Community Calling

Trick Question, My answer;

You can't force somebody to stay here. I had referenced towns being almost as addicting as Clash of Clans. Constantly upgrading your town, adding new residents etc. It's their choice whether or not they'll want to stay. But It's our job as a Community to make sure they get the best experience they'll ever receive on a towny server.

It only took me 5 minutes to talk to this guy, I asked him what he liked about the server, why he joined, when he joined. He joined literally 10 minutes prior. I had explained all of the basic chats /tr, /tca, /tcb etc etc. Gave him some god tools and armor so he would be more protect. I told him about joining towns, how we have mini games etc.

All it takes is 5 minutes of your own time to help new players out. It's not your job to do it, but all it takes is a spark to ignite something.

 

Of course you can't force them to stay. But we've done advertisements for years, and we gather a lot more players, that end up quitting after a week.

Traditionally, if you've looked at the ads MeepCraft has run, it has painted MeepCraft to be yet _another_ mini-game server. How many ads have we ran that has focused MeepCraft on being a towny server? Not many.

Additionally, I urge anyone to take a look at the donations. I'll ask this question, and hope I get tons of replies.


1> Did you donate?
2> What game-mode most motivated you to donate?


-- Point is, a vast majority of people donated for the towny experience, and not a single mini-game. Yet the server has continually ignored that very game-mode, with exception of minor cosmetic or config changes. There has been very little real content added to the game-mode that is the blood of this server.


So the answer is: How do you keep them?

- Real content. No more pointless mini-games that are broken and empty 30 days later. No more ads pointing out all the minigames we have, that everyone else also has.

Towny, and the community, has been what has kept players here, and the server has generally failed to capitalize on that, because it keeps trying to be the next major hub server, which it cannot be - The market is too flooded already.

 

1) I paid a rank seller
2)KitPVP and Terrarium

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 20, 2016, Original Post Date: Jan 20, 2016 ---

IMO this is the key. MeepCraft isn't a case of improving the weakest link. Instead, we should be working to improve what we do already have--towny and community. How many people use infected, boomo, laser, etc? Rather, the question should be: "How many donations did those encourage?" Most new content ends up unfortunately wasted anyways.

 

wow

 

I answered this in my AMA.
When we make surveys that force answers like "What minigame made you stay?" It proves nothing.
The REAL reason every single one of us has stayed is because of the community. Some say its gone to crap as of late and thats why old and new players leave. Is that true? Sometimes.

We as a community dont do enough to reach out to cits and being them into the community unless its for something negative. I most likely would have left the server with how rude some people were to me. However I met Noble who introduced me to others and I stayed because of you all.

With that said, we DO 100% need things for them to do.
Were working on that wether you believe it or not, Were just listning to the majority and fixing things before we add more.

We all want survival man. Were tryin haha

 

The point I've tried to point out for quite a long time, is that a near-singled focus on trying to make this a hub server has only served to reduce the popularity, and quality of the server. I've seen this since MeepNetworks, where a successful server was literally thrown out for a near-failing one.

I know the strengths of this server, and I'm not saying, for a second, you guys aren't doing things. I know exactly how much work is being put in, but I also know exactly how much progress gets made for those man-hours, not much. I also know why people leave, it's not because of a single reason, but many, complicated ones. However, that does not negate the fact that the server has spent thousands on ads, and the natural outcome of that is several hundred players pass through, and we've retained only a fraction. This is as evident by the fact that it has been officially discussed as so.

"MeepCraft currently incorporates minigames. These minigames integrated into the Economy experience in the way that players are rewarded with the in-game currency “Meebles” upon winning. The basis behind this previously was that players would join the server for the minigames, and stay for the economy aspect. This is not true, and it was never true."

This statement is absolutely correct, but yet thousands of dollars has been spent towards something that is essentially pointless. While the amount spent isn't an issue, that is the cost of doing business. But what is silly is that nothing has fundamentally changed to perhaps give those dollars a shot at being much more efficient.

One chronic issue has been that most measures taken end up being half measures. Whether from inception, or just the end implementation of something much more robust, the result has been half-measure after half-measure. What kind of server is this? Is it a towny server, or a hub server with towny? There are hub servers out there with double the players in their towny game-mode? Is this a towny/economy server primarily? The development certainly does not point towards that, look at mini-game and gimmick development there has been compared to substantial and real content added.

I'm just asking, is this really working? Doesn't it kind of seem the same as MeepNetworks, in terms of direction? When is it decided that this kind of hasn't worked in 3 years. Or has it? Are we content with the server at this playerbase? If so, then fine, but you can only extract so much money, which is needed because this is a business, from a customer base. So you must face the obstacle of refreshing that playerbase.

Personally, it's not all about survival. If towny had new content, I'd still play it. While it's absolutely normal to get bored of a game after 3 years, through no fault of anyone, that applies to all players. You are still forced to face the question of how to get new/more players.

Either way, I'm just saying; this is probably the norm for this server if it wants to be a hub server with towny. I can point out several servers that are fundamentally like MeepCraft, that wasn't the case as of a few years ago.

-- This is also not a dis to any of you staff, again, I know how much work is put in, and how much is out of your control. I just want the server to stop running into the wall in front of it, and turn somewhere else and try that path, we had it once before, we can be there again certainly, but I don't believe by this road.

 

Or maybe I still actually care about this server. Crazy right? Who even does such a thing anymore?

 

1. Yes. I've donated probably around 160 dollars to the server, mostly rank selling. I've had Cit-Prem bought for me. Donated for Exc and then bought Elite with Meebles.

2. Having VIP/Prem was amazing mainly due to having more sethomes and being able to get to places faster. +/heal and /feed in Towny. Bought Elite mainly because of /fix. I don't give a damn about any minigame perks.

 

I gave this new player a full set of god armor, god tools, a plot in my town, vip rank to avoid town taxes, and a stable form of income.
2 weeks later and he hasn't logged on since.

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 21, 2016, Original Post Date: Jan 21, 2016 ---

also he has 100 meebles in his account so theres probably an issue with new players learning how to make money *cough* *cough* but thats not a big deal because they'll stay here even if they can't make money right

 

1 - Got VIP, Supreme, and ultimate as gifts. The others were from rank sellers. I bought each one after another individually as they came.
I would gladly have donated, if I had the money, at the time that I donated. Right now if I joined I would have left.
2 - Towny perks. Towny was the most amazing thing in my eyes at the time. I felt that VIP opened a lot for me.

 

1. no but I paid someone to
2. /fix

 

Obviously by making them unwelcome unless they give the server some money.

 

Bump

Let's help get some new players