[Poll] Blocktopia Overhaul

[Malcovent]

Five years ago, a group of friends came together to host a server - based on a gamemode that they loved to play, this blossomed into the community that today you know as Blocktopia. Even five years later, this same drive to enjoy a game with friends is exists and nourishes the community.

However it is safe to say that in those five years - both we and minecraft have changed, and what once worked for us as a community may no longer be sustainable or indeed enjoyable. Other avenues exist that our members show more interest in and staff show more enthusiasm in cultivating.

To use a more lively metaphor for plans - we wish to put a flame to the Blocktopia that we know now, and from its ashes have a multi-gaming community arise - complete with a new name, a new theme and a new purpose. This is however, a very large shift in direction - and one that does not come without its risks. There may be drastic changes that may see some people leave and some people lose ranks - it is for this reason that we put the decision to you - the community members, as ultimately Blocktopia belongs to you.

Below is the suggested change, followed by notable pros and cons. We ask only that you put careful consideration into your choice.


With the change, we’d potentially have…

• A New Name: We love the Blocktopia brand, in the spirit of shifting our focus away from Minecraft, we feel a new name is needed.
• A New forum layout and theme : To cope with drastic changes to community structure - a new layout will be needed with focus drawn away from Minecraft.
• Removal of all but our most popular Minecraft Servers: Most likely 2 servers at most, though this doesn’t bar future servers opening.
• Streamlining the staff structure: There are many ranks that have no clear definition of purpose, These will be removed.
• Servers/Support for popular games - including for games that we do not host. Support Including subforums, competitions, embedded streams and more.
• Far more community events.
• Cleanup of ranks - Long-inactive staff/Admins that have been gone will have their rank removed.

Cons/threats of proposed changes:

• Removal of many Minecraft servers
• Possible loss of much of our Minecraft-playing playerbase
• No guarantee that staff will keep their rank - may be large culls.
• Huge project, might temporarily distract from central activity/work
• Risk in ‘venturing into the unknown’, can’t necessarily predict what we will find on the other side.

Pros/opportunities of proposed changes:

• Supports a number of games community members enjoy.
• Allows us to branch out into different games (With our own servers) properly.
• Enables us to try build a greater sense of community.
• Good point to do some spring cleaning.
• Rekindle some of the passion within the community.
• Give head staff an opportunity to remove redundant parts of the community in place of more useful things.
• Potentially many more events.
• Should be able to lower donations in very near future

 

[Fiestaguy]

I don't care if the community name or anything changes, if this means I can have more fun with my friends that I have made/brought here, go ahead! I'm all in!

Sorry if this seems slightly half-assed, it's the most basic of my feelings towards this, and I CBA to make a ranting post filled with feelings and stuff.

Speaking about half-assed, FIIIIRST.

Also, are forums going to be moved to another server/are threads going to be removed? If, so, could we port /some/ ongoing threads? *COUGH* Guardians of the Elements *COUGH COUGH*

 

[Jivvi]

let's rename the community Michelle

 

[Nillbugwtw]

Also, are forums going to be moved to another server/are threads going to be removed? If, so, could we port /some/ ongoing threads?

I can't speak authoritatively on the subject, but my somewhat educated assumption is that since a new forum layout and theme would come with the overhaul (instead of new forums), that we would just stick with the current forums, and add new sections/move outdated sections to the archive.

2AM incoherent typing, tl;dr: Same forums, new stuff

See Malc post, new forums

 

[Fiestaguy]

I can't speak authoritatively on the subject, but my somewhat educated assumption is that since a new forum layout and theme would come with the overhaul (instead of new forums), that we would just stick with the current forums, and add new sections/move outdated sections to the archive.

2AM incoherent typing, tl;dr: Same forums, new stuff

Would it be a good thing that if enough interest is shown in a thread, it'll be moved to the new forums in it's whole? I guess that could happen. Like, a form of popular thread being handed out and people mark which ones they think is worth keeping.

 

[Kuyajer]

muh infecshun

 

[cooliorules]

Would it be a good thing that if enough interest is shown in a thread, it'll be moved to the new forums in it's whole? I guess that could happen. Like, a form of popular thread being handed out and people mark which ones they think is worth keeping.

I'm assuming what he means is that it's on the same server, so no threads would be lost. Of course that isn't 100% certain since I'm not nill, but that's what I thought of it.

Anyway, I would love to see us venturing out from just minecraft - more opportunities to gain a larger community. I wouldn't want to see it get too big though, because this place is an amazing and mostly tight-knit community.
As long as RoF stays

 

[Malcovent]

I haven't discussed it but off the top of my head, I'd imagine that at best, we'd move the most popular 5-10 threads across to the new boards.

 

[Jivvi]

Would it be a good thing that if enough interest is shown in a thread, it'll be moved to the new forums in it's whole? I guess that could happen. Like, a form of popular thread being handed out and people mark which ones they think is worth keeping.

I highly doubt that the Off-Topic section would take a significant hit from a reform centred around the gameservers

On that OffTopic, one thing might be a suggestion for not only gameservers, which will probably be brought about, but also a broader forum, with more diverse not-directly-related areas, such as the creative corner, and suggestions for that

Also, will a broadened community mean forum staff become a possible requirement. Personally I think some people would be nicely suited to a forum administration role, while perhaps not being as active in-game. It would also take strain off of the headstaff for moderating the forums

Edit: oh so entirely new boards; ninja'd

 

[Vatumok]

You are spot on that Blocktopia needs an overhaul, I had been personally thinking about suggesting something similar. Some servers simply are not sustainable anymore with the low amount of players there are. As I've always said the biggest problem is getting newer players in the community, once they are here they will mostly stay. I will go through all the servers and try to explain why they do not work.

---
Army of Darkness
Nothing per se wrong with the server but there are not enough players at the moment the really enjoy it. It is just a pvp server and it is not that unique so newer players would rather go to a more popular server to play a similar server. Also, I do not know how the rules are at the moment, but I know that a few contructions (towers/stairs) that really killed the fun for me and for a lot of other players.

Rituals of Fire
Although this server is still the most popular, it is still not doing well. All the players on RoF are common players, and you barely see a new face log in and actually stay. Mostly because it is plain boring outside of the chatting/discussion with other players. I have seen a handful of new players say that it is just boring, and honestly I cannot blame them for thinking that. It can be fixed It is possible to shift the playstyle from more passive to active by for example making players get the resources the round they have to survive.

Infection
After the update I have to say that I am quite impressed with Infection. I really like the maps, which I did not before. Though, it still has a feeling that it is not completely finished yet and could still be polished to become a better server. I see potentional in the server because it is unique and active (compared to RoF) but for it to work Blocktopia still needs a bigger playerbase.

A&T
Fun server but quite pointless with so little players.

Buildbox
Nothing wrong with the server, always good to have a building server for the staff/players to make new maps for our server.

SMP
As long as we are not popular enough to sustain a few unique, cool servers then I think we should not have a SMP server because there simply is nothing special about it and players would rather go to another, more populair server.
---

In my opinion it would be best to get rid of all the servers (possibly temporarily) except for a modified RoF, Infection and Buildbox and that is purely based on how unique (& useful) those servers are. Then you can make the choice to switch outside of minecraft or stay in minecraft. There is still a lot of talent in Blocktopia in terms of programming, design and art so I do think we have the capability to come up with a great, dynamic and unique server that could really bring players in.

Either way, things do need to change and think it is necessary to try some things out.

 

[Jivvi]

Agreeing with Vatumok on the plane of servers;

Infection is probably the most unique, well-rounded, and enjoyable server, despite being ignored by a lot of the playerbase.

RoF is also unique, iirc, but also agreeing that it needs changes to not be a bore to new faces.

A&T is a server with a lot of flexibility, so it could be an interesting addition, and can facilitate quite a lot of the other servers in a basic form via vanilla maps which can be manufactured.


Also, I'm interested, what games would likely be towards the top of the list for new servers?

 

[Fiestaguy]

I highly doubt that the Off-Topic section would take a significant hit from a reform centred around the gameservers

On that OffTopic, one thing might be a suggestion for not only gameservers, which will probably be brought about, but also a broader forum, with more diverse not-directly-related areas, such as the creative corner, and suggestions for that

Also, will a broadened community mean forum staff become a possible requirement. Personally I think some people would be nicely suited to a forum administration role, while perhaps not being as active in-game. It would also take strain off of the headstaff for moderating the forums

Edit: oh so entirely new boards; ninja'd

The GotE thread has been going on for a while, and -in my opinion- has enough significance to be moved over, 135 pages of extensive writing and storytelling making the equivalent of a medium-sized novel. And there's still quite a lot of interest and the thread is still actively ongoing.

As for the forum-staff thing: Heck yeah, haven't been on the server in ages and I could very well dig up my old staffing skills.

 

[Toiletprincess]

I dont want my art thread to be removed cause there are memories there

 

[Jivvi]

 

[Notme]

Hmm interesting.

We should rename it to: "3spooky5you" XD

 

[YouWould]

I'll be honest, personally, I have no complaints against spreading out to different communities, but I don't think we should really be leaving Minecraft. I understand this may increase donation costs, but that's just my two cents (No pun intended)

 

[Alisha]

I haven't discussed it but off the top of my head, I'd imagine that at best, we'd move the most popular 5-10 threads across to the new boards.

What about the Mafia archives? Those aren't directly related to the servers, so they shouldn't cause any problems with re-branding Blocktopia.

I'm still a little bit worried, as if the re-branding doesn't get enough new people AND alienates the Minecraft players, what happens?

Feel free to prove me wrong, I'm just voicing my concerns. I'll vote after I get responses to these.

 

[superstein]

I'll be honest, personally, I have no complaints against spreading out to different communities, but I don't think we should really be leaving Minecraft. I understand this may increase donation costs, but that's just my two cents (No pun intended)

We won't be leaving Minecraft. Just gradually shifting our foci elsewhere to create more of a community feel, more room for productivity, etc. There will still be Minecraft servers.

 

[Faliara]

I can't really make a definite vote yet. I'd have to think it through first. There's a good deal of threads centered around other games, so...

I don't think I'd agree with the name change, though. I don't know if I could see anything but that logo on the top right corner of the page, and it's always nice to remember where we started. TvTropes kept the TV part of their name, right?

 

[OgroovysamO]

Despite not being as active as I once was, I'm still not crazy about the change of 'branding' that's being proposed. It begs the question: What IS Blocktopia now? Arguably, a change of brand won't achieve all the much. The name 'Blocktopia' is near iconic in its own right, and is fairly recognisable to old Classic MC players. I fully support the idea of introducing new games as permanent servers, I fully support those servers being pulled to the forefront of the community, I even fully support the killing off of some of the existing Premium servers, but I believe this should all be done under the Blocktopia banner. Granted, a slight alteration to the name may be necessary (Blocktopia Gaming?), but the slight change in direction doesn't necessarily need to be reflected in the name of the community.

As for the forums, a change of theme may be needed to accommodate this slight change of direction (but oh good god please don't change to one of those crappy generic 'EVERYTHING MUST BE BLACK OR GREY' forums, anything but that), but I believe the vast majority of content should remain (maybe archiving pre-2013 threads which are no longer active?).

Blocktopia is a community, one of the best around. It's running low on steam, but it has more than enough life in it to be revived. Just please don't stray too far from where it came from. It's origins are nearly as vital as it's player base.

 

[Shande]

Do you know what kind of games we would be moving to?

 

[Jivvi]

I can't really make a definite vote yet. I'd have to think it through first. There's a good deal of threads centered around other games, so...

I don't think I'd agree with the name change, though. I don't know if I could see anything but that logo on the top right corner of the page, and it's always nice to remember where we started. TvTropes kept the TV part of their name, right?

we started as theone's though

 

[Notme]

Do you know what kind of games we would be moving to?

League of Legends XDDDDDDDDD

Also any other games with multiplayer like KSP, Terraria, Starbound (when it comes out of beta), Cube World (when this comes out of limbo) and others like TF2 or dota.

Shande I was only joking about LoL, I know that you hate it >.>

 

[Love]

Sorta-long post incoming.


I've been a part of Blocktopia for... Damn, almost 3 years now. I've seen a lot of people come and go. Why is that? Some people had life matters that couldn't be handled, others because of issues they had within the community. But it seems that over my 2-and-some-odd years here in this community, a lot of the departations (whether it documented with a thread or a Status message) have been due to the lack of content being brought forth. I personally took a break a year and a half ago because Blocktopia didn't have what a different server had, and quite frankly I found other games I found interesting. Blocktopia had died out for me.

Am I saying that we need to stray entirely away from Minecraft? Not at all. I think some of the servers are in pristine condition. Hell, I've been staffing one for over a year. Does it get a bit boring? Yes. Do I have thoughts of leaving? Maybe. But the fact of it is, I stay for the playerbase and the excitement I get. It's easy to get sucked into our current Minecraft servers for over an hour if there's the right conditions. I do think we need to remove a couple, but that will be open for discussion at a later date I presume.

Now, with that, there's an issue I want to bring up that I wasn't able to at an earlier date; IF we were to go through with this, and move on to more and more different games (while keeping the 2 or 3 Minecraft servers), would we try to strive towards Free-To-Play games? While I'm not against a GMod server or, hell, maybe some community-sanctioned L4D2 games from time to time, or whatever other Multiplayer game there is we can set up servers for, I think one thing we would have to look at is affordability. While I will admit, the community has grown in age, and with that can come with a better income of money for individual players, some of our playerbase either: 1) Doesn't have the ability to pay for games (No Steam, or just other issues). 2) Can't afford *x* game(s). Or 3) Doesn't find *x* game(s) interesting enough to purchase it. I'm sure there'll be a way to mend that when we reach that (maybe pull together some money and have a (bi?)monthly raffle for the game(s)?).

*Reserved section for thoughts on the Forums*

This is probably very incoherent and hard to follow, but that's what school will do to you. This is my 2 cents on the matter. Any questions I'll be willing to answer when I get home from School.​

 

[Enderfive]

I say, go ahead.

Whether we like it or not, Minecraft will (or already has) reach a tipping point soon, from which the influx of new players will start to decrease (either due to lack of interest in the game or simply most people that care about games at all already having bought it) and can't balance out the old players that are leaving or fading into inactivity. It's okay at the moment, but what will it be in a year? Five years? Ten?

I've played Minecraft for a little over three and a half years and if I hadn't modded my .jar when I got bored of vanilla, I'd have stopped probably about three months after I started playing premium. If I hadn't moved on to multiplayer when I got bored of the mods, I'd have stopped a year after I started playing. And now, after having tried everything there is to try in the Minecraft universe and all connected to it, I've still been pretty inactive in Minecraft for half a year. My point here is, people will eventually get bored of Minecraft and if we play all our cards on making our Minecraft servers better, we'll end up as a dead community that only goes on the forums or TS to see old friends who we used to play with.

Some cleaning up is also nice in terms of organization and clarity, I see no problems there.

On the topic of name change and forum overhaul:

There are both pros and cons to these two points. I don't feel like they are completely necessary, especially when talking about the forum overhaul, but I do admit that they have their merits. The name change is more understandable in my opinion, with us moving away from Minecraft and all, it'd be logical to have a name that's not directly associated to the one game that we're moving away from. I do agree with what Groovysam brought up, the origin and history of the community are important, so perhaps not have the new name be something too far from the familiar "Blocktopia" would be a good idea. Idk, that's something that can be thought about later as well.

The forum overhaul... again, I understand where this is coming from, but I'm not so sure about this one. I get that the whole point of the overhaul is to have a clean start and move away from Minecraft, but Minecraft is not the only thing that's going on on the forums and as I've already pointed out (and Groovysam before me), the place where we came from is as important as the place we're going to. If it's possible, it'd be great to at least have the more popular stuff carry over, especially in the case of Mafia, Survivor and GotE or anything else that can't just be recreated due to the complexity of it.

As for a visual change in the forums, I'm all for it.