Community Community News - 26 August 2016

[Vatumok]

The overhaul was a nice symbolic idea, but definitely one of the worst decisions made. Branching out to other games doesn't just work, there's no way to bring people in the community, TTT being a rare case. Whether you like or not we are a minecraft focussed community at the moment. We were dying until tnm and Comp revived it by released AoD2, a minecraft server. Sure we can work on expanding out to other games where possible; that's why I am not 100% set on going back to Blocktopia but I'm not letting what we have suffer because "we are a gaming community". I will not talk about the state of TTT out of respect for Inf but they mostly register to get some bonus and then not contribute much anyway. On minecraft we need to add more incentive to register on the forums too because there are quite some new players joining, especially for RoF.

Why can't we just embrace that we are a minecraft focussed community that plays other games together and provised servers (like TTT) where possible. It's pointless to claim that we are a gaming community if that gets us nowhere and only hurts our progress in Minecraft, where we have a name. Now, I'm not set on going back to Blocktopia, but it's not such a bad idea as you all make out of it. Blocktopia was a huge name in minecraft, and if it can help us a lot with advertising then I am willing to consider it. On /r/minecraft today there was an article about JTE/beginning of lava survival on the frontpage - we are able to profit more of that as Blocktopia than EscapeRestart. To me it's a huge question if staying with a more global name is worth it over having a big MC name because that's really where almost all of our shit is.

 

[Hex]

my point was that it's hardly fair to say that ttt has clearly failed, as from what i see, the opposite is true and it's one of, if not the most successful server of our last few years when we take a look at the post-overhaul time as a whole

I can agree, TTT isn't a failure. GMOD is a very good place to get players, and it has gotten new players. I just don't think these players are (mostly) in the actual community of ER.

 

[JtTorso]

Soo what you are saying is before all of this we never got forum members too? Because I fondly remember the introduction always having new messages in it and actually seeing them stay for the most part almost 2 years ago. (sorry if i misunderstand)

Now what I see are posts that almost seem half assed, just to get their "free points" in TTT. They never stay on the forums, or if they do its for a couple of days and then they disappear. The top 3 posters in Introductions were last seen at the beginning of this month, around the time they posted those introductions.

That's not what I said at all. My point was that people aren't staying on the forums if they're coming from TTT or Create, no one is staying, but at least with TTT people are telling us where they came from.

 

[Deleted member 4601]

expect polls and opinion threads about it soon.

Your opinions matter, folks. We're not gonna shove anything down your throat, so calm down =)

 

[Hex]

That's not what I said at all. My point was that people aren't staying on the forums if they're coming from TTT or Create, no one is staying, but at least with TTT people are telling us where they came from.

No one is staying saying where they "came from" in MC servers because we literally have 0 reasons for anybody to join the forums.

I see new players almost everyday on create, and yes, not every single one of them stays, but most of them do, and I see them almost everyday on Create now. No one joins the forums though, from Create, because we don't have anything special for you when you do sign up, so ergo they dont have a chance to say where they came from. The only thing we give out rewards for is voting (which surprise surprise more people do now since there is a reward).

If we had any reward to sign up for forums, i bet you would see the introduction posts go up and see more new accounts popping up. You guys still have the lead, because you have an incitive to sign people up, so they see the forums, they see the introductory posts, they feel the need to post, etc. We literally have one announcement that states we have a forum, which doesn't really help at all since there is absolutely no reason to just check out the forums.

Either way, I feel like its more that the rewards pull in more people to the forums, not TTT itself. Not trying to talk shit about TTT itself though. Infected runs a great server it seems and cares immensely about it. It pulls in players and i see it relatively full for the most part of the day, but i dont think most of those players do anything with the community at all because a lot of gmod players just join and leave after a while. (Previous GMOD server owner myself, it was a struggle to get a good community). We obviously have a good hook from TTT, but we still need something to incite players to stay.

All in all, I misunderstood your first response anyways (my bad).

 

[Notme]

n /r/minecraft today there was an article about JTE/beginning of lava survival on the frontpage - we are able to profit more of that as Blocktopia than EscapeRestart. To me it's a huge question if staying with a more global name is worth it over having a big MC name because that's really where almost all of our shit is.

Hmmm looks like we have chance for some new people.
Heres thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/4zrbpq/the_secret_history_of_minecraft/

Edit: Advertisers could raid that place.

 

[Psycho]

Branching out to other games doesn't just work, there's no way to bring people in the community, TTT being a rare case.

Extending the community with other gaming servers can work, it just takes time, effort, and lots of dedication to make it happen. I'm certain that there are other games suitable for expanding the community, you just need to research and look into them a bit more.

We were dying until tnm and Comp revived it by released AoD2, a minecraft server.

Hey hey, don't forget the state that RoF was in and how a few dedicated staff revived it.

It's pointless to claim that we are a gaming community if that gets us nowhere and only hurts our progress in Minecraft, where we have a name.

What's pointless is reverting back to the Blocktopia name and thinking that it will save this community. Yeah, Blocktopia was a nice name, but that name is history, just like how this community moved beyond TheOne's name. Thinking about it, what was the state of Blocktopia before we transitioned to the EscapeRestart name? Wasn't the playercount on servers low and the community base low as well?

 

[Rune]

-Removed Chaotic reply, no point replying back.

Anyways, I agree with what Psycho says entirely; we never even tried to actually branch out except for TTT. If you think that we failed in expanding without even trying then there isn't a point. No, what we should be doing is actually attempting to bring in more players from other games. If we actually attempted then maybe we can find more games which are compatible with our community, such as TF2 or even Starbound. It just needs a can do attitude which I am confident that you Admins have, but not used and to just pick the easy route out.

We were in the same place with Blocktopia and now we are in the same place now.

 

[Friendy]

Right, this is all heresay, nobody knows what will happen with either outcome - the idea to go back to Blocktopia and change some of our server names is just that; an idea. It isn't set in stone, we're considering many options for many different things that are also not set in stone, so discussion will most likely be brought up in the near future regarding the path that the Community Admins have decided is best for this community.

 

[Hex]

-Removed Chaotic reply, no point replying back.

Anyways, I agree with what Psycho says entirely; we never even tried to actually branch out except for TTT. If you think that we failed in expanding without even trying then there isn't a point. No, what we should be doing is actually attempting to bring in more players from other games. If we actually attempted then maybe we can find more games which are compatible with our community, such as TF2 or even Starbound. It just needs a can do attitude which I am confident that you Admins have, but not used and to just pick the easy route out.

We were in the same place with Blocktopia and now we are in the same place now.

Hes right though, the whole "If you guys change i'm gonna make a campaign and go against you" is just childish. It gets nothing done, and just causes more stuff than what was already going to happen. That's not how you deal with problems like this, and it shouldn't come to a campaign against the decision anyways. Its a community decisions, and if the most part of the community wants the name change, it's gonna happen. So if the name change were to happen, who would you even go against? The part of the community that voted for a name change?

 

[Rune]

Hes right though, the whole "If you guys change i'm gonna make a campaign and go against you" is just childish. It gets nothing done, and just causes more stuff than what was already going to happen. That's not how you deal with problems like this, and it shouldn't come to a campaign against the decision anyways. Its a community decisions, and if the most part of the community wants the name change, it's gonna happen. So if the name change were to happen, who would you even go against? The part of the community that voted for a name change?

So you are basically calling everyone who disagreed with the name change to EscapeRestart children then. Anyone is allowed to disagree what happens. And how do you know that most people want the change back? From what it seems, it seems like a equal split, with most of the staff saying yes and other players saying no.

It unbelievable how you go ahead and continue this argument when I removed my original statement to stop it continuing on. Any reply I do anyways will look bad and flamy so I'm not going to reply to any further statements about this.

 

[Hex]

So you are basically calling everyone who disagreed with the name change to EscapeRestart children then. Anyone is allowed to disagree what happens. And how do you know that most people want the change back? From what it seems, it seems like a equal split, with most of the staff saying yes and other players saying no.

It unbelievable how you go ahead and continue this argument when I removed my original statement to stop it continuing on.

I'm not calling everybody children lol. I'm calling the people who think that "campaigning" is gonna solve anything, a little childish, because that idea never works and is just a childish idea, please don't say i'm calling people childish when I'm saying that the IDEA is childish. How do you know most people don't want the change if I don't know how many people do want the change?

 

[ChocoFox]

Date: 8 February, 2015
Post URL: http://escaperestart.com/forum/threads/blocktopia-build-the-next-chapter.17964/#post-349023

 

[Rune]

Date: 8 February, 2015
Post URL: http://escaperestart.com/forum/threads/blocktopia-build-the-next-chapter.17964/#post-349023

Woah, I never even knew that Nill said something similar to me LOL

 

[Comp]

Guys we're not doing another overhaul. All this is, is trying to get ourselves out there.

Googling Rituals of Fire brings up Escape Restart, but the same is not true for AoD or Create. Therefore, it would be a good idea to try to change name of these servers to something which can be found easier in search engines. (bing?)
As far as renaming the community goes, I personally dislike the current name, but it would be a bad idea after the disaster is caused last time to change back to Blocktopia.
What I think would be useful however is adding a redirect for Minecraft users connecting to blocktopia.net to lobby.escaperestart.com so that our old IP also works (I've seen a fair few people join and be like 'Oh! This is blocktopia now! I couldn't find the server').

 

[sessybessy]

Hmm drama, I love tl;dr stuff. Atleast I can come on the forums and read stuff now!

 

[Hex]

Guys we're not doing another overhaul. All this is, is trying to get ourselves out there.

Geekenstein see, don't wanna say I told ya so but.... I told ya so

 

[sessybessy]

Geekenstein see, don't wanna say I told ya so but.... I told ya so

(ง ͠° ͟ل͜ ͡°)ง FITE ME (ง'̀-'́)ง
̿'̿'\̵͇̿̿\з=( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)=ε/̵͇̿̿/'̿̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ ̿̿'̿'\̵͇̿̿\з=( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)=ε/̵͇̿̿/'̿̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ ̿̿'̿'\̵͇̿̿\з=( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)=ε/̵͇̿̿/'̿̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ ̿

 

[3nd3rslayer]

Hey guys, sorry if my reply don't take in consideration or include all the things you said, because to be honest I can't be bothered to read all of the things you posted

We are not saying that escape restart will definitely change to blocktopia and neither are we saying that create will definitely change into build box. Vat said he was going to make some discussion threads so don't go under assumptions so quickly and chill out. As for aod, we might be changing it as it is the name of a very famous movie (my child hood movie).
This of course, is for advertising purposes as it is very hard advertising the way the community is right now.

Since we practically changed this into a discussion thread, I'll just add in something quick.
Congratulations:
Friendy
Sircomp
and all those other scrubs I forgot to mention!

 

[Mastersten]

funny how all the work we achieved and important decisions we made will be for nothing, no offense but isnt the key to go forward instead of going back? Sorry to say but in my opinion this is the beginning of the end.

To explain this to the people who see this as confusing:

The overhaul was done for a reason, minecraft was, and afaik still is, declining, the wanderers that were looking for a nice place to stay have already found their spot years ago.

Now it hasnt changed so thats why they started the important overhaul to make us more a broad community then just minecraft. It was an decision to increase in players and in my opinion it was so important in what we are now.

Going back because people say "it used to be good in the days we were blocktopia" isnt gonna solve the declining and this will only split up our player base between TTT and minecraft players, is this what we want?

And when were talking about multigaming, I've have rarely seen any poll, discussion thread and other analystic related stuff from the CA's.

So yeah to summarize this: going back will not make this better, even worse, it will split our playerbase up and thats why I call it the beginning of the end.

 

[Jayfeather]

funny how all the work we achieved and important decisions we made will be for nothing, no offense but isnt the key to go forward instead of going back? Sorry to say but in my opinion this is the beginning of the end.

we didnt change a thing - that was the 2 year long debate we've had. if we wanna switch back literally nothing will change except we can advertise better.

 

[Psycho]

Googling Rituals of Fire brings up Escape Restart, but the same is not true for AoD or Create. Therefore, it would be a good idea to try to change name of these servers to something which can be found easier in search engines.

This argument that googling "Rituals of Fire" yields more results can be used for "Buildbox" as well, which unfortunately leads to a Coding site.

Spoiler

 

[IQD]

On a more likely search of "minecraft lava survival", our servers also come up first after 3 youtube videos, albeit using results from 2015. Same goes for just "lava survival".

 

[Infected_alien8_]

Even if changing our name to Blocktopia and advertising ourselves as a Minecraft focused community makes it easier to get us more players, do the majority of us actually /want/ to be a big and mighty Minecraft community? I thought that's the whole reason we changed to a General Gaming Community - because most of us have moved on from Minecraft. I get people want to be all big and popular again but realistically are most people here going to be happy if this place is a big and popular Minecraft community?

If we change to Blocktopia we are limiting our options for branching into other games, which we can do in the future should interest rise for one. If we change back to a Minecraft focused community we're going to have forums filled with Minecraft players, who are usually younger in age than a lot of other games. Do most of us actually want that?

I vote keep our name as Escape Restart. We need to allow ourselves the options of branching out into other games and being attractive to people who are coming from those other games in the future. I'm certainly not happy with re-naming TTT to Blocktopia since even voting on Minecraft maps on TTT sometimes gets you a whole bunch of random guests putting on squeeky voices saying "Miiiiinecraaaaaft, don't vote Miiiiinecraaaaaft", so having a name linked to it wouldn't be a great idea lol.

 

[Hex]

Even if changing our name to Blocktopia and advertising ourselves as a Minecraft focused community makes it easier to get us more players, do the majority of us actually /want/ to be a big and mighty Minecraft community? I thought that's the whole reason we changed to a General Gaming Community - because most of us have moved on from Minecraft. I get people want to be all big and popular again but realistically are most people here going to be happy if this place is a big and popular Minecraft community?

If we change to Blocktopia we are limiting our options for branching into other games, which we can do in the future should interest rise for one. If we change back to a Minecraft focused community we're going to have forums filled with Minecraft players, who are usually younger in age than a lot of other games. Do most of us actually want that?

I vote keep our name as Escape Restart. We need to allow ourselves the options of branching out into other games and being attractive to people who are coming from those other games in the future. I'm certainly not happy with re-naming TTT to Blocktopia since even voting on Minecraft maps on TTT sometimes gets you a whole bunch of random guests putting on squeeky voices saying "Miiiiinecraaaaaft, don't vote Miiiiinecraaaaaft", so having a name linked to it wouldn't be a great idea lol.

From my experience owning a DarkRP server for 2 years, there are a lot of kiddos on GMOD too.. When we were a minecraft community was it full of little kids that were annoying? I've always thought we've had a more than average maturity level in our community since I've joined 2013-now. People are gonna rip on Minecraft, its a joke, a meme. I could say the same about gmod and its toxic playerbase. I choose not to though, because I know its a joke that gmod is toxic, and that it really isn't like that if you find the correct server with good rules.

EDIT: Though I do agree I think we should factor other games into this, im only for the create name change tbh.