Welcome to Operation Nasal Crayon Removal 2

[Malcovent]

​

[JUSTIFY]Hi all, and welcome to the planning section for what we'll tag as Operation Nasal Crayon Removal 2 (Just Crayola for short) for now (theme tune) . For those of you curious about the name I think the first Operation Nasal Crayon Removal project related to Primordias creation.

I think it's important that we identify what we want to achieve with this overhaul before we discuss the details,[/JUSTIFY]

• [JUSTIFY]Contrary to habit, we are not trying to expand the community - quite the opposite, we going trying to cut down our immediate responsibilities.[/JUSTIFY]
• [JUSTIFY]We are going to get rid of assets we're keeping purely for sentimentality rather than being integral to the community.[/JUSTIFY]
• [JUSTIFY]We are going to come to terms with a series of difficult decisions that should have been made in years prior.[/JUSTIFY]
• [JUSTIFY]We are going to establish necessary groundwork/infrastructure for expanding the community into other games in future. Both hosted and unhosted.[/JUSTIFY]
• We are going to do a bit of spring cleaning (Removal of long-absent staff, etc. )

Administrator Server-Directors

It's possible we may lose members in this overhaul and may make ourselves somewhat unpopular to some players/staff. But we can no longer sustain the current state of Blocktopia - whilst we could go to the extent of trying to re-design every server to be popular/advertising extensively, I imagine we'll still run into funding issues in near future.

In this section you are welcome to make suggestions and discuss original suggestions, we will start compiling a list of accepted suggestions as part of a to-do list, admins will focus on working through this to-do list wherever they can.

I'll open up the floor to the first handful of suggestions most likely tomorrow.

 

[SparklyMuffinz]

Posted my questions here since... I think this is the proper place to do it now?

Off-Topic:
These threads keep on looking beautiful, I highly approve the name and theme song.

More On Topic:
Some things I just wanted to throw out there for discussion:

1. We agreed to lowering our player cap for now (not to get on your cases ).
2. In terms of the renaming... after reading the responses from the overhaul thread, I sort of agreed with keeping part of our name (for example, someone threw out there "Blocktopia Gaming"). It's different but sort of the same? Or perhaps my attempt at trying to please everyone... Regardless, my question is: what is our goal for the name change? Are we going for something entirely brand-spakin' new like TheOnes -> Blocktopia?

3. [...]we are not trying to expand the community - quite the opposite, we going trying to cut down our immediate responsibilities.

   I'm just wondering how this fits in with if we were to expand to other games? Also where will our focus lie when we're choosing outside games (F2P?)
4. I believe when 2 & 3 are answered, then we can plan on a logo/theme.
5. And if we are expanding (which I assume will start relatively soon towards the new year), when would be a good game plan to decide on which servers we are intending to keep? Also will we be able to advertise the servers we have left? And when are we planning on advertising RoF - if not done already?

We will lose players unfortunately, but when I think about the countless times we heard "Blocktopia is dying", we gotta be given some time and credit as we try something new to fix that problem. I'm hoping we'll get that chance before anyone flips and leave.

 

[JtTorso]

SparklyMuffinz In regards to the name change, I believe I recall someone suggesting we could have an overall community name and still call our Minecraft division Blocktopia, so essentially it would be X and X gaming community presents: Blocktopia. I think it might've been superstein who said this after one of our meetings.

 

[RyanDodd]

I'll admit, I haven't been the most active on reading the overhaul thread. I think I mentioned it before, but the thing that concerns me most is cutting down to just a couple Minecraft servers. You guys are probably already tired of hearing it, but I feel as though it's a major concern shared by much of the community. We have a good server selection currently with several different basic gameplay types (building, lava survival, PvP, and SMP) and things like Infection and A&T. My suggestion would be to consolidate to four basic servers covering the PvP, building, lava survival, and SMP game modes. Cut out any other servers and a core aspect of gameplay is gone. Consolidate is the key word, as we could do a sort of PvP-Infection combo server and add some minigames to a server or perhaps keep A&T for an event server. Basically add aspects from A&T and Infection to other servers to make their loss less painful. Staff from those two servers could possibly be allowed to staff the remaining core servers (I have no problem bringing most of the Infection team to AoD if they were willing to come). In the future we could assess the possibility of bringing TNT back as a full-time server.

It doesn't sound like cutting two servers will do much, but those are the main gamemodes that people will want to play. An event server doesn't hurt now and then either. I think the main thing I'm trying to say is that we shouldn't shift our focus from Minecraft. Sure, a lot of the community plays other games but one thing that almost everyone has in common is that we all play Minecraft. I see Minecraft being the base for everything and the other games branching out from that.

I apologize for the fairly long post on a single topic, but I feel it had to be said.

 

[Malcovent]

I'll admit, I haven't been the most active on reading the overhaul thread. I think I mentioned it before, but the thing that concerns me most is cutting down to just a couple Minecraft servers. You guys are probably already tired of hearing it, but I feel as though it's a major concern shared by much of the community. We have a good server selection currently with several different basic gameplay types (building, lava survival, PvP, and SMP) and things like Infection and A&T. My suggestion would be to consolidate to four basic servers covering the PvP, building, lava survival, and SMP game modes. Cut out any other servers and a core aspect of gameplay is gone. Consolidate is the key word, as we could do a sort of PvP-Infection combo server and add some minigames to a server or perhaps keep A&T for an event server. Basically add aspects from A&T and Infection to other servers to make their loss less painful. Staff from those two servers could possibly be allowed to staff the remaining core servers (I have no problem bringing most of the Infection team to AoD if they were willing to come). In the future we could assess the possibility of bringing TNT back as a full-time server.

It doesn't sound like cutting two servers will do much, but those are the main gamemodes that people will want to play. An event server doesn't hurt now and then either. I think the main thing I'm trying to say is that we shouldn't shift our focus from Minecraft. Sure, a lot of the community plays other games but one thing that almost everyone has in common is that we all play Minecraft. I see Minecraft being the base for everything and the other games branching out from that.

I apologize for the fairly long post on a single topic, but I feel it had to be said.

I respect what you're saying but there's a very high potential that forcing ourselves to consolidate gamemodes will both take a while and harm the gameplay of another server unnecessarily.

The very bottom line is we're almost at the end of the month and only have $20/$125 - and this has been happening repeatedly for the last quarter year. If servers aren't bringing in enough players anymore to sustain themselves - It needs to be understood that the gamemode may not be seen as necessarily fun enough to draw in players.

A few other issues spurn me to move from Minecraft and look outward -

• We've just had our community put to a halt for quarter of a year due to the actions of a single developer (Bukkit), it's an incredibly fragile game to invest into, often we find that Mojang updates either flatout break our servers or mean we have to wait a month for an update.
• The servers are ridiculously unstable, I think me and dirtcake have discussed Bukkit being far too fragile before. I find that I spend half my time restarting them or tending to them.

This isn't to say "Lets abandon minecraft" - more "Lets not try keep servers just for sentimentalities sake as its incredibly expensive, If they're doing badly and we're not convinced they'll do well soon - axe them."


It's fine to suggest trying to maintain the dedicated server ( Which, if we're keeping more than 2 Minecraft servers we may as well anyway) - but quite frankly if we don't cancel them soon, we'll lose access to the entire dedi and all servers will go down, and then we'll start this process of cutting servers anyway.

SparklyMuffinz In regards to the name change, I believe I recall someone suggesting we could have an overall community name and still call our Minecraft division Blocktopia, so essentially it would be X and X gaming community presents: Blocktopia. I think it might've been superstein who said this after one of our meetings.

I quite like this idea, but if we did this - I'd still want to present the servers as (New Names) (Server Name), So for example Potato Gamers Rituals of Fire, rather than Blocktopia Rituals of Fire. So I'm not quite sure where we'd fit this in - Other than forum category name/referring to our minecraft servers as "Blocktopia Division?"

 

[Malcovent]

Posted my questions here since... I think this is the proper place to do it now?

Off-Topic:
These threads keep on looking beautiful, I highly approve the name and theme song.

More On Topic:
Some things I just wanted to throw out there for discussion:

1. We agreed to lowering our player cap for now (not to get on your cases ).
2. In terms of the renaming... after reading the responses from the overhaul thread, I sort of agreed with keeping part of our name (for example, someone threw out there "Blocktopia Gaming"). It's different but sort of the same? Or perhaps my attempt at trying to please everyone... Regardless, my question is: what is our goal for the name change? Are we going for something entirely brand-spakin' new like TheOnes -> Blocktopia?
3. 
   
   I'm just wondering how this fits in with if we were to expand to other games? Also where will our focus lie when we're choosing outside games (F2P?)
4. I believe when 2 & 3 are answered, then we can plan on a logo/theme.
5. And if we are expanding (which I assume will start relatively soon towards the new year), when would be a good game plan to decide on which servers we are intending to keep? Also will we be able to advertise the servers we have left? And when are we planning on advertising RoF - if not done already?

We will lose players unfortunately, but when I think about the countless times we heard "Blocktopia is dying", we gotta be given some time and credit as we try something new to fix that problem. I'm hoping we'll get that chance before anyone flips and leave.

1.) We did but, this (somewhat) takes priority for the time being over sorting that, though we'll probably do it as part of shifting things about anyway.

2.) I think my current stance is that a new name will give a fresh feeling to the overhaul, the cherry on the cake if you like. I understand everyone's attraction to the old name but I really think we need to go all-in if we want to restructure the community.

3.) We'll discuss what games we want to move to in due course, though I'm still deciding how we want to approach this (Whether we want to outline a series of games to move into just after overhaul. Ideally we should be opening servers because we as staff enjoy the game, not because we feel compelled to0).

5.) Undetermined, I'd like to be knee-deep into this change by 2015 but that's a pretty strict timeline, so we'll see how we get on. Realistically there is nothing stopping servers advertising now - I can't think of a single resource we have save access to the twitter feed that you also don't have. If we're referring to the plan of an independent advertising team, that'll have to come a little later down the line I'm afraid as to say my plate is full of responsibilities currently would be an understatement -- the metaphorical responsibility gravy is now dripping down my trousers off the side of said plate.

 

[Prizyms]

Are we keeping the same forums and rebranding them (archiving all the old threads) or opening up new ones with the databases cleared? I'd be fine with either.

NB I would suggest we keep the blocktopia.net domain for a little while afterwards to redirect to the new website.

 

[superstein]

Are we keeping the same forums and rebranding them (archiving all the old threads) or opening up new ones with the databases cleared? I'd be fine with either.

NB I would suggest we keep the blocktopia.net domain for a little while afterwards to redirect to the new website.

We won't just delete everything, likely save and archive a lot of it if possible.

 

[Malcovent]

Posted a few preliminary threads red-ringing big issues, there's a few more that'll come up once we've decided factors like servers opening/closing, for example - whether we keep the dedicated server or not, but I think it's best to save that until we know more about our server lineup.

 

[Malcovent]

Forgot to add - if you have a suggestion for the overhaul by all means, throw it in a new suggestions thread.

 

[Malcovent]

Triple post, and a glorious one at that. Just to note that - I am away from tomorrow evening until next monday.

But more importantly - if Directors have any concerns or suggestions, now is the time to raise them. I'll be starting to approve/decline the first wave of ideas upon return.

 

[superstein]

If there's any areas where you feel you can contribute, please do so! We should start making some headway and begin to finalize some of the smaller stuff while making progress on the larger stuff. Like Malcovent said, we should see if we can get some stuff set in stone by Monday.

Don't be afraid to go against the majority opinion, all feedback is important, and compromises can always be made.

Server-Directors Administrator

 

[superstein]

While we're at it anyone against the idea of opening this subforum up to the public to view (read-only) after we announce our plans once we're at a stage where we're ready to open it up for public opinion? I think it'd help with letting everyone know our thought processes here and to be more transparent - the most transparent we can be here.

 

[Malcovent]

While we're at it anyone against the idea of opening this subforum up to the public to view (read-only) after we announce our plans once we're at a stage where we're ready to open it up for public opinion? I think it'd help with letting everyone know our thought processes here and to be more transparent - the most transparent we can be here.

I agree with this, once we finish going through approving what core changes we want to adopt (Name change, etc).

 

[SparklyMuffinz]

While we're at it anyone against the idea of opening this subforum up to the public to view (read-only) after we announce our plans once we're at a stage where we're ready to open it up for public opinion? I think it'd help with letting everyone know our thought processes here and to be more transparent - the most transparent we can be here.

Haaai, 2 weeks late response:
Sort of scary but cool, haha. This is literally all our thoughts written down so I don't see why not? It's literally showing how we reached our decisions which is a step towards full communication!