Hello everyone, I'm sure very few of you know me, as I recently started playing again after a 9+ month absence. The one thing that has struck me most since being back is the serious lack of builders. I remember a time when you could say "Hiring dirt placers, pm me!", and getting some 5 responses from builders. Nowadays it seems like the majority of players are literally presidents. This is not good for an econ based server. Think of this like you would a medieval society. The vast majority of people are peasants (90%+). Lets compare these to builders. (Sorry builders) And we'll say mayors are minor lords and presidents+ are lords or kings. Based on that math 90% of the server should be builders. Since this isn't real life that number should be lower. Anyways, these peasants serve lords, and live on lords' land just like in towns on ECC. These peasants also do petty tasks and petty labor for us "higher ups" that we don't want to do because "it shouldn't be worth our time". Without this peasant/builder base the society and economy will fail. This is increasingly apparent on ECC, where the lack of Builders to do petty labor and especially buy homes is growing. I've noticed it's much harder to sell homes/plots now than a year ago, simply because mayors and above don't need them, and that's the majority of ECC population. I don't know if this issue is a retention issue, or just a lack of ads/server list position issue. By no means is this a rail on ECC or the owners or builders, just letting y'all know what I think. ~stin23 tl:dr I made a rant about how lack of builders is killing ECC from within and making it very hard on Mayors+.
Based on your forum join date until where about a 9 month hiatus would be, I did the research: April 10th we were on page 85 of resident apps and on July 10th we were on page 58. This is a total of 27 pages of residents joined between April and July Between April 10th to January 10th: January 10th we were on the 16th page of Resident Apps April 10th we were on the 1st This is a total of 16 pages of residents However, this consists of multiple pilot apps and medal apps, but still a significant difference. As far as the whole "killing ECC" thing, not really. I don't really see a drop in users as most find it more difficult to make money.
There are plenty of builders... No need to worry. Most likely no one saw your ad to keep advertising and you'll get an offer eventually.
I don't know if your comparison to medieval society is all that accurate. In medieval society, there are a set number of kingdoms and principalities with lords installed. There really isn't upward movement in the society. On EcoCityCraft, everyone has the option of upward movement. Personally I do not look at a person's tag of builder/resident/mayor/president to mean anything more than what the person is technologically capable of (trade sign creation, mayor commands). I look at the quality of their work and their commitment to their work, to consider them Kings and Queens of EcoCityCraft.
I have noticed that the server hasn't been growing at all within the past 2 years i've been playing. Its always been under 300-350 users ever since 2012 when , for a short while, we had a good 350-400 users on. Of course there are a few times when the server jumped up in users and got around 400+, but when this did happen it never lasted long. You are right though, there are a small majority of builders and a large portion of the server being mayors/presidents.
I would agree that the server's Builder population seems to be decreasing. Looking at the point of "everyone is equal, rank doesn't matter", this is true, but the real point to the decreasing amount of Builders is not an equality thing, but instead a server growth issue. As the current players either continue to rank up or move on from ECC, the Builders fill in the space of the previous group. The smaller this group of Builders become, the less new Residents, Mayors, etc there are. That will start to really hurt the overall player count of ECC, and can be associated with the slightly smaller playerbase we have today. Our peak seems to be smaller and shorter, I remember it hitting around 300 consistently during peak, now we're averaging around 260. Really, I have no idea what the cause of it is. From what I can tell, ECC is still using the same advertisement methods. Maybe some new features that we've incorporated on ECC have been a cause? For example, maybe the new exp system is too complex for some new players and is driving them away. Possibly it could be a decline that almost all servers are facing; annual commitments like exams, SAT, and so on have been taking a toll on gaming activity as a whole? I'm probably over-thinking this, but ECC does seem to have less players online, and the decrease in new Builders could be a reason for the smaller playerbase.
Wait until summer comes (school ends) and we will see the usual bump in players. I know the summer coming is only a temporary boost in users, but it leads to a few more dedicated players. Someone should really do the math because I'm not good at it, but a certain percentage of players that join stay forever, and have a long-term affect on the sever. I know Andrew pays a ton for advertisement and I see our ads frequently on Minecraft websites so an increase in users has to happen unless there is just a variable that I am not seeing.
I agree with @Falconaire, I think there is less players coming on, I look at how many are on every time I come on and I only see about 40-60 and in the last month I don't think I have seen it go over 100! People just seem to be joining as builders playing for like an hour or so then quitting as they don't want to play ECC anymore or they don't like working to earn money I personally don't mind working for my money but at one point I did think about quitting trying to make 85k for Mayor rank, but people need to stick to it as I did. I think that we need to get more builders on so that our towns/nations can become busy, happy places, as at the moment it seems the majority of users are President or higher so they all have multiple towns and lots of money so they don't need to work to get money they click on there pumpkins/melons every hour and get 10-11k! No offence to any Presidents+ there!
This could be where something promotional on the server could come like skyblock or more fair hunger games, which you can see many people have been debating in the suggestions thread.
@Dr_Dragon_Slayer lel "more fair hunger games." Hunger games is fair: If you want the OP kits, buy them. If you cant buy them, then that sucks, doesn't it?
It is okay if there are more mayors and presidents than residents or builders. That should be completely normal. Because it is easy to rank up in ECC, all you need to do is collect money and work your way up. Just save money. So 90% of the ECC population shouldn't be builders because of this. Also, your analogy is Feudalism. It is only normal to have 90% peasants in the middle ages in Europe because you cannot rank up in that society. If you are born a peasant you stay as a peasant for your entire life. In ECC, its the opposite, ranking up is extremely simple, all you need to money and time. For example, the reason why you stay as a knight for your entire life and you cannot rank up to become a nobleman no matter how many kills you get or how much money you have, is because the nobleman will have children and they will take his place when the nobleman dies. (The nobleman will pick his eldest son) By the way, Feudalism eventually falls.
Maybe it's because the builders rage quit because they can't even place water without donating.(using real money)
Yeah, i have seen quite a few builders leave because you have to pay for tp or water, this could be a reason there is a lack of builders but i dont think there is overall
I wouldn't really compare to medieval times, but I do see what you are explaining. Without having read many other people's posts, I'm just going to throw my own words out and not reply to anyone in particular. Spoiler: tl;dr Huge learning curve, never-ending learning, frustration, rankism, etc. What I have personally noticed over time is a learning curve, getting bigger and bigger. It becomes increasingly more difficult to learn Minecraft and ECC. I only mention Minecraft because many builders we get are first-time Minecraft players, expecting to learn how to play Minecraft. Considering how different ECC is from vanilla Minecraft, it is very difficult - and even painful - for some people to learn, so they do not stick around. There are not many servers with nearly as much "random" things disabled as us, as many donation features that have as many features as ECC, not many changes to vanilla functions, or nearly as many "things" in general (farming being important, melon swords, odd-ball items like "netherstars" being a currency, bonus/extra ranks like tycoon+ that don't "do" anything, all of our apps, etc). Many servers nowadays are PVP-based or [mini]game-based, and are dumbed down, simple, and straightforward. Any other economy or roleplay server is so simple and often has a basic "how to play" guide that actually covers everything. ECC is extremely complicated to all the other major servers. Overall, ECC is complicated and not necessarily new-user-friendly, despite all the things that are done to make it so. Whether new to Minecraft or having come from servers with less "going on," people are always learning about ECC and seem to never stop. (I'm even still learning things, after three years, despite checking the forums 5+ times every day, any time I'm active in-game, and talking with friends who play every day.) Having so much to learn, finding basic features disabled, changed, or in donation features, learning of the tiers of items (melon swords, for example), etc. is extremely daunting for new users. It can scare them. Of course, we still do get new users, and I am sure there are MANY factors as to why we are getting less and less, but this is my own theory/idea as to why - maybe just one factor of it. I've just noticed it as ECC keeps adding more and changing more over time, and how things get more complicated/complex... Many frustrated new users who just don't have the patience for it. I know that I personally have a lot of patience - more than the average person - and if I came and joined ECC today without having played prior, I would have quite in a week due to the sheer amount I had to understand to not get bashed, harassed, ("rankism" ECC has is pretty bad sometimes) feel lost, struggling with getting the only tools or farms needed to make money (because they are extremely "expensive"... the economy is kind of severely exponential rather than linear), or feel as though I would never get anywhere on the server.
I have no issue still building or helping people build or work to build. But I notice there are alot of builders wanting hand me outs. Like hey i don't have this give it to me ? It's quite strange to see this. Granted I have only been on this server about a month and apart of this forum for about a week now. I can still see the issue.
Over the past week or so, yes, there's been an increase in Builders. However, I'm betting this is largely due to Spring Break. During March there was a very small amount of Builders online, as well as activity in general was lower. I searched up on Google trends the "interest over time" of ECC, and the results are here. Granted, this is not completely accurate, but it still shows interest in ECC is in a decline. Interest (according to Google), is lower than it has been since January of 2012. Personally, I find this as rather alarming, though of course this should not be a sole judge of the prosperity of ECC, the numbers are still there.
