Ok so in my last post I went out and suggested a complete restart. I now realize that this is unrealistic and very unlikely. However my main goal and point of that post was not addressed so for that reason I locked it and am making a new post here. The main issue that I believe ECC has is that it is slowly dying out and almost boring now (I know many of you will disagree on this). I rarely go on anymore but when I do Immediately notice major changes. The first one being that this once 200+ player server has decreased to only 100 (if lucky), and will continue to decrease. The only way to get those numbers high is with new players... NOT old. See, I believe that everybody is addressing the wrong issue in the wrong order. People focus on finding ways to keep builders on this server. Yes that is an issue that we need to build upon but that will not fix this. The issue that we need to focus on is how to increase the flux of new players. This means we need a way to actually get new players onto the server for the first time. Once we get a large steady influx of players, THEN we can focus on ways to keep them here like free housing or providing them with free tools or advice. There are some other issues such as various prices or rule changes and all these can be found in my last thread found in the link at the bottom but before you read it please keep in mind that I have dropped the restart suggestion. Please consider everything I have said in this new post so far. Now my reason for stating all these issues was not only for the players but for the survival of this server. I could not really think of a way to fix all of these issues at once and the only thing I could think of at the time was a complete restart. Ive seen it happen on plenty of other servers with it being a success so I thought "why not here?" My restart suggestion was simply a solution but the point of this post was to open it up to other possible solutions that I could not think of. Maybe a partial restart? I am not really sure but thats why I re-created this post here so we as a community could think of suggestions on how to revive this server back to the 200+ online player days where the economy was balanced and flourished, prices were just right, and everybody could enjoy a fair server with their friend. Another issue that I see is ways to make money. I know people will argue on this but lets face it, the most common and real way to make good money is to simply farm or mine a TON. This is a hardcore economy server isn't it? My suggestion is how do we make more ways to make profitable money. One major issue that I notice and am directly affected in is the price of property (land, towns, plots). The prices of these have dropped significantly over the past couple of months and years. What Im saying is that we need to find a way to somehow increase the value of land and plots again. This would open up the Real-Estate business that has pretty much disappeared recently unless you are a big name or well known (which to me is unfair. Should not be based on popularity). With the opening up of Real-Estate once again, we now have another sector and way to make some good money. And plus I think some people (like myself), enjoyed/enjoy the real-estate business. The only issue is I cant personally think of a way to increase the value of land and plots which is why I'm making this an open discussion. If you have any ideas, thoughts, or questions please feel free to comment below. After all, thats why this was made, so we can provide all our ideas and thoughts publicly for everyone to see and discuss!! Previous Post (Keep in mind everything that I have stated here and that I have dropped the complete restart idea. This is just so you can read more in-detail what I'm trying to say and some of the issues we need to address): http://www.ecocitycraft.com/forum/threads/restart.110815/
You're seeing this the other way around. A large influx of players is meaningless of none of them find a reason to stick around. And for a lot of new players, there's plenty of reasons NOT to stick around. The economy that warped to please the old crowd, the rich crowd. Star tools, free and instant enchanted repairs, SG kits, etc. These problems are, unfortunately, too integrated in ECC. And incredibly difficult to remove. So the only solution is to balance it out and compromise. Give /repair a cost. An XP cost. Make it cost 1000 exp to repair an enchanted tools. (or 500 XP. I'm just a player, not a cop.) This makes repairs more valuable, decreases constant farming and makes it worth while for people who have the repair function, since they can ask for more money for their services. Nerf/balance out all SG kits. If people don't like nerfing then you should create a basic kit that everyone can use. It doesn't need to be anything special, just enough for someone to defend himself from the get-go. Get rid of buffer and spy. These kits do nothing but unbalance things. Spy makes you very difficult to detect, people who come on ECC to play SG end up getting killed without seeing the enemy. This is extremely aggravating when you know what's happening, and it's even worse when you don't. How do you think people feel when they get killed by an invisible person and when they ask about it in chat they get the response: "It's a kit. You need to pay for it."? It would make them angry, and it would make them quit. Add buffer to the mix and it gets even worse. They get 1 hit killed by an invisible person. There's no amount of nerfing that can fix this. Only a complete removal of buffer can. I realize people paid for those kits, I realize it's quite a bit of money. But I also realize that if nothing's done about it SG is done for. Remove 6 SG arenas and add new mini-games in their stead. There are too many arenas. People come on the server and find that the SG board is practically dead. 6 out of 8 arenas are empty almost all of the time. Keep the most popular arenas (2, and 3 or 4) and add a new minigame with 1-2 arenas. (blockhunt, skywars, anything fastpaced works, pvp or not.) This adds more variety to the playing experience, and keeps SG fast paced. (as opposed to the slow 1-3 player games you usually see) Add a farming method that's as good for new players as it is for old players. Since most farming methods are already taken, I suggest cactus farming. I'm willing to provide code to block automatic farming, since I already have it working in my own plugin. Cactus farming requires nothing but a fist, and it can be made faster with a shovel. But the farming method is so basic that even a new player can easily do it and make up to 10k an hour (if the max for it is like 14k an hour) Don't try to gain a large amount of players. Now this one is solely my opinion. But if the server grows too large it loses the aspect that made me stick around and love this place. And that's the community. I watched this server grow, I watched it peak, and I watched it decline. And in my opinion, the peak was definitely when it was around 100-150 players max (in 2012) I don't think there need to be many more players, I think it should just be more accommodating for players. If the server grows too large the community declines. Crack down on trolls, scammers and repeat offenders. I can't stress this one enough. Trolls, scammers and repeat offenders do nothing but ruin people's experience on this server. Crack down on them, permaban the ones that don't change or don't intend to change. Get rid of those people. They are like a cancerous tumour, if you don't get rid of them quickly they spread and cause havoc all over the place. There's more, but that's all I got for now.
The one's I definitely agree with are nerfing/taking away kits and removing arenas. As a person who owns kits and having used them for over half a year, I have slowly seen what they have done to our server. When I first started buying kits, it didn't seem like a big deal. Everyone was using them and the server felt healthy at that time. Now I have a hard time getting into a lobby with more than 4 people and its because of people such as myself using kits. Take all my kits away. I don't care anymore. I just want to play. For arenas being removed, I'd like to see one sign that puts you in a lobby. At 10 seconds, it would take you to the map that is randomly selected or voted for (with a vote command). I don't want to see only 2 maps. I would rather have a brand new sg system that puts you in the most populated lobby possible. Adding a farming method that is pretty balanced to old and new users, that sounds like netherwart in my opinion. When I first started playing, I farmed netherwart and was able to make 10k per hour if I remember correctly. And anyone is able to netherwart farm. All you need is soul sand netherwart, and You don't need to donate for water or buy water from someone else. You don't even need light or repairs for your tool. The hardest thing to get for an nwart farm is a fortune 3 tool, which you may already have. After a while I bought fly and was able to make 14-15k per hour. Cracking down... Yes please.
Very well written and thought out. However it's not like I completely left out that we need to keep players... I just said that's not the main issue which you disagree on which is completely fine and your point about it makes perfect sense. As for the SG kits.... I can't remember the last time I played SG because it's become so corrupt and unfair now so I completely agree that something must be done. However this can be a touchy subject since these are kits that players paid for with real money so I'm not sure how it would pan out. Let's just leave a solution for that aside for now, but at least we both and seems like everyone else acknowledges this issue. As for adding other mini games. I could not agree more. Perhaps adding my personal favorite spleef? Maybe the server or admits could hold tournaments with cash prizes and who knows maybe it'll grow so that there can be a spleef leader board. The cash prizes and leader boards can be for any game and will also bring a new way to make some money while having fun (doesn't have to just be spleef. It can be any other games that you listed as well). My personal favorite idea that you had was the price for repairs. Back in the day I'd constantly see players exchanging things for repairs but now that field has completely disappeared. So I agree with adding a new cost to it like XP. The only issue with this like u stated for SG might be that new players won't want to have to pay for this. My answer to that is everything can't be free and after all this is a hard core economy server, they should know what they're getting Into at some level at least. Adding a new farming method could be a good idea too but personally I will let you guys decide on that since farming isn't my area of expertise or interest really (why I want to find other way to make money other than just farming). Cracking down on trolls and scammers is another issue but I feel that is going to be an issue no matter what and everywhere even on other servers. Not a whole lot you can do about that, maybe a little, but not a lot. Overall again I love this response and this is exactly what I was hoping for in this thread. Thank you and let's all continue to develop these ideas and come up with more possible solutions!!
Thanks @kukelekuuk00 for the mature and friendly response. Its nice to see you offering a helping hand and good suggestions. :] My main focus in this reply is the Real Estate market however. You say that prices have plummeted. You also said that only popular/famous users can make any money on property nowadays. I completely disagree. The only reason I am able to sell prebuilts that are upwards of 10k is that I go out and make a name for myself. If your town is stunning and you are brining people in to it and showing them around you can make your prices fly up also. Everyone has the same chance at this. Just be mature and friendly and talk to players. Get a town portal and other features and you can set your prices at however high/low you want. But plots are purely aesthetic. The thing about ECC is that players don't actually need a house. They are paying for looks & in a sense roleplay. You don't need a roof over your head. Which means you as the seller needs to convince the player that they need this house. Plots are cheap because they require little to no effort. I recommend making a rebuilt town. My prices range from 6k-10k in my nation of Atudrar. The users determine the prices of land, not staff. Its up to you guys to balance it out. As for erepairs costing money... users pay $100usd just to have the command. If we change it to cost exp/ECD people will throw a fit. SG kits I agree on. Nerf them. Nerf the heck outta them! I personally don't play SG because of kits. Maybe we should have arenas that don't allow kits? Idk toss out ideas! But I do commonly see builders rage quitting & yelling about kit users. Cactus farming, I love that idea. If this plug in kuke talked about is consistently updated this could be great. A great source of income and would bring back a value to SAND. (Which is $0/per) Its all about demand! Farming prices need to change in my opinion. Wheat used to be a great source of income. But it got needed in (what I believe to be) an attempt to get people to buy melon swords. We need more minigames in my opinion, like parkour or adventure roleplay things! Not sure. And @THCOOL I recommend highlighting the important parts in a color that stands out in your long posts or grouping ideas. (Its a lot for a person to read and focus on.) In conclusion, keep the ideas coming! I would love to relay ideas to the staff team if I see anything worthwhile. ;]
Just like Kuke, I thank you for a respectful and insightful response. I understand what you are saying about the Real Estate market. Perhaps you are correct. I agree that prebuilt sell more than just empty plots. Perhaps that is something I might test out myself since I don't really have anything to do on this server anymore. I have seen prices drop on land especially whole towns but maybe you're right. Maybe thats just because people are looking for prebuilt things nowadays and pretty scenarios. Not just flat grass. So again, I have a town right now that I can test this out on. I will make it as pretty and nice as I possible can and make all sorts of cool prebuilts and see what happens. I will let you know my results if you'd like (or maybe you'd wanna help ??? LOL). As for the erepairs. I think we both interpreted it in different ways. I think you saw the exp as a cost to own the command itself. I saw it as exp will be the cost for non-donators to pay for an erepair. An example would be if lets say I had the erepair donation feature but you did not. You wanted an erepair from me, so (from what I interpreted this as) I would charge to a certain amount of exp in order to make the repair. This will make getting and owning the erepair donation more worthwhile and profitable. This was just an idea. But who says we have to use exp anyway. Maybe we could use diamonds? or nstars? the list goes on and on. I absolutely love the cactus farming idea. The only issue is Im pretty sure there is a way to build a huge automatic cactus farm where you don't even have to press any buttons. You literally just sit and the cactus grows and collects in chests by itself. Im sure you can find it on youtube to figure out what I'm talking about exactly. But other than this issue, yes i completely agree this would be a good idea and bringing back the market for sand is just another plus! I cannot express how much I agree with the price changes part especially on wheat. I wont get into it but before the price drops, I used to run a wheat farm operation along with 2-3 other friends. The farm made alot of money but what was so great about it was it aloud us to employ over 100 builders. Yes I said over 100 and we helped alot of people (including the now mod nicit6) build themselves on this server and stay. But since the drop we were forced to stop and now it is simply a ghost farm/town. I would love more than anything for it to return because it was just a fun experience. Helping builders get started with some money, making new friends with the workers, and making good money all at once... you just cant get any better than that. So I agree that the prices need to change. Minigames.... Yes! parkour, role-plays, or my personal favorite spleef. We need these all and it could only benefit the server. I don't see any downside to this. And if these games become popular than as I mentioned before perhaps we could host server tournaments and have leader boards, etc. This would only bring the community together and make ECC a more fun place especially for new players. Finally as for SG.... I think its safe to say that pretty much everybody thinks that kits should at least be nerfed. SG has become more of an issue than a friendly game. O and Ill keep the spacing and everything in mind. When I wrote that I was extremely tired and was simply too lazy to separate everything lol so sorry about the clumping.
I completely agree with what was said about the kits in SG making it unfair. I have spent $160 USD on kits and I would gladly give all that money away if kits were just... gone. It is absolutely unfair and I just want to play Survival Games like it is supposed to be played. I acknowledge the fact that, yes you can earn lots of money if you buy kits and yes, SG kits is one of the most popular donation feature, but it takes almost all elements of fun from the survival games. The survival games should be won out of skill, not how rich you are. With kits, you don't need to know chest routes or know how to be good at PvP, you just need to be able to left and right click, whether drinking a potion, or 1 hitting someone. Kits just ruin all aspects of the survival games. Also I agree with kuke on the cracking down on scammers, hackers, trollers, and repeating offenders. I know people (I won't mention any names) who were banned over 5 times, and still allowed back on the server. Some went so far to get banned over 10 times, and they were still allowed back on the server. This needs to stop. If people have over 5 instances where they broke a rule with definite malicious intent, then they have to be (permanently) perma-banned, or have a 3 month ban. And if they STILL persist in breaking the rules, make it a 6 month ban. It is just not fair for users of ECC to have to deal with these people who consistently break the rules. As for the cactus farming, yes I used to play on a factions server, and I had a huge fully automatic cactus farm where it would grow, break and be collected (without using any redstone). I don't think cactus farming is the best option. I don't have much knowledge about farming, so I regretfully don't have an alternative. Mini-Games. A definite yes. We need some more variety. New ways of making money. More reasons for new members to check out what ECC has to offer. Spleef, parkour, role-play and more. Spleef is easy to integrate into the economy. Have joining signs, have matches, money for every kill (possibly) and money if you win. Parkour, have different difficulty levels. The higher the difficultly, the bigger the reward. As for role-play, that would be a new, interesting and fun way for the community to interact with each other. There are so many options you can explore with role-playing! The removing of Arenas.... Yes. We need to get rid of some of the larger arenas. Removing 8, 7, 6, 5 and 1 will help the game flow a little more instead of every 4 arena 4 games, 1 arena 5 game is completed. I am sure there are maps out there that are better suited for this purpose. Solar Frost and Icarus for example. This would mean that more games can be played, and more popular arenas (popular to the larger minecraft community) can be added and will be played. The EXP for repairing tools makes sense. It costs EXP to enchant tools, EXP to repair them in anvils, so it would make sense to make then cost EXP to be repaired by donation features. I think 1000 EXP is a bit much seeing as you don't make much with max picks, but they do need to be repaired often. 500 EXP is probably better for the economy and people's income. I look forward to hearing your replies! -FuryFudge
I think people may have misunderstood @kukelekuuk00 regarding /repair. I read it as /repair still only being available for those who have ExtCommands, but it will cost exp as well. The reasoning behind it being that it will help stem the currently unlimited repairing, give the exp market a kick up the butt but will also still retain (to a degree) the exclusiveness of having paid $100 for ExtCmds. Kuke's point was that /repair is too engrained into ECC to have something as drastic as making it freely available to everyone for exp. Is this what you meant @kukelekuuk00?
Yup. That's what I meant. The people with exctcommands have access to the command, but the command has a cost associated with it. 500XP or something.
The most evil feature yet. Frankly, I don't think it should exist. But if we do intend to keep it.. an idea is to have it stop you from breaking your tool and reminding you to repair it, also stopping you from breaking any blocks with it until it's repaired.
After reading more, if I had to pay 500 exp I'd be angry not because it's a $100 feature, but because I don't mine and the amount of repairs I have to do while farming is outrageous.
Yes, I agree farming does require a ton of repairs. However the price doesn't have to be set at 500xp.... I guess that would be something up to the admins to decide on but the exp required could be any amount rlly and not just 500. I like this idea though because it forces players to conduct business in a variety of ways and not solely on farming the most. If a repair costs exp, maybe it's time to explore a different route to make money, to use your head and think of ideas. And also what dewsy said... it will give the exp market a kick in the butt.
And that is EXACTLY why it's necessary. Because people can currently farm endlessly without a care in the world. It would make for some more creative ways to make money. (and exp becomes a valuable thing for once.)
I agree it is something that should be implemented in some form, but for farming the market would die. Completely. Except for hand farmed crops like sugarcane. No one would farm melons, because the price of exp would be more than what they would get farming. No one would farm pumpkins, for the exact same reason as melons. If you found a way to implement it to farming I'd be very happy. I'm all ears. Mining already makes more than farming, but mining gets exp while making money. Farming doesn't. This would destroy the farming market and raise the mining market.
SG: Take away some features! Like.... Spy, Buffer, ETC (more fair for players then) Farming: Make it more fun somehow, and maybe depends on the tool 50 - 500 xp per tool..? Mini-Games: On mostly some big-lots of players servers i have seen have a lot of mini-games (such as Spleef, SG, ETC) More Players: We may not need more people, we just need people to STAY HERE and be happy! (to be a THRIVING SERVER) (Reminder 3+ years ECC has been here!) P.S.: I like everyones IDEAS!!!
