Website Donation Pool to fund techs for current/future projects.

Currently donations are distributed top down, meaning we pay fuzzlr and he decides what and where to distribute funds. Alls well and good and when donating, the person is making a conscious choice to gift physical currency to a charitable cause. Keyword being charitable.
Right now meep is in dire need of techs and their subsequent footwork, we need more of them, and the ones who are working deserve more recognition. You cant force volunteers for timelines, you cant force them to learn, you cant compensate volunteers for their time lost, the result is a business roadmap that has question marks instead of plans. Seems like hiring paid techs might be more resourceful than hiring builders at this point.
If a tech is contracted to do a job, in most businesses worldwide, it gets done, on a timeline, according to a business roadmap. Many of you may have noticed on software sites that they frequent that the creator typically asks for donations with no real world return other than the satisfaction of investing in that company's future.
I want to see everything holding back meep get fixed, issues should not take seasons(or longer) to remedy.

There is clear proof that our donor base is still intact past the EULA, what I'm suggesting is a way to further allow people who donate because they "love" the server, to directly impact its future.

It's a reassurance of our investment, which is what we do when we donate. We decided this cause is worth it, letting everyone play on a server is worth funding, even without receiving any other perks than those who play for free. Thats an honest donation.

So my SUGGESTION:

Separate tab on the shop page, allowing any $ amount donations, to be used "exclusively" for funding specific tech-intensive projects from which they could choose.

-Projects would have their own forum, they would vetted and decided/voted on by the entire community before even being added to the donation option.
-Projects would be things that are tech intensive, not ideas like "nerf /fix", we cannot accurately vote on things that benefit us in game and not server as a whole. Hence why suggestion polls are often ignored, we(the community) isn't intelligent enough to have a valid opinion. Don't take it personally, democracy is great until you're in a room with 4 people who want to eat you.
Suggestions are good the way they are without voting, for the most part, BUT for example, updating to 1.9 is something where the community vote is all that matters. enter the "donation funded techs"...
-In game, one of the meep ads would inform people that by donating and being forum active, they can shape the community and its future. This would further aid in getting good poll data on those key tech hurdles.


the only donation project i am currently suggesting is the following:
1.9 support, before the schoolyear starts again, 1.10 wont require nearly 10% of the effort that we face now.
we need months of tech time to get to 1.9 and the person who claimed they were working on it cant/wont respond, i must deduce that 1.9 support is dead in the water, lets get funding going, and get meep 1.9
i love this server and i'd love to donate directly to the people helping it out of this hole.

who knows, if it becomes viable, we will have the means to quickly add massive additions, rather than trickle of changes that is happening now.

TL : DR I want to crowdfund 1.9 so I can stop telling every new citizen to downgrade their client to the one from 18 months ago in order to play properly.


edit: Considering this suggestion is about fuzzlr's company. I wish for him only to make the final call. @Fuzzlr

 

+1
make a minimum donation of like $5 so people don't make troll donations

 

Good point. lol .01 for reggles! 10000 times facedesk.

 

what if i don't own more than 1 dollar

 

the minimum should be $1

 

use one of these and report back asap

 

This is really cool, But what if the server needs donations, and the techs have more donations than they need, could they give them to the server?

 

+1

You cant be picky at how much is donated, people will be giving money towards it no matter how high or low the amount is that they give. Even if it is a 'troll' donation it will still go to the server. But if staff want to make a restriction I suggest $1 but personaly I wouldn't restrict it.

 

Funding has never been an issue previously. The two main issues with most techs we've had are

1) They caused far more disruptions game-wide with no reprocussions (Ugleh)

2) Their plugins weren't very good


This is not necessarily a bad idea, but I suspect it wouldn't have been necessary had techs been given alternate goals, such as less mini-game development and more development to the core game, which hasn't happened in any major fashion. I think the biggest issue is the loss of money spent with no returns on things like new spawns that are not needed; advertising that does not bring a return in any real fashion.



Playing devil's advocate - What happens if the tech is crowd-funded for a project regarding towny, for example. However, the tech is then directed towards development of another minigame, or some other side-project?

(Also I could be wrong, but I think it's equally against the EULA for anyone to make money making plugins)

 

exactly why I want fuzzlr to weigh in on this, you raise very valid points.
I just think its about time to get us to 1.9 so those rare people who find us via server listing sites don't skip past us because we are outdated.
And i see no evidence of anyone trying to bring us 1.9... ;/

 

Oh definitely, I don't disagree.

 

+1
i want 1.9, only reason

 

I'd happily pay 10$ in meebles if there was a "+" added to the front of "Supreme", and I'd be a helluva a lot happier if it went to paying for techs, and not architects for spawns that are too big and bright

 

Just skip 1.9 and go to 1.10; it works better and is newer anyways.

+1

 

Denied, we currently do not feel this is needed.