Why I really left Blocktopia, and why others will too.

[Notme]

I never was on TS, so I can't judge it.

Blocktopia may be like this because no server from 2011 and earlier exists now, although there are their ports.

If it was player influx, well, classic had all servers (600 or so from what I remember in golden age, and around 100 - 200 before we shut down our classic servers) on one list, while premium doesn't. Also premiu have like thousands if not tens of thousands servers.

If its commitment to servers, well I saw it getting damaged (If they were very hard committed to few servers, and never got interested of rest of them) during ungraceful servers shutdowns/derpiness.
Also long time players may just get bored of MC or be taken over by real life.

We have server stability since ungraceful shutdown of PTNT. Player influx seems to be consistent as of now.

So while our foundations are history, we are far from dying. We just don't have fire of second era.
Basically we are now Canada - large area (many servers) low density community.

As of friendliness well, you can always befriend shande or Faliara on RoF.

 

[JayJay]

What would happen if we had an idea for a whole new server? The coding is obviously going to be hard but what do when we have to re-make smp?

 

[Notme]

What would happen if we had an idea for a whole new server? The coding is obviously going to be hard but what do when we have to re-make smp?

I would root for prison/DayZ server

But that after we got 1.8 Sponge (or something) ofc.

Or server where you have couple of very large teams (Prison could fit it).

 

[Edgar Harford]

It's all essentially just social segregation, these cliques are seperating from each other at a minuscule rate, but over 3-4 years you can notice the change and the decline in social interactions with others outside these cliques. We can all safely say that this community is just a barrage of smaller communities, that have a common interest within these groups considering most of these cliques don't even play BT. Then again there are some of these cliques that do play BT, and as some have mention to me before, they tend to be in staff groups and sometimes that segregation, the seperation of staff and players can be a bad thing. It's like how sometimes players may feel alienated and feel like the staff are no more human than automated machines, filling out a slip card role.

 

[Notme]

It's all essentially just social segregation, these cliques are seperating from each other at a minuscule rate, but over 3-4 years you can notice the change and the decline in social interactions with others outside these cliques. We can all safely say that this community is just a barrage of smaller communities, that have a common interest within these groups considering most of these cliques don't even play BT. Then again there are some of these cliques that do play BT, and as some have mention to me before, they tend to be in staff groups and sometimes that segregation, the seperation of staff and players can be a bad thing. It's like how sometimes players may feel alienated and feel like the staff are no more human than automated machines, filling out a slip card role.

Is it possible to "unclique" cliques? At least ones who play Minecraft here?
For example making SMP or prison server, that would encourage a lot of teamwork?

Also if its true with staff, then talk about it with them or higher ranks.

 

[JayJay]

I would root for prison/DayZ server

But that after we got 1.8 Sponge (or something) ofc.

Or server where you have couple of very large teams (Prison could fit it).

I don't mean a prison sever, just a new server, for example Cowboys & Indians, Blockparty ect?

 

[Kordra]

I don't mean a prison sever, just a new server, for example Cowboys & Indians, Blockparty ect?

It's ultimately up to the admins. I wouldn't be trying to organize anything official at this point, if they don't want it t happen it's not going to happen.

 

[Notme]

I don't mean a prison sever, just a new server, for example Cowboys & Indians, Blockparty ect?

I just was saying example.

 

[JayJay]

It's ultimately up to the admins. I wouldn't be trying to organize anything official at this point, if they don't want it t happen it's not going to happen.

Oh ok, good to know, I wasn't organising it or suggesting it, jusk asking, thanks.

I just was saying example.

Sorry

 

[Jivvi]

one suggestion i was going to make was alterations to game rules / mechanics to encourage teams

eg more cookies for bigger houses with more people and assist kills & team buffs for aod

 

[Enderfive]

Figured I might as well chip in.

I'm not on Teamspeak a lot, in fact, I don't even have TS (not because I don't want it, but because I can't), so I very rarely even go on TS at all, so I can't really comment on the TS situation much. I will say, however, that private rooms are exactly that: private. If the people in the private room don't want you in there for the moment, then you should respect that and leave them alone, in private. So if you're wondering why a "clique" in a private room doesn't want you to join it, then you might want to think again. Public rooms should, of course, be more welcoming, but since I don't have much experience with TS, I can't really comment on the current situation in that sense.


Now, moving on to what I do have considerable amounts of experience with.

First off, the "cliques", outside TS. Honestly, I don't think it's such a big of an issue as it's portrayed to be by some people in this thread. There is a problem, perhaps, yes. For example, this demonstrates it pretty good: http://blocktopia.net/forum/threads/notice-to-all-rof-players.14831/
However, as this link also clearly demonstrates, the problem is already being acknowledged and worked on and again, the problem isn't as large in my opinion as it's being made out to be. I myself try to be fairly friendly towards new players or players I haven't met before and I certainly don't attack them. I haven't really seen anyone else do it either, except for a few rare exceptions.

I think the problem here for some people is more in the fact that perhaps they can't find people they could connect with in the community. If you have similar interests and actually try to communicate with people yourself, then you typically will find friends.

If you don't share similar interests then you're not as likely to become friends with someone and if you're not friends with someone, then obviously you won't want to talk to them as much as you do to your friends. Sure, friendliness towards people is important, but being friendly and being friends are two completely different things and you can't expect people to immediately take a liking to every single new player they meet.


As for the other highlighted issue, the one with not enough content being pumped out:

It's timeconsuming. It requires a certain amount of skills. It requires a certain amount of dedication. And yes, I agree that the staff, or at least the higher staff should have all these things at their disposal, but that doesn't change the fact that they also have to eat, sleep, work/study, they have personal lives to take care of. All that put together means that sometimes, they only have an hour or two to spend on the community, sometimes not even that. Couple that with the fact that coming up with new content is very timeconsuming (as in, you won't be able to code a server in just a week, you won't be able to build a (good) map in just a week, you might not even come up with a good idea in just a week) and there's your answer. Of course the work they do here is important as well, but it doesn't have priority over their actual lives, and I believe that's something to be respected. Remember, the staff don't get paid for what they do here, and considering the amount of work that they do actually do here, I'd say that at least I am very grateful for their service, and while I too would like more content, I also know that it's not that simple.

 

[Mia]

Private rooms were never the issue brought up in this thread. I think we can understand that people have private matters to discuss in there, I don't see why this is being brought up because it was never an issue in the first place.
Anyway you can hate me if you want for saying these things but honestly this issue needs to be thrown out there to be heard. It may not be that noticeable now but a lot can change in a few years time, for better or worse..

 

[Vatumok]

I've always been very open with the fact that the only reason I'm still hanging out here is because I still know a lot of people here. The community/people are pretty good IF you really get to know them, but because the servers are so empty it's easy to feel left out when you do not know anyone. Also, I do notice that the people here are quite elitist. Also, the next problem is that the servers currently aren't interesting enough for someone to really start playing on it. Sure, the server are of pretty good quality, but they are not known enough or simply too boring (think RoF outside of the socialising).

This all leads to the problem that it's simply not attractive for newer players. I mean, why would you join a community where servers are usually boring because there aren't enough players online or because there is not much to do.

I feel like a lot of people here are afraid of change, and want to keep going like theones/blocktopia used to be in the classic days, but anyone can see that's impossible. Back then we were unique and easy to find so we became very popular. Now our servers are not unique enough (and also not easy to find enough) to keep people here. Well, RoF is unique but way too passive gameplay.

I mean, it can stay this way, if the administrators want this, but if blocktopia really wants to become popular again, there is a lot of work to do. The most importanty is increase player density by removing certain servers (possibly temporarily). First we should be succesful with 1-3 unique servers that really attract players, then when we become more popular more (basic) servers can be added like normal SMP, Buildbox and A&T.
By increasing the player newer player flow you also solve that "clique" problem because I think this grouping now only happens because we've known eachother for so long without really new people joining.

Might type some more later and/or write down more ideas.

 

[Zelz]

Firstly, I have to agree, we do have a lot of cliques. However, a lot of them, maybe not all, are very welcoming. For example, the league players may seem really cold but actually they're really funny, welcoming people, in their own little way. Our main problem is gossiping and rumours. A lot of gossip goes around this community, unfortunately, and it causes some players to avoid others. Aside from that, often people in private rooms and such just want to be left alone with friends, and that's fine, so long as they don't snap at new players and such.

Secondly, I also agree with the content. Everything seems to be delayed and there isn't many events. I mean, the events we do have are super fun and great but we don't really have many of them. However, I do understand why. The higher staff can't dedicate their life to this community. They have other things to do, such as something as silly as another server/game they may staff to something more important such as family and real life friends. Something that could maybe help this situation, in my opinion, is having more higher up staff. This increases the ability to host more events, as there are more flexible times for people in different timezones, more people to host different events, etc. I think it could work quite well. However, as for the new content all the time, it's very tricky to come up with really good things and actually put them into the game, very often. But this is where more higher up staff could come in and help out. They could all throw their ideas together, and add more things. We could also do with more coders, just incase one can't fathom something out, of one is busy/ill.

All in all I do agree with you, I just think there are solutions to these things that could really do with putting in place.

 

[Nottykitten]

Well about the cliques thing, in my opinion it's not much of a problem. Sure not all cliques are inviting as others, but can you blame them? You can't just walk up to someone and expect them to be your best friend all of a sudden. Things take time. First you need to build a small relationship with one/more of the people in a clique before you can really be invited into a clique. For example just have fun with people from a clique on one of the servers and eventually you'll be allowed to join their shiny private room on TS since they like you.

However this process is made harder because of the kind of servers we have. Not saying the servers are bad, since i love them, but they don't really encourage playing with newer people all that much.

AoD -> Survive with or kill your friends/clique!
RoF -> Build a house and AFK with your friends/clique!
BB -> Build with your friends/clique! I mean who is going to build with some random person? Not me.
SMP -> Make a clan with your friends/clique!
TNT -> Kill everyone! Except this server isn't here

Again, nothing wrong with cliques. Though for a newer player it's hard and also might seem intimidating to join groups on these servers and will feel left out. Servers like TNT or TTT were pretty good in this case since you interract with basicly everyone. One way to make this better, is for example to have an SMP like primordia. Instead of lots of clans that exist out of friend groups, just have like 4 big clans that have to build their empire together. This encourages different people that normally would be in different clans to actually work and play together.
Pls primordia #2

 

[Kordra]

AoD -> Survive with or kill your friends/clique!
RoF -> Build a house and AFK with your friends/clique!
BB -> Build with your friends/clique! I mean who is going to build with some random person? Not me.
SMP -> Make a clan with your friends/clique!
TNT -> Kill everyone! Except this server isn't here

From a new player's standpoint

AoD -> Play a game with people you don't know and hope either you or they are social enough to befriend you.
RoF -> Build a house and AFK
BB -> Build something by yourself and have your build critiqued by someone you don't know for a rank that means nothing to you.
SMP -> Abandoned
TNT -> Non-existent

 

[Nottykitten]

From a new player's standpoint

Thats exactly what I said, only the new player has no friends/clique yet. And as I said the gameplay doesn't really encourage people interracting with others.


Also the forum games section could be a way to get to know others. I met the lovely Timdood there in the Mafia forum.

 

[Kordra]

That's exactly what I said, only the new player has no friends/clique yet. And as I said the gameplay doesn't really encourage people interacting with others.

I was agreeing with you, just showing it from the first person perspective of said new player.

 

[Sploorky]

In my eyes, the issue isn't cliques, but moreso the greater degree of difficulty to enter a clique. The less players playing on the servers = the less people to meet = the less "cliques" to join. It's far from impossible though, there are definitely people to hang around. Despite the (imo unjustified) rep it gets, the league room really is a fun place to try. You don't even have to play league if you don't want to, noone is going to force you out of the room, you should just give people in that room common courtesy, as you should any group. Plug.dj is also fairly busy, and you can find people to meet and speak to there.

Agree with you on point 2, however. On a bit of interest, how many people would attend a planned teamspeak gettogether? You don't always need a game to have a good time, it's the experience of hanging around with other people.

 

[cooliorules]

SMP -> Abandoned

Not exactly. The last SMP was closed and we're waiting for all the new bukkit/sponge/whatever-we're-gonna-use to be available so that we can have a nice updated server, instead of something that's thrown together so that there's something for us to play which is buggy and not well thought out

 

[Nottykitten]

Agree with you on point 2, however. On a bit of interest, how many people would attend a planned teamspeak gettogether? You don't always need a game to have a good time, it's the experience of hanging around with other people.

Karaoke best event ever.

 

[Sploorky]

Karaoke best event ever.

we did karaoke on meeting 100.

we did karaoke on meeting 150.

in two week's it'll be meeting 200.

please, admins it's basically tradition.

 

[Jayfeather]

Alright, time to talk about the biggest 'clique', or 'social group', or whatever it is. We all want to.
The LoL clique! Most people in this group aren't overly friendly in general, post overused and sarcastic things consistently and regularly, and have driven the notion of 'satire' from amusing up to downright irritating. Sure, you can have your own little group of LoL players, but it doesn't mean you can attack other people, such as harassing people over using private rooms simply because your clique has outgrown the maximum. A lot of them can be as unpleasant as all fuck when they want to be (Looking at you, Haysagar) and show a hostile front towards newer people, or people they mightn't like so much. Something something SnapFlash. Frankly, if you at least made the effort to be welcoming, that would be swell.


On a positive note, though, it's good that the community is branching out, even under unofficial thingymabobs. As it is we exist as a kind of general gaming community, we just happen to host a handful of Minecraft servers, and the occasional Gmod or TF2 server.

Really, while the castle of Blocktopia itself may be crumbling slightly, the community itself is keeping it held together, and isn't showing any signs of caving in.

You post as if you know anything at all. All I can see is a whining child in this post. Contrary to popular belief we actually like interacting with people, hence why we don't necessarily support private rooms. Like I said If we're not overly friendly it's because of an age gap or because we're being passive aggressively attacked just like this.
Stop talking about snap flash. None of you on this forum have any idea what it was like. There are no words in the English language to describe the things we had to deal with as a result from that. There's a reason he's global perma'd. If we seem cold it's because we might be busy in a game - getting to know people isn't immediate

 

[Pafrick]

as far as im aware FreakyCupcake and iiDeathCookies and i are in ts rooms alot are we a clique? anyways its always sad to see a BT member go even if they have a valid reason

Spoiler: contains a sware

 

[Jayfeather]

I had a big argument, but there's no use flaming the thread with huge rants and counter-rants. I drift around the community also, and speak for yourself, but my personal experience with the league clique is not wholly pleasant.

Right there's no use unless you get the last word right