@Jordi223b This really concerns me because I've also heard of players who have had withers spawned by admins, which drop nehter stars which, as you might know, are farely valueable. Now, if the items are requested to be destroyed as r4 said, there shouldn't be a problem

I always pick them up and request items be sent to me.
Clearly I missed it in this case but it's worrying that a user decided to say nothing.

I can't read the whole thread from my phone right now, I'll revisit from home later, but I'd like to chime in on the part I read about crates being overpowered. I'm a fan of op overpowered items as much as possible. The more unique or unusual the better. For me it adds new options and new things to see. I don't understand why a realistic economy where some people have fabulous wealth is even a problem anyway. If my neighbor can afford to build his house out of diamonds good for him! It doesn't affect my ability to gather and build on my own. And if I could build a creeper grinder that would be awesome for me and for others since i could sell gunpowder for the benefit of other players. I just don't understand why the concern about others personal wealth.

Guys I guarantee 85% Chance this works once you Live a little, breathe some air, you tend to run out of fresh fucks to give about a game hosted by young adults

Haha! I'm sorry but anyway

This is why I feel players that just keep to themselves always have the upper hand with the community and staff because you don't really heavily take part in it enough for drama to interfere with a block game. You're not targeted, treated passive aggressively, People just kind of leave you alone if you barely talk anymore.
My experience with CM has been similar to cepheid not so much about the server concerns but more personal. Does it matter to me anymore? Nah, Not At All.. I've had my highs and lows playing here but in the end nothing of it matters anymore. I'm not going to drag any of this through my personal life because that's where CM stops existing. And it's a weird feeling for me because I used to heavily partake in debates. I guess I'm growing out of some things.

So many great points, I'm glad that other players can see the faulty decisions. Thank you @cepheid for all the time you have spent creating this post. I also agree that some rules are confusing and should be written.

Also can confirm Crafty is there when you most need him He's helped me with many personal problems. Issues that I'm certain most other staff wouldn't know how to handle, so props to him for tht

@Cileklim So many great points, I'm glad that other players can see the faulty decisions. Thank you @cepheid for all the time you have spent creating this post. I also agree that some rules are confusing and should be written.

elaborate, please. Agreeing with "faulty decision" doesnt help us at all, especially concerning @2Chill and @OtherGreenGamer ;

You agree that we will never promote them or agree that its a mistake to wait?

You agree we refuse without thought even though the threads linked have lenghty discussion between botg staff and players?

As Crafty said, if no one tells you anything, how can it be fixed?

@GrinningBobcat yes definitely but it goes back to my point that if they were cause for concern, why do i hear about it *now*, 2 months later? 2 months ago cepheid was still staff, i posted a picture of the totem, which can only be used once; i heard crickets. The only time @cepheid has ever approached me was when his thread was deleted due to rash jugement

@Cutebot Ok this is getting ABSOLUTLEY out of hand. You are all going to have to hear my opinion on this matter. I can't use quotes becuz my phone hates me, but I'll edit this when I get home to add specific quotes.

Even in this thread, @Blackened_Dawn has not admitted to anything she said about the crafty crates or whatever. Therefore reinforcing cepheids subject of staff being selfish and arrogant at times. I do not mean to direct this only at dawn, please take note of this.

Secrets. Ahh I've wanted to talk about this for quite a while. There are many times, even in this thread, where staff are just saying things like ", well, your gonna have to trust me," such as how dawn said that SHE makes the craftycrates and @CraftyMyner reviews them. I'm in total agreement with @cepheid about this matter.

Everything else in this thread I have no other opinion on, I agree with cepheid.

What is there to admit ?
We don't agree the Craftycrates are OP, should we admit that since It was mentioned a number of times ?
No I don't agree it's a mistake and if Ceph actually had a criticism and didn't want to just staff bash as a leaving present he would have raised the concerns when Dawn asked in Staff chat if people thought this was OP.

How is that a secret, Dawn makes crates, this is a well established fact and many VIP+ know this.
Other than that when have staff asked you to trust them in this thread ?
No offense but you are just weakening Ceph's points even further with things like this.
What do you even want, we explain every staff action to you ?

Agreeing with Ceph doesn't help us, if you have a concern raise it yourself.
As I pointed out nearly all of Ceph's criticism are invalid anyway so what are you agreeing with ?

I for one agree with R4 and dawn on this, while the thread above does have one or two valid criticisms it seems mostly to be just a thread to attack certain staff, people should raise these concerns when they are a problem not just compile them in one big thread and leave.
I for one don't support the kind of pure economy Cepheid espouses and to try phrase the failing to meet his opinion of the server as a criticism is nonsense as most of his points seem to be.
The server doesn't cater to one individual and failure to meet your opinion of how it should be run is not a failing, that's just arrogance.

Staff do a great job and spend hours of their time for free and most people in this thread seem to have forgotten that.

@Blackened_Dawn @GrinningBobcat yes definitely but it goes back to my point that if they were cause for concern, why do i hear about it *now*, 2 months later? 2 months ago cepheid was still staff, i posted a picture of the totem, which can only be used once; i heard crickets. The only time @cepheid has ever approached me was when his thread was deleted due to rash jugement

Does it matter? Stuff that give advantage should not be given no matter what.

@Blackened_Dawn elaborate, please. Agreeing with "faulty decision" doesnt help us at all, especially concerning @2Chill and @OtherGreenGamer ;

You agree that we will never promote them or agree that its a mistake to wait?

You agree we refuse without thought even though the threads linked have lenghty discussion between botg staff and players?

As Crafty said, if no one tells you anything, how can it be fixed?

@cepheid In addition, I believe Ina's birthday gift of a knock back 4 bone is unacceptable to be given out. Don't misunderstand me, I know Ina would never abuse it in pvp, but she could easily be raided/killed and have it fall into the hands of pvpers. It also sets the precedent that it's okay to give out potentially OP items that are not possible to create by survival players, which is something I'm starkly against. Here's her item:

@cepheid The admins routinely contradict each other about both words, some saying they're allowed in come contexts and others completely banning them. It's extremely confusing and wholly unnecessary, I personally don't care whether they're allowed or not, but crafty and the admins MUST come to a consensus about these and other words.
-I also feel like the "orientation" for new staff is lacking a bit. Maybe it is just a "learn as you go" experience, but I do feel like new helpers need a little bit more help knowing the kick/ban process. It took me a month as staff before someone told me it's 3 kicks you give someone before asking for a ban.

@cepheid sknup's base
For reference: Skup's Base Protection
One secret that's now public that I can talk about is sknup's base. I personally don't give a shit about sknup having admin protection of his base, but the way it was handled by the admins is pretty unexcusable in my eyes. Some of the admins act like there was no problem with protecting his base, but if there really was no problem, then why was his protection kept so secret that even many staff members (including myself) weren't allowed to know about it. As far as I'm concerned, the only 2 reasonable ways to handle his protection were:

1. Inform the community from the beginning that sknup's base is both unraidable and will carry over between servers. This way people are at least aware of the rules of the server they're playing on, voting for, and donating for
2. Once his base was discovered to have protection, remove the protection and admit that a mistake had been made (even move it first so it wouldn't immediately be raided, I don't really care)

Ultimately this is Crafty's server and he can make the rules as he sees fit, but the community absolutely has a right to know those rules and the exceptions. In my eyes, it gets more complicated when people are voting and donating for a server and then realize that they've been duped to some extent by the admins making exceptions to the rules. Everyone should ideally play by the same rules, but in the case that they don't the community has a right to know. I'll reiterate: I personally don't care that sknup has base protection, and for all I care he can be given creative to help him build better. However, what I disagree vehemently with is how the admins kept it a secret and expected no backlash.

@cepheid I want some more consistency with the explanations of some of the rules. For the last 6 months I've been trying to figure out whether things like pumpkin edits, low fire, low shield, or ore highlighter edits to texture packs are allowed but can never sem to get a straight answer. Even the other day I responded to this post trying to bait an answer from the admins about pumpkin edits to no avail. this post suggests that low fire and low shield edits are unfair in pvp an therefore aren't allowed, but people seem to post screenshots of pvp-edit packs on the forum every day and don't get in trouble. Apparently batty's coordinates plus was allowed on the basis that the same effect is possible through optifine but that effect isn't possible through optifine leaving me confused why this mod is still allowed.

As with a lot of other things in this post, I don't particularly care what is and isn't allowed, but I do care about consistency. I just want crafty/the admins to have clearer rules to make it easier for players to figure out what they can/can't do and also for staff members to answer questions about such things (I had a few players ask about pumpkin edit and low fire texture packs when I was staff and I struggled to answer their questions, even after asking in staff chat).

@cepheid Refusing to admit mistakes
Unfortunately, like in 2Chill's case the admin's not admitting to any mistakes seems to be a serious trend. I first saw this all the way back when the casino opened and I was begging people for 8 hours to change something, but nobody admitted any problem until I farmed 30+ stacks of coins. There's always going to be bad decisions being made, but I wish I played on a server where the admins were able to own up to their mistakes and fix them. The admins stuck with the OP villagers at spawn despite significant pushback , and the hostile environment toward suggestions directly delayed my reset post . Perhaps the most straightforward example of this was with the wool trader that was implemented. When it was found to be overpowered, I thought it would've been easily handled by just saying "hey guys, sorry I fucked up this one. It won't happen again." but instead the admins didn't admit any wrongdoing:

Sorry to particularly single out Baron on this one, I think it's a problem most if not all of the admins can have at times, but I really don't think it's unreasonable to expect the admins to just admit a small mistake, it would certainly earn my respect more and make CraftyMynes better as a whole.

Other significant cases of refusing to admit mistakes include the handling of sknup's base (keeping it a closely guarded secret) and not promoting 2Chill. It would be extremely refreshing for the admins to bridge the gap between themselves and the rest of the playerbase, because currently it feels to me like the players are more separated than ever from the admins.

@cepheid Staff's resistance to suggestions
Perhaps my biggest gripe with the staff on CraftyMynes, I think too often suggestions from the community are simply rejected without any though or real consideration. While I understand that not all suggestions are good suggestions or can possibly be implemented, it's important to listen to the community at times since the survival players are the ones most affected by many decisions being made. There are good and bad reasons to reject suggestions, but I think it's important to keep in mind that respected players can have terrible suggestions, and stupid players can have amazing suggestions. Every post should be taken for what it is and judged on whether it's a positive move for CraftyMynes as a whole and not just the feelings of a few players. Too often suggestions are met with anger or just disregarded, which I can't stand.
more reading on this topic:
https://forum.craftymynes.com/3889-the-future-of-spawn-eggs
https://forum.craftymynes.com/3325-mob-griefing-and-fire-spreading
https://forum.craftymynes.com/3656-remove-or-nerf-all-spawn-villager-trader
https://forum.craftymynes.com/3254-allowing-cheaters-to-play-on-alts

Closing thought: at this time I've provided more public constructive criticism for the server than possibly anyone else. I hope going forward staff will be able to respond better to criticism . I think the behavior of a lot of staff members needs to be changed, and I hope it can be done peacefully without hurting anybody's feelings, as we all want CraftyMynes to be as good as it can be, even if I may decide to leave soon.

If there is no incentive to buy CraftyCrates, how do you expect the server to continue to run? None of the items imo are super OP, so I really don't even see an issue with it. You can get cartographers easily and get maps and have 2 totems fairly quickly.

@Cellexya If there is no incentive to buy CraftyCrates, how do you expect the server to continue to run? None of the items imo are super OP, so I really don't even see an issue with it. You can get cartographers easily and get maps and have 2 totems fairly quickly.

Totems can be obtained, but can you say the same thing about a knockback IV item?

It has vanishing on it, and it was a birthday gift, I see nothing wrong with that.

@Cellexya It has vanishing on it, and it was a birthday gift, I see nothing wrong with that.

I'm not against birthday gifts, but even if they put vanishing to it after this thread, the photo clearly shows that the item did not have vanishing on it before. As I said, items that give a clear advantage over other players should not be given at all.

If it was a sharp 6 item or something similar, I could agree. But it's just a knockback item. I don't really see the huge advantage.

The Hurricane shit storm pushes onward

So the issue with the birthday gift is that because she can hit people back a few more blocks than a sword, it's an advantage? This doesn't help in the case of a fight. She would have to hit them back, switch to a real weapon, and then fight. While she is swinging that around or switching weapons, the other player would have probably a sharp v sword, getting hits in and eventually killing her while she does no damage to him other than keeping him farther at a distance. It has no pvp benefit. The only chance she would use it in pvp in the first place is if she was jumped by a pvper out of nowhere, in which case being taken by surprised and killed before she probably could get more than one hit in. That is not an advantage, that would actually make it harder to fight.

At this point, considering what staff has said, the only valid argument is the Secrets one, which most players don't have anything to do about or have anything to say, it is a problem staff have to fix (with more honesty between them for example).

@Cileklim Does it matter? Stuff that give advantage should not be given no matter what.

As pointed out such an item is useless in pvp.
What advantages do you think it gives and what right do you think you have to dictate what we should and shouldn't do?