When I was a kid, I lost my dad's really nice military flashlight while riding my bike. My dad isn't abusive at all but it was a really nice flashlight that I had lost. I would recommend going to a well trusted friend's house after school (without telling your parents if you think they will recognize you are missing quickly) and call them. tell them that you lost it and that you love them, and then tell them who you are with and where. Hopefully they will calm down before they com to get you, or if you doubt they will, call them from a friend's phone at school and tell a teacher if you think you will get beaten for it. This is a sucky situation but I hope you get out of it.

@TheMightyDrex I think gold farms aren't against the rules, but beware they might cause horrific lag

Overworld gold farms are not allowed, but nether gold farms are allowed.

Will this be for next month since April is kinda at an end?

@CraftyMyner I already removed the New Player room and rule book, players are now spawned right in front of the random TP with a title telling them to use their guide book to random tp.

Oh no don't get me wrong, there's not much more to do, a lot of the issue is that those people have too little patience to do even that when looking for a server they can really get into. I think you've done what needs to be done in that matter, I had to really think back to when I first joined, and it was pretty straightforward.

@R4iscool1 I don't agree, custom gifts add to the fun of the server in my opinion and prevent vanilla going stagnant, really they aren't a big part of the server but they show our appreciation to certain users.
Provided they don't confer an unreasonable advantage I see no issue with them

Exactly. I don't even have an issue with totems being given out. Having the ability to survive with half a heart if only useful in a couple scenarios. I think if you want to complain any more about the state of the server, complain about the players we lose within 30 minutes of joining, otherwise we just go back around the issue. :)

@Silver_Sonya Ok, how about that: only survival obtainable items only as a part of donation perks. No birthday, retirement, graduation and other gifts at unknown admin's discretion.

Sounds like a plan?

That is what would remove the OP items, yes. However, this would remove items with lore, harmless enchantments, and special attributes like colored names. Doing this would overall make crates a lot less interesting because the month specific items such as holiday themed, useless items, would be gone. Personally, I think that we don't need to worry about the OP items at all. If we want to talk about players leaving, I bet this is a 100:1 ratio on the players that leave 30 minutes into joining the server, vs the very rare person leaving due to "OP" items.

Don't get me wrong, you had a complaint, and this idea you have would remove it. However, if we held a vote of the top, I don't know, two hundred players that have the highest amount of ticks currently, I doubt this would go into action. Making a plan has to be combined with selling it to the community. If I heard "No more unobtainable items!" I would be super upset, because I enjoy collecting the rarer unobtainable items. As stated by crafty;

@CraftyMyner He plays but on another account. All the members on this forum represent less than 1% of the players that have played on this server, all the members that gave their opinion on this thread represent less than 0.01% of the players that have played on this server. For a more accurate statistic, all players that have posted on this thread represent 0.12% of the players that have played in the last month.

Feedback should be taken into account but should also be weighed.

Take a shop, for example, most of the time people only post a review if they had a bad experience. while its good to look at the feedback, you must take into consideration that the reviews may make it look worse than it actually is.

The same should be taken into consideration here, it's good to look at the feedback from players, however, we most not forget about all the other players that don't communicate their opinion on the forums and all the players that leave without saying why they left.

We receive on average about 120 players per day, most of which leave shortly afterward for one reason or another. I doubt that their short stay of 20-30 minutes was caused by staff giving out a non-op gift to a player. While we should make an attempt to fix some of the issues outlined in this thread, we also need to think about the issues that cause players to leave only a few minutes after joining.

To fix this decline in players, we need to think about issues bigger than just giving one bone to one person. This post should have been about fixing the server but so far all it has really been is an attack on the staff with no real ideas towards a solution.

I'm not perfect, the staff are not perfect, the players are not perfect. We all are not perfect, bashing and yelling at someone when they make a mistake is not going to help them improve.

I don't think that players are leaving due to "OP" items. I think that new players are leaving and for 2 main reasons.

1. Lack of direction in spawn, easily fixable with a sign that can be seen the second a new player accepts the rules, leading them to the RTP.
2. Getting killed/discouraged. Unfixable really unless we could make new players not found for score and not drop heads. Also they make por decisions and build too close to spawn, once again I think they are lost in the directions they can see.

Now in all seriousness. Do not try and belittle, argue, or fight. If you want people to take this thread seriously for another second just tell us your ideas.

@Silver_Sonya I see you love giving advices but not fancy following them yourself, right?

Uh, I think you've missed the point here. I'm not on your side of this. I don't care whether Shina gets a bone or if there are totems in the crates. You represent the opposisite side of this, so by all means, make a suggestion instead of getting all revved up by me trying to get some real points here. So far there is no real arguement other than you trying to make people look bad.

@Silver_Sonya Mate I don't care about op items. I care about players leaving the server because you guys are so excited to improve others "flawed" opinions.

If you want to resolve the issue, tell us your opinion on how you would fix these issues and what you would enforce. Otherwise stop trying to put staff down and work to fix it. All I see is "I don't like this (input annoying comment about staff), this is wrong, etc" if you want to fix some thing, and "Care about players leaving the server," then give a solution and stop spitting hot air.

Wow, this argument has gone from being a long list of informal complaints to a bunch of scrappy players trying to fuel this arguement with the opposite of help. I agree that maybe sometimes staff could be a little more clear on rules or bans, but they aren't perfect, but they DO know what they are doing. I deleted my above post because my wording was off, I actually meant to day that I DON'T agree with most of what was said. I don't doubt ever that staff puts time and heart into this server and whether they handle something one way or another, taking pot shots at them isn't cool or near what they deserve. I know that the vast majority just doesn't care whether Ina gets a bone, or if there's a totem in the crates; you shouldn't care either. Just be happy that the staff wants to dedicate so much time to making people happy here, and not abuse power or anything serious like that. So much time and effort goes into this server and responding with complaints is fine, but for the sake of the staff just be nice and stop trying to cause arguement. I mean, this IS the BEST vanilla server, the staff's methods are tried, true, and seem to work with little flaw, so please don't go throwing shots. If I were in staff's boots right now, I would lock the thread and wait for people to stop venting and actually try to resolve something instead of annoying them.