Ok guys, I'm kinda tired of the elephant in the room so let's get a productive, CIVIL conversation going here. People start throwing shit or pointing fingers at what individuals have done in the past and I'm going to slap the shit of them. If you're going to be critical, at least do it nicely and be productive. Overall, this isn't about the past or misdeeds of individuals, let's focus on the future and how we can bring this community back together. Some people still love Minecraft. Some people still love FTB. Some people love ARK. Some people love Overwatch. Some people love random other games. For the most part, aside from some particular individuals not getting along, for whatever reason, we all love each other's company and there is a desire to still play games together and possible increase the overall size of the community. So what is stopping us from doing that? Why do people feel they have to leave the community to start a generic gaming community? Here's how I see it. We have both powerful hardware and hosting that is essentially free (through the grace of imaxorz). We also have a teamspeak server running on that hardware and I personally have complete control over it. I unfortunately don't quite have complete control over the website, so updates to parts of it take time (have to go through max). Updates to the overall structure of the forums can be updated instantly by me so that's not a big deal. So again... what is really supping us from becoming a more generic gaming community that also runs a few servers? I think overall we all agree upon the spirit of what our community stands for. Let's start with me posting a blast from the past (posted below). I think our core values are still strong. I think how we view our community is still solid aside from it being a it minecraft centric. Our vision for what we wanted to do with the servers never really became a reality and honestly advertising the brand has been difficult to say the least. If people truly care about this community, let's get some feedback on what we can do to change it, adapt it, so it's something that will live on in whatever form the community desires. Yes we will still have Minecraft servers (as long as there is someone who enjoys maintaining them, atm that's Erik). Yes you bet your ass I'll still run ARK servers (because it's the game I play pretty much daily). Do we dial back the number of Minecraft servers? Do we double down and increase advertising (which currently there is ZERO) for ARK servers and setup a proper Unofficial server cluster? Do we bring back Space Enginers? Do we get rid of Space / Medieval Engineers all together? Do we start up a new server like Rust or something else? Anything else is up in the air. Let's hear it people. Core Values Community Fun Competition Creativity Variety The Community People genuinely respect one another People love the culture and consider it a healthy community People help each other out, with understanding the server / the game People work together forming small teams, towns, and organized PVP People talk often on the forums, sharing stories, builds, experiences, and off topic discussion People frequent Teamspeak People are proud of ShadeCrest People are competitive, but have good sportsmanship The Servers 5 servers running niche versions of Minecraft and other Sandbox games 100-200 total players across all servers on all day long 300-500 total players across all servers during peak US hours 200-300 total players across all servers during peak UK hours 500-1000 total players across all servers during weekend events Servers have healthy economies where the average person doesn’t feel poor but feels they always have something worth while to spend their money on or a point to trading with other players. PVE is challenging and has a unique balance of non-vanilla mechanics that attracts people to the server because it offers a unique combination of plugins available nowhere else PVP is competitive, fair, and balanced where there aren’t a lot of restrictions or rules, but rather a good set of plugins and custom settings which creates balanced PVP gameplay. PVP is long and drawn out with interesting paper/rock/scissor balancing. The core servers should be balanced to attract a wide, younger, and more casual audience The non-core servers attract an older, more mature, technical, and hardcore audience. The Brand ShadeCrest is seen as a household name that most Minecraft players have heard of ShadeCrest is not one of the highest population servers, but one of highest quality servers ShadeCrest attracts and fosters players who livesteam, make videos, etc ShadeCrest hardware is seen as a high performance with a stable connection ShadeCrest staff is viewed as professional and very active ShadeCrest players are seen as friendly and welcoming
For those who read this, I'm sorry about being a bit annoyed on Teamspeak over at dynoderps. I came in to try to extend an olive branch and understand how people where feeling and got a cold shoulder. This division in our community just seems superficial, laughed at by even some of those who have left, and overall I just don't see the point in it. If it's about who has admin rights in Teamspeak, things can change regarding that. Right now admin rights in TS mirror who are admins of ShadeCrest and then maybe an exception or two. If we become a more generic gaming community, then helmets can be given to people who are more in change of managing the community in general (ex. Dyno is an admin on the Steam group) as need be. Overall though we don't need a lot of TS admins unless we have a regular problem of people coming in to the teamspeak and spamming or being annoying. Overall, I want to see ShadeCrest stick together and there is a desire to keep it together and not be torn apart. I'm kinda shocked by how many people are the Teamspeak regulars who have as a large group decided to just leave the community together but still stay together as a community. I'm still baffled as to why. I've heard the reasons and while I understand the initial knee jerk reaction, I say again, if people are serious about keeping community together, why not work out differences and bring the community back together?
Well, while I don't have file access to the backend of the forums to modify images, I can modify the stylesheets and link to images off the website (and just pull of the mc.shadecrest.com/images/ subfolder) so finally updated the logo to be a more generic one as I wanted to do over a year ago. Also doing some restructuring of the forums so there's less of a minecraft focus.
I don't think the issue is that people have left the community, which will always happen no matter what. I think the issue is that it's really hard to get new people who share similar interests. For example, for Minecraft servers, we always had a relatively stable group of 16-20ish year-olds, but I think we had a small number of younger kids. Because Minecraft generally appeals to a younger audience, having a small amount of those younger kids means that it's very difficult to keep numbers up. While we don't exactly want a huge number of young kids, the audience Shade Crest seemed to appeal to was those 16-20 year olds who like Minecraft is pretty small. The biggest disadvantage over the extremely popular servers seems to be demographics, so moving toward other games seems like a good idea. My main point is that if we want the Minecraft server to be popular, we need to put more emphasis into attracting the crowd we used to have, rather than the mostly exhausted younger demographic, or switch to other games and have a unique reason to choose this server over others.
The demographics have barely changed for minecraft or our server in general. Our problem has been lack of a stable population. We don't have a setup that's attractive for new players given our current active players.
I think that the biggest problem is lack of visibility. While it is easy to find the website and server information if you are directly looking for it--We only have a handful of people sharing and talking up the server. While I am quiet on here most of the time, I've been a part of this community since the beginning, and I have never seen or heard anything mentioned about the game group. ...as cheesy as it may seem, I suggest creating a line of inexpensive but marketable S.W.A.G. items to draw actual physical support to ShadeCrest, or at the least, create media advertisements to bring excitement and a bit of a spotlight to the gaming group. Do giveaways. Allow purchases. Do an in-server let's play. I know some of this has been done in the past, but the last uploads were a year ago. I find it no coincidence that things started slowing after the media stopped being created. ...I would be willing to head up some of these, but would obviously need some collaboration help-- In my experience as a media designer and a small business builder I have found that these are surefire ways to increase the following of any group, business or cause.
I don't think a single sale would be made on SC swag. That aside, you're right, our visibility has been poor. If you want help with server projects, just tell us what you're planning and what you want done. We'll see if we can work something out.
Definitely would love the assistance of a media designer / small business builder helping with advertising.