[Expanding the NerdNu community]

Y'all need to try SMITE, which is like League of Legends but better, with a less toxic community and a third-person perspective.

[Payday 2 campaign]

I also play pretty regularly, so I'm down to play. Generally I play at the same times as Eehee.

[Server Tech Admins]

Isn't this exactly the same thing that the techs do anyway? I don't see much point in differentiating each tech for a couple of reasons; firstly that'd require us getting even more techs and we're very hesitant about that now, secondly I think techs would end up being a server tech for each server anyway. I don't see the benefit on changing the tech's name to fit a specific server if they're going to continue doing the same work.

 

This is the reason it was decided against the last few times it's been proposed, and I agree with the logic here.

[On Survival Administration]

I don't believe that not being able to jump on Mumble is honestly that big of a hindrance to being able to work my head admin duties.

 

As mentioned in the OP, I personally believe that you would be more in touch with the playerbase if you could make time to pass through Mumble a few times a week and chat with the players. We may be many levels of bureaucracy below, but that's where the raw, unfiltered thoughts and opinions happen.

 

While this is nice to be able to do, it's also taking an admin away from his/her work (i.e. doing admin request that are only able to be done by an admin).

 

While unrelated to the OP it is part of your post, so I will mention that I also personally believe that more "admin only" work could actually be done by the moderators.

[On S and Moving Forward]

That being said, we have no plans at this time to publish any public information on our current revision plans or participate in public meetings to discuss how the new S revision should be built. Ultimately the S admin team requires the latitude to craft the gameplay of S with community suggestions, but not community interference. When we have a better idea of what our plans our, and have had the time to internally review it with the rest of Nerd staff, a public post will follow for everyone to discuss what they feel about it.

 

I'll be brutally honest, here. This has probably broken the record for the fastest cautious optimism to semi pessimism about a staff addition turned into unfiltered disappointment for players. Initially there was cautious optimism and the posts were existing problems and guarding against survival spiralling even further than it already has, but now we know. Not only, as TornadoHorse pointed out, has there been minimal work done on the ideas despite hyping them up a lot, there's no intention to get preliminary feedback. You're not Valve. You're not developing VAC. People want to have a hand in shaping it because they're the people who the server is for - the players.

 

Read this thread, then you should probably make some plans to have some chats. You're doing the opposite of what everybody is suggesting. The point of sharing it with the people who will be playing on it is to get their feedback before you start basing other ideas of those ideas. The more time you invest in an idea that may potentially have zero turnout (which has happened before), the more difficult it becomes to change your plans.

 

If you just want a server for you, let us know and we'll most probably go somewhere else. We're not expecting a democracy, we're expecting you to just listen to the concerns, take them on board, and most importantly act on them and tell us how you're going to act on them. Currently it feels like anything that is said goes straight into a memory hole.

[On Survival Administration]

 

So now i'm not a "survival core player." good to know i guess. 

 

I started on S, and other than one rev where i built an Iron farm on P (while simultaneously playing and building on S during the revs that overlapped that one PvE rev) I have pretty much played exclusively on S. I have frequently been in the top 5 on usage for S and have had several revs where i had over 1000 hours logged. I have built quite a few huge builds single handedly including a full size arena that was used for the subsequent S rev. Many of my builds have been near spawn forcing me to either use diplomacy or pvp to defend myself. I have built many xp, mob, and iron grinders, all public, to try and encourage pvp. I've helped out new players with advice and gear to get them started. I even built a pvp kitting station that would give out food, weapons, pearls, and arrows to encourage pvp and spent many hours gathering resources to keep it stocked.  I've played on S for every revision since i bought minecraft and joined during rev 15.(incidentally I found Nerd.nu from the link on /r/minecraft and S was the first server I ever played on)

 

Since becoming Admin, I admit my usage stats have dropped, Do you know why? Yes, partially because I have had IRL stuff come up(such as work which has me getting up at 4:15 every morning and not getting home until after 6:15 at night) but also because I spend a large amount of time performing admin duties that take away from my play time. If I look at my personal statistics for this rev in minecraft, I have been logged onto the server enough to be in the top 20 easily, but as the usage stats don't log AFK time, it doesn''t show the hours spent combing logs and querying logblock for modreqs and moderating duties. None of this shows the amount of time spent doing admin duties out of game.

 

What does a player have to do to be considered a "survival server core player?"

 

 

At the risk of this post being an opinion piece, I submit that the following would make you a 'non-core' player. Note that by these standards I'm most certainly not a core survival player either.

 

1. Consistent playtime on the server. You state your job is keeping you from doing so and, while I feel like you mentioning your oh-so-long working hours sound like "I'm better than you because I work longer hours than you", it's unfortunately pretty much the major telling point. You don't have time to play - you're not a core player.

 

2. Lack of communication / involvement with the core player base. Like it or not, there is an existing core player base and, again like it or not (and I'd venture that you're definitely in the 'not' camp), it contains most of the aforementioned "boiz" from the OP. That circle has grown and shrunk over time, and it's hardly non-inclusive. Those players are online every day each talking and playing on the servers, as well as communicating in Mumble. I played when you were at the "peak" of your involvement as a player with the server and I'm fairly sure I never even saw you in chat. Silently building something and then logging off does not a core involved player make.

 

From your end it doesn't sound like something you can change. It's difficult to snip your work hours if your job requires you to work those hours, making it difficult to find the time to play on the server. Likewise, you mentioned that you simply don't enjoy playing on the server - how can you be considered a core player if you don't enjoy doing it? That makes sense for some things, but not for a video game community.

 

Overall, realistically, the fact you're not a core S player is trivial if the other two points are resolved. It is, however, a major telling point when it seems that what originally started out as one offside server administrator alongside draykhar and Tharine (Mrloud15 - an addition I and many others very vocally opposed), has metastasised across the entire administration team until nobody actually plays on survival, they just "administrate" it and "think about" it. The lack of being a core player is largely tied into point two - you need to have your communication channels open.

[On Survival Administration]

As the original thread was closed, I spoke with the administrator who closed it (Cyotie911) and it was agreed that a new topic could be formed as long as the topic is adhered to.
 

IRC conversation I had with Cyotie911 for posterity:

<Cyotie911bot> If you have questions that you would like answered, please just directly message an S admin or any head directly
<Aeoxic> Cyotie911bot: That is not how it works, and that's never how it's worked.
<Aeoxic> Why is that the ruling now?
<Aeoxic> Normally you're all for having things open and transparent.
<Aeoxic> Why all of a sudden is this not allowed.
<Aypop> Cyotie911bot, is a mumble channel alright with you?
<Aeoxic> Trigger words 'drama' and 'witch-hunting' are nonrelevant. Please use other terms.
<Aypop> I remember a while back, Mrloud15 had a public mumble channel setup to address grievances.
<Bmx> Cyotie911bot: I made the thread to express the issues I feel are going on and to speak about them. You are now oppressing said ideals and trying to "shut us up". I don't appreciate the fact that we have tried our best to make progress however you still don't see it that way.
<Cyotie911bot> Bmx, I didn't close the topic because anyone was being targeted.  I closed this thread because the comments in the thread were starting to become... well "quit touchin the poop crock, he looks for trouble a lot"
<Aeoxic> Cyotie911bot: Then I will start a new topic, is that okay?
<Aeoxic> Your justification is that it deviated from the OP, which I agree with.
<Four_Down> If you felt that comment wasn't appropriate, why didn't you remove it?
<roastnewt> there was a single off topic comment in a huge thread of productive stuff
<Aeoxic> I would like my questions, which are the questions of apparently at least fifteen other people, answered.
<Aeoxic> It's not hard. I'm not asking for a poem.
<Cyotie911bot> and the original reason for the thread.  "why was the newest S admin picked" was answered in a different thread days ago.
<Four_Down> Why write off a whole thread with loads of productive content because you felt one comment over stepped the mark
<Aeoxic> Cyotie911bot: I don't think you read my post.
<Aeoxic> Primarily because I address exactly that.
<Bmx> Cyotie911bot: So you had to lock the thread? You couldn't just hide the post and ask the person to calm down and to write a reply that was better suited?
<Cyotie911bot> I haven't had time to respond.
<Cyotie911bot> I'm multitasking
<Four_Down> Correct, and since then a whole range of new, productive comments have been posted
<Aeoxic> Cyotie911bot: I understand that, because I am too. Can I repost the thread with my post as an OP and request that it sticks to *that* topic?
<Cyotie911bot> I am not opposed to starting a new thread with the new questions and topics moved over.
<Four_Down> Also, it's interesting you now say the reason was because the comments were going off topic, yet in the post, you just say "it's gone on too long"
<Aeoxic> Okay.
<Aeoxic> Doing it now.
<Aeoxic> Cyotie911bot: Thank you.

I'll start by pointing out that I'm very well aware of my ranking on the survival usage board. At the time of posting I'm 305th with just shy of two hours of total play time this revision. Several revisions ago, however, I was regularly in the top 5 - 15 players in terms of play time.

When a group of people collectively states that their opinion of x is y, generally you're not going to change that. Of course there are some glaring examples of the contrary such as the beginnings of the universe / humankind or the correct way to compose a cup of tea, however this doesn't apply when the main collective playerbase of survival is saying that they're not getting heard enough. Anecdotal evidence (and that's all these threads are - anecdotal) does not contribute to a defence.

At the risk of beating the skeleton of the dead horse into a fine dust, from what I've gathered passively the primary criticisms are the following:

1. The current survival server admins are not survival server core players

2. The current survival server admins don't listen to anybody

3. Nothing is ever going anywhere.

1. The current survival server admins are not survival server core players
Sorry admins, but this is indisputable. The only reason I can't say "none of the staff are even in the top 20" is because Mumberthrax just shaves in at number 17. If the average number of hours for the three longer-term S admins was a player, it'd be number 25 on the usage charts. If we include our newest admin (at a total of zero hours), it clocks in at around number 34. The only person who even comes close to being a survival core player is redwall_hp, and it took about three revisions until he was a household name as a moderator because even his time on the servers was sparse.

Between the four combined, the survival administrators have 139 hours of played time this revision on the survival server. Comparatively, there's a total of 733 hours of played time on the PvE server. This thread contains several justifications for it. Of them, Beastbruiser's stood out to me most. The long and short of it is that it's not an enjoyable experience to play on S. That's understandable, because I and many other current S players agree with that. From an observational point of view, my problem is with the played hours disparity. Mumberthrax has 59 hours on S, and 192 on P. You accepted the position of server admin in order to perform various duties largely in the vein of improving and shaping the future of the survival server. What makes PvE such an enjoyable experience by comparison that you would dedicate between three and four times your time to it, than to molding the server you're responsible for into something you want to play? Given those reasons, why isn't there any clear and cut progress towards fixing those reasons? Those are your goalposts.

2. The current survival server admins don't listen to anybody
I'd submit that this is half-true, and while one half of it belongs within point three, the other half is a problem of communication. We have several communication avenues open to us for NerdNu. We have the forums, the subreddit, the IRC, and in-game.

The first two have the problem of being poster-boards. Anyone can submit a comment to it and, frankly, everyone does. A lot of criticism threads turn into heresay and opinion slinging. Opinions are like nipples, everybody has one. Some have solid points, others are obscured by layers, and some are displayed at every opportunity regardless of whether the audience has stated "I am interested in your nipples" or not. Cats have between 8 and twelve. In-game the admins just want to either do their job or play the game. In both circumstances there's little desire for a chat about the servers' future, and this is understandable. IRC has a myriad of issues ranging from the fact that one-on-one private conversations can be later misconstrued, to the fact that some people simply don't log IRC.

One communication method I've left off there is Mumble, and for good reason. Mumble (or VoIP in general) is an incredible device for conversing, not just communicating. The nigh-annual Mumble meetings that are held have, given that the serfs non-staff have been allowed to input into conversation, always been a net positive. Casual conversation regarding current thoughts on the server at present and in the future would be highly valuable. This was a common experience with the server admins up until those after draykhar and Tharine who, whilst server staff, still maintained a highly active Mumble presence and were able to consistently communicate with players both in the context of playing the game and playing the politics. Currently, I'm only aware of redwall_hp and Beastbruiser ever being on Mumble when they're playing Trouble in Terrorist Town. Mumberthrax doesn't like his headset, to which I venture should be remedied by simply buying a new one or, if $50 is a bit much to drop right now, start a S-centric fundraiser for one. I'm sure people would contribute if they believe it'll increase server admin Mumble activity.

3. Nothing is ever going anywhere.
Herein is the latter half of point two. The server admins do sometimes listen, but only when they're within reasonable distance of a well-marked "to-do" pile. Then they can take the suggestion and make a large song and dance about putting it on the pile. No mention is ever made of the ever-growing size of the pile or the fact that the last time something was removed from it, CraftBukkit wasn't in violation of someone's copyright. The primary cause of these seems to have one commonality: Effort. The amount of effort required to remedy these things is often too high to bother. As an ex-developer, I'm very well aware of the fact that larger-scale plugins and sweeping configuration changes can't be created and tested overnight, however many hands make light work. There are multiple capable Java developers within the survival community that can assist. All they need is a green light from an admin saying "I'm willing to try this". For a lot of things, they don't even ever get that.

I'm of the opinion that what needs to happen is not simply a cool new admin from what I can only assume the admin team sarcastically refer to as "da boiz" while rolling their eyes. I believe that while the current administrative team doesn't actively play on S, this is something that should change in order to bring them more in tune with the playerbase at its rawest. What needs to happen is a culture shift back towards the idea of actively making a difference, not just "keeping things running". Vanilla Minecraft is now boring. Factions and pay-to-win servers are thriving. Even HardcoreSMP is magnitudes more active around the clock than S is, and players get banned when they die there.

On the other hand, what needs to happen for any of the above to even hit the runway, let alone fly, is ideas to work with. These come largely in the form of really sparsely thought out reddit posts with "thoughts?" in the footer. This isn't a productive or useful way to create a think tank. Approximately a year and a half ago a group of players created a very large document listing, in great detail, their thoughts on the current issues and their potential solutions. About half of those suggestions have been implemented permanently, or implemented, later decided against, and subsequently removed. Sure, it's a lot of work, but it's a labour of love, right? There's no requirement for a symphony accompanying each individual idea, but detailing and updating it properly goes a long way. It helps everybody see your perspective from the get-go. Another form of idea generation is simply through passively observing new players. Players will often join and ask if feature x is available on this server. Take these into account.
 
Discussion Points
Please keep this thread on topic. The last one was closed because it ended up deviating slightly. Our discussion points are the three key points listed earlier. The major questions that need to be answered (by the S administrative base as a whole) are:

1. Why are the current survival administrators not survival core players by being picked from the survival core playerbase, or by playing largely on S?
2. Why are the clear avenues for improved communication not taken after being told time and again that the level of communication is insufficient?
3. Why is survival stuck in a cycle of taking ideas, barely implementing them, then going back to the old (nonworking) formula? What can be done to improve this from the perspective of the players, and the perspective of the administrators?

 

Thanks to Bmx, gsand, MonroeZabaleta, MrGauthier34, roastnewt, TornadoHorse, and the few others who proofread, edited, and added to this post.

[I think it is time to drop the "reddit" affiliation]

This topic has come up before, possibly by yourself CmdrTebok and we haven't drawn a reasonable sense of direction on where to go. Currently we're advertised in several ways (as a collective group of servers) such as Reddit Minecraft Servers (on /r/mcpublic & /r/minecraft), Nerd.nu on our website homepage, Reddit Public Minecraft on our website banners, IRC takes you to #redditmc whereas mumble brings you to mumble.nerd.nu. There may be others too.

 

Just from this topic alone, I can see that our own community is divided in how we are perceived, or should be perceived.

 

• 'Brand ourselves Nerd.nu Minecraft Public Servers.'
• 'Drop reddit affiliation.'
• 'Don't drop reddit affiliation.'
• 'Make a more prominent use of the Nerd.nu domain name.'
• 'Reddit is culturally different from our servers.'
• Are we the official server of reddit or minecraft? (sidebar reads: Subreddit for the official Reddit Creative, Survival, PvE and Chaos servers for Minecraft. and we are advertised as ' Official Reddit Minecraft servers ' on /r/minecraft).

To move forward, instead of focusing on a name to begin with how about we decide who we are in a greater sense of our community?

 

This would mean deciding on whether we want to be a minecraft community or grow into a multi-game community.

 

Instead of deciding whether we should be affiliated with reddit, we could decide on where we feel is best to advertise a minecraft / multi-game community and if reddit falls into this plan.

 

Who are we and who do we want to be? If we figure this out then the name should follow.

 

I think the desired intention is to remove both reddit (and, by way of another topic started by Deaygo, "Minecraft") from the focal point. Keep (and use) the subreddit, but try and move everything name-wise to "NerdNu".

 

One important point is that this community never was the 'official' reddit servers. reddit inc. as an entity never had any affiliation with the servers, nor do any reddit staff volunteer on them. Calling it the 'official reddit Minecraft server' is a misnomer. At best, they are the "official unofficial" servers because they were one of the first, the first on reddit, and owned by the guy who is top mod in /r/Minecraft.

[This is a huge issue that needs to be fixed]

I'll start by pointing out that I'm very well aware of my ranking on the survival usage board. At the time of posting I'm 305th with just shy of two hours of total play time this revision. Several revisions ago, however, I was regularly in the top 5 - 15 players in terms of play time.

When a group of people collectively states that their opinion of x is y, generally you're not going to change that. Of course there are some glaring examples of the contrary such as the beginnings of the universe / humankind or the correct way to compose a cup of tea, however this doesn't apply when the main collective playerbase of survival is saying that they're not getting heard enough. Anecdotal evidence (and that's all these threads are - anecdotal) does not contribute to a defence.

At the risk of beating the skeleton of the dead horse into a fine dust, from what I've gathered passively the primary criticisms are the following:

1. The current survival server admins are not survival server core players

2. The current survival server admins don't listen to anybody

3. Nothing is ever going anywhere.

1. The current survival server admins are not survival server core players
Sorry admins, but this is indisputable. The only reason I can't say "none of the staff are even in the top 20" is because Mumberthrax just shaves in at number 17. If the average number of hours for the S admins was a player, it'd be number 25 on the usage charts. If we include TheAcademician (at a total of zero hours), it clocks in at around number 34. The only person who even comes close to being a survival core player is redwall_hp, and it took about three revisions until he was a household name as a moderator because even his time on the servers was sparse.

Between the four combined, the survival administrators have 139 hours of played time this revision on the survival server. Comparatively, there's a total of 733 hours of played time on the PvE server. This thread contains several justifications for it. Of them, Beastbruiser's stood out to me most. The long and short of it is that it's not an enjoyable experience to play on S. That's understandable, because I and many other current S players agree with that. From an observational point of view, my problem is with the played hours disparity. Mumberthrax has 59 hours on S, and 192 on P. You accepted the position of server admin in order to perform various duties largely in the vein of improving and shaping the future of the survival server. What makes PvE such an enjoyable experience by comparison that you would dedicate between three and four times your time to it, than to molding the server you're responsible for into something you want to play? Given those reasons, why isn't there any clear and cut progress towards fixing those reasons? Those are your goalposts.

2. The current survival server admins don't listen to anybody
I'd submit that this is half-true, and while one half of it belongs within point three, the other half is a problem of communication. We have several communication avenues open to us for NerdNu. We have the forums, the subreddit, the IRC, and in-game.

The first two have the problem of being poster-boards. Anyone can submit a comment to it and, frankly, everyone does. A lot of criticism threads turn into heresay and opinion slinging. Opinions are like nipples, everybody has one. Some have solid points, others are obscured by layers, and some are displayed at every opportunity regardless of whether the audience has stated "I am interested in your nipples" or not. Cats have between 8 and twelve. In-game the admins just want to either do their job or play the game. In both circumstances there's little desire for a chat about the servers' future, and this is understandable. IRC has a myriad of issues ranging from the fact that one-on-one private conversations can be later misconstrued, to the fact that some people simply don't log IRC.

One communication method I've left off there is Mumble, and for good reason. Mumble (or VoIP in general) is an incredible device for conversing, not just communicating. The nigh-annual Mumble meetings that are held have, given that the serfs non-staff have been allowed to input into conversation, always been a net positive. Casual conversation regarding current thoughts on the server at present and in the future would be highly valuable. This was a common experience with the server admins up until those after draykhar and Tharine who, whilst server staff, still maintained a highly active Mumble presence and were able to consistently communicate with players both in the context of playing the game and playing the politics. Currently, I'm only aware of redwall_hp and Beastbruiser ever being on Mumble when they're playing Trouble in Terrorist Town. Mumberthrax doesn't like his headset, to which I venture should be remedied by simply buying a new one or, if $50 is a bit much to drop right now, start a S-centric fundraiser for one. I'm sure people would contribute if they believe it'll increase server admin Mumble activity.

3. Nothing is ever going anywhere.
Herein is the latter half of point two. The server admins do sometimes listen, but only when they're within reasonable distance of a well-marked "to-do" pile. Then they can take the suggestion and make a large song and dance about putting it on the pile. No mention is ever made of the ever-growing size of the pile or the fact that the last time something was removed from it, CraftBukkit wasn't illegal. The primary cause of these seems to have one commonality: Effort. The amount of effort required to remedy these things is often too high to bother. As an ex-developer, I'm very well aware of the fact that larger-scale plugins and sweeping configuration changes can't be created and tested overnight, however many hands make light work. There are multiple capable Java developers within the survival community that can assist. All they need is a green light from an admin saying "I'm willing to try this". For a lot of things, they don't even ever get that.

I'm of the opinion that what needs to happen is not simply a cool new admin from what I can only assume the admin team sarcastically refer to as "da boiz" while rolling their eyes. I believe that while the current administrative team doesn't actively play on S, this is something that should change in order to bring them more in tune with the playerbase at its rawest. What needs to happen is a culture shift back towards the idea of actively making a difference, not just "keeping things running". Vanilla Minecraft is now boring. Factions and pay-to-win servers are thriving. Even HardcoreSMP is magnitudes more active around the clock than S is, and players get banned when they die there.

On the other hand, what needs to happen for any of the above to even hit the runway, let alone fly, is ideas to work with. These come largely in the form of really sparsely thought out reddit posts with "thoughts?" in the footer. This isn't a productive or useful way to create a think tank. Approximately a year and a half ago a group of players created a very large document listing, in great detail, their thoughts on the current issues and their potential solutions. About half of those suggestions have been implemented permanently, or implemented, later decided against, and subsequently removed. Sure, it's a lot of work, but it's a labour of love, right? There's no requirement for a symphony accompanying each individual idea, but detailing and updating it properly goes a long way. It helps everybody see your perspective from the get-go. Another form of idea generation is simply through passively observing new players. Players will often join and ask if feature x is available on this server. Take these into account.

Thanks to edk, gsand, tobylane, and the few others who proofread, edited, and added to this post.

[Expanding the NerdNu community]

Something that seriously needs to be considered with all of this is location. Specifically, how that will affect latency. Minecraft is good in that both it's not huge on reaction times, and the netcode is average enough to penalise even players next door from the datacenter. First-person shooter games such as TF2, CS:GO, and to an extent Rust definitely require a lower latency. I can't play TF2 with a latency above 80ms, so playing on an American server is absolutely a no-go for me. I imagine it'd be the same degraded experience for anybody outside of the USA.

 

 

I think rust servers are something that only a few select organizations can host?

 

This has changed semi recently. The current version of the game (that is, development - the other version is now considered "legacy", not "stable") has a server binary that is usable by anybody.