@ThePhoenix You can't help Mojangs shit game code.
Yes you can, I have already said the solution was to go semi vanilla in the past, there are community polls where many active players have agreed with the change to semi vanilla because the game was genuinely turning to pure dogwater performance-wise, they have been ignored and brushed aside with the response "it's too much work, I have to fix boats."
I have made the case to use a Fabric server which is exactly one-to-one with the vanilla server software by design when no mods are installed, meaning that in principle Crafty could switch to a Fabric jar in a single day and still use the existing command block/panel systems, forego the "pure vanilla status," and install optimization mods later which increase the performance of lighting updates on the server, mob AI, etc... "fixing Mojang's shit game code" so to speak. The response was "it's too much work."
In the times that Crafty has responded to requests for semi vanilla he has stated "it is too much work to switch to semi vanilla, I have done it before and everything breaks," which again it shouldn't break command blocks, panel systems, etc if he used Fabric, as it's specifically engineered to not patch the vanilla server any more than is required by its installed mods. As in, if there are no Fabric mods installed on the Fabric server (especially the Fabric API), it performs no patches to the vanilla server, and functions identically to it. He has never addressed that point in particular.
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Regardless, I quit playing because I felt like the staff wasn't listening to my listed grievances. I've watched CM stumble since then, and reach horrible lows of 1-2 active players, with coping excuses like "it's a school weekday, kids won't be playing" or "everyone moved on from Minecraft." The fact is that everyone in the past has moved on from CM.
This could have been fixed if there was a more active involvement from staff in the direction of this server. I still don't see any sign of activity that signifies anyone actually seizing the helm of the server and bringing it somewhere new, it has mostly been minor things like "let's pardon everyone who used minimaps or Lunar client," or "we're going to approve a bunch of QoL mods and turn the server into a weird optional plugin-like modded vanilla experience" or "let's make 3 new channels in the Discord and delete the other random ones."
These things all benefit an existing community, not one that has hemorrhaged players for years and years, and suddenly was revived due to a Minecraft update. Considering that Mojang is now planning to do tiny "drops" of like 1-2 features instead of huge overhauls like before, this does not spell out good for the future of the community.
Other things that heavily persuade me that the server isn't heading in the right direction are the incredibly strange staff decisions being made like... you know... banning pie chart for its use as an xray yet allowing Litematica despite its potential use as an xray. I've used the pie chart in my own modded servers specifically to debug rendering issues and low FPS in order to triage things to a single thing or mod, it has legitimate use as a profiling tool if you know how to use it. So then why is having the pie chart up bannable, but having Litematica isn't?
Or that in the 10th anniversary post, Crafty basically directly admits the server doesn't pull in enough donations for him to not pay for it out of pocket, i.e. it's financially infeasible:
@CraftyMyner Over the past few years I couldn't bring myself to joke around as the topic just seemed too real. The numbers were down and I was paying out of pocket for the majority of the server. When I saw the 10th birthday coming up, it all caught up with me, I realized I can't keep doing this forever.
Then proceeds to start a store-wide sale ushering the existing players to buy ranks -- the subtext and optics there aren't great.