ok guys, i think we need an update on ideas that could happen and stuff?

bacially map reset isnt an option.

we need to do something to the economy, this ranges from decide one type of currency to working a plan to kick start its activity again.

we need to advertise a bit more, e.g. youtube

we need to make it easier for new players to join, and give them reasons to stay

we need to rebuild some bits of spawn, which bits is to be decided

we need to remake the voting system. change rewards and stuff

i probly missed bits so feel free to add on to this... lets discuss these things now? any new ideas are also welcome still,just thought it a good idea to collect some ideas into one post

What purpose would that serve? Emeralds have no abilities other than trading, and that is disabled. Diamonds would make a more stable economy, as displayed in the past.

Honestly, I personally can't see how we can fix Main's economy, which is why i'm thinking a map reset (kinda) is the way to go.

If people would post 'strategies' of how to beat the economy, it'd be very useful.

The reason(s) I think Main's economy is 'beyond repair' are here...

~ Wipe all MTC - People with 'material wealth' become/stay rich, material and building supplies still worthless and surplus.

~ Wipe all MTC and remove spawners - Same as above, but yes, spawner-gathered materials will drain eventually. (Building materials still in surplus quantities).

It's all very well wiping the credits, but there are still too many surplus materials around on Main. (Which are therefore worth much less, ruining the economy and feel for gathering resources).

Hope I haven't repeated anything/much of what people have posted, there's a lot to read in this thread.

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Well, a way we could get rid of diamonds/gold/spawners in the economy is offer to buy them back at ridiculous MTC prices, then after a bit once a fair amount has been sold; reset the MTC.

First off,

A MAP RESET ISN'T HAPPENING

Clear? Good.

Next...

I don't get why people seem to be siding with diamonds as a currency...

The idea of a backed currency doesn't work on the server. The main idea of that is that the value of diamonds stay the same for a long time and rarely change... If you would please take a look at the current economy diamonds are worth about 30mtc (may have changed a bit) they used to be over 120mtc. So which currency is changing in value? Well seeing as the cost of spawners, which is what MTC is mainly used for and the reason for its popularity it hasn't changed as much, this clearly shows with a bit of thought, the price and value of diamonds are changing even now. So... Ya.

MTC is a much easier currency to work with, it can be changed (delete/add MTC) where as diamonds are items, harder to control. MTC is easier to use for the player as it cannot be 'lost' as it isn't physical and there is no limit to the amounts people can carry at one time. It's generally more convenient that diamonds.

I addition diamonds are used for other things, tools etc. this means making tools is effectively destroying money, not really ideal.

Basically for the economy to recove I think MTC would be a better option, at least for the time being. Allows staff to control certain aspects (and no I don't mean wipe entire accounts) plus once diamonds are removed as an official currency stability will get even stronger.

There is another option though...

Ban all player sales of diamonds for MTC. I know this sounds drastic but if we back MTC with diamond instead of having them separate that would also ensure some sort of stability. Basic idea is that staff set value of diamond, in turn holding MTC value at the same level. This would need some working out but with a good plan could be possible...

In January I had the opportunity to bring a lot of friends to Minetown but ultimately decided against it. Now that there is an open feedback thread I'll post my reasons, perhaps they be helpful.

The number one reason I could not bring a bunch of friends from other servers over was because of the block revision & FTB uncertainty. Even with just 10-11 players online I was getting blocks reverting. From my time as moderator and answering petitions, I knew that at least two of the 10-11 players online at that time had massive mob traps -maybe that was the issue, maybe it wasn't. Though we do know from the highly respected and knowledgeable Spigot contributor mikeprimm that mobs interacting with mobs creates exponential CPU usage... Also, Mob Traps on a server that spawns diamonds for you to purchase with voting credits? Is it that hard to fight monsters like a man in an open field!!

No matter what the cause, I couldn't just have my friends and players exodus to a server that had unstable game-play at 10-11 players.

Similar with FTB, it was questionable what level of support FTB would be getting from the MT staff. My friends and myself personally enjoy two game types 1) As close to vanilla and difficult as possible (no /homes, no /spawn, no babies allowed) and 2) Heavily modded like FTB where things you never imagined are now doable. Everything in between is ho-hum to me. So with that I decided to just run FTB myself with some trusted players because I could actually say there was a 2:1 ratio of people who can actually create protections and other misc tasks that I remembered waiting days for on MT Tekkit (5 days for a region protection... and I was MT Main Staff!). I definitely made the right choice hosting FTB myself based on the threads I see here, and I often have 2x the beastie's online.

So to recap why I didn't play here with a bunch of people was because 1) Lag with 10-11 players, 2) Unknown SLA for FTB.

Things that were NOT a reason I didn't bring people to play

- Spawn (They will be at my /home within 1 second of joining and never see spawn again)

- Economy ( The game was designed without an economy, and can function without one)

############### End of the Top Thinger ###############

That's that, and here is my two cents on a spawn redesign (why?) and other ideas being suggested for a Minetown Revamp.

Spawn

- I personally never cared what a spawn looked like in judging a server. I may be the minority on that one, but I am also a Minecraft player of 2+ years so I still fit the target demographi.

It isn't necessarily representative of the game-play experiences - especially if it was created in creative while the server is survival. I'm not quite sure that people who leave Minetown because they don't care for spawn are players that would have added anything of value to the server anyway... unless what we value are people idling at spawn and not playing.

If you do redesign the spawn,highlight what Minetown has to offer, not what a select few can do in creative gamemode.

However if you are only changing it to appease the planet Minecraft kids who have a short attention span, don't expect them to stick around long as their attention (that you knowingly catered to) has now shifted to another server.

Economy

- Never cared, I just mine and I craft and that is that. I'm not an economist, nor do I believe the real world is minecraft so I'm not gonna comment on that. However, I have seen staff ask for input before on MTC value. A suggestion I have is if you ever need a way to get people to vote without causing inflation (if you care), is to rewarding voting with permission nodes. Want to warp today? Want to go /home? Vote daily. Remove the nodes every 24 hours. Just a thought to a problem that some have, but I personally didn't.

Multiple Servers

- While it is nice to have all things under one umbrella, does Minetown have the resources to support that many offerings? I worry that trying to support many things in a mediocre way just ends up with people leaving to a server that specializes in just one thing - similar to how I had to start my own FTB server because the MT one seemed to be an afterthought.

tl;dr

In my opinion, I don't think we need 1,000 bells and whistles to retain players; we need a positive return on investment. How will I be rewarded for playing on Minetown, vs another server? The problem is not everyone seeks the same reward. Some want to build, some want to just have a high MTC count, some want to have no worldly possessions or MTC, but instead just win PVP. Some just want to watch the world burn.. but they are called griefers and we don't want them to stay anyway <object class="emojione" data="https://resources.enjin.com/1489581540/themes/core/images/emojione/svg/1f61b.svg?0" type="image/svg+xml" standby=":p">:p</object>

I thnk lag hit it on the nail there. What makes Minetown special, that's what attracts players. What is new and fun to play with but doesn't get boring fast, things like ftb are good examples, or even sky block. See how popular that is, because its different and new.

It's all very well saying lets fix main. But who wants to play on main? I don't because its the same old thing. I done everything before. We can't really change that, but new players don't have that feeling. So we need to think, what would a new player want for main?

10 pages? Good job guys, Not sure if its been said but im 100% FOR wiping MTC BUT, I did still earn it. Whether or not i used it. How about before we wipe it, we create a cash in program? Force the players to spend it. Turn it into physical coins so i can make it rain?

Here are my suggestions:

1) Do nothing with the economy, but give other than currency for voting (like small credit toward donation packs).

Stop worrying about the price of diamonds ( I like it low for tool and armor <object class="emojione" data="https://resources.enjin.com/1489581540/themes/core/images/emojione/svg/1f642.svg?0" type="image/svg+xml" standby=":)">:)</object> )or the amount of MTC on the server. For me the economy focus so much that game features were disabled (villager trading) is what caused me to start playing more on Pearl.

2) Find protected / abandon areas from users that have not been on in say 1 year (or 2 years . . .) and

3) Limit spawners to only those found naturally (this one would hurt me <object class="emojione" data="https://resources.enjin.com/1489581540/themes/core/images/emojione/svg/1f642.svg?0" type="image/svg+xml" standby=":)">:)</object> ).

4) Leave epic areas to the discretion of their owners. I would hate to see Tokyo go. Just have a spruce up campaign in the areas around spawn.

5) Maybe reduce the number of "servers", I know MCBallCTF and SkyBlock are popular now but they are a flavor of the month.

Skyblock is unique, however maybe servers like Feed the Beast and MCBall should be only up during an "event". The only MT servers I really play (or Minecraft servers for that matter) are MT Main and Pearl so it is easy for me to say to pare them down. Lag is still sometimes an issue even on Main with 5 players.

6) Make it easier for new players to get started, the hub makes thing daunting to the uninitiated. Getting started was much more user friendly when there was just Main and Guest World.

I am sure I will think of something else and of course these are just my opinions.

Skyblock is now serving more-so as the guest world than Wildlands, and MCBallCTF is like a seperate server that's only on the Eximius/Minetown network. Most of the players there haven't even been on main for more than a few minutes. FTB is actually very active, and my understanding is that the FTB server is completely independent, actually being hosted on different hardware and all. If we do away with servers, it needs to be with those that are inactive; like wildlands and regular MCBall. I do agree that we've stretched ourselves too thin working on so many different servers, but we need to keep the somewhat active ones.

Sadly, I do feel as if this thread has slowly become a bashing thread for how to fix problems instead of trying to attract more members. Keep in mind that traffic will pick back up in the summer months when kids are out of school. More members would, in my opinion, solve most of the current problems anyways.