Mini-games Server Discussion - requesting your input!

[Sir_Didymus]

Hey all,

 

I was recently reminded that we haven’t had a great deal of discussion with the staff team around the potential of opening an experimental mini-games server on nerd.nu.

 

With redwall’s development proceeding well, we feel it’s important that any concerns or queries, positive or negative can be aired here. We want to make sure there is majority support from the current moderating team for this idea, before thinking about rolling it out for an open test in the near future.

 

Essentially the goal of this server concept would be to provide an easily accessible set of ongoing mini-games of various types, whilst being very low on moderation needs. Players join a small lobby which contains leader boards etc. and can jump through portals to various game types. There is the scope to add any new map very easily, meaning we could begin to engage players in the creation of their own server content (maps would generally be around 100-400 blocks across).

 

This is the kind of server we would expect players to dip in and out of, potentially extended the amount of time current players stay on the nerd servers as a whole, and bringing in newer players who then may transition to the longer term server types.

 

The head team have discussed this at length, but we’d be interested to hear your thoughts, as it’s important to look at things from as many different angles as possible. If there is an overwhelming dislike for this idea then we will go back to the drawing board, but we’re hopeful that this is different enough from P and C that you’d be willing to trial it.

 

If you’re still not clear on details, redwall will be keeping an eye on this post in order to answer any questions you may have. Here’s a short video that’s been put together to give you a bit of a flavour of how it looks at the moment.

 

 

For those who haven’t visited the test server recently (or at all), you can access the latest incarnation at /server minigames-dev (it’s running on 1.10).

 

If we're going to trial this, we'd like to get the ball rolling fairly soon - so a quick response would be appreciated.

 

Thanks!

 

~Didy

[redwall_hp]

Just a note: if you've tried the server out in the past, it's changed significantly. It has a whole new game mode (CTF, inspired by Quake), a fancy new minigames hub with portals and a wall of player heads that dynamically update through the new player ranking plugin. It's definitely worth a fresh look.

[Silversunset01]

Another note: if you switch from the lobby it will announce it. if at all possible please try to do this when there's nobody in the lobby and once p/c are on 1.10 you should be able to swap from one of the servers and just kick out the "<player> has left the game" message. Buzzie checked this tonight, just a good idea for now.

[torteela]

This is the kind of server we would expect players to dip in and out of, potentially extended the amount of time current players stay on the nerd servers as a whole, and bringing in newer players who then may transition to the longer term server types.

 

I agree with this. Even if there's people who just personally don't like minigames and think they're killing minecraft, any time a user is spending on Nerd is better than them spending it somewhere else.

If we do end up having this it'd be nice if our advertising all prominently featured it for a while, though we'd want to make sure we have a good amount of fun games for people to play if we're telling them to come to our server.

[buzzie71]

I think if the goal is just to provide another fun thing on nerd for players and visitors, that minigames is worth, at the very least, a trial run.

 

I would disagree with the idea of using minigames primarily as a way of bringing in new players to P (gameplay of C is a bit different and I'm hesitant to comment in this sense).  Many of the gameplay styles represented on P require a lot of time investment - I imagine for a picky builder (the worst case), this includes gathering supplies and materials, then finding and getting to a suitable place to build, before building actually begins.  For the best case, a player joining a town that has a starter kit and materials assembled for them, this still involves getting to the town, again before building actually begins.  Minigames are going to be more drop-in-drop-out - getting started is almost instantaneous, and a player well adapted or suited to this playstyle will (I think) find the pace of PvE gameplay to be too slow for them without effort spent getting used to it - thus, I don't expect a very large portion of first-time visitors to nerd who frequent minigames to eventually migrate.  

 

Also would like to echo the suggestion to not jump to minigames from the lobby if there are non-staff present - you will(?) leave behind a message stating that you have switched to minigames-dev, and since its introduction is not known and still being debated, it would probably be better for staff if we can avoid the situation where players get hyped for minigames coming soon but then feel let down when the server is not launched (unless we let them in on news that we are currently discussing it and it may not launch).

[robr]

i would tend to agree with buzzie, minigames do tend to attract short attention span players - but i don't see the harm in having the server available to bring more people into the community itself so long as it doesn't take resources away from the other 2 servers (no we dont need a long discussion about java threading, etc, i'm referring to resources in general overall not just compute)

 

that being said, i might recommend renaming the server in the meantime to something less descriptive like /server test1 or something that we know about but it's not obvious what the purpose is - that way if anyone sees us switching to it "its just a test server"

 

i would also recommend planning any production release around the end of a natural P rev to take advantage of the player lull, maybe pull some of those people back in that might wander elsewhere, etc..

[redwall_hp]

I just tested and confirmed the issue with the lobby. However, this isn't an issue if you switch from a regular server...which you'll be able to do after today, as they'll be running 1.10.

 

As for whether the server would bring more players to PvE or extend the community by bringing in players who prefer its style...whynotboth.png? I suspect that the benefits would be twofold.

 

Additionally, it's worth noting that the Overcast Network is shutting down permanently on September 5th. Overcast provided a lot of inspiration for the CTF game mode featured on minigames-dev, and the system is capable of offering a very similar gameplay experience to Overcast's capture mode. So if we were to play our cards right, it's possible we could collect a fraction of their community when they seek alternatives.

[defiex]

I would absolutely love having a mini-game server in addition to Pve.  Sometimes I just get tired of building and want to do somsething else, which leads me away from the server completely.  If I had some mini-games to play, I'd likely be there instead of running around in circles playing GTA.

 

Even when people built little games on the P server, like the mini puttputt, it was super fun to play with others. THough I suppose that would be a mini, mini, mini-game.

[Sir_Didymus]

Last call for feedback - we'll be closing this topic 24 hours from this post.

[Sir_Didymus]

Alright guys, thanks for the feedback. There's no responses here that seem to object to an experimental run of this server, so we're happy to move forward with this idea. More details will follow.