»Is it time to start over?

Hey guys, recently I came back to guildcraft mainly because I've fell in love with OP Prison and I'm really enjoying my time there.
Looking at the amount of players on the server is truly depressing for me, seeing a lot of people quit on a daily basis, playercount slowly dropping...
After almost a year I've came back to be active and have some fun on here, but if this downwards trend continues, who knows how long I've got left until it's all gone.

So since I've had some free time, I've decided to do some detective work and try and see what could be the possible ways to reduce the downtrend and maybe even get up to lets say ~400-500 Avg players daily.
Here are some of the suggestions I think could improve the current situation:

1. Cleaning up the staff members

First of all, there's a lot of inactive staff, when I say inactive, I mean really inactive.
There are H-A that haven't played for weeks/months, same goes for some mods/admins.
The staff team needs to be cleaned up on most gamemodes, servers need active staff members that can host events and frequently update their gamemodes so players do not get bored.

Tho I've got to say, I've noticed some staff members frequently hosting events, and props to them, they truly make the server a more enjoyable place, but sadly on some gamemodes updates/events are non-existent.

Also to add, with the current average playerbase, you don't need 20+ staff on all servers, 4-6 staff members should be enough to cover all of the work (if the staff are active/hardworking).

2. Removal of some of the gamemodes

If you look at the gamemodes such as SkyGrid/KitPvP you'll notice that they have 0-5 players on average, I honestly don't see the point of having those gamemodes at this time, with the current amount of players.
SkyGrid has 2-3 staff members, and almost no one is ever on, there are things that could attract more players that should be added instead of skygrid, it's simply an outdated gamemode and with the current amount of players it brings no profit to the server nor any benefit to the playerbase.

3. Enforce the rules

Some gamemodes support toxic behavior, lower staff are told to overlook breaking the rules and toxic players aren't punished as frequently as they should be.
Remember, minecraft is mostly a game made for kids, we should focus on attracting a wide variety of players, from both young to older people, we should be welcoming to everyone not only certain types of people.
If someone is new and wants to apply for staff, you don't have to call him randy (the shocking thing is most staff use this term as well to shame new members wanting to apply).
Simply treat others how you want to be treated, with respect.

4. Advertisement

If guildcraft wants to get more players to join, some money should be put in advertisement.
Minecraft is slowly losing it's playerbase, but there still are a lot of people playing this game,
It would be best to first improve all aspects of the server, and after invest some money into advertisement.
If we could make new players (of all ages) feel welcomed, we could gain a decent amount of players.

5. More Events/More Minigames/More Fun

Start hosting forum events/voting contests/more frequent in game events...
Add new things and make the server more enjoyable for both new and old players.
Also quality suggestions should be implemented faster.


In conclusion: Overall, there is still a possibility to improve the player count, but it would take hard work from a lot of people, the question is, how hard you want it?

So I'm asking you, how hard do you truly want to improve?

 

I'm going to be 100% honest. I despise the way the higher staff team controls and administers Guildcraft, but it doesn't end there. The main problem is that Guildcraft is 100% burned out. We should've expected this around in 2014ish, but it's too late now. Why?

GC was never a unique server, is not now, and will never be.
Tell me one thing that GC has unique to other servers. Absolutely - blatantly - nothing, except for Annihilation 2.0, which is why I still play it to this day as I find it the only good place to play anni. Otherwise, let's look at other gamemodes. Skyblock? Incredibly bland, the recent reset introduced a disgusting, washed up island upgrades menu soggily made up from a DeluxeMenu configuration. Survival? Improved much more, but they were all necessary changes that had to be made - none of it was new to the entire Minecraft survival community. It was solely to improve the experience of already existing Guildcraft players, not bring something unique to new players that would make them stay. Factions? Another 'Guildcraft needs to catch up on the shit' scheme, introducing genbuckets and chunkbusters, a feat that was introduced to factions ages ago. Skywars? Neglected, block lag is absolutely horrible, and is overall a bad experience.
Not much from the other gamemodes. I see no reason why I'd choose GC over other servers which are constantly updated with fresh and new shit. The only reason GC can hold on now is 'cracked players come to our server.'

You know why Bedwars failed? Why it had around 30 players on its released and is already dead now? Because it's absolutely bland, and is basically a copy of every other bedwars server there is. I'd play Hypixel bedwars 10 times over GC's, because it analyzes the game correctly and adds on to it. No offense to the developers, but you might as well just purchase bedwars off spigot and release it if that's the way aXed wanted to release bedwars. I was incredibly disappointed at the release.

What GC has done so far, with all the gamemodes except for annihilation, is simply create a bootleg copy of either something that we missed out on and all other servers had, try to copy off 'popular' gamemodes in hopes that 'cracked' users would be appealed, or simply try risky schemes that never worked out. Annihilation is the only gamemode where Jono has actually put thought and time into creating new kit upgrades. And we can only say that because anni isn't such a popular gamemode as others are.

This is not 2013 or 2014 anymore. This is not the Minecraft server stage that was years ago. Years ago, if you were this huge network bringing 10+ gamemodes, you'd become popular. That was the norm. That's how Guildcraft became popular, because everyone was so new to all the gamemodes. Now? It all matters on how unique and new your server brings to the community. Look at Minesaga. Look at PvPWars. Look at SaicoPVP and Hypixel. They're all thriving efficiently because they introduced something new. People leave because they found a new server that is so much better than GC. GC will never be able to achieve that uniqueness.

Why? Look at the most recent resets. Tell me one thing that GC introduced that other servers didn't have. Zero. Nada. What GC is trying to do is catch up on the trend, not create a trend. How exactly does that bring in new players?

With that considered, do you believe that advertising will do anything? Attempting to bring in players via Youtube or some shit? If the server is a mess, players won't consider staying. It's that simple. Same with events. Hosting events on a bland server brings absolutely no fun to anyone except for GC's playerbase. GC has gone from expanding its playerbase to new players to desperately trying to retain its current playerbase.

You're missing the main point. Guildcraft is not ahead of other servers. We are incredibly behind in terms of bringing new, unique content. Everything 'new' we bring in each reset to every gamemode is already something that other servers had and we had missed out on. The staff team, however corrupt like shit it is, is nothing compared to how bland this server has been throughout the past few years. Yes, you've been attached to OP Prison, but it's no game changer compared to other op prisons. Again, do you believe that enforcing the rules, or reworking staff will do anything? As toxic as some players can be, they're never a reason why players decide to not stick around.

In conclusion, until aXed even considers to analyze gamemodes and bring in new content, GC will be a server that will only retain its current playerbase - because we call Guildcraft our home, not because we're so fascinated about what GC belongs. That's why I have no intention to try to make a change here, because in order to get out of all of this the head staff's attitude and mindset needs to change. I'm done with trying to improve this community and I hope you are as well. I'll just play anni and move on. Go on, laugh at me, say that I'm the most negative human being. I don't care anymore.

And it never will. That's how GC was born and how it will die.

 

BLA BLA BLA
Just ignore the bad stuff and focus on the good stuff.
EASY

 

you might as well suggest gc to close now

 

That's why I've stated that it would require hard work to come back from where we are today.
It's much easier to copy another server than to create something unique, and that's what I'm saying, hard work is required for improving.

But first of all I believe that the staff situation should be fixed, because we cannot expect people who don't even play the game to introduce something unique and new.
We need developers who would work hard on those ideas and try to make something new/special, make players ideas into reality.
But for all of that, we need motivated people and motivated staff.

Hard work can do wonders, but it requires sacrifice.
Staff need to invest more time and effort, everyone has to.
That's why my question was "How hard do you truly want to improve"
Good things come from hard work, there are some staff that truly work hard on GC but I believe that the way they work isn't aimed at the right goal.

Most staff members cannot even make a change, they're just there to mute and ban, this should change, they should be able to have more effect on how things work.

I agree with you uniqueness is the key, something new, something fresh, but for something like that to come, we need to fix the biggest problems first.

 

your like the 100th person to make a post on this topic this year.



Congrats you accomplished nothing

 

Agree with most of what you've said, especially the first two. I'm especially critical of the first point; HAs who are supposed to be role models for their staff members are the ones who are most inactive, I'm not going to point out anyone but that's a fact. Some go inactive for months altogether just showing themselves once in a while that you gotta take a screenshot whenever they post something.

Inactive Admins/Mods are really a big problem honestly, people who deserve the position more aren't able to get a chance to prove themselves due to them. Me personally I've resigned on servers I lost motivation on, added with others reasons, I thought I was just wasting a place so I just resigned but what was the reaction of the others staff members? A few bashed me for that, they still hold that against me. That's how it is now.

About the playerbase I'll talk about Eggwars since that's where I play the most; it was the most popular server here about a year ago with around 200 regular players but what did the Administration do? Completely ignore it that's right. We haven't had an update since ages, since it released I believe and look where it is now, not even more than 5 players. aXed earns a lot of money through Factions I agree with that but that doesn't mean he should ignore the other servers. Now they're working on an update apparently but I'm afraid it's too late.

 

Honestly, just..

 

Annihilation staff is just a mess and I'm sure other gamemodes are just as bad.
Skygrid is just a waste of space, even when GC peaked it never reached a high playerbase, although Kitpvp could be revived with Map Rotation and more unique features.
GC's playerbase won't ever be lower or higher than it is right now. The only thing that is still keeping it alive is people who like the community. If we want an increase in the playerbase the server needs lots of cleaning up and revamping.

 

I am thinking of new gamemodes .

 

You win some you lost most

 

K well Imma address a couple things. You guys make it look bad that we are trying to keep our current player base here, whats wrong with that? If im not able to bring in new players, but I want to help the server, best thing I can do is focus on keeping people that are already here from leaving.

As for youtubers, ya thats a complicated one. I spoke to a good dozen of em, all said no because of various reasons, so that form of advertising is a no go unless an angel falls off the moon and decides to play on gc.

Inactive staff. Ah yes, ranters favourite thing to rant about. Sure, inactive head admins exist, and its fairly bad if the alleged "role model" is inactive. I totally agree, we need more active head admins, and thats the truth. But inactive mods and admins, like leave them alone man. What harm do they do? ask any active head admin how many staff they have, they will give you 2 numbers. One being the total, the other being the amount of staff that actually play. Inactive staff dont take up other peoples place, they truly dont. If a reasonable head sees that they have 2 active staff members with 8 inactive, they will promote more people, and thats a fact. Servers with a low player base dont need an active head admin, do they? I mean most people just rant about the server being terrible, so the head admin feels put down. How bad do u think the head admins of kitpvp and skygrid feel when u say their servers should be removed? Did you ever consider that at all? did you really? So when u tell someone what u do is irrelevant, they simply give up and become inactive, leading to their server becoming one of the servs ppl want gone. Instead of saying it should be removed, why dont you try to think of something positive. And plus, how is it harming gc to have them? You say they have 1-2 players, and considering how good gc's PHYSICAL servers are, I doubt theyll make a difference. So let them be would you? Its always nice to be able to gather a couple friends on kitpvp and simply have a jolly ol time. They might not be earning gc any money, but they most certainly arent harming it. You talk about gc having the need to be unique, yet u want to take away those same unique things. Globally speaking ya kitpvp isnt unique at all compared to giants like hypixel or what not. But when you talk locally, kitpvp is unique in that people made good memories there, and same goes for skygrid.

I am not posting this to start world war 3, but this is my take on this post. Its good to discuss these server matters, so id like to keep this convo going to see what others have to say.

 

I have to agree with what Raging said more than what Voj said. Voj also had some good points and it’s always nice to keep a positive and optimistic attitude, but I don't think much of those things will help now, as most of the gamemodes are bland and copied.
If originality won't be implemented into GC's gamemodes, there's no way this server could become better and have a larger playerbase.

 

The norm in this community is that we need to make gc 'what it was again.' By your logic, we've lost 2000+ of our playerbase then. If what you want to accomplish is just to save the server from losing its playerbase, then we should just head in the current direction that we are in right now, no problem. But a server's priority is never 'we accomplished this much,' it's 'we need to go further.' I see no reason why GC should settle down and just enjoy a good experience of what we had left. This is not some survival server that you have with your friend.

I honestly don't have much of an opinion against 'inactive' staff as each staff member has their own reasons, but as for head-admins that control inactive servers - it's their job to find out why their server is so neglected and not played, which isn't really happening.
I also didn't have much of an opinion on removing inactive servers, but if it were to be done it's mostly to cut down on fees to host that game and use it somewhere else (development, better host etc). Not necessarily trying to think negatively

So yeah, for the memories I'd definitely stay here. But this is not some cult or some SMP server - it's a network, and its purpose is to expand, not provide a fun experience for a few friends. But this really matters depending on your own opinion.

Go pay Skeppy $800 a video to play on Guildcraft. You need to realize that players usually play on the server because they want to play with the youtuber, not "oh my god my fav youtuber played on this server it must be so good omfg!!!". Of course, if there is something on that server that is relatively appealing (which I don't see in GC), then players start to stick around. Not the other way around. I've seen others fail using this marketing method, trust me, it doesn't work as well as you'd think.

The one gamemode I'd find ideal for Youtuber advertising is annihilation, as we actually developed our own content and is mostly unique (kits, maps, upgrades, etc..) That may work. Otherwise.. not so much.

 

u should try other games

 

Being inactive as a head admin for a server doesn't exactly make the playerbase go up lol. Wouldn't it make sense that servers that doesn't attract people would need an active head admin to make that happen? To put in ideas and etc to make the subserver more attractive?

 

Yup, but honestly at this point I don't think anyone can bring a server such as skygrid back from the dead, replacing it with something new/fresh might be a good thing to do.

 

Skygrid can come back if alexan stops being inactive and actually focuses on it

 

HAHA YEEEEET VOJ4OWNER

--- Double Post Merged, Nov 6, 2018, Original Post Date: Nov 5, 2018 ---

well actually i havent found any servers with a kitpvp like gcs, like any kitpvp ive seen is wayyyyy different than gc kitpvp. And gc kitpvp is the best ive seen.