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Discussion Make Shotbow great again.

Discussion in 'The Network' started by MacPinguPvp, Apr 19, 2016.

Discussion - Make Shotbow great again.
  1. MacWasPvp Platinum

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    206,412xp
    Right. We have to make Shotbow great again. This isn't a joke, I just want to help the server as a whole, together. We must contribute if we want our play-time and dedication to Shotbow's minigames and gamemodes and money not to go to waste here. So I will see what I, a single player, can do with the rest of you to help Shotbow out.

    As we all know, Shotbow's state isn't great. People are complaining (For all the right reasons), people are mad, people are quitting and people are just unhappy. Something has to be done but as we've heard way too many times;

    "Our staff are too busy, we can't do everything at once"

    Which I see as the staff giving up. We understand that you have your own lives and responsibilities but to be blunt- That's not the point. What we need is staff with free time, active ones, younger ones. We do not see a lot of the staff here anymore because of this one, single excuse and it's just not good enough.

    First, we need some goals. Ones that can help upbring the network to its former glory which it deserved (And still does).

    • Employ active staff to the team [ ]
    • Develop more for games to soothe the nerves of salty players [ ]
    • Make less popular gamemodes rise again [ ]
    • Raise player count [ ]
    • Make players happy [ ]
    Suggest what more to add to the goals and how we can bring the server back to it's olden days.

    Don't forget to vote. :)
    DrachenCube, darien1215 and PinguBot like this.

  2. Mistri Network Lead

    XP:
    1,695,816xp


    The thing is, people like you and I want more games that have even interests, but other people want less games with more interest per game. Don't get me wrong, there is no right or wrong answer, but who are the staff supposed to listen to when half of the community wants one thing while the other half wants another?

    You make this sound easy. Of course they're trying, but believe me, I've learned it the hard way - 99% of servers die in the first few weeks of their being released. It's already a huge landmark of getting a decent playerbase by Shotbow, and I think they're continuing to do so quite well, to be honest.
    Barskey and MacPinguPvp like this.
  3. MacWasPvp Platinum

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    206,412xp
    I know that those goals are hard to reach but something has to be done. The development team has to keep the server fresh with content. It's like Youtube. Some people want more videos, others want higher quality videos. A lot of Youtubers, however, found the right thing which is make quality content at a good pace. We need more games once in a while, like Gold Rush... But the devs also need to take care of the older games to keep those alive. I'm not asking for a lot, I'm just asking for a fair balance. Fix the big bugs in games ASAP and once there's no big ones we know of, go back to coding Gold Rush. But you can't leave a big project like Gold Rush for a long time because the hype train will crash and burn and so will the player numbers. Neither can you make content and let it be broken, like housing in MineZ2. People need that fixed to take advantage of the game's amazing content.
    Mistri likes this.
  4. TechnoMaster4 Obsidian

    XP:
    269,487xp
    As a former staff member and as a member of the Minecraft community who has been staffing servers since 2013, I would like to weigh in on this post.



    I understand your perspective and how you can see this as an issue, but to be blunt: No matter how much free time staff members may have, we are not slaves to the network. The vast majority of the Administration aren't paid to do what they do (myself included), so they have absolutely zero obligation to do the work they do. Trying to say that all staff must be active (in the terms you are implying) as much as you are wanting simply is an impossibility. The reason we took the position once it was to better the network we loved so dearly and to better ourselves as an individual through responsibility, self-accomplishment, management and leadership. This brings me to the next issue you feel you have the solution for:

    If a staff members is a young, 14-year-old individual who shows excellent maturity, leadership skills and has a deep understanding of the server, its community and how to act within it, then we will definitely reach out to them and see if they want to help better their community as a staff member. But finding people, especially children under the age of 16, can be incredibly difficult. Leading a community is a huge responsibility that can't be taken lightly and to be completely honest, most members of this community would never be able to handle a position with any sort of power or responsibility. It takes a special kind of someone to tackle on a leadership position and since this is an online community, it makes it that much harder to find those individuals. It involves time, careful observation, and discussion among several other potential candidates with other staff member's opinions.

    When you say to just recruit more active members, it is in no way simple, nor is this next issue any simpler:

    Coding is a lot like a n incredibly complex foreign language that requires perfect grammar and punctuation. If one tiny thing is wrong; if there is one extra period, one extra comma, one extra semicolon, and a plethora of other potential possibilities, what you are trying to make will not work. Imagine trying to have a conversation like this online with a computer:

    Computer: "Hello, I need directions to the nearest restroom. Do you know where it is?"
    You: "it is down the hall to the left by the sign over there"
    Computer: "I am sorry, I did not quite catch what you said. Where is it?"
    You: "you take the left at the end of the hall how did you not understand me?"
    Computer: "I am sorry, I did not quite catch what you said. Where is it?"
    You: "Go down to the end of the hall and take a left.."
    Computer: "I am sorry, I did not quite catch what you said. Where is it?"
    You: "Take the left down there."
    Computer: "Thanks!"

    This is obviously not how coding works, but imagine having tens or even hundreds of thousands of these mini conversations that could take 1 minute to complete or several hours. Errors are so common and it can take a long time to fix them properly. Developing a new game or "making the old ones great again" is simply not something that can be done overnight. Coding takes time, patience, incredibly careful planning and pitch-perfect execution. If any of these areas are lacking, you can end up making a horrible mistake that can negatively impact your network, company, or whatever you may be coding for.

    Let me go tell Navarr to get the patent pending Shotbow Player Count Wand of Majestic Publicity... Oh wait, it doesn't exist. Player count will always fluctuate, especially when the competition has infinitely more resources than Shotbow. That is not Shotbow's fault; it is the reality of business. As Mistri said, it is lucky Shotbow even has the player count they have. Shotbow beat the odds and became a successful network that is still going today years after. It is incredible.

    The staff do all they can. Plus, of all the networks I have been a part of and of all of the online communities I have been a part of, I have never seen a community want change and then immediately resent the change once it is made more than Shotbow's community. We can make changes when they are reasonable to make, however when everyone backlashes and says how horrible the changes are, how they wish the older versions were back, and how awful the staff team is for making these wanted changes, you can understand why we may hesitate before making more changes in the future.

    Again, the staff do all they can.

    Instead of holding on to older expectations that will never return, try and look to the future and future memories that will soon come to pass. If you continue to allow yourself to live in the past, you will never be able to enjoy things in-the-moment because you will always be comparing it to what it "could have been." Why sit there and pout about memories when you can cherish them and look forward to new ones? Seems a little strange to me.


    Move on and realize: Shotbow is still here. Shotbow is still great. It is not what should be done to make it great again, what what should be done to continue to make it great.
  5. blaueszebra Retired Staff

    XP:
    362,364xp
    :eek: Shotbow's average staffer is 14-year-old? No offence or age discrimination intended, but this would explain quite a lot of things ...
  6. MacWasPvp Platinum

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    206,412xp
    I don't have a lot of time right now (Ironic, right?) but I will try to reply to you as fast as I can.
    No, you aren't slaves, however, if you're going to want to contribute to the network, you can't just be inactive the entire time. I get it, you have lives of your own, don't have all the time in the world, etc. but you have to understand the non-personal reasons. Here's an example:
    "I'm a PC gamer"
    "Oh. What do you play?"
    "I play a lot of games... just I haven't touched the PC in 3 months because... life"
    "Then that doesn't make you a PC gamer..."
    "It does! I just don't have time for it and you can't tell me what to do."

    By employing active members, I meant ones that you've seen playing a lot, getting involved in the community and know will have a lot of time on their hands rather than those which you're not sure will stay for 2 months.

    You could take on skilled programmers onto your team and help with the tideous bits of coding, if there are any, or to create code as a higher-up says and see how they do, then test it and look through it to make sure it's fine. I know there aren't many people on the dev team but there should really be. This won't be as easy as the other goals, but it has to be reached somehow. Also, I was talking about the games needing some fresh things added or new games made to keep the network hot and spicy.

    Raising player count was a general point. We need to bring people in and keep them here. If there was a player count of 300 constantly, nobody else would want to play because who wants to be limited to small-team Anni games, empty MineZ worlds, etc.? And atleast keeping the player count high would be a step forword. We need to hold our ground.

    The players need to be more happy with their experience with the gamemodes. A lot of them aren't mad because of the staff, they're mad because of the gamemodes being half-assed in some situations. Like a horse with a broken leg. You don't have any other ones so you gotta ride that horse. You don't want to help the horse because... why? It's cheap... and buying another horse is expensive. But you just don't feel like it because people still want to ride the horse and will pay for that horse.
    It's the same with the games. They want to play MineZ (2) because there's nothing else like it in the Minecraft community but the devs are leaving the big issues to work on big projects that are stopping us from enjoying the current games and we need to find the right balance.

    I don't literally mean the old days in the past. To be honest, the server was kinda bad with 2 or 3 gamemodes back then but you guys kept it new and fresh all the time. Kept the players, wanting more. Made them hyped, kept up with expectations and made a lot of people happy but now it's not the same.

    Please don't take this personally and understand my reasoning for saying these things. I'm just being straight-up and trying to put light on the issue to help us diagnose what's wrong and find what we must do to help.
  7. Fluffoon Retired Staff

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    451,096xp
    No, he meant that most of the people who play Minecraft are 14 - 16 and it is hard to find people of that age suitable for a staff position, not that the average age of the staff team is 14.
  8. Murgatron Retired Staff

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    970,785xp

    Numerical age does not always directly correlate to someone's maturity.
  9. Mistri Network Lead

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    Do you know anything about programming? Try finding any Java Bukkit developer skilled enough to make a large, mutli-arena minigame with MySQL compatibility and multiple classes, and is mature enough to be a staff member, and is also willing to work for no pay. It is near impossible, I've tried myself. Almost all other major networks pay their developers, and considering that, Shotbow has a great developer team that is considerate and only want to promote Shotbow's growth rather than getting paid.
    Barskey and MacPinguPvp like this.
  10. MacWasPvp Platinum

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    206,412xp
    I've tried coding. I did it in school a little bit and won 2 competitions but I understand that programming can be tedious and difficult but we HAVE to do something. Either current devs have to sink more time into it or more devs need to be found.
    OneTupacArmy and blaueszebra like this.
  11. Braiti Platinum

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    Just going to throw in my 2 cents and say that running a Minecraft server is probably one of the most inconvenient businesses ever created. The cons greatly outweigh the pros, so just the fact that Shotbow is somehow still running with a somewhat consistent rate of players up to today is pretty astounding in itself. However, don't get me wrong. Just because it's still standing doesn't in any means make it any better.
    Rixhack, Guard1an and Mistri like this.
  12. Dinohoot8 Platinum

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    484,663xp
    Shotbow is making more games technically. They took out the arcade games along with Ghostcraft and are redoing them. So technally, those are new games once they come back. Also, WIR I think is being coded for it to be better and GoldRush is being coded with it being fun. Shotbow has their hands full with coding so much at once they probably can't think straight. There might even be only a few people or 1 person coding per those gamemodes.
  13. ment0l66 Emerald

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    575,309xp
    It's not to hard to find them.

    It's hard to get them to work for shotbow without being paid
    MacPinguPvp and Mistri like this.
  14. blaueszebra Retired Staff

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    362,364xp
    Even that is not the problem. You wouldn't believe me if I told you what the real obstacle is :zspeechless:
    OneTupacArmy likes this.
  15. MacWasPvp Platinum

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    Friggin' click bait. :lmao: "What is it?" :stuck_out_tongue:
  16. blaueszebra Retired Staff

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    According to the NDA, I'll have to kill you after telling you the reason.

    After checking, I'm allowed to confirm that It doesn't have anything to do with the ᴉʇɐuᴉɯnllI .

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