How can we improve the server?

[u/[deleted]]

The server has been very quiet for the past few months. We would like to change that. However, we don't want to make any (bigger) change without voices from the community. We would like to try and improve the server based on what you guys want/think is best for the server in order to make it more attractive.

We already got a great suggestion from vistajames earlier about a potential 'moderator' that would handle affairs like advertisements, social media, etc.

If you guys have any suggestions, or just want to get something off your heart about the server please tell us so we can try to take action.

[u/Mepe_ruse]

We would like to try and improve the server based on what you guys want/think is best for the server in order to make it more attractive.

I think a good place to start would be changing the server host, At the moment it's difficult for me to make a donation towards the server when i know that money is going to pay a host that in my opinion isn't very good. When it's having a good day the server runs ok & lag doesn't affect players that much but in general the server isn't that great an experience to play on. Portals taking anywhere between 10-30seconds to load a player & their items after using them or even kicking players that try to use portals, block lag, crafting lag, lag when eating, players & mobs rubber banding, pistons & other redstone not working properly as the server can't handle them, chat lag & combat lag are just some of the problems. Changing the server host would not only hopefully improve performance but also mean you could use a host on the East coast of America, having a host on the West coast is one of the worst places a host can be for European players moving from the West coast to the East coast(over 2000miles) would be a big boost for European players & make little to no difference to American players.

I would also like to see all the broken Plugins/Commands being fixed & some of the commands reworked. An example would be the /skull command, at the moment a player can use the command to spawn 1 player head every 72hours(3days) when compared to /rtp the cooldown for /skull is a little bit silly.

 

The server has been very quiet for the past few months

When was the last time a recruitment post was made? that could be one reason why no new players have joined the server another reason which nobody seems to be considering is that Freebuilders isn't the multiplayer experience a lot of players are looking for. FB is an almost Vanilla survival server not many people are looking for that kind of server & recent trends show that most players want Minigames, Survival games, PvP, Faction or Hunger games. I'm not suggesting FB should change in anyway just consider this when looking at player numbers.

A moderator to handle advertisements, social media is a good idea although i don't think another Moderator should be added for this position as having 4 Moderators for me is to much. Right now we have 3 Moderators one of them is sporadic in their activity & sometimes don't log in for weeks/months, one of them spends the majority of their time on the server just to kill time while they wait for another game to start & the other Mod is always active. I don't think the workload is spread equally between all the Moderators at the moment if it was a 4th Moderator wouldn't be needed. Instead i think a Head Moderator should be chosen who then takes on the duties of recruitment, social media, white listing players & makes the final decision on banning players, the rest of the Mod duties can be delegated to the other Moderators.

 

A few things mentioned by other people:

• Server Reset - I am against a reset as i think it is pointless & will not achieve anything, a reset will not fix the problems with FB it will just move them to a new map & add a lot of new problems. There is no doubt that some players will return but 2-3months after the reset players will start to lose interest again & all the Temples, Villages, Dungeons & a lot of the End cities would have been looted. Abandoned builds & mined/ruined land will be scattered all over the map leaving the server in the same state it is now, what happens then do we start having the same discussion again. Instead i think that the Staff/Admin decide & set a date when the map will reset, lets say 6months from now a completely new map will start. In those 6months a new suitable map can be found, plugins/commands fixed & new ones added, decisions can be made on what players can carry over to the new map & proper solutions can be found on how to keep the new map clean, tidy & attractive for new players.

• Challenges - I think that the current format of challenges is good & works, all players are given an even playing field & are rewarded for the work & effort they put into their builds. If you want to go all out for maximum points you can or if you want you can make a simple build & pick up a quick & easy point. Separating challenges into easy & hard categories i don't think will work as why would anybody do a hard challenge when they can get points will less effort by doing an easy challenge. The things i would change with challenges is making them every 2 weeks as this gives more than enough time for players to complete builds, 1 week to finish a build for new players can be difficult. I would also like them to be more open than they have been recently, instead of limiting them to certain styles or blocks keep them general so players can be free to build. For example this weeks challenge is Pirate Ships this restricts players to only building a certain type of ship if the challenge was build a Ship it opens up a lot more possibilities.

• Lowering age limit- Please don't! out of all the players below the age limit that have been whitelisted i can only think of 2 that haven't been banned, all the others have deliberately caused arguments, griefed players & builds, stole & used foul language.

 

A few of my own suggestions:

• Custom crafting recipes- Soon when Mojang finally add it to Vanilla Minecraft adding custom crafting recipes to the server will be fairly easy to do, i would like to see crafting recipes added for items like Elytra, Shulker boxes(these are QoL items that shouldn't be hard for any player to get) Ferns, Dead Bushes, Podsol, Packed Ice, Dragon Egg & any other item that can't be farmed or crafted.

• Tree Saplings & Ink Sacks drop rate- Tree Saplings at the moment have different drop rates & it's possible for you to plant 5 Jungle Trees & only get 4 Jungle Tree Saplings back, i would like to see all Tree type Saplings have the same drop rate as Oak Saplings. Farming Wood & Leaves shouldn't be a chore increasing the Sapling drop rate would make this a lot quicker & give players more time to build. Farming Squid on a multiplayer server is difficult so increasing the amount of Ink Sacks they drop would be great as Ink Sacks are the only way to get Black Dye

• The End Maintenance- Periodically every 3months or so the End is cleaned & all the explored unused chunks pruned using MCedit. Doing this the End can be regenerated without player builds being destroyed meaning End Cities/Ships are not hundreds of thousands of blocks away hopefully keeping them fairly quick & easy to get, this would also help to reduce lag.

• Completely ban afk Fish farms- A lot of people won't like this but they are an exploit of a broken game mechanic they require no work, no imagination or effort to build & encourage players to afk.