So do you mean there will be a reset soon? Another option would be to let players download their worlds, so they can resume playing in singleplayer.. + No rage, at least less + No bad impression of the server - People stop using your server..
Wow, this is really nice! I actually thought about this some time, since the server is way to laggy.. :/ Community is great, staff nice, your plugin selection is perfect, but Infinity is such a laggy pack.. Where can I request such an export?
not to forget that items like: quarry + speed upgrades, a stack of high end lava gens, a few stacks of conduits and a few stacks of lava tanks (either bedrock drums or the infinite access) would get the player started right away, what would take 2 days normally.
Well that's kinda the whole point, I mean I know some people like a completely fresh start, but honestly there is nothing I hate more than having to go through those 2 days of early game for the 50th time... if I absolutely must abandon the base I've spent ages working on because of a full map reset and then be forced to start building a new base from scratch then being able to carry over just enough stuff so that I can at least skip that early game stage is the only thing that would really make me remotely excited about playing on the new map. Sure there are the quickstart kits which would essentially give me a similar shortcut, but since those quickstart kits are only single use I really don't want to have to spend £X every few months to re-buy that same setup.. so while yes I can see how from your perspective you want people to have to start from scratch because that's an extra 2 days of playtime you can count on, on the other hand I don't really think it is fair to force that on everyone, especially long time players like me who have already spent literally hundreds of hours on your network, so letting the people who find the reset a massive inconvenience take a limited amount of stuff to the new map to give them a head start is in my mind a perfectly reasonable compromise.. and anyone who does want a completely fresh start can simply not take advantage of the option and just leave spawn on the new map with the basic starting inventory as normal. Honestly I think it would actually make things rather fun for the people who are begrudgingly moving over to the new server, since how much of a head start you get would depend on how smart you are at picking what items to take since you only have a limited number of slots available.
I just think the community should be open to announcements that players / mods are deciding to do a reset or advocating a vote for one. There's nothing that burns a player more than playing for a week or two on a server they think is mostly new due to player count only to find out you've wasted your time in limbo. I don't know what the solution is but, I have a feeling that if the Mods made an attempt at trying to steer newer players into fresh mods they think they may like or warn them off for a week, you'll end up with more people loyal to the Mym network. I guess what I'm advocating here is like a spin doctor / PR team / mod or player counselor that channels that frustration towards playing a new pack in mym. Like I said in the comment that spawned this thread, I've come home twice (3 times actually) after 3 business day trips to find my world totally wiped and that's a burn.... What makes it worse is feeling like player's time isn't thought of as a valuable resource. I don't really think its *how fast or long* you do these, I think the key is to spin it positively and within the community so you continue to get new players who donate and support the system. I guarantee you that just resetting a server without helping someone find another spot to fit into is going to mean losing everyone on that server not already committed to the MyM net. Really though, at the end of the day its about respecting players time; this is key because a lot of players have jobs and lives and playing this game online has actual costs for us IRL; we could have been doing something else productive or fun with out using limited time. Act like its a big deal to inconvenience us or at least feel bad about it!
Those are direct spoken out thoughts, rationally without emotions attached. Don't take it personal. I don't like to talk around it and it tends to be the most productive way. Ideas are not solutions. The only way I see this could work is a system were players need to donate for servers to stay up. We can't invest limited resources into something dying without reviving it with a reset. I have been a player on other servers before. I know exactly how it feels. But ultimately it is, no server or a fresh one. There are limitations we have to accept and live with. The players that leave for good because of a reset are not likely to play other packs. They already decided to quit before knowing about a reset or other event. The reset event is only the trigger, not the cause. I don't see how that would work. The skills required are enormous. I don't think we have psychiatrists lying around. Also the work required for successful psychiatrist work no matter the size of "damage" is nothing that could be dealt with within a few hours if you don't know the person. It probably would make things even worse. I'm not a psychiatrist but I'm quite sure on this. If you have a friend who is and talk about the topic I would love to hear what the outcome of the discussion is. A question: Is it our job to help users go through changes? Understandable, I have been there many times my self. What we could do is cover it up. "Sorry there was a world corruption which we couldn't solve and we had to reset the server." "This is a major update and requires a reset". Doing this is taken a lot better by players. But is it the way to go? It is not. What value does playtime give the server? It is a liability not an asset for the server, the network.. I know how it sounds, but think a moment about it, totally rationally all emotions by side. What does it give the server, what does it take from the server? Great thought. I see this working out, but how? That is fine. Most come back within a week, others after they have been on another network and got a feeling on how it is being dealt with on there. Agreed on, on a emotional level. Not agreed on in rational reality. It is an area where demand of high quality servers is higher than supply. It is not a market where the user needs to be convinced and bound. @bryan84 I'm not someone who you can convince in a day. I pick on every point be it a strong or weak argument. This is my way of seeing what will work and what not. The intent from your post that got to me is that when doing a reset the "event" should be optimized in a way that lets the user feel his time on the server was/is valued. Now the question is, how? How do we reach people in rage because of the news. Is there a way? I find this a though one. The idea and intent being great but the possibility/reach, hard if not impossible. What were your thoughts on this. How do you reach someone in rage, closing up to the outside world in a manner that is possible on big scale and without personal communication.
That was quite a deconstruct Slind ;p lemme try to unpack this: So your general TLDR is relatively correct, I just think that you've missed some of the nuance. Look, as I see it you have two conditions you need to maximize and your'e only optimizing for one of them. Lets be honest here, you love lots of new players cycling in and want to retain them because votes get you advertising to get more people coming to your site. However, at the end of the day, you don't really want these people to use a ton of resources because they are essentially freeloaders. They use server resources without contributing to the system which is the ultimate goal. Getting as many players as possible on to vote is the penultimate goal; the ultimate goal should be monetization. The only players that should really *REALLY* matter to you are the ones who donate. Those are the types of players you really need to retain because at the end of the day they support the server. When I'm talking about respecting my time, its because time is money; I'm fortunate enough to be in a position where I can work basically as much as I want. This means that I have disposable income. Income to spend donating to servers for example if I feel like I enjoy them. The flip of this is that I have to make a CBA over whether I should just be working or playing games to derive enjoyment due to opportunity cost. I consider my time to be precious because doing one thing always means sacrificing another. If players feel like server owners don't care about their time, the largest cohort that will be bothered by this are the people with money to give you, the server. People who just sit in a basement all day playing free servers aren't the population you need to worry about; they'll come back because they don't have anything else to do. Donation is a possibility, but not really what I was talking about. I was thinking more along the lines of an announcement that people have made suggestions that perhaps its time to do a reset; and that for the next X period of time there may be a chance of a reset. *This* is when you make an announcement for new players who are just starting to move sideways to a new but, similiar pack until things are resolved. Also resets aren't even bad in most cases, its just that at any given moment a server has a lot of churn. Doing it like this, in the open, gives the people with time invested to vote on the whether a reset would be a good thing. It also gives people fair warning to move sideways within mym to a similar pack. Seems to me that this diffuses a lot of the anger that happens when these things happen and prevents raging. By being helpful in directing them to a close alternative, which is something you could automate, I think you'd have higher retention. Also, while highly manipulative, welcome people to vote on the future of the server. You don't have to implement what they say, just look like you are doing it. That being said, you can always ignore their advice and do whatever you want; because people *think* its there decision that made it happen, they'll tend to own it and even defend it even though its not really what they wanted. I think this really fixes or at least ameliorates the "rage" issue. Still you might be surprised by the input you receive, there may be great ideas you can capitalize on. Finally, don't assume that most players browse the forums. Very few players actively trawl the forums on what new alpha pack is coming out and when. I'd highly recommend that you make the announcements as visible as possible like text displayed on logging and the news feed in clear terms so people don;t feel like it happened in the shadows where they didn't know it was happening. This is called "retention" in the marketing community. You can do this a number of ways. Make sure your valuable users have their needs met. Also, make sure that their friends are happy too since they can drag a good player off to another server and the converse, convert their non-donating friends to donors too. Also, all the donors who've already paid aren't the only people capable of becoming donors; a lot of new players are potential donors that are testing the waters. The acting like you respect their time thing works well here. If you're helpful, even in an automated capacity, people with extra money to spend for entertainment might view this as a better "investment" for future entertainment if they see that donors aren't taken advantage of and that their time isn't wasted.
You do know that if you hold donors alot higher than anyone else NO ONE WILL JOIN THE SERVER, no one, no new players, and then players will donate JUST to get better treatment, the fact that both donors and non-donors are on the same level here has actually made retention of players have here, no one wants to be on a different level, and then because they want to support the server or get these little bonus perks they donate.
One thing you could do to increase revenue but keep the players on an equal level is to open a new separate donation category that is a subscription based donation. Something cheap like $5 a month or so that gives users the opportunity to jump in at a higher level of reward but have it not be permanent. Give them something like kits and commands that parallel the utility of t3 or t4 status. I think plenty of players would go for this, especially on starting new servers with a nice little boost and then not needing it when they have a month of playtime since they have a base and resources now. It's basically a credit/donator rank hybrid that allows for players to have some nice advantages for a time longer than that of the 1-time kits but yet not on par with the higher donator ranks.
I'm not discussing a pay to play scheme, I'm describing what their "Mission Statement" or "Business Model" should be. I don't think its controversial to say that trying to retain people who actually pay the bills should have a higher priority than players that don't. Notice how I said that their penultimate (ie 2nd most important) goal is to keep new players coming in to keep them on the charts. That maximizes potential future donors; how they turn regular players into donors is called a conversion ratio. They need a strategy that properly optimizes 1st retention, then player base growth, then conversion. Suggesting that everyone has to pay would reduce growth which, reduces eventual conversion. Edit: That being said, there actually is a way to calculate the optimal balance of player types to maximise earnings which should be the goal for everyone because we all get nice things. I was suggesting hypothetical ways to maximize retention by changing how they do resets.
correct, but physically holding them and treating them better because of the fact that you want more money will not retain players, that just pushes people who can't pay (such as me) away from the network
Oh, I forgot to address this earlier. This is what I mean by a strategy that backfires in you face. The "oh there was world corruption, things had to be reset" is actually *way* worse then just announcing a reset for a few reasons. If people actually believe it was due to instability or poor management, they won't think "Oh well, time to start over," what they're really going to think is "OMG the server could wipe at any minute for any reason, why should I waste my time if it randomly wipes?" See what I mean? You already have "counselors" in the form of mods. In combination with *really clear* announcements that are automatically broadcast to explain things, you can have mods drop in to sort of mellow out a mob when they get agitated. You already use keywords to trigger messages, you could use keyword detection to alert mods that there's a problem on any given server and send them over to calm people down. As for whether its your job to help players move to new servers, no its not your job per se. However, if you're trying to "build a community" it goes a long way for players to be endeared to the MyM community. After helping them out would also be a great time to "accidentally" broadcast a solicitation for a donation since they'd be grateful, you know a coincidence ;p[DOUBLEPOST=1442677348,1442676576][/DOUBLEPOST] Why? As an analogy, think of the restaurant business from the perspective of a waiter and a diner. The diner (you) get the same goods (food) but you can get better service with one waiter vs another; and the experience can be vastly changed by the quality of one waiter or another. People tend to tip (donate to) waiters that give them good service. Some people don't tip or tip well but, as a waiter the best strategy is to act as if they will because they'll get more tips (donations).[DOUBLEPOST=1442677718][/DOUBLEPOST] I sorta like this idea since it lets people dip their toes in the water without spending a lot of money. On the other hand it would probably reduce the amount of donations since they have a potentially cheaper alternative. Maybe limit it to one time per person or once every few months. That way it becomes an enticement.
the best strategy is to treat everyone nicely, give everyone the same great service attitude and the like and they will be likely to tip more, trust me i was talking about that, if you get an amazing quality of service anyways you're likely to be kinder to those who give it, which is why some servers can keep afloat, trust me, we're agreeing in the fact that people need great treatment, we're just disagreeing who gets it
Where are we disagreeing who gets it? I'm not saying it should be a donor fest while all the plebs go play on the 5 tps server.
i understand this, i'm saying that no matter who you are you get the same treatment, you're saying that donors should be held higher in some respects, but subtle suggestions saying donating can help you get more modpacks that the community wants to play i think would be a great way to grab donations to do that, and i'm not saying you want to give the normal players the 5tps server, no one does (except jerks)
Donors already recieve special treatment in the form of kits and commands. Objectively speaking, they *should* do everything to maximize the number of donors. This is a total tangent from how they should handle resets but, as long as the enticements are positive to donate I don't see a problem. If you start nerfing or punishing non-donors then its a problem.
