I'm not sure what you mean by this, but I do feel like it is not useful—or perhaps even not appropriate—for me to fill in the survey, considering that I haven't 'really played' on EMC since 2015.
There's a section where you can state whether or not you are active, etc. If you would like to submit go ahead, the way analysis will be done, it won't create unwanted outliers. In fact, I would consider it useful to hear from both active, less active and inactive players, on their perspective of how they see EMC, which can later help create action plans to attract or improve experiences within each demographic. There hasn't been any staff additions for over two three years (plus SS and Staff teams heavily reduced in that time as well), and with slow progress on dev side and community members slowly eroding away, those who do want to help (or who would have liked to help, but got demotivated along the way), from my point of view, have been alienated by historical inaction (or slow action) by the server. This has led to some directional change for EMC's plans for improvement as denoted in chicken's recent threads (Server RoadMap & forum updates) -> which is why I created this survey at this moment in time. It seems to be the best time to get community feedback for some of these topics. Personally, the past 6 months, I've tried to help EMC by creating thorough suggestion threads (notably in joint efforts with jewel_king) and opening public discussion places (such as my 10 year thread) to try to engage the community for the betterment of the server, even this survey is myself trying to help out of my own time. And going back to Nick's statement, there's not much else to do, other than to wait and see how the server progresses. There's a limit to how much a player can do to help the community without hearing from decision makers, and everyone's skill set or time might be limited, but still would like for EMC to resurge again. ^ That is where I believe Nick's statement/sentiment comes from, and I hold the same opinion, not much else to do, but try to help in the sidelines of staff/admin teams. (Nick might be totally referring to something else, so I'm not trying to put words in someone else's mouth) NOTE: (The statements above were stated from my perspective as my own person, and it is neither confirming nor denying that similar sentiments are expressed in the results of this survey) -> I will release my analysis of what might be interesting to the public (following the different permission levels that players trusted me with to share their voice)- this will be done once the survey concludes at the end of the month ---- In other news, a full week has passed, and over 50 responses have been submitted!!! That is leagues ahead of what I expected for this first week, so THANK YOU everyone who has shared their voice. -Tuq
Right you are sir! If it wasn’t for my strict limitations on my WiFi holding me back, I would doing more than lingering around the forums. 😔 At least I can still get a little piece of the action in the meantime.
Half way through the Time Frame of this study! Bump - Due to some IRL stuff, I haven't been able to market it as much in-game as I would have liked, but great reach so far either way! Wanted to thank everyone again who has submitted a response so far, and I would greatly appreciate it if you would reach out to more people you know and share this survey with them! Thanks again, please reach out to me if anyone has any questions.
Hello Just wanted to give an update, the past couple of weeks have been extremely busy on the personal side and I haven’t been able to continue advertise the survey nor have had any spare free time , so it is most likely I’ll post the results around mid-april so I’ll leave the survey open for now until I get the chance to do the write up. Thanks for participating and for your patience, Best, Tuq Reminder to also fill out this survey from Moople if you haven’t already May 1st update - schedule has been cleared up I will get back to creating a public post with conclusions, just fyi filtered raw data (per privacy consent participants provides) has already been shared with Starf since the beginning of April
It'll be interesting to see if any of these suggestions are taken into consideration. I won't hold my breath since I know the dev team is a shadow of what it once was, but Chickeneer has surprised us before!
Hello Everyone,Sorry for the delay in this update. Several personal events have kept me from being actively involved in EMC the past year. For those who prefer a brief overview of this post, here's a quick summary made by chat gpt: Survey Summary: Conducted in March 2023 to gather player opinions on EMC, shared with staff while maintaining participant anonymity. Tuqueque will post more detailed data and graphs from the survey in the coming days. Decrease in Activity: Historical analysis of the "Show yourself" threads indicate a significant drop in EMC activity, aligning with projections from November 2022. Discussion Threads: Various discussions over the years addressing community and staff issues, such as economy and game mechanics. MC Java Trends: The decline in Minecraft Java's popularity, particularly among younger players, is concerning for EMC. Future of EMC: Questions raised about rebranding EMC, targeting different audiences, and strategies to remain unique and attract new players. Community Engagement: Suggestions for improving community engagement and resource accessibility. Financial Stability and Development: EMC's financial stability is noted, but external economic factors and development challenges are ongoing concerns. What has happened so far?In March 2023, I created a survey but never publicly posted the results. I did, however, share them with the staff back then, respecting the anonymity requested by some participants. I released the survey while in communication with the staff team. After the study period elapsed, I shared with staff the curated data results. This survey stemmed from my experiences between June and December 2022, a period when my activity in EMC was high but was later reduced due to disillusionment with the server's progress in development over economy, community aspects, and others while I was absent from the game during college. For a deeper understanding of community discussions that have been held in the past and to help the community and staff team find ways to revitalize EMC, you can read more here: https://empireminecraft.com/threads/giveaway-10-years-and-5000th-post.86298/ https://empireminecraft.com/threads/suggestion-adventuring-update.86466/ https://empireminecraft.com/threads/idea-voter-items-overhaul.86387/ Threads by others https://empireminecraft.com/threads/poll-chickeneer-fixes-the-economy-thread.86188/ https://empireminecraft.com/threads/suggestion-misc-improvements-and-fun-systems.86841/ https://empireminecraft.com/threads/confusion-reigns-on-this-empire.83022/ EMC Decrease in Activity I also conducted an analysis showing the rapid decrease in EMC activity. The "Show yourself" thread, in my opinion, is a key indicator of this decline. Today in Dec 28, 2023, the 2023 Thread has 58 replies, on the bottom edge of my projections done on November of 2022 which expected between 57 and 107 replies. This could have many reasons from new players disliking the forum/style, or posting selfies in it, or what I consider the main cause would be... the decrease in overall activity in EMC from both failing on acquiring new players and retaining old ones. (In reality a combination of many factors) We've had numerous conversations about the state of EMC, discussing various community challenges such as the economy and game mechanics over the years such as these... https://empireminecraft.com/threads...and-how-emc-is-run.81329/page-16#post-1533737 https://empireminecraft.com/threads/how-we-got-here-now-about-the-emc-community.82563/ https://empireminecraft.com/threads/community-and-staff-discussion-thread.81347/ https://empireminecraft.com/threads/is-emc-dead-or-dying.76765 https://empireminecraft.com/threads/economy-crisis.61889 https://empireminecraft.com/threads/your-opinions-on-inflation-in-the-empire.47642 https://empireminecraft.com/threads/how-badly-would-my-vault-crash-the-economy.86697/#post-1622005 https://empireminecraft.com/threads/healthy-economy.82605/ MC Java Trends I feel it is important to continue these discussions on how to redirect the server, and especially consider the general state Java Minecraft popularity. It is no news that Minecraft has been decaying in popularity, especially with younger children since there are so many entertainment options out there. During the first decade of Minecraft, arguably the golden era, it has had 3 main servers in Java of which arguably a majority of players has played at least in one of them at one point or another. Hypixel, Mineplex, and The Hive. Two of them have closed their Java servers, and stuck only with Bedrock edition. The Hive sunset its Java server two years ago 2021, and Mineplex did so this year(2023). This trend is something to consider as we think about EMC's future. Can we do anything? These discussions lead to several important questions regarding EMC's future, such as the possibility of rebranding, targeting different audience (the average age of the Minecraft player is 24!) and strategies to attract new players. How can we incentivize community engagement in various aspects of the game and beyond? I welcome any comments or ideas on EMC's state and what we, as players, can do to make EMC more appealing to new players. Should we change our approach to the economy, public farms, or even form an unofficial welcoming committee? I feel like many of the issues that EMC seems to be facing is kind of a recycling bin dilemma. If you make recycling too confusing or place the bin too far away from a trash bin, people won't recycle. However, if they are placed right next to trash bins in a non-confusing manner, then, people are more likely to do the right thing. For EMC, if resources are easily accessible for any community volunteers might be able to improve EMC's outlook with little to no effort, for any issues that can be managed without code. Let's talk! My thoughts... Over the next few hours/days, I'll share key graphs from the survey. In the meantime, here are some of my current thoughts: This past year, my playtime was very limited, but I did explore other similar servers. I appreciated many aspects of these servers and also recognized where EMC excels, such as in staff professionalism and server stability. EMC financially seemed fine a year or so ago when using the API (basically a fast way to do /res info) I calculated the supportership of the populatiom who still had reses. The general conclusion from back then was that EMC has enough of a strong base of OGs who has kept supporting even when they haven't played in years, and after reaching out to a few, they said they have been happy supporting a service which gave them happiness many years ago, and would continue to support, even if they don't return. -> I am not that worried of EMC ceasing to exist due to financials - However: I am not sure how this has been affected by the real world factors such as big price hikes and inflation the past 18 months, and global recessions... both affecting disposable income for supporters, and probably server technology for monthly upkeep costs.) It is also true that chicken had an extremely busy year IRL which slowed development of EMC. I am not sure how much a discussion would help in this situations, however I would still like to post this. Upcoming projects such as the Think Team? seem to be the right directions at least to be able to optimize the little dev time we get per year. If you would like to mark the thread as "read" to receive notifications, or share any thoughts or questions you might have, feel free to do so. P.S. I'm not sure if I ever gave the promised rupee rewards for the survey, so I'll do that first thing whenever I sit down to write the next post and increase the rewards due to the delay.
Tuq, that's just the nature of how things go, sadly. Those that have stuck around played on EMC in the earlier days of Minecraft when things were much different, EMC included. I can speak from experience that 9 years ago, things were much different. Most of the players are now adults or are just about to be adults. Personal life matters take priority (I can speak from personal experience) where people may stop playing on EMC, or Minecraft in general, for a long period of time. In 2016, I lost a friend of mine because of how busy her life was about to become with getting her job. I have never heard from her since and she still has a special place in my heart~ Minecraft has also changed a lot, for better or for worse, since then, as well as the world. I won't bring politics into this thread but I'm sure a lot of the new adults can speak for themselves about how difficult things are. Best of luck with your idea! It'll be sad to see almost no activity on EMC (like what I witnessed in 2018), but that's just how the cookie crumbles.
Personally, I feel as though the whole "Towny/Plots" system is getting old (Generally speaking, not talking about only EMC). As someone who has been on and off for quite a few times over the past 12 years there's only so much you can do on a towny/plot versus traditional smp's.
I,ve felt this sentiment for quite a while now. Noticed it with the seasonal htown plots that event plot worlds seem to work a lot better. Haven't really spent time at plots in 7+ years now unless its viewing a collection or searching for a specific item to buy at someone's town shop. With blocks being protected when you place. The only true downside to living in the wild is transportation to and from town if need be. Although if everyone lived in the wild im sure it would look at lot different. It would be nice to see a change in the tutorial encouraging new players to venture out and start outposts versus encouraging town gameplay. That is what initially got me hooked on emc. Emc was a public smp anyone could join and the though of having my own base out in the wild was insane and too an extent over 10 years later im still chasing that dream a bit.
Well, there is the frontier. Infrastructure out there is spotty and often poor (as Spyrovsgnorg noted in part), but I'm trying to fix that, at least for the Minecraft Paradise Outpost.
