The Inevitable is coming...

Yes, I know, spooky title, but I'm going to try and be as serious as possible in this thread.
Now, you may be wondering what exactly I mean by "The Inevitable". What I mean by that is the server's death. The demise. The destruction.

I know, for many of you committed players of Buildcraftia, this idea may be hard to grasp, but honestly, it is very obvious. There are several reasons I believe so strongly that the server as a whole is going to collapse in the near future and leave us behind with nothing. But, I will start with a simple one.

Staff:
In case you haven't noticed right now, we are down to only 9 staff members. I know that may seem like it is a decent number, but when you look at the hours each of these staff members are able to commit to the server, it really isn't much at all. Between school, jobs and the army, the majority of our faithful staff are unable to commit the level of time necessary to keep the server at its peak efficiency. I'm not here to bash any of the staff members for their lack of activity, truly, I'm not. What I'm trying to say is that they are stretched far too thin and are largely unable to help players on the server when needed. Also, just like in the past, there has been problems with AFK staff or unreachable staff. It can be extremely frustrating on both ends of this argument. Those who argue the staff should only be online if they are able to be there to assist players often get frustrated when there is a spammer, advertiser or some other rule breaker are there and no staff to help. But, one can also see the staff's stance. They, like anyone else, sometimes need to be away from the world of Buildcraftia and can't always be on call. They too have lives and that must be respected. No matter where you fall on either end of this debate, you must agree that having no staff members there to help you leads to chaos and anarchy. If the server is filled with chaos and anarchy, there is no way to progress and it often seems unappealing to new players, which is very reasonable. If you were to walk into a school and all you saw was chaos and no control, you would think that wasn't the best place to go to learn. It is the same thing with a creative server. If a new player logs on and sees players verbally attacking each other in chat, spam and other nonsense, they will be turned away from the server and are more likely to leave and never come back. This leads into my next problem with the server's current state.

New Players:
Our new player base, or lack there of, is so minuscule it is beyond belief. I would dare to say that upwards of 95% of our active playerbase is made up of old time players, staff and retired staff. For a server looking to move forward, those numbers are frightening. A lack of new players means there are less people who will donate for a rank, less people to talk about the server to their friends and so on. Without new players, it is completely impossible for our server, as a whole, to make any progress. How do we achieve more players? More advertisement, and like Leo always loves to point out, more voting. Barely any of the players are motivated enough to vote on a regular basis, and those who are, are few and far between. If we want more players we need to vote more and frankly, I don't see that happening.

I would also like to point out that new players often feel ignored and unaccepted. They see a cool community, but no way in. This also is a major problem because 9 times out of 10, these players decide it is easier to just leave than to try and weasel their way into our tight knitted community. My suggestion to try and fix this is for ALL players of Buildcraftia to be more opening and welcoming, and I don't just mean saying "Welcome!" whenever a new player joins. I mean actually committing and engaging in a conversation with them, no matter how young or old they seem. We need to welcome EVERYBODY. Our community has always been a unique one, filled with weebs, builders, chatters and many others, all in one place getting along (for the most part..). If we openly accepted new players into this beautiful community, we would probably be able to get much of a better flow into our server as a whole.

Finally, the final, and arguably one of the biggest problems, is that without new players, we have a smaller pool of potential new staff members to choose from. And, from what I said above, it is quite obvious we new a flow of new players to better sustain our glorious group of staff members. At this point, with out a significant increase in new players, we will have very few people who are willing AND are qualified to be staff. There is a big amount of retired staff, and a good number of them are not exactly willing to rejoin the staff team due to school, their social lives and other things outside the realm of Minecraft.

Lack of Innovation:
Moving on to more technical and not quite as tangible aspects of this "rant", I guess you could call it. Many players, and myself included, who strongly feel that the server has not been able to move forward due to the lack of any major updates to the server in general. As many of you recall, back on that fateful day of November 9th, 2015, Leo announced that factions would become a reality. Since then, I've been told time and time again that this was Jessie's project. I am by no means purposefully trying to shame Jessie, but it has been nearly 4 months since that day and we haven't received any solid news on this new server. Yes, I will admit that since that time the Skyblock server has been added, but people's excitement in that server last only a short span of time. Other than the faction flop, there have been other serverwide flops that have come along. These include, but are not limited to, the paintball update, the official release of Domination (as far as I'm concerned it is still in beta mode due to the fact that there has been no official announcement), and finally the Buildcraftia Competitions hosted by the staff team. All of these major flops relate back to the whole problem with the staff (Once again, I must say, I love all the staff members and I have nothing against them. I am simply trying to produce constructive criticism). Like all things, in order to move forward, the server must have new innovations and changes to keep the players coming back. For this reason, the lack of innovation is a major fault in our system.

Lack of a Direction:
This is nearly hand and hand with Lack of Innovation. The server, as a whole doesn't really feel like it has any one purpose or goal right now. It feels as if we are at a stand still, a crossroad we can't seem to pass. Even though we have made a bit of progress, there is still this feeling that we are standing still. Yes, the API has been released (kind of?). Yes, we have gotten rid of Mac. Yes, there has been removals of inactive staff members. These are all baby steps to get us going, but if we really want to try and save the server, we need to begin to take leaps and bounds. Baby steps will not keep the server afloat. I know I'm being blunt, but doing these tiny little things will not be enough to save the server. If we really WANT to change and if we really WANT to keep this server alive, the community as a WHOLE needs to pitch in. But, frankly, at this very moment I do not see that happening anytime in the near future. Due to this whole lack of direction and lack of innovation, there hasn't been anything extraordinary occurring over the past year. And that simple fact seriously concerns me and leads me to believe that the server, is in fact, dying out.

So, in conclusion, we can sit around here all day arguing and bickering about what we NEED to change and what has caused all our problems, but in all honesty, the problem lies at the heart of us. We are the problem that we are constantly fearing. WE are the ones leading to our own demise, and until we begin to change, the death of Buildcraftia will be inching nearer and nearer with every passing second of every passing day. Now, I leave it up to us, as a community. Will we change our ways and right our wrongs in a final attempt to save the server that means so much to many of us? Or will we sit back, enjoy the last moments, and watch as our hard work fizzles out into nothing.

It is your choice.

 

Hehe well done dusty

 

cow, you read it before I even posted it. XD

 

to long so ima say this: BC wont die, its doing gr8, and saying its gonna end isn't rly the case, go back in time when arcadia was around and post this thread will ya?

 

If you didn't even read it, how do you even know what my points are trying to say?

 

cause I saw BC is dying and I was leik NOPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPE !!!!!!!!!!

 

just read it... it's not even that much.

 

you can never judge a thread by its title...

 

that and the fact that the server isn't going to be updated to 1.9, but from what I've seen mineplex hasn't even been updated yet, so we have a little time when players are actually looking for 1.8 servers, but it's not going to last forever. I know that Leo works a ton for the server, so I think that we should maybe start looking for another developer that is willing to work when Leo is out of commission. (although Im pretty sure that the server being stuck in 1.8 is the plugin's fault and not Leo's)

 

Leos working to get it to 1.9 right now.

 

It is the plugins. It takes a long time for the bukkit and other plugin devs to recode their plugins to work with a new update. It happens with every new update and with every server.

As I was reading the bit about staff not always being able to be there, I had the idea that we could implement vote kick for if there's spammers/hackers on and no staff. It would have to work to be a majority of the server, e.g. if there's 20 players on, at least 15 have to agree to kick.

I'll also leave my skype here(It's alatus.caelens) so anyone who hasn't can add me. Just skype me anytime during the day and I'll see it and get on minechat, excepting from 1:00 - 2:30 because that's when I have my AP Classes and I can't have my phone out during those.

Also on the topic of staff limitations, as a purely theoretical proposition just for my own curiosity, does anyone agree with a staff system that has a few owners/admins then multiple(like, upwards of 5) moderators who deal with most of the server side issues(i.e. old-old-old BC). Discuss below.

As a final thought on moderators, I know all of you would love to have a mod position and it seems glorious(it is pretty fun to be staff), but the majority of new mods have been leaving within 3-4 months due to family issues, or realisation that they don't want to deal with the players. And I get that, but please, the next time staff applications or nominations come up, seriously spend time to think about whether you're committed, about whether you will be able to put in the time no matter what comes up.

 

Dang it, I was going to add that another Dev might help but I forgot. I knew I forgot something

uh... And how exactly do you know this? Leo has previously stated that the server won't change to 1.9 for a few months at least. So I have no clue where you're getting your information.

 

he still is working on it...

 

Has he told you this? Because if he hasn't, then you are just speculating.

I personally always did prefer having a large group of mods compared to admins and owners, but I'm not sure that is completely possible with the current number of staff members. And like you said, we need moderators that know the struggle of being staff and are passionate and committed to the server and serving as a moderator.

 

Thank you Dusty! Even though the title of your post is seems negative, the constructive criticism and even some suggestions for improvement are really a positive contribution in the current state of the server.

I really like the idea of everyone pitching in to welcome new players and help them feel included. Leo's idea of more voting to attract more players is great also.

I'l stick around for some time yet and help the server hopefully move from surviving to thriving.

 

I have been extremely inactive recently due to a recent family issue that just came up and I totally never expected this, and I have been trying to hop on the server here and there but don't think I'm quitting anytime soon. Unless I get fired for being inactive but I'm sure the Admins understand anyhow.

 

I agree with the whole more mods thing, because when I had just joined BC (a wee lil 12 y/o nine) I always found it easier to approach mods with things that I was having problems with, as opposed to going to an admin (which tbh was just ramsay and mac, so meh)

 

I love how I was the exact opposite, I always approached one particular admin at the time. Lux.

 

I understand that the staff members have their reasons for being inactive, and I'm totally fine with that. I understand life issues come up. I'm just saying that when the majority of staff are unable to spend an adequate amount of time on the server, the server suffers.

 

And when the server remains offline with no explanation as to the reason, perhaps the inevitable has arrived