Best Posts in Thread: An Open Letter to the Meepcraft Staff

Dear Meepcraft Staff:


With the opening of Revamp and Towny Extreme, many veteran players such as ourselves who have played on this server during its prime are coming back and having loads of fun playing minecraft again and reconnecting with all of their old friends. Before this server was a mini game server, us ancient players remember how fun a minimalistic towny/pvp server could be with a strong and consistent community/playerbase. Our current town (Exegol) consists of players that have been involved with the server ever since the beginning of 2012, a short time before the server went from a 10-40 player community run on Fuzzlr’s laptop to an immense gaming community with thousands of players everyday. A lot of us have also had the privilege of being a part of the wonderful staff team throughout the rise of Meepcraft. Collectively, as some of the oldest, most devoted players you will find on this server, my townmates and I have decided to put together a post that includes our thoughts and opinions on the revamp as well as the issues that we have noticed after playing on here again since the start of the revamp.


We also want to thank everyone on the staff team that spent so much time fighting to keep the server alive prior to the revamp. It was your decisions and actions that caused this new influx of players coming back. We know the crazy amount of hours and dedication that you have put in to keep the server alive and we can speak for the whole server that we really appreciate you guys. We also know that moderating a server is a lot of work and requires you to make many tough decisions. A great staff member is able to be a leader, connect with the playerbase, and understand where to use proper discretion when punishing players who break the rules. They are also able to be introspective and honest with themselves when they make mistakes.


However, we also know we can speak for a majority of the server that the inconsistencies in moderation right now have had a significantly negative impact on the server as of late and have not reflected the qualities of a great moderator. Certain staff members are having a tough time connecting with the current playerbase because they do not spend much time actually playing on the server and interacting with players because in a way they are actually trying too hard to moderate the server. The influx of players coupled with the lack of need for moderators to assert their authority has caused punishments to be handed out without proper discretion and without the staff member thinking about the infraction. This has led to some instances where there has been a “Show me the man and I'll find you the crime.” complex.


Since the start of Towny Extreme, there have been almost 20 players banned for either xray or some form of bug abuse. Right now there are about 35 players consistently online. These players have all been extremely active since the start of the revamp. These aren’t new players who’ve never played Meepcraft before, they’re players who have come back because Towny Extreme included everything that paralleled what made the server and community so fun and engaging. If these bans were lifted right now, there would most likely be 50-60 people online right now instead of 40. We are not saying that these players didn’t break the rules, but we are concerned that the biases of the staff team that we’ve highlighted above are disproportionately punishing meepers that fit a certain description: Very active, respected, and otherwise rule-abiding veterans who are in towns that are not named Legion who resorted to breaking the rules due to server bugs and problems that the staff team are responsible for. These problems include not properly setting bounds on the world, and making diamonds so rare to the point where average gamers would be lucky to get enough for a set of diamond tools after a week on the server. We are all adults here, and we have set a precedent of reporting bugs such as the tree spawning glitch and flying outside of towns glitch to the staff team when we’ve discovered them. We are not young children who need to be babysat and set an example of anymore. We are actual people and the staff can do a better job at using discretion by talking to people and understanding the parameters of an infraction of the rules. The handling of punishments by certain staff members has put a bad taste in the mouths of many players, and will likely cause many people to just stop playing once this quarantine is over and people go back to their normal lives. At the start of this new page in Meep's history, we should be doing everything we can to keep players online so that when this pandemic is over, they will still want to hop on and play. Banning a bunch of players for small infractions while the only thing for some of them to do right now is play minecraft just lacks the sense that a staff member who wants to increase quality player engagement should have.


To conclude, we are imploring you to think about what is best for the continued growth of Meepcraft and capitalize on this time where many people will be online by unbanning all players who were banned for non toxicity-related crimes on Friday, April 10th. We cannot speak for everyone, but as for those in our town such as VKL and jcbetro who have been banned already, we can assure you that we are not here to cause harm to the server. We genuinely care about this server and we are only here to play minecraft and have fun during these hard times. We ask that you consider using more discretion when passing hefty bans on players because we feel that it interferes with the enjoyment of this server and provides an unstable and unhealthy relationship between staff members and players that may inhibit players from continuing to play on the server. We truly appreciate the time that you have put into keeping the integrity of the server intact. Again, we are all friends and on the same side and we implore you to use more discretion when handing out punishments. The smaller the community, the more the engagement. If we all work together and recognize our faults we can continue to make Meepcraft great again.



Love Always,

The Sith Coalition
(written by: IFOC, jcbetro1011, VKL, BTeets, HotAsianBeans, and Epicdude141)

#VKLForHelper2020

 

Hey thanks for being cool and having a response that contributes to the conversation. I blame Adrian for bringing attention to quite a minor part of what the message was and his response contributes to the problem we were trying to indicate. We were mostly concerned with the discretion and lack of sensible response when it comes to interacting with grievances/rule infractions. This server is new and obviously wasn't going to be implemented without some hiccups such as the world border being messed up (later fixed) and the diamond oregen being absolutely wack (later fixed). The TLDR is that with a smaller server you can just talk to someone before slapping a long ban (especially during the quarantine) and the problem can be fixed much easier. It could be cool if we had another Town Hall like we did the first few days into the server launch.

 

When I was banned, it took me 2 hours for a staff member to tell me why. The reason was for “Player Harassment,” but I wasn’t sure exactly what the staff meant by that. I made a ban appeal asking why I was banned, and that appeal was deleted by staff. I dm’d CluelessKlutz on discord asking why, and he didn’t respond. I asked two of my friends to go to meep discord and join ck's and qazini's call to ask why I was banned (I couldn’t go myself because I am also discord banned). Instead of answering their question, staff ignored them and then muted them for “being annoying.” I asked another friend to dm ck on discord, and ck immediately responded by saying that ban reasons are private and he couldn’t tell him why I was banned. However, this gave me proof that ck was on discord and was just ignoring me, so I confronted him about it and finally he gave me the reason why I was banned.


So yeah, staff to player communication could use some improvements in my opinion.

 

If I may comment here, I think there's something that should be said that a lot of people are missing, and its absolutely no ones fault. I'm not disagreeing with you by any means, I think a lot of what you said was correct. But there's something many of the "veteran" players are not seeing. When you guys played, the server was a certain way. A bit more toxic, a bit more lenient, and under completely different ownership. I also played during this time, and it was fun, the server thrived under this. Then as many players grew up, stopped playing, and the player count plummeted, those of us who stayed saw a massive shift. Toxicity on the server literally went to near 0, rules were broken far less, and a new kind of community came out of that.

That community is what I wanted to talk about. From 2018-2020 (give or take a year), the server became less divided and more of a family. As @Fangdragon1998 put it, there were different groups of people, from the "just want to build" group to the hardcore pvpers to a bunch of others. But once the player count went down, most of the players kind of morphed together. Sure, we obviously had our interests and ways of playing, that should be expected. But, we all loved the server and were willing to go along with it through whatever. In this time, many new players joined, and played actively, and were involved in the community. Whenever someone started problems, they were quickly warned or muted or temped and it was over. And when I say problems, I mean provoking fights in global or being a nuisance, things many of you would likely see as normal.

And this is where I think a lot of the controversy originates from. Over the past two years, both the players and staff alike became used to having few problems and leaving global to be an actually pleasant place. Everyone knew everyone, and while we may not have all been buddy-buddy, there were no real problems amongst players. This, is my opinion, is the largest difference from the "old Meep" many people have joined back from. Global many years ago was so different than how it was right before revamp that if you compare them side by side, the results would be jarring. This change happened gradually, after years of player count fluctuations, different players joining and leaving, and updates to the server as a whole. And as the community evolved, and the server with it, we all adjusted to the "new Meep." It was a wonderful, non-toxic, lovely place, that I had no problem investing hundreds of hours into. In honesty, I preferred these years over years past, although many old players would likely disagree.

Now, fast forward to 2020. Extreme/Meepcraft ReImagined is released, with the main hope of attracting older players back to up the player count and save the server from death. And, by some miracle, people actually start playing again. So many old players have returned, if even for just an hour to say hello or check out the update, that it's honestly astonishing. I've talked to so many people that I haven't seen in years, and I think most of us share that same experience. But, with this influx of players, comes something no one could have predicted or expect. Old players returning, expecting to find the server the same way they left it. Not gameplay-wise, no, but community wise. The server suddenly saw a bunch of players who were more "toxic" than the past two years had seen, and it was a shock. And the reason I put toxic in quotation marks is because a lot of you players are considered toxic by the new community standards. Old standards this was just how people acted, but in this new community we've created, there's a noticeable personality shift. But this new community, built off of years of, for the most part, positivity and unity, was met with the polar opposite. And this is where the problems began.

Many players began to act and do things that years ago would have been fine, but in our server today, are seen as pretty outrageous things. The whole problem with the bug exploits: we all got used to these bug exploits being taken extra seriously, and we all reported them to Clue as soon as we found them. I, myself, have been involved with plenty of game-breaking bugs that I've reported to Clue as soon as I found them. Those who didn't were permed, and we were all okay with that. Old players don't know to do this, so they take advantage of these "exploits" then are surprised they got banned, because they genuinely did not see anything wrong with their actions. And this, it's no one's fault. It's two different eras of players clashing because neither realize how much the server has changed. The exploits are just one example of many instances were there was a massive disconnect between the two sets of players.

So with that, I'd like to kind of sum some stuff up:
Old players are returning to a server that has changed a lot more than any of them realized.
New players who played just before revamp are seeing old players they've probably never met and are shocked at how different they are, having no idea how different the server once was.
Neither of these players have done anything explicitly wrong. They both just acted the way they always have. And these conflicting/contradictory actions have been the cause of the past nearly two weeks of confusion, frustration and insanity.

And to address the whole "Legion is biased" debate: This is a symptom of the problem. Many of the players who played before revamp, the "new players" as I've been referring to them as, joined Legion. Most other towns are just friend groups of old players. So when people see few Legion players getting banned, and many other towns getting banned, it is purely because most of us are used to the new way the server is run, and understand certain things are not allowed, while to old players they may seem perfectly legal. So no, no one is biased, we are just used to a different kind of server. Also, many of the other problems came out of the Extreme rules being extremely confusing and unstated, and some players (on both sides) taking advantage of staff confusion.

For now, this is all I'd like to say. There is SO much more than just this to discuss, but I think this post is long enough. I'd once again like to say that I'm not really on either side here. Both sides love this server, and they show that in different ways. There's a massive miscommunication, brought on by nothing but time. There is no right side, there is no wrong side, there is just two main groups of people who have grown up on two different versions of the same thing. So, as a PSA to everyone, old and new: please don't target any staff or players for things that are either out of their control or not their fault. Everyone hears each other, and all just want the best for the server.

I hope I got my point across. I completely hear where you are coming from and you made plenty of valid points. I just think there's something no one's really acknowledged or realized that should be said. Thank you for reading, sorry for making it so long.

 

I feel a unban for all is justified.

 

First, thank you for taking the time to write this. It is one of the better critique threads that I have read over the years, and I appreciate how you wrote it. Secondly, and why I am here - having banned the majority of the xrayers, I feel like I need to address this: I do not look for any specific people or towns that I "want" to ban. I look through a general database, note outliers, and investigate from there. I have nothing against any player or town, nor would I ever let my personal affections interfere with moderation. I have banned friends before. If I need to, I will ban them again. The same applies to people in my town. I wasn't going to comment but then I started considering leaving Legion - a town I joined just because I wanted to have fun - because people were so overwhelmingly alleging bias. I hope to attempt to convince you that there is none.

 

Well that's what you have to expect from a server that went down from literally thousands of players online to just a small friend group right? Because for the past two years that's all the server playerbase has been. Of course its going to be less "toxic" when everybody is friends with each other and there aren't nearly as many players online.

Even at that, it's not like we just came in when Meepcraft was at thousands of players a day and expecting it to be the same, we knew the server shrank and all that fun stuff. You have to understand that a lot of us saw the rise of the server. I remember joining the server before a 100 players were on consistently, and watching the server rise to the first time when there were over a thousand players online. We know what it is like to be in such a small tight-knit community and watch it literally explode to a massive server full of people. We understand, trust us we do.

I think that this is an issue on its own in the fact that this current staff team doesn't know how to moderate a playerbase of this size. That's the honest truth. This playerbase we have right now is in a very unique position. Sure it's full of players, but the numbers are very fragile and we are here because we love the community and of course the fact that we are in a worldwide pandemic. If you want players to stay after the pandemic, staff must understand that what they do right now requires immense amount of discretion and common sense. You are right, things changed between meep then and now and for them to assume that we would follow the rules as they are now compared to what they were then, especially when they are unwritten, is crazy. The current mod team is used to having that small tight-knit group of players where everybody is their friend, they don't know how to moderate with such a big and now vocal playerbase.

 

Very eloquent and level headed response. I concur.

 

meep revolution incoming

 

This isn't a place for toxic crap like that

 

f in the chat

 

The Sith Coalition outlined in their post that they believe Meepcraft Staff was acting biased against players like them. I'd argue, instead, that the Meepcraft staff act in a way that appears biased towards everyone because they act against the best interest of the server.

What is this best interest? My argument is that Meepcraft's ultimate goal, like any server, is to be fun. Under this logic, I believe rules that do not increase enjoyment or decrease unenjoyment are out of place because they limit player engagement. What constitutes a fair rule is up to interpretation, but I'd at least like to open up the idea that the way rules are enforced should be to promote fun. Staff, you made an error by forgetting to generate ore correctly in an area of the map, and you banned people for this error.

Dismissing the idea that banning these people were justified or not, I implore you to think about what good banning them does. What does banning these people do for the server? These players were not acting maliciously. They were mining fairly in an area of the map that was, apparently, completely off-limits to mine in due to an oversight. They love the server to death, and the work they have done on the server and continue to do on the server adds life to it. Did banning these people make Meepcraft a more or less enjoyable place?

This adage is relevant once again. "In any relationship, the person with the most power is the one who needs the other the least." Staff members, think about it. This game is called Minecraft, and you banned players for mining in an area that was impossible to verify as unfair. Does the need to ban people for this faulty reason outweigh the positives they could do for the server? I'd argue not, I think you need these active, passionate players more than they need you. Please, for the sake of the server, act in the interest of enjoyment.

 

The administrators have already met in Discord with the authors of the thread, changes will be publicly announced soon.

 

"the biases of the staff team that we’ve highlighted above are disproportionately punishing meepers that fit a certain description"

Just in case you missed that part.

 

Please try to keep this discussion constructive and respectful and not derail it with nonsense.

 

You literally find reasons to post useless messages that demean and otherwise provide no constructive feedback. You literally post an entire thread about me when I have never even talked to you. Grow up bro lmfao.

 

I won't let this thread get buried, partly because Qazini is the only moderator that's replied and also because I really want some kind of explanation from @CluelessKlutz

 

keep the mean comments to urself bully