayable. 12 TPS was "normal")

      Who knows what other great players we would of lost If I never tore down that wall.
    • That we enforce your personal preference of 'harder' starting criteria/gameplay on everyone... Our motto is "Play Your Way". If a player wants a rougher start, they can give away all their starting rupees and destroy their starter goods.

      The starter armor is not overpowered and gives players some defense against the custom mobs they may encounter in the wild that they've never seen before. You are far from "thriving" with iron armor, simple wood, torches and animal eggs that you can get in 5-15 minutes if you know what you're doing anyways.

      It's not very fun if your first step into the waste you get killed by an Enraged Zombie only to then find out our server doesn't allow teleporting and they have to find their body...

      We have to ensure they get a fighting chance to get off on a good foot.
      Also is it not possible to skip the tutorial anymore, that was only possible nearly 1.5 years ago.
    • Better retention %'s are always better. They are not. 100% retention means nothing if your sample size is 100 players.

      If 5% of users are good, and 20% are bad, with a sample of 10k that gives us 500 potential good players vs 50 good players when we have 10k vs 1k per month.

      Those bad players? They either get banned or leave. They are a TEMPORARY problem where a GOOD player is (hopefully) a permanent/long term edition. As time goes, more and more good players are added, and bad players get removed.

      You can't take numbers blindly. You have to put human intuition and analyzing of the data to understand the real benefits.

      Just like any normal business, you have to look at all of the aspects of the gain. More growth = More voters = more users referring = organic growth to our player base. That is stability.

      Maybe you weren't around, but before I took over, EMC was in bad shape. Chats were inactive, servers never hit cap, there were times only 1 or 2 people were on.

      The negativity of EMC's activity only added to people quitting... Players want to see a GROWING server, not a dying one, and if we did as you're suggesting, it would only have 1 way to go: down (kind of hard to grow with the doors closed).
    • That we give stuff to older members that new players don't get...

      We want to give features to as many players that it fits best for.
      Given we have to lock some for encouragement of supporters, but if you notice, since I've taken over, nearly all supporter perk additions are still usable by free players! I design things with intent for everyone to enjoy it.

      I've even taken many supporter perks and given them to Free players too. We want to provide an experience everyone can enjoy, and not intentionally establish a level of elitism.

      If the only reason to not give someone a feature is "just so that player can have something you dont", then that's not really a good reason.

  8. You both have some pretty good points, and also some points that aren't as good. On one hand, EMC doesn't have a good ratio of active to inactive players, but you really have to think about it: Do other servers have better ratios than EMC? Of course, some of them have much larger player counts, but their average amounts of active to inactive players seem to remain about the same as EMC over all.
    There is, however, a problem with when new players join. As SteamedEcko said, new players are practically being spoon fed, but this is only in some cases. Other parts of the joining process are just lacking in general, for example, actually getting new players to read the rules. This brings up Aikar's point. We don't want to try to rule out more immature players with a complicated joining process, because there could be some good players that also get ruled out due to just being lazy (Like myself).
    If you want my personal input, the only way to have both new and old players be happy is to create a compromise. Have the start areas very easy, fun, and appealing to newer players, while other parts of EMC give the older players that sense of nostalgia that makes them want to stay. There really is just no way to appeal to everybody, since everybody has a different opinion on what makes a server great.
    codygraw101 and SteamedEcko like this.
  9. Well, not really.
    The issue isn't that of new players joining the server. I'm not advocating anything like closing the doors on people who could potentially become amazing additions to the community. I'm talking more about how new players interact and experience the server vs. how old players do. The way I see it, new players are spoonfed compared to how older players were, which changes the way the new players perceive the server. The push for new players not just in the advertising and behind the scenes stuff, its also in how easy we make the server for them. From the perspective of an older player, we may see newer players joining and not having to work as hard or dedicate as much time in to get just as good results as we did back when we first joined, which may cause a "poor" attitude? I'm not sure how else to word it but I hope you get what I'm saying.
    I respect your judgement when it comes to player stats and such, mainly because you run the damn thing lol, and if you say the way we are headed is good, then I support what you have to do
  10. Finally someone said it out loud. I had given up on expressing my opinions.
    "ShelLuser: NO way I'm reading your post anymore. Try shortening them."
    SteamedEcko likes this.
  11. The most important filter for new players is the community itself and it's culture.

    If we want to keep good players, we need to invest some time there.
    Not only moderators, but even primarily non-staff.
    See what the new player is after, tell them in few short sentences what they can expect on EMC - and then they will soon know if this is a server for them or not.
    When I have some time and energy I do that.
    Even if 95% don't respond, 5% respond and one of 100 is really a good player - I think it's worth the effort.
    SteamedEcko likes this.
  12. A bit off topic: That reminded me to vote, thank you. :)
  13. You're almost making it sound as if we're loosing a lot of good players, and quite frankly I'm not too sure I agree.

    I've been a little absent lately, at one time came back on SMP2 after a week+ of inactivity. That was an eye opener. Sure; it's still the trusty and friendly SMP2 as I knew it. But there were a lot of new players there and my instinct tells me that there are also some potentially awesome ones around.

    The main problem here is making sure that the new player actually appreciates your help and doesn't pick it up as unwanted or worse: a little intrusive.

    I don't think you can come up with a "best" way here. But what I've seen happening on SMP2 I'm pretty convinced that the system which is in place now is doing a good job.
    ChickenDice likes this.
  14. I don't think he was saying we are losing good players. Just that by interacting with the new people we can increase retention. Whenever I'm not focused on a project I run around and "stalk" new players giving them things, taking them on tours and answering their questions. I have had players tell me to go away, that's easy fix, just go away lol. More often than not though people are happy that there is someone on the MULTIPLAYER server that is playing with them as soon as they log in.
    ShelLuser, M4nic_M1ner and Aikar like this.
  15. I see where you read that ("if we want to keep"), but that's just clumsy worded.

    What I mean is give the new players an opportunity to get a first impression and also try to get a first impression.
    This also makes a new player realize that there are live people there and a community.

    Oh, no ... no stalking
    I don't like stalking at all.

    I do initiate a conversation - "Hello <name>"
    But if there is no answer, that's all, finished.

    "Welcome! Are you new to Minecraft?"
    ...
    "Just ask if you have any questions"

    I think that the best time is not right after they complete the tutorial and join (and there is that automatic message), but few minutes later.
    ShelLuser and SteamedEcko like this.