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+--- Thread: What is our focus? (/showthread.php?tid=1062)
What is our focus? - Indrae - 10-12-2012
What is our focus?
Every server has a focus. You have PvP servers whose focus is on how to provide the best player combat experience. You have creative servers like the Voxel Box whose goal is to create the best environment for their players to build spectacular builds. You have survival servers where the focus is to provide the best player versus environment experience. Then you have the roleplaying servers whose focus is on immersing their players in their characters and in the game.
Then there is CFEW, a server without a focus. At the moment, our server does not have a well defined focus. We are not a survival server, we are not a creative server, we are not a PvP server, we are not a roleplaying server. We try to be all of those, and we do none of them well.
It wasn’t always like this. Let me take you back two years ago, to September 9th, 2010, the day I joined the server. I was new to SMP. I chose a random server from some server listing site. I joined with a friend, and there was only one other person online at the time: Clownfish. The server had none of the features that it does now. It didn’t have a currency, it didn’t have zones, and it didn’t have multiple worlds. There were no nicks, no custom ranks, no colored text. I could have left then and there to find a server that had a wide array of features, but I didn’t.
Why did I stay? At first I stayed because Clownfish was a genuinely nice guy. He didn’t treat me with disrespect or condescension. Then I began to meet some other people. I met LeoNovas, who was an OP even before I was, and was for lack of a better term, my best friend here on the server. I met a guy named TrueScopes, who had built a house just down the road from me at spawn. There were others, and in those initial times we did a great deal of exploring and building together.
No one was focused on promotions back then. No one was focused on becoming an OP back then. No one was trying to gain more influence on the server back then. We weren’t focused on trying to add new features just for the hell of it. We added things back then because we genuinely needed them. We promoted people to OP because we had a genuine need for people to watch over the server. In fact, that is how I was first promoted to OP. It was little more than a week or so after I joined. Clownfish was leaving for the night, and there were no OPs on. Someone needed to watch over the server, and Clown asked me to do so. And I did, and I have been doing so ever since.
The CFEW that I joined no longer exists. It no longer in the slightest bit resembles what I joined. Now we bicker fight over the most trivial of things. Anything we do now has to go through arduous debates that no one enjoys. Want to make a simple suggestion? Expect to be required to fight for and defend your idea tooth and nail to have anything change.
We have become a feature focused server, not a player focused one. We focus on what new world we can add to our bloated list of worlds that no one touches. We focus on trying to provide every imaginable game play style as possible. There is no uniformity. Everyone has to have their own custom rank, their own custom display name, their own chat colors. We’ve forgotten how to say no. Just because an idea might provide a slight bit of fun, that does not mean we should add it, especially if we don’t actually have a genuine need for it.
We lack social cohesion now. We are not a community. There hasn’t been a CFEW community for a very long time. There is an OP community now, an Adventure World community, and the list goes on.
We have grown too large and too bloated. It is time to trim the fat. It is time to go back to our roots. It is time to go back to what made us great in those early days.
If I joined CFEW today, I would not stay.
I have this question for you all: What is our focus now, and what should it be?
RE: What is our focus? - whitelily36 - 10-12-2012
RE: What is our focus? - Eaglefighter - 10-12-2012
I think the main focus has always been fun and family friendly as well. That would be the server focus, it just is not always the focus of all players. Right now we have a lot mroe players then 2 years back. Right now all we can do is ban peopel that make things really not-fun. but we simply dont know all players anymore, ad not all palyers want the same thing. Thats why there are multiple communities, people choose what they like the most.
Another explanation would be that we simply dont see everyone anymore due to timezones. I dont run into a lot of US players because it is like 7 hours earlier there, so i dont know a lot of them.
So: main focus is fun and family friendly, thats what makes us stand out.
RE: What is our focus? - blueapplepiedude - 10-12-2012
family friendly and fun.
basically make a spawn to tell you what the heck you want to do. that should solve it.
like 10 areas. all with signs about info and how to warp there.
RE: What is our focus? - Flyingfruitloops - 10-12-2012
Well, I'd like to make one note. When I joined cfew, just when 1.7.3 came out the server was fantastic, the community was trustworthy, and everyone asked if people needed help. I used to play on it every time I got to play minecraft. Then as I hit higher ranks the people asking if they could help with something stopped. More griefing came to the server and now everyone stashes their things.
I agree with you Indrae, cfew has changed a lot from the past. Too many worlds have been built. Too many ugly buildings scattering the landscape. All nice places from the beginning of there server have been left there, abut like an explosion has happened and there's cobblestone and dirt everywhere.
I think the server needs a new main world. The main world is too full. And I think the server is more of.... An all rounder server. I also think if we were to go into worlds like AW we should not have a main world inventory.
RE: What is our focus? - fireb4llz - 10-13-2012
After playing singleplayer stuck on beta 1.2_02 since I forgot the password to my bro's friend's account (which I used to get the game back in late January 2011) I eventually bought Minecraft shortly after the release of beta 1.6. I then spent a long search for a good server to play on for around i think two weeks and eventually came across CFEW. The community was great and I made a lot of great new friends. The only person I recall who actually begged for a promotion back then was Poppy_sunny.
Unfortunately, as the server became bigger so did the problems. Drama began to arise much more often, the world began to become more and more cluttered, the economy began to break down, and people began to focus more on being promoted rather than having fun. This doesn't apply to everyone, there are definitely some great people on our server who are willing to help out the community but I feel that I feel our community as a whole is not nearly as strong as what it used to be.
We definitely need to get rid of some of the unnecessary worlds we have and make a new main world. What our focus as a server is yet to be determined, however our focus as a community should be to respect CFEW's most important rule, Have fun. Video games were made for our enjoyment, Becoming stressed/arguing over something that happened in a videogame especially a game as wonderful as Minecraft is complete nonsense.
RE: What is our focus? - Indrae - 10-13-2012
I think we should go back to what we were originally, back to what made us great: A building server. We could organize it into three types: Normal (Main World, no mobs, no damage, legitimate item collecting), Adventure World (Survival, mobs on, legitimate item collecting, with separate inventory from Normal), and Creative (creative mode on, obviously). We could reduce our number of worlds to the bare minimum needed to satisfy these areas. We don't need PvP, or any kind of special game mode. We were at our best when we focused on a great building experience. Let's try and get back to that.
And when I say building, I mean just building for the fulfillment that brings. We don't need ranks to tell people they are good at building. I didn't build all of my creations to get promoted to some meaningless rank. I built it because I enjoyed building. So, basically, I'd say get rid of the review process once and for all. We aren't here to tell people that they have crappy builds that don't meet up to our standards. We're here to be a family. We're here to be a community.
RE: What is our focus? - whitelily36 - 10-13-2012
RE: What is our focus? - clownfish - 10-13-2012
RE: What is our focus? - shppthwhtfx - 10-13-2012
I'm sorry for not being overly creative in this opinion, but I don't really mind any of these directions we take. I doubt our server will suffer from reduction of worlds, ranks or an increase to them either.
I do agree with lily that no matter what decision we make, we should make it for furthering the fun and community of the server. For once I have nothing to add/take away, enjoy it =P