Informal discussion on upcoming Survey

[mk59apr]

Hello Addicts!
Staff are currently looking at doing another survey in 2015, and I'd like to start a discussion here on "what should be on the survey"
Here are some ideas we have from the staff forum:

General Server Direction:

Where are we going?, Where do we want to go?

-most server lists do not have a "Build" server category, yet MCA is primarily a build server, how do we work with this?

Server size:

Our player numbers are down, if we need to make the server smaller to survive, what should we keep?

Community:

What is the best way to develop community and what kind of community do we want?



Here is a link to our last survey:
http://www.minecraftaddicts.com/sho...-Player-Picks-Results?highlight=player+survey

Please take a moment and let me know what questions you would like to see on a survey,
thanks,
-mk

 

[CheezyMarsBar14]

I was thinking about this the other day... You guys should definitely lower the server slot size. The most people I've ever seen online was 52 and that was almost two and a half years ago.

 

[Spubbles]

I've been thinking about this for a while now...

-I feel that we should expand our server...gain more people...I think its quite odd at points when there's more staff on then players. I feel that should be reversed.

-If you look at the voting sites, they claim that we're a factions server. Well we were...but we aren't really currently...This is a problem due to new players ask if there's factions, we decline...and they leave...and this happens over and over again. Those voting sites reallllllllllllllllllllly need to be updated. Or dare I say...add fractions so those voting sites aren't lying to people...

-You realize theres a problem with most places dont list build servers...So why not expand from build? I dont understand why we must just be build? Maybe add some worlds? More ways to gain players...More ways to play MC(Factions, Mini games, etc.) will gain more people to join.

-Redo the base spawn look...like seriously, it looks quite old compared to what we could do now. Dont get me wrong, it works but we're gonna need a much bigger, and better spawn if you want to gain players. The spawn represents the whole server; it's the first thing players see, if it impresses them, they stay awhile.

 

[bobafettacheese]

I agree with Cheezey, lowering the slot size would be a good move. Cutting it to 50 would probably be fine, the most people I've ever seen online at one time was like 26 and that was in the summer in the morning. During the school year when I've managed to get on (sadly not very much) there have been one or two, maybe 5 max online. However, I don't think spawn needs to be completely rebuilt, I rather like it and I know it took a lot of effort to make it look as nice as it does. Maybe remodeling/minor design changes here and there (Add a warp to the air balloon again, I loved that ) but I don't think we need to start from scratch. I also don't know about adding factions again, I think I remember reading somewhere on here that Factions just caused more people to leave than join and it divided the server whenever a reset happened. I'd vote to just change what our section on the vote pages says.

 

[kiomf]

Wuv is so detailed in everything he says

 

[Zaralink]

Like boba, I've only seen single digits lately... pve community remade into a server, anyone?

 

[mk59apr]

cheezy: I'm basically renting the server from Jangles at this point, so cost is fixed for now. Less slots would cost the same. It may be possible to scale down in future if we need to, but I"m thinking I would keep our current setup until at least sept 2015.

iwu: the other day(yesterday i think..?) you said there was not enough staff, I'm confused on your first point.
-also I do not feel the server can afford to expand, we need to make what we have work first.
-agree that updating vote list info would be a good thing
-we are not just build, we have arena and pve. But build has been our main activity, and we have these cool old maps that I feel should be kept alive somehow into the future, or at least until minecraft is not a game anymore. I'm not questioning that we will continue to build, I know we will. It's more a question of how we let people know that we have a cool build server.
-I'm fine with changing spawn and I think we should get that on the next survey... adventure map? move spawn to build world?.. there's lots of possibilities there...

boba: as with cheezy, server cost is fixed for now, so number of slots is not the issue. I'm not wanting to add factions to this server, but I can see either doing factions with a server split, or partnering with someone who wants to run a factions server, and is part of the MCA community.

kiomf: lol

zara: yes I do feel that our pve world could be done better, with a better setup for new players and mca players as well. bigger map size might be cool for starters....

 

[Spubbles]

cheezy: I'm basically renting the server from Jangles at this point, so cost is fixed for now. Less slots would cost the same. It may be possible to scale down in future if we need to, but I"m thinking I would keep our current setup until at least sept 2015.

iwu: the other day(yesterday i think..?) you said there was not enough staff, I'm confused on your first point.
-also I do not feel the server can afford to expand, we need to make what we have work first.
-agree that updating vote list info would be a good thing
-we are not just build, we have arena and pve. But build has been our main activity, and we have these cool old maps that I feel should be kept alive somehow into the future, or at least until minecraft is not a game anymore. I'm not questioning that we will continue to build, I know we will. It's more a question of how we let people know that we have a cool build server.
-I'm fine with changing spawn and I think we should get that on the next survey... adventure map? move spawn to build world?.. there's lots of possibilities there...

boba: as with cheezy, server cost is fixed for now, so number of slots is not the issue. I'm not wanting to add factions to this server, but I can see either doing factions with a server split, or partnering with someone who wants to run a factions server, and is part of the MCA community.

kiomf: lol

zara: yes I do feel that our pve world could be done better, with a better setup for new players and mca players as well. bigger map size might be cool for starters....

I claimed that we dont have enough ACTIVE staff at points.

 

[Zaralink]

Wasn't pve much bigger (and populated) a few years back? I remember all the base hunting... I miss the older days, now all we get is 1x1 cobble pillars and stairs

 

[mk59apr]

A bigger PVE world gets +1 from me,
although I would like to hear from alien on world size and how it all works with the setup.

 

[alien12]

A bigger PVE world gets +1 from me,
although I would like to hear from alien on world size and how it all works with the setup.

PvE when it first opened was roughly 1500x1500 when it first opened which is now increased to 3000x3000. It's always been treated as a resource gathering world for build to try and preserve build plots as much as possible.

 

[kiomf]

PvE when it first opened was roughly 1500x1500 when it first opened which is now increased to 3000x3000. It's always been treated as a resource gathering world for build to try and preserve build plots as much as possible.

And here I am digging everywhere on my my plots looking for resources

 

[leafsfan24]

-When you first start on MCA how many caps do you get? Could we add more to leave new players more room for mistakes?

- Could we add one time use /kits for food and stuff like that for new players? If you don't die as easily people might want to come back.

- Reset pve and bigger sounds good.

- Contests that the winner gets something other then caps like to build something in spawn or add a new arena or gets their name in the museum or something like that

 

[DCL_]

Everyone starts out with 50 caps, but to me, that is like moving to a new country and starting out with 1 dollar. You can't do much with it....Considering how easy it is to get 1000 caps, I'd say that a fair starting balance would be 200 caps.

 

[alien12]

What needs to be remembered is that you can get 60 caps every day from voting.

 

[leafsfan24]

I was thinking 200 caps too.

and the 60 caps a day is good, but whenever I join a new server I don't vote for them until I know what they're all about which could take a while.

 

[MrJangles]

Hey folks . Happy new year! Lots going on, hows things blah blah blah. let's stick to the topic for now because this one's a good one.

I've always said that once people find MCA they typically stick around. Sure, there could be lots done in game that can spice things up, but what's most important here I think is the history, reputation, and finely tuned original feel minecraft game play. The uptime is record high and it's always up to date.

That said, I think telling people what's here is most important. Social presence needs to increase 10 fold on facebook (daily updates), youtube (more videos, short videos) and twitter (10 tweets a day?). Participating in discussions on the official minecraft boards and other general minecraft sites to offer help is free, link in signature and represent yourself as a helpful kind person as MCA is the best at. Paid advertising on voting sites and even facebook my have a good turnaround, but that costs money. Making a plugin get's you presence in the dev world and it's also free, but lots of work.

Advertise and use a hook, like a contest, and maybe encourage signup with more incentives. All of that said, I think what's been built over the past many years deserves more attention.

xoxox

p.s. homepage needs daily updates, google thinks we're a ghost.

 

[mk59apr]

survey format ideas:

I'd like to stick to general questions and ask people to write their ideas out on each topic.

To streamline that process, I'd say set a limit to each answer, for example the size of a Tweet.

I'd be willing to offer some decent prizes for the people who write the most on the survey, provided it makes sense and is not just spam.

All the answers could then be posted for the community to read on the forums, as well a version could be done in a text file.

Here are the questions I have so far:

-What changes do you want on MCA?

-How should the MCA community promote itself?

-What do you like about the Minecraft Addicts community?

-Should MCA build a new spawn?

-If the Minecraft Addicts server goes bigger, what should we add?

-If the Minecraft Addicts server goes smaller, what should we keep?

 

[leafsfan24]

I like the idea of long answers but maybe we could take these answers and make a second survey that's multiple choice for example if multiple people said we should make the server bigger by adding factions or adding the end then we could create a question in the survey like:

When we make the server bigger should we add: (Pick one or multiple)

1. the end

2. factions

ect.

This is so we can have idea sharing like we are doing now but in a more formal setting.

 

[leafsfan24]

For making the server smaller I would suggest making creative smaller. I know of a lot of people that have built big builds in there and I myself like using it for testing as it lets me stay in mca so maybe you could make the world smaller and move any previous projects to a plot farther inside.