Revision 22: Survey Summary

[Guest]

As many of you may have have noticed recently, we’ve been making some changes based on the survey responses we received. This post will detail those changes. We will also be going over the results of the elytra poll and the action we plan to take based on that poll.

 

Before we go any further, we do want to say a big thank you to all 94 people who took the time to submit your thoughts. This is an increase to the volume of responses we received in the Revision 21 survey. We have seen a 25% increase in the number of people who left a contact name, now at 78% this survey, which as some of you have seen, has made it very easy for us to follow up with you on your feedback.

 

We’ve made quite a few changes this revision. Some have not been received too well, while others are very much being enjoyed. We do want everyone to have a positive experience, and while we can’t please everyone all of the time, we want to reiterate that the changes we make are heavily weighted from listening to your feedback and what you want to see - even if this doesn’t always seem the case.

 

We care deeply for the server and always try our best to do the right thing. By no stretch of the imagination are we perfect but we are thankful that so many of you feel the same way about our shared community, and engage with us patiently and in constructive ways, as evidenced by your responses to our survey.

 

This week has been a busy one for Didy and I, as we have been holding several team meetings to review the survey responses in greater detail as well as following up on our own progress with implementing changes. We were reading and following up on individual responses as they came in but this week has all been about enacting changes, leading up to this summary post.

 

From here on, we’ll start detailing the changes we’ve made and provide context where we can.

Spawn

• Including more signage around spawn to highlight the cardinal directions.

We didn’t consider that the layout of spawn would be confusing to people who aren’t using a minimap mod, or the livemap. While the roads leading out of spawn were differentiated by colours, we have now added giant compass point letters at the archways leading out of spawn. They are visible from the spawn point, facing outwards.

 

• More signage around spawn to highlight where to find things.

We’ve made a couple of changes under this branch of feedback. Firstly, we’ve added signage at the spawn point, directing people downwards to view information. There are now signs present leading down into the rail station, including some rails on the floor to try to naturally draw people to and from the stairwells where the station rests. We have added signage at the spawn melons, to more clearly demarcate that they are for public consumption.

 

• Display people who have earned various accomplishments from server events and such, around spawn.

This is another great idea! We’ve made a start by including some recognisable faces around spawn on the ground floor, with their accomplishment listed and will continue to add to this in future.

 

• Removal of the region greetings, inclusion of rule signs.

For this revision, we wanted to test the theory that most won’t take the time to read through the walls of rule signs, and instead, provide urls and information as people exit spawn. We observed this for some time and felt that this didn’t work as effectively as we hoped, and in line with your feedback too that these greetings were spammy, and that there were in fact people looking to read walls of signs, we have reintroduced these signs back, right underneath the spawn point itself. Some of the signs do have the option to punch, to receive urls to the information guide and such.

 

• Adding a place for the Archaeologists’ Guild.

We want to ensure that the ground floor of spawn is primarily used for services which offer a function, so your suggestion of adding a place for this guild is a good one! We have added “/place A_Guild” at the doorway in between the two sides of the Archaeologists’ Guild.

 

• Information on the new nether mobs, at the nether spawn.

We really didn’t want to make this change because some of these mobs are incredibly dangerous! However, a few flesh wounds later and Didy and I have wrangled up one of each of the nether mobs which received some form of special treatment or another at the nether spawn. Each are within their own pod with a brief bit of information accompanying them. Please do not tap on the glass as we do not have enough insurance to guarantee your safety.

 

• Inclusion of an access hatch at the spawn rail station.

This change was implemented much earlier in the revision admittedly as it was impossible for people to safely or reasonably reach the basement of the station while at spawn. This is available via a trapdoor on the same level at the station dialers.

 

• Inclusion of water to the horse parking areas at spawn.

We’ve had to recycle some of the fountain water but horses parking at spawn will be able to replenish their thirst without needing to go to the overpriced gift shop on the upper floor.

 

• Removal of the barrier blocks in the exterior spawn gardens.

We are aware that earlier on, these barrier blocks had unintentionally provided host to a number of traps around spawn. While these were remedied, we have now since removed all barrier blocks as we can understand the frustration in trying to cross the exterior garden to leave spawn, only to be met with an invisible maze.

 

• Increase the visibility of spawn with better lighting.

Parts of spawn were ridiculously dark and that is an area that we take responsibility for. We have since gone around the entire ground floor, including the inner courtyard and rail station and have ensured that 99% of all dark areas have been brightened up. We have primarily done this by ensuring that the light levels do not dip below 8 on the floor itself.

 

• Announce the new spawn trades upon release.

This is a great idea, to save waiting for one person spend a long period of time using the trader. Since the last set of trades introduced, we have used your idea and detailed the list of trades available.

Portals

• The spawn nether portals have been replaced with a single portal.

We received a lot of varied feedback from your experiences on the corner nether portals at spawn. We heard that the portals were hard to find at first since they were so far out and that there were frequently horse issues, or confusion over which portal your horse would end up at.

 

Our design idea for having the portals at the corners of spawn was to allow people to exit spawn quicker, and to limit any spawn lag by having a nether portal parked right in the middle of it all.

 

We were overzealous in our concerns with lag and have since removed all four of the corner portals. There is now only one portal, which is down the stairs from the original spawn point. Now, much closer to the rail station for easier transportation.

 

• Provide a clue for the currently unfound portal.

We plan to do this, most likely with the release of the next portal & clue!

 

• Improve the layout of portals to how they are usually done.

Without giving away too much for the one existing and the other remaining, hidden portals, we did want to break the cycle of what people have come to expect this revision and try something different. While we don’t intend to move any of the portals this revision, we will definitely be factoring your input, into portal layout next revision.

Documentation

• Improve the Iron Golem Spawner / wiki documentation.

We’ve noticed with a number of our documentation, that quite a bit of introductory information is missing which doesn’t make a difference to those who are already familiar with how the server works but it ensures a very confusing experience for everyone else. While improving documentation on the iron golem spawners is a start, we do intend to improve all of the documentation over time for other areas too.

 

We have however, updated the information guide on iron golem spawners to make the information clearer and add in details which explain the concepts better for people who may be unfamiliar with them.

 

Another change we have recently requested on the homepage of the wiki is to ensure that the pve information guide is one of the first links that is visible, particularly for new people to see. We focus our attention to try to make the pve information guide the place to go to visit all of the server-related information, instead of seeing it spread out across multiple command pages.

 

• Create a directory of settlements.

We have since set up a settlement directory for Revision 22, here! Our plan is to revisit these submissions late in the rev, to get some comparison shader photos to show the development over time.

 

• Enforce hopper restrictions consistently and make their governing rules well known.

For those of you unfamiliar, we have been reaching out to various people this revision to see through changes to the number of hoppers in use, particularly when in large quantities, or in designs that could be altered slightly to significantly reduce the hopper count.

 

Hoppers account for the majority of our server tick rate so this is an element of the server stability that we’re having to follow up with, for the benefit of all. We are currently in discussions with the head and tech admins, to ensure that a consistent and fair policy can be established.

Community

• Increase the availability of parrots and horses.

Given the more limited spawning rates of parrots in particular, but also horses, we have ensured that you can purchase spawn eggs directly from the Archaeologists’ Guild by trading in your fossils.

 

• Releasing the slime spawner; Releasing some spawners through unlocks such as events.

We have released the slime spawner through the Lost Slime Golems event, and the slime grinder is now up and running! While some spawners have in the past been released through, or were found as a result of an event, we wanted to try something a bit different here by having the spawner be made available to the winner, to be placed wherever they wish (within reason).

 

• Monitoring the availability of resources, such as glowstone.

With glowstone only available through the nether, and villager trades, we are keeping an eye on this resource (which highlights itself quite easily on the livemap). Should supplies deplete to any worrisome levels, then we can look at introducing other means by which players can acquire the resource.

 

• Custom nether mob drops could be better refined.

We do hear your feedback that some of the drops are abundant and become bland after a while. We will reevaluate nether drops and publish an update in future when those are available.

 

• Removing the shulker spawner (bedrock marker) from the nether.

We have taken action in removing this bedrock marker from the nether. It will not be placed elsewhere, instead you can expect to have an event brought to P in future where the grand prize will be a shulker spawner.

 

• Review iron golem spawner costs.

We have reviewed data on relevant drops, and explored the number of iron spawners created across the map so far, and feel at this time that costs are reasonable. We will continue to watch these numbers, and take another look at this before we start planning for the next revision. We won't be making any changes here at the present time, however we have implemented some planned boosts to diamonds for players participating in various server events, that should help individuals acquire the necessary diamond supplies.

 

• Reduce the number of server messages in chat.

We have taken steps to change this over the past few months. The ‘server is saving’ messages are no longer visible, and we have limited the frequency of server alerts to 5 minute intervals. If you wish to see all server alerts at once, rather than wait for a particular one to come around, then you can run /alert list. The latest events and such will be towards the bottom of the list.

 

• Return the guild quests; Including find and seek puzzles.

We have created two guild events so far and have plans for more to come! The Lost Slime Golems in particular is very much geared towards those who enjoy hide and seek type events.

 

• Ensure that lore text on unique items doesn’t run off the screen.

While it isn’t something we can fix for the existing items, we have ensured that as of the latest events that this isn’t an issue anymore for the new, unique items.

 

• Allow people to flow water without the need for a moderator.

Having flowing liquids restricted is a big part of our anti-grief measures. However, if you have built enough to have acquired a region over your build(s), then you can run the command /flow, and click on a source block to flow water in your own region, without the need for a moderator.

 

• Address the disappearing horses (upon dismounting) and the lack of an indicator for the hydration level of your horse.

Unfortunately, disappearing horses is an ongoing bug from Mojang so we will have to await a resolution from them on this front. For anyone who does experience their horse disappearing on dismounting, typically a relog, or running away from the area and back will make the horse visible once more.

 

We have spoken to techs and believe that a horse hydration indicator will be possible in a future update to the plugin. We will ensure players are informed when an update is implemented in future (taking account for tech availability).

 

• Include custom map art with various server accomplishments.

We love this idea and are planning to do so, particularly for some future events!

 

• Make more events available from the start of the revision.

We do note that this is a suggestion for next revision but we agree, and will aim to do so by providing at least one event that is available from the first day of Revision 23.

 

• Ensure that there are more opportunities for people to contribute to server build projects.

In the past, we have seen various flora and objects built by people across P, submitted for use when a new map is created. We don’t yet have a clear picture of what we’ll do about this but it is something we want to try to find a way of opening up once more on.

 

• Allow for more heads to be made available with doppelganger.

We are wary of exploring this option, as larger numbers of skulls can have an impact on the performance for each user in the area. We will however be continuing to make available a limited selection of custom skulls, through various events and traders.

Elytra

• All things elytra.

We’ve had so many varied opinions on elytra that we’d like to address. Before we get there though, let’s begin by taking a look at the poll results.

 

Q. Changes to the availability of Elytra were widely discussed during last revision's feedback. Currently Elytra has been set to be unavailable to any players until Week 6. What are your thoughts now that Revision 22 has begun?

Option	No of Votes	% of Overall Votes
I don't really use Elytra so this doesn't affect me.	24	25.8%
I would like to see Elytra remain delayed by 6 weeks.	29	31.2%
I think a delay is fine, but I would like to see it shortened. 6 weeks is too long.	22	23.7%
Elytra should be made available immediately.	18	19.4%

 

While the most voted for option is to see elytra remain delayed by six weeks, we see a significant majority of people who wish to see the release of elytra happen earlier. For this reason, we will be releasing elytra along with this post as part of the latest trades available at the Archaeologists’ Guild in spawn. This means that as of this post going up, the elytra is now available.

 

With elytra in Revision 22, we made quite a number of changes to the path to obtaining them. One of the pieces of feedback that we heard, and accept, is that we probably changed too much all at once. A more incremental approach to trying new ideas may have been the better option in hindsight.

 

We're aware that no matter what we choose to do, some people will feel it was the incorrect choice, however we feel that releasing elytra one week earlier than planned is close enough to everyone's choice of vote that we can all accept the compromise.

 

We do want to reiterate that changes we make to the server are heavily weighted on your feedback. We read through more than 75,000 words of your feedback before making decisions. Our decisions are not always right, which is why we do these surveys, and listen again to you. From the poll results above, we can all see that the topic of elytra is a divisive one.

 

For next revision, we will come together again and look to find a way to improve on the experience this revision so far as we haven’t settled on any decisions because it is too far ahead.