So I mean, I get the whole voting thing. I do. I've been here close to two years. I used to vote faithfully every day, until some painful event made me despise some staff and part of the server as a whole. That pain sort of recovered, and I really did want to start voting again when I finally got my computer fixed but now I noticed. Every time I log in "Hey, you haven't voted in a while! Vote!" Every ten minutes "Hey, why don't you vote?" And now, the crown jewel "Voting stops voting reminders" ... aka bribery. I mean, yeah, you need votes to make the server more well known and such, but .... really? Bribing to get votes? That and the tutorial that used to make you actually learn the rules now is you just running as fast as you can to get to the actual game play. The economy is all sorts of weird and the monopoly is sort of.. harsh. I just. EMC used to be really nice, now it's like I only see the bad sides of things. I'm not the only one am I? **Edit- I mean this as no indiscretion to the staff- they've been amazing as of late and very helpful with matters. I'm amazed at how kind people can be to others they don't even know. Of course, I do have a few favorites- don't we all- but they're all dear to me in my heart.
I was expecting a rant of my style (see: Weekly rants). Anyways, serious talk time. I certainly agree with you on the tutorial. From a community member's point of view, if people aren't willing to spend a few minutes grasping the basics, they don't deserve the wonderful benefits and rewards. I suppose from a business point of view, you want as many people playing though. Then the question arises. Does a positive community outweigh a large one? I'm not sure there's a right answer. Let's take a look at voting. If we have a positive community that are pleased with the server, there should be people voting. Therefore, the voting messages don't have to be as often. However, I believe there should be some messages to remind people to vote, and some incentives. It's a good way to get people started. I'll admit, I started voting for that extra 50 rupees (I think it was 50. Quite small at the time) because I wanted the rupees. I didn't really care I was supporting the server. Over time, I did and have stuck with voting for quite some time…*chuckles to self* Now, if we have a large community that is not cohesively working, voting messages will appear extremely often in a desperate grab for votes. I agree with you that that is not how things should work. That's just how I see it. I do encourage voting as a way to thank the server for being free (well, prior to the whole EULA fiasco) and providing a good playing area, but maybe the messages should be tweaked to say that as well as the incentives?
The messages are not bribery. Bribery is offering payment to coerce someone to do something illegal. Since this is a free server, voting is more like a non-monetary payment for playing and the voting messages are a bill reminder. If you don't vote, the messages become advertising. Most of us are very good at tuning advertising out. I personally don't notice the messages. But then, I also vote.
It was been noted that things with the tutorial are not perfect some things where changed to make it easier for a while with the intention of improving the whole system. On the Home page of the website the top post is all to do with this, while very little information is in the thread right now perhaps you should check it out. http://empireminecraft.com/threads/its-here-almost.43876/ It takes months of work to put this together not a few hours it also took a lot of ppl and while I have not seen it myself yet I expect that it will answer some of your gripes. As for voting trust me when I say you have seen nothing as far as advertising is concerned on EMC, on other servers you lose your whole screen every few seconds and it just screams at you to vote or donate and you not only had to vote but also donate to get rid of them. EMC is really not that bad when compared to these others and voting helps it out and don't forget all that free game play you get and is it really that hard to take a minute to vote.
The problem is that the negative side of people not voting much heavily outweighs the negative side of more advertising and rupees for doing so. We used to have 2 websites that you could vote on, each 50r each/day, with no ads for them. I bet you'll think that was amazing - it was not We had downwards of 20 people online at peak time total, and it was a very dark period for EMC. Compare that to today and it's a much more pleasant to be online. Sure, if you don't vote you get reminders, but they're not that big of a deal and they don't take away anything. I'd much prefer those compared to an empty server. Of course it's not all voting that led to bustling servers, but it plays a huge part. Perhaps if you support Aikar could make vote reminders hidden, but for a free and expensive server to run the least people can do is vote
Well, a new tutorial is coming, so that's hopefully all set! For the voting thing, I agree. It says it too soon. I vote every day, yet it always tell me "you haven't voted yet today!" No, of course I haven't, the 24 hours since the last vote haven't passed yet...
Not sure its worth mentioning but you can increase your vote streak every 16hrs, that may be why you get this message
The sad part is, from what I see on my own server home (Smp1), attendance is at it's lowest! At a time where I remember there being a minimum of 40 people on, there was only 12 yesterday! It's just. Sigh.
The tutorial will be fixed soon (friday). I agree that high quality members are more important to the community as a whole. As for the voting message, there might be something not working with regards to it spamming if you have already voted. It is supposed to run once every 2 hours if you haven't voted. I will talk with Aikar about testing this to make sure.
It's actually due to 2 factors right now: 1) School - Our numbers were BOOMING during the summer, hitting new online records. Then IMMEDIATELY when school started the numbers dropped massively. Many people aren't getting on as much due to school. 2) Minecraft Drama - The past few months of the game has been negative after negative after negative. Minecraft is filled with all drama and no positive for the past few months, and it has made tons of players quit/give up. But for the OP, as of tonight we have launched our new tutorial which will ease your concerns. The previous one was temporary as a quick stop gap to not let the previous tutorial cause us to lose players. We're making effort to actually study how things impact us, and the interactive tutorial seems good in theory, but was causing us tremendous pain. When your spending money on advertising, you can't have a known faulty process causing someone you paid to try your server abandon without even giving the server a shot.... so we took it out and put in that quick run to get the essential information out. But over the past few months theirs been work on a new well designed, proper tutorial which is now live! ------------------------------ As for voting - Voting is a strong way to get new members without paying, but we can only maintain high rank if tons of people vote! Yes the message can get excessive, but its on the to do list to change how the reminder works so its not as spammy. (showing 1 to 2 messages a day at most, not time announce based) Its work to overall improve our announcement system instead of spamming a message you've already seen. I work a full time job so I don't have as much time for EMC as I need, so we have to take quick actions to get quick results, then work to polish it up afterwards. Tutorial was a case of that, and so is announcements.
Oh dang. I got a response from Aikar and it's an amazing one 0_0 Alright, first, thank you for replying Aikar, I get that yeah this is one heck of a server to run- I've never played on a more complex and detailed server- the amount of effort is probably a little bit terrifying once I really think about it. Second, yeah they disappeared on me for a whole day then made their appearance, and I know the big thing for free advertising is the voting, but goodness it's a lot to take in sometimes! Third, I did take a look at the tutorial and oh. my. god. It's so fancy. And big. How long were y'all working on that one, seriously??
