Hey hey hey party people.

Been sat on this for a few years now, but ever since the Birdfrock 'incident' a few days ago its become clear to me that apparently one person bringing forward their grievances with the server to the staff can actually have an effect, and while I may not agree with Birdfrock, his reasonings and the staff's response to it , I am very pleased to see the server at least trying to move in a better direction.

While I've decided to not go on a long winded rant about every little thing I deem to be out of place regarding the server, as it is not mine, and my way of doing things is not necessarily the best, I've thought about this particular point enough to think that someone should really say something.

If you're on the forums reading this, I imagine that I would not be wrong to assume that you play the server enough to notice the one of the largest, if not the largest issue with CraftyMynes. The playercount.

As I am writing this, there are currently 2 players on CraftyMynes, not including myself. While CraftyMynes is a rather unique experience in that we have a much deeper community than most, meaning that I can't foresee Crafty going entirely dead anytime soon, a near entire lack of player influx will only continue to starve the server of it's lifeblood.

So, what to do about it?

There is a multitude of things which can be done in order to get the playercount up, but as I said at the start of this ramble, I will be focusing on the one I deem most damning, and it can be quite neatly summed up one sentence.
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CraftyMynes is NOT a vanilla server experience.
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While in the past I have been of the opinion that adding plugins would solve all the servers issues, I am no longer of that opinion. While yes, it would likely solve the lag issues and allow for a higher playercount, I think adding plugins would simply drive away the community that Crafty already has, and throw the server into an even worse state.

The system we currently have with the command blocks (while I can't pretend I properly understand it) I find to be incredibly charming, and 100% makes the server stand out from the crowd in a sea of plugin-riddled survival servers. And besides, after all these years, it would be a shame to start now and cast aside Crafty's unique command-block legacy.

So instead, I will present you with a hypothetical scenario;
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You've decided to go out for the day. It's been a few hours and you've been enjoying yourself, and you notice you're starting to get a bit hungry. You think for a moment, and decide that you're going to treat yourself to your favourite, a nice steak. You wander about for a little bit, looking at different restaurants until just out the corner of your eye you spot a place you haven't seen before. "Crafty's Steaks".

"Perfect" you think to yourself as you go in and take a seat, looking through the menu, settling on the 12oz flat iron. Your waiter comes up and takes your order, and while the place isn't packed, you're loving the ambiance and décor. After a little bit, you see your waiter approaching your table with a plate, and you sit up, looking forward to your food as it is set down in front of you.

But... this isn't what you ordered. Your potato wedges look fantastic, the side salad looks fresh and crisp, but instead of your steak, there's a large slab of cauliflower instead. Just catching the waiter before he heads off, you let him know about the mistake, you ordered the steak, not this!

You prepare for the apology, and to wait a little longer for your actual dish to be prepared, but it doesn't come. Instead, you see a smug grin cross the waiter's face as he pushes his glasses up his nose. "Umm, actually..." He lets out, "I think you'll find that while the word Steak typically means beef, it can also mean just a thick-cut piece of any animal or even vegetable."

You of course are disappointed. You guess he's technically not wrong, but this isn't what you wanted. "But shouldn't you make it clearer? At other places steak just means beef steak, like you'd expect?"

At this, the waiter changes. You can see his teeth grinding, his eyes nearly bulging out his head as he begins frothing at the mouth. You cry out as the waiter punches you in the nose before ripping you from your seat and throwing you out the front door, slamming it behind you, screaming something about not mentioning other restaurants.
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While far from a perfect analogy, I believe it gets my point across. Yes, technically CraftyMynes is a vanilla server, but just because you haven't edited the .jar file does not mean it belongs in the vanilla server list. Commands like .home, .trade and .tp are not vanilla.

I believe that if CraftyMynes was to be advertised on the Semi-Vanilla server-list, it would have a HUGE impact on player retention. Rather than new players joining, looking around at a hub world before pressing tab and seeing all the ranks, both of which famously do not exist in vanilla, and immediately leaving forever because as far as they're concerned you lied to them in order to trick them into playing, instead they would join, see exactly what they wanted to see and begin their adventure in a new server, before later learning that it is 100% command block, and actually get a chance to appreciate how cool that is.
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Anyway, if you've read this far you obviously care for the server, so should you see any gaps in my reasoning kindly tell me why below, and with any luck your solution will be better than mine. Despite it's issues, I am very fond of this server, and this post is my attempt to try and give it a new lease at life, and should someone else have a better idea I would very much like to hear it.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk

-BingusIncorporated

@CraftyMyner I tried to do something good for the community, it was probably short sighted, but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. I didn't foresee what was going to come next. It felt like I just said a racial slur on twitter, pretty much everything I did was contested. People, including me, were made fun of in the forums. I don't believe in myself anymore. I do not understand the community or the game well enough to make correct decisions. I tried to take advice from staff and other players but I am still lost.

Just a pre-lude to your questions, don't be too upset, and don't worry. In regards to all the recent kerfuffle I know that for me, and I am going to assume others, it was all a case of timing. I know you were only doing what you believed to be best for the community. But from the point of view of the player I saw basically no changes for literally years, despite raised concerns, and then suddenly one person starts to complain about an issue which next to no people have actually had, and within hours the owner, almost always silent, makes huge changes to the server. For me at least it very much came across as a slap in the face to anyone else who's ever suggested any changes to the server. I think J_a_r_d said something similar in the (now deleted) chat under BirdFrocks post.

Now I've had a bit to calm down I think the changes that were made were actually pretty sensible, just implemented in a rather rushed way. And even then, as I said at the start, It's really nice to see actually changes for the better, even if the first few steps were a little wobbly.

@CraftyMyner If we switch to semi vanilla, all the work I did could be replaced with a few plugins that take seconds to install. That emotionally hurts. It's like entering into a car show where everyone has a sports car and I have a go-kart that was built in the backyard with my dad when I was a kid. It feels out of place. I know I can keep what we have but it's going to feel a bit jank when compared to the offerings available with plugins.

Personally, (judging from other replies my opinion is far from unanimous) I would like to keep the command blocks, as I put originally,

@BingusInc The system we currently have with the command blocks (while I can't pretend I properly understand it) I find to be incredibly charming, and 100% makes the server stand out from the crowd in a sea of plugin-riddled survival servers. And besides, after all these years, it would be a shame to start now and cast aside Crafty's unique command-block legacy.

I very much like the analogy you used with the Sports cars and the Go-Kart, I think it almost perfectly sums up the server, and if it's any consolation, I find that the heart of the server really shines through, and I thinks that's why CraftyMynes has the deep, long lasting community that it has. I find at least that keeping it command block helps to retain that nostalgia I have for Minecraft throughout the years.
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Now then, this is going to be a little difficult now, as I won't lie, I simply hadn't considered

@CraftyMyner The systems behind the scenes are so complex that even when I the creator go to change one thing I break 5 others.

That. As such I'm not really sure what to suggest, because as you say, not everything actually can be implemented properly without issue, and lacking your unique knowledge on the server's inner workings I simply do not know what is a simple request and what is not.

Instead, I suggest that you begin with something that can be changed a lot easier (at least as far as I am aware) the Forums.

People have been very good about sharing thoughts in these comments so far, so I hope that sentiment remains. If a voting mechanic/section could be introduced to the forums any ideas that you see which you think may have some merit behind them could be put to the face of public decision, which and much less likely to go down poorly, and it also lets you see which decisions are controversial ahead of time, saving a situation like last time.

@CraftyMyner I guess the few questions I have are:

Is the lag really that bad, do we even have enough players right now to cause lag?
Is there something we are missing that would make a much bigger difference than semi-vanilla in terms of player retention?
If we go semi-vanilla, it's hard to go back. Do we try to switch categories for a week or month and then make a decision if we see more players?

1) Honestly? Not really. At peak times I can see some strain, but you're right, we rarely have enough players for it to be an issue, however if we can get an player influx again it will become one.

2) Not as far as I am aware. Not to say that there isn't one, I am simply not able to spot it myself, hopefully other answers will prove more fruitful.

3) I think that's an excellent idea, it would be very useful to test if it actually makes a difference.
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To finalise, much like yourself, when I first started playing I was a mid-teen, and now as an adult with a career and other responsibilities, it's harder and harder to truly unwind and find time for the things which bring me so much enjoyment. It's because of that I've been going on these tirades, because I truly believe that CraftyMynes is something special, and I think it's worth my time to attempt to stop it from fading into obscurity.
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Forever your's Crafty <3

BingusIncorporated

I agreed with the past two posts, made by Shlocked and jard.

I’d like to add one thing though, more on the “vanilla” gameplay aspect of things. Which I’d argue is more important than being vanilla in definition. There’s a feature on the server that is in place because thunder cannot be enabled due to an exploit. Thunderstorms. It’s a very important part of the game and makes things like certain Trident enchants and Lightning rods useless. Also because of this, it cuts out a feature in the game which allows you to make multiple unique mobs. The most important being charged creepers. This is because they have a special ability to drop another mobs head when they explode said mob.

“But Crafty already has a solution to this”

Yes, and to be brutally honest. A bad one. I can confidently say throughout hundreds of hours of gameplay over the past year or two I’ve never seen a single charged creeper. It’s all luck based. The only way I’ve found to get these heads is getting a rank which is placed behind a paywall. Which is a bit unfair

And again, I know crafty mynes isn’t really “vanilla” when it comes to a gameplay’s perspective, but if you are even going to use the word vanilla and can’t come up for a better solution for disabling things. Just call yourself semi vanilla and just enable the thunderstorms.

@JackyBoy__ I agreed with the past two posts, made by Shlocked and jard.

I’d like to add one thing though, more on the “vanilla” gameplay aspect of things. Which I’d argue is more important than being vanilla in definition. There’s a feature on the server that is in place because thunder cannot be enabled due to an exploit. Thunderstorms. It’s a very important part of the game and makes things like certain Trident enchants and Lightning rods useless. Also because of this, it cuts out a feature in the game which allows you to make multiple unique mobs. The most important being charged creepers. This is because they have a special ability to drop another mobs head when they explode said mob.

“But Crafty already has a solution to this”

Yes, and to be brutally honest. A bad one. I can confidently say throughout hundreds of hours of gameplay over the past year or two I’ve never seen a single charged creeper. It’s all luck based. The only way I’ve found to get these heads is getting a rank which is placed behind a paywall. Which is a bit unfair

And again, I know crafty mynes isn’t really “vanilla” when it comes to a gameplay’s perspective, but if you are even going to use the word vanilla and can’t come up for a better solution for disabling things. Just call yourself semi vanilla and just enable the thunderstorms.

This still wouldn't solve the issue of the exploit itself so i'm not sure where you were planning to go with this. I've found several charged creepers, generally in highly populated areas like spawn city and whatnot. Although I have a suspicion that the charged creeper spawns can be taken up by the multiple GP farms on the server, as i've seen several in falling GP farms that survive because of their greater health. Something that'll be looked into. At the end of the day as a vanilla server we're more at the whims of mojang than some.

Yes, because the actual, tangible benefits from using better software outweigh the cognitive dissonance from challenging dogmatic beliefs that otherwise just make us feel good inside.

Should I be blunt? "We are pure vanilla which is good" is textbook dogma that has plagued this server for years now. We keep seeing the negative effects of this belief over and over and over again, and yet we must continue to use Mojang's jar, because this is true and good and unquestionable. Like I said, textbook dogma.

Only like 5 or 6 remotely active players still care, and the player counts speak for itself. Keep in mind this server used to pull in 20-40 players regularly at its peak. The rest of the player base who value an actual better server experience quit years ago and will never voice their dissenting opinions here for that reason.

Alright alright alright. Must say, threw me for a real loop with the restrictions in place. But I've given this quite a bit of thought and I'd like to believe that I've thought of something which may help out with player numbers.

Votes are important for player numbers. I can't say I know just how important, but I get the general impression that it's very. As such, we need more votes, yes?

I propose an addition to the voting rewards. Firstly there's the Magic Meat and XP, and I say don't touch it. That in my opinion is more or less perfect the way it is, and any changes to that could just be a bit of extra work for no real reason.

However, there is a secondary reward currently in place. I believe after 30ish days of daily voting, you get a reward (I want to say an Elytra + something?). I'm much less focused on that prize, and significantly more interested in the infrastructure surrounding it. It tells me that there is already a system built into CraftMynes that can count how many days in a row you have voted, which is the crux of what I am going to propose next.

I would like to suggest a voter rank, and give it access to the third .sethome that VIPs and above get access to. I suggest that after 10, 15, 20, whatever days of daily voting, this rank is given to the player. HOWEVER, unlike VIP and all of the current ranks, as soon as the daily voting discontinues, the rank is removed and to regain access to the 3rd home the player has to once again vote daily until they reached the required vote streak to regain the rank.

This would do very little to interfere with the current playerbase, and it allows a path to get a third home for players who are not able/willing to put money into the server. It gives a much stronger reason for people to vote while offline, which, all in all should hopefully lead to a sharp increase in votes.

I did my best to work around

@CraftyMyner The systems behind the scenes are so complex that even when I the creator go to change one thing I break 5 others.

That funky little sentence, and this is my best shot to think of something which could be implemented without too many changes to the current system.

Thoughts?

Your beautiful bubbly bouncy baby boy <3

-BingusIncorperated

I like this idea, more votes seem to be the way forward.

I was lucky enough to get my VIP rank from the community piggy bank filling up, which is very rare. I once voted for long enough to get a vote crate and was a bit disappointed with the items I received. Remembering to vote 4 times every day for a month isn't the easiest thing to achieve and I would have hoped for a better reward. I pretty much stopped voting after this, I'm lazy.

@BingusInc
I would like to suggest a voter rank, and give it access to the third .sethome that VIPs and above get access to. I suggest that after 10, 15, 20, whatever days of daily voting, this rank is given to the player. HOWEVER, unlike VIP and all of the current ranks, as soon as the daily voting discontinues, the rank is removed and to regain access to the 3rd home the player has to once again vote daily until they reached the required vote streak to regain the rank.

This voting rank would be perfect, especially for my alt account. The VIP .home perks would make me continue voting daily for that account. A 7-day streak seems about right to be given the voter rank. Missing a day means you lose the rank, so you have to get to the 7-day streak again to get the rank back.

If you already have the VIP rank, it just means you don't have to vote every single day to keep the perks. I think the voter rank would fit in nicely and wouldn't negatively affect the current rank system.

It may even be possible to include voting perks for the current ranks, maybe making everyone's final .home free if they keep the vote streak up?

Happy Birthday to the server!

-fish

here is why cm is dead

1. horribly mismanaged, staff presence is nonexistent and do not engage with the community. the discord is less active than some 10 member private discord
2. horrible server software, switch to semi vanilla already. many incredibly game breaking things ruining the server experience in the past could've been resolved with a seamless switch to paper or something else actually competent, but there is this obnoxiously obsessive compulsion to stick with official mojang vanilla software. "blame it on mojang" doesnt work as an excuse anymore when there is an objectively better choice to make
3. vanilla minecraft is running out of steam, sorry, pack things up and move on

is there any fix to these problems? in principle, yep, but pragmatically, nope lol. i have exhaustively discussed these issues for the past 6 years or so, especially the semi vanilla change, and i'm always met with the same adamance over and over again. it is literally pointless to mentally invest any further in a server that refuses to change

After having read all of this, I'm most inclined to agree with updating the discord, and using the eventual 1.21 update to bring in new people with another reset. Plus, this year is both the 15th anniversary of MC AND the 10 anniversary of CM. The former alone should (key word) generate some more interest.

I've been playing CraftyMynes since the beginning, and it's sad to see the server and community in this sad state. I don't want to see CM be lost to time and/or inactivity. At this point we need some sweeping reforms and a big refresh overall. Going with semi-vanilla sounds like a good idea on paper, but in keeping with CM's original identity of standing out, I think we should refrain from using the term "semi-vanilla" when describing the server. When I've told my friends about our server, I always describe it as "99% vanilla", or "vanilla with creature comforts." I mention the sethomes, TP system, trading halls, and other amenities. I'm sure there's a more succinct way of explaining and marketing CM, but I'm just sharing what I've said.

Add in anti-griefing measures and other semi-vanilla features, enable ban forgiveness for those who've been banned for 2+ years, and see what sticks. Maybe we can market it as 90% vanilla then? lol

I'd love to help out with the cause in any way I can. If we're gonna try to boost this server to new found glory, we're gonna need all hands on deck. I know I'm not on very often these days. I grew up and became an adult somehow with many adult things that take up time. I'm still very passionate about this server and I'd love to see it make a comeback.

I know I'm kinda gushing at this point, but I wanted to toss my hat in the ring, even if it's way later than everyone else.

@Tez1010 I personally agree its time to start fresh on discord and if we timed it with the expected update to 1.21 and insisted you actually play on the server to join the discord? Basically the general chat is just drivel, and lots of 'goodbyes' as people leave the server. Quite frankly I would not want the young people in my family who all play minecraft, though mostly not on a public server, to join the discord server as it stands and I think it is quite off-putting.

100% agreed. The discord server needs a well-deserved upgrade, and proper moderation. Plus, all the anti-furry hate I received is still very easily viewable, and that kind of attitude, in jest or otherwise, isn't a good look for a server, not to mention all the "goodbyes"

As far as vanilla is concerned, yes Craftymynes is technically vanilla, as it uses the unaltered jar file, but with the creature comforts it doesn't really feel vanilla to a lot of people. Changing over to semi vanilla with paper would bring performance improvements, but integrating it with all Craftymynes systems isn't a 5 minute job, and Crafty simply doesn't have time to do it.

That's fair. Maybe we can pin this thread on the forums and refer back to it if or when Crafty has time to integrate these changes. I'm sure this server wasn't originally build in a few minutes, and I don't expect it to be fixed in a few minutes either. These changes could come as a result of new activity on the server, and seeing what the players want.

Many people have moved over to bedrock, and java is getting left behind. I don't think there is a simple answer, I'm afraid, but for now we carry on and I will do what I can to help.

With the 15th anniversary, this may not be as big of an issue as it has been in recent days. That could be my rose-colored glasses talking though. That being said, I fully believe that our last hope would be a strong marketing push. MC has been around for 15 years, well we've been around for 10 and still around! Something to that effect. Use our age as a selling point, and see whatever smaller changes can be implemented. I don't know what Crafty has the time to do these days, if anything. Delegating these changes to the rest of the staff is an option, but I don't know if Crafty would be ok with that. Plus, giving admins and mods access to change the server in these ways may be a process in itself. I'm just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks.

As for Bedrock edition, I don't know what to say about that. I much prefer Java for all the mods and stuff, but Bedrock is getting better all the time, and I must admit it makes the future of Java servers and communities somewhat questionable. As for now, I can only do so much. I could maybe do a base tour on the night of the reset as well as a village tour and post it on my YT channel. Maybe someone could record the "spawn explosion" if we're doing that again and upload it. IDK if CraftyMynes has a dedicated social media presence, but that could be a great start in getting our name back out there.