How to Solve the MCGamer Leadership Crisis

[Narwhalll]

I some what disagree with you.

Ok

 

[Niall]

i work in the digital sector for an online retailer. i see how efficient teams can be, and yes, mcgamer is trash

Sorry, might be missing something, but when were you on the staff team?

 

[Nikola]

That was a bit of an over reaction. Hiring someone that has horrible grammar, caused a large amount of controversy within the staff team and who has not been in the staff team for over a year would be a bit stupid. I have a lot more to say on Dave but I won't to not cause flame or disrespect here on the forums.

The same guy who you are talking about did countless of good things that helped MCSG become what it is but of course the human nature works differently someone would rather remember someone for doing something bad rather than doing something good and I dont judge you for doing that... and he may have not been in the staff team for a year but I can gurantee you that he knows way more that me and you know together. He was an ex admin so he probably knows how everything works (btw, he was a staff member on other networks while not being a staff member on mcsg so he isnt "rusty" if thats the correct word to use).

I admit Dave may of done some bad things in the past, but judging someone based of something that happened years ago is stupid. Whats even more funnier months later after he resigned mcsg started going downhill lol

Also SixZoSeven and CAmadeusA would make great leaders tbh next to dave

 

[Gustav Mahikano]

I admit Dave may of done some bad things in the past, but judging someone based of something that happened years ago is stupid.

But that works both ways. If you think it's wrong to judge someone for past mistakes, then why is it right to acknowledge their good moments? The only reason Dave is being considered as a potential owner is because of his past at MCGamer, but as soon as someone brings up that he's done wrong you say 'the past shouldn't matter'. It doesn't make sense.

 

[Remy2402]

The same guy who you are talking about did countless of good things that helped MCSG become what it is but of course the human nature works differently someone would rather remember someone for doing something bad rather than doing something good and I dont judge you for doing that... and he may have not been in the staff team for a year but I can gurantee you that he knows way more that me and you know together. He was an ex admin so he probably knows how everything works (btw, he was a staff member on other networks while not being a staff member on mcsg so he isnt "rusty" if thats the correct word to use).

I admit Dave may of done some bad things in the past, but judging someone based of something that happened years ago is stupid. Whats even more funnier months later after he resigned mcsg started going downhill lol

Also SixZoSeven and CAmadeusA would make great leaders tbh next to dave

I don't doubt that he would be a better leader than you and I at all. I just don't see him being the solution to this problem. I think the solution is for something bad (like the recent events) to get to Chad and make him hit rock-bottom and realise what he needs to do to save this network.

gtfo

k

 

[001nathan100]

That was a bit of an over reaction. Hiring someone that has horrible grammar, caused a large amount of controversy within the staff team and who has not been in the staff team for over a year would be a bit stupid. I have a lot more to say on Dave but I won't to not cause flame or disrespect here on the forums.

Not hiring someone for being dyslexic, is one of the most stupid arguments I've ever heard. I recommend you have a look at this website before you use that argument again.

http://www.dyslexia.com/famous.htm

Second of all, it was the staff cauaing the controversy most of the time.. Not Dave. And yeah, maybe he made mistakes. But don't we all? And like I said before: people change.

 

[SixZoSeven]

The same guy who you are talking about did countless of good things that helped MCSG become what it is but of course the human nature works differently someone would rather remember someone for doing something bad rather than doing something good and I don’t judge you for doing that... and he may have not been in the staff team for a year but I can guarantee you that he knows way more than me and you know together. He was an ex admin so he probably knows how everything works (btw, he was a staff member on other networks while not being a staff member on mcsg so he isn’t "rusty" if that’s the correct word to use).


I admit Dave may of done some bad things in the past, but judging someone based of something that happened years ago is stupid. What’s even more funnier months later after he resigned mcsg started going downhill lol


Also SixZoSeven and CAmadeusA would make great leaders tbh next to dave

So I haven't really responded much over the months to people requesting me to come back -- What I personally have to say might not appear popular to others. I'm just going to throw it out there, though.


Theoretically, if I were tasked with leading this community, I'd start at the core foundation of the staff team. I'd absolutely revitalize the staff team, change many mechanics and workings of the staff team, and build an extremely solid administration. I'm talking a staff team made out of steel - one that I'm proud to both lead and stand behind.

Again, I must warn you: Some of these things might sound crazy...but here goes:

Every new person hired, at every level, gets to talk to me. I don't mean that in a scary way - no, talking to me (or whoever is the leader) shouldn't be a scary thing. Anyhow, they'd personally be screened by me. Yes, I'm a firm believer in handpicking the cream of the crop hirees. I don't usually like to settle for less, so I'm aiming to have the type of staff team that other communities look up to. "Wow, look at so-and-so making a new server. I really hope their staff team is as top-notch as MCSG".

I'm absolutely serious. Top notch-staff team, handpicked. Should the need arise, trusted, competent administrators would also be granted the ability to screen hirees.

Communication and integration is next. If a staff member needs to talk to a dev, admin, or owner, then it should be possible. Absolutely. From what I've heard, it’s often hard for staff members to talk to admins/owner currently, and perhaps that's because the upper level staff don't want to constantly be bothered by useless messages. When you have a top-notch staff team like mentioned above, that sort of thing doesn't happen anyways. So again -- easy and efficient/hassle-free communicative abilities from lower level-staff to even the highest levels.

Key point: QUALITY OVER QUANTITY. I'd much rather have 50 fantastic moderators than 200 pure moderators. If a large portion of those 200 moderators don't do their duty well, and fail to work efficiently...what's the point of having them. 50 top-notch moderators will get the job done, and please the community while doing so.

I've heard from current staff that meetings are still somewhat dreadful - They take a while and there are STILL issues with timing. That needs to change. Meetings need to be 30 mins tops. That's it. Unless there is some monumental situation at hand, (leafygreentea came back and killed the entire sr. staff team) then really, 30 mins tops.

There's plenty more I've thought about regarding the staff, but those are just some more immediate and frontal thoughts/changes.

Moving On.

So this is a tricky subject, and potentially could get some people mad at me. But hey, that's going to happen when you're promoting some amount of change to the status quo. Anyhow, the development team would need to get revamped.

Like I said, this is tricky. Here's why: I don't have a full, working knowledge of the current financial operation of the server. (I have a rough idea, but its outdated and was at best a superficial understanding) I don't know exactly how money flows in and out, and what is allocated to what. Also, this is in no way bashing the current development team.

So, here's a couple things: Get a few, STRONG developers. Ava is a pretty cool gal. I've known her for a bit, met her IRL a couple times - she's a smart person who's off to do great things after college. That's for sure. But she's also not able to handle development single-handedly. Think of it like this: Let's say you have a soldier in your army. He's the best soldier you've ever trained. He's amazing. That doesn't mean you can send him out on his own to take out entire squadrons of the other army. It just doesn't work like that.

Same idea here - Ava can't just do everything. There needs to be, in my opinion, three developers that can get the job done, fully. This might be the most difficult task.

Somewhat related to development -- I'm going to perhaps be "politically incorrect" as this may appear as pure bashing of the sever (it's not, I'm purely giving my thoughts on things for the better of the server). The gamemodes. All of this stuff that came with the AntVenom merge. Stop. There are so many gamemodes that have extremely small, sometimes zero playerbase. Zero. That's not acceptable. Gamemodes shouldn't always be released just because someone else has it. There are exceptions to this - Having a creative and survival server are fine. Even other popular things are fine. It's more of "When has the last time anyone can remember playing something like Survival Bingo to the degree and extent that SG has been played"? I'm checking right now, and there's actually zero people on both the US and EU network (for the aforementioned gamemodes). If I wanted to, I literally couldn't play multiple gamemodes because no one else is playing them. Perfect what already is popular, then draft ideas for new gamemodes. The thing is, when a new gamemode is going to be released, it needs to be great from the beginning. A top-notch product needs to be made. SG was hands-down the single greatest gamemode innovation in Minecraft, and UHC is a close second now. Other communities made pretty good SG servers, and have hundreds of people playing on them. There must be a reason why very little play the UHC here.

Badlion has UHC. They just do. Everyone knows it - Mineplex staff know it, Hive staff know it. It's just a matter of fact. Don't attempt to outdo them in UHC...it just wont happen. Instead, let's get started in innovating the next big gamemode. That's what needs to happen.

That largely ties in with forging a stronger dev team, however part of this is also a shot called, or at least should be called in my opinion, by the administrative staff.

I recently heard AU was shut down. There is only one reason for this: The AU servers were simply not profitable. That shouldn't be the case -- the system should work that it's proportional to the AU playerbase. Again, I don't know the absolute specifics like numbers, and I understand AU hosting is much more expensive, but still, it was a thing many years ago, and shouldn't be going away. That's backwards progress. Not good. Should be forward progress.

I briefly read the announcement regarding AU server shutdown. I'm not at all denying that the quality to value ratio was off, but it was more often that not like that in the history of MCSG. For as long as I can remember as staff, AU has always been spotty compared to US and EU in terms of quality to value ratio. Other servers have AU, let's have AU too. Even if it's a much smaller amount of server hosting compared to US or EU, there still needs to be AU if there already was multiple years ago.

More serverwide community events. I'm talking livestreams, I'm talking tournaments. That sort of thing. Chad used to livestream back in 2012. It was awesome. Everyone in the TS back then would always get so excited when a Chad stream was coming up. It was great fun, and something everyone could enjoy. I'd certainly want to have fun livestreaming with the community.

But why stop there. Let's get some real YouTubers and Twitch streamers to realize this is the place to be when it comes to playing SG. Why not?

Anyhow, I'd probably look into reworking the donation system and introduce different in-game properties that would encourage donating. Not pay-to-win or something like that. That's lame. I'm a competitive gamer, so I know these things first hand just like everyone else.

Look at CS:GO. It's not pay-to-win, yet valve rakes in so much profit off of skins and cases. Players love the skin system. Even the operation system too. Let's look at those sorts of avenues for the server, to ensure the server is getting the money it needs to maintain AND grow.

I'd also promote the push for more competitive, organized play. Again, tournaments. Not just any tournament - Tournaments with prizes to be desired. Livestream the tournaments. Get thousands of people watching on twitch. Do it.

Full communication needs to be made between staff and players. Introducing the Dev Changelog was a great idea. Continue on that sort of path.

There are plenty of decisions made that never made sense to me. Some may disagree with me on this, but for the longest time I've always wanted to push harder bans. I wanted to do away with all of the 1 day for this, 3 day for this, 5 day for this, 7 day for this, permaban for this nonsense. You hack once, now it's time for a break. Second time, you're gone. That's it.

There's often too many uproars over bans either being unjust/unfair, or invalid.

This goes back to top-notch staff team. The staff that deal with ban disputes need to be the best hacker-spotters ever. I can look at a player, and just tell be the way he moves if he's likely a hacker. Once I actually see the portion of the video where he/she is supposedly hacking, its either they were or they weren't. I've played this game too long to not be able to spot hacks. Aeruner was an old admin, and he and I used to be some of the only sr staff that could actually reliably spot better sprint mod when that used to be banned.

Speaking of catching hackers, let’s get work started on making an absolutely phenomenal anti-cheat system. Strong, full-fledged devteam = better work production towards great anti-cheat. Remember, anti-cheat systems don’t care who they ban. They won’t hesitate to ban someone that is their friend, because they don’t have friends. They don’t ban out of anger or spite. They ban because they are programmed to under a specific, hardened set of parameters.

The forums are flooded with posts about “this server is dying” or “what happened to mcsg???”.

Honestly, yes some of this posts are not very helpful and are just angry people sharing their anger. But there is a reason why we see so many of these posts. A reason exists.

There are several other significant changes that I would bring about, but many of them escape my train of thought for now. I often put on the “I’m SixZoSeven, so let me just post witty or neat things that gets lots of likes from people.” Seriously, when I was staff I would very rarely directly speak out against other staff members. If someone said something I completely disagreed with in a meeting, I would often just stay out of the conversation or vaguely respond taking a neutral stance. That was my fault – I shouldn’t have been so afraid. As everyone can see by this post, I’m very clearly not afraid of people I used to work with disagreeing with me. It’s a good thing to have them disagree – at least it means they’re reading what I’m typing.

If I was older and wiser back when I was staff, I’d have done everything in my power to make MCSG the best server it could be.

Again, could write about more things…but many other ideas escape my current train of thought.

I completely understand how arrogant this sounds...but take a look at what I have in my signature. There's a reason I have those awards, voted by the community. And to think that was back when I was younger and didn't actually fully incorporate my personal potential for this community.

 

[Dave]

So I haven't really responded much over the months to people requesting me to come back -- What I personally have to say might not appear popular to others. I'm just going to throw it out there, though.


Theoretically, if I were tasked with leading this community, I'd start at the core foundation of the staff team. I'd absolutely revitalize the staff team, change many mechanics and workings of the staff team, and build an extremely solid administration. I'm talking a staff team made out of steel - one that I'm proud to both lead and stand behind.

Again, I must warn you: Some of these things might sound crazy...but here goes:

Every new person hired, at every level, gets to talk to me. I don't mean that in a scary way - no, talking to me (or whoever is the leader) shouldn't be a scary thing. Anyhow, they'd personally be screened by me. Yes, I'm a firm believer in handpicking the cream of the crop hirees. I don't usually like to settle for less, so I'm aiming to have the type of staff team that other communities look up to. "Wow, look at so-and-so making a new server. I really hope their staff team is as top-notch as MCSG".

I'm absolutely serious. Top notch-staff team, handpicked. Should the need arise, trusted, competent administrators would also be granted the ability to screen hirees.

Communication and integration is next. If a staff member needs to talk to a dev, admin, or owner, then it should be possible. Absolutely. From what I've heard, it’s often hard for staff members to talk to admins/owner currently, and perhaps that's because the upper level staff don't want to constantly be bothered by useless messages. When you have a top-notch staff team like mentioned above, that sort of thing doesn't happen anyways. So again -- easy and efficient/hassle-free communicative abilities from lower level-staff to even the highest levels.

Key point: QUALITY OVER QUANTITY. I'd much rather have 50 fantastic moderators than 200 pure moderators. If a large portion of those 200 moderators don't do their duty well, and fail to work efficiently...what's the point of having them. 50 top-notch moderators will get the job done, and please the community while doing so.

I've heard from current staff that meetings are still somewhat dreadful - They take a while and there are STILL issues with timing. That needs to change. Meetings need to be 30 mins tops. That's it. Unless there is some monumental situation at hand, (leafygreentea came back and killed the entire sr. staff team) then really, 30 mins tops.

There's plenty more I've thought about regarding the staff, but those are just some more immediate and frontal thoughts/changes.

Moving On.

So this is a tricky subject, and potentially could get some people mad at me. But hey, that's going to happen when you're promoting some amount of change to the status quo. Anyhow, the development team would need to get revamped.

Like I said, this is tricky. Here's why: I don't have a full, working knowledge of the current financial operation of the server. (I have a rough idea, but its outdated and was at best a superficial understanding) I don't know exactly how money flows in and out, and what is allocated to what. Also, this is in no way bashing the current development team.

So, here's a couple things: Get a few, STRONG developers. Ava is a pretty cool gal. I've known her for a bit, met her IRL a couple times - she's a smart person who's off to do great things after college. That's for sure. But she's also not able to handle development single-handedly. Think of it like this: Let's say you have a soldier in your army. He's the best soldier you've ever trained. He's amazing. That doesn't mean you can send him out on his own to take out entire squadrons of the other army. It just doesn't work like that.

Same idea here - Ava can't just do everything. There needs to be, in my opinion, three developers that can get the job done, fully. This might be the most difficult task.

Somewhat related to development -- I'm going to perhaps be "politically incorrect" as this may appear as pure bashing of the sever (it's not, I'm purely giving my thoughts on things for the better of the server). The gamemodes. All of this stuff that came with the AntVenom merge. Stop. There are so many gamemodes that have extremely small, sometimes zero playerbase. Zero. That's not acceptable. Gamemodes shouldn't always be released just because someone else has it. There are exceptions to this - Having a creative and survival server are fine. Even other popular things are fine. It's more of "When has the last time anyone can remember playing something like Survival Bingo to the degree and extent that SG has been played"? I'm checking right now, and there's actually zero people on both the US and EU network. If I wanted to, I literally could play multiple gamemodes because no one else is playing them. Perfect what already is popular, then draft ideas for new gamemodes. The thing is, when a new gamemode is going to be released, it needs to be great from the beginning. A top-notch product needs to be made. SG was hands-down the single greatest gamemode innovation in Minecraft, and UHC is a close second now. Other communities made pretty good SG servers, and have hundreds of people playing on them. There must be a reason why very little play the UHC here.

Badlion has UHC. They just do. Everyone knows it - Mineplex staff know it, Hive staff know it. It's just a matter of fact. Don't attempt to outdo them in UHC...it just wont happen. Instead, let's get started in innovating the next big gamemode. That's what needs to happen.

That largely ties in with forging a stronger dev team, however part of this is also a shot called, or at least should be called in my opinion, by the administrative staff.

I recently heard AU was shut down. There is only one reason for this: The AU servers were simply not profitable. That shouldn't be the case -- the system should work that it's proportional to the AU playerbase. Again, I don't know the absolute specifics like numbers, and I understand AU hosting is much more expensive, but still, it was a thing many years ago, and shouldn't be going away. That's backwards progress. Not good. Should be forward progress.

I briefly read the announcement regarding AU server shutdown. I'm not at all denying that the quality to value ratio was off, but it was more often that not like that in the history of MCSG. For as long as I can remember as staff, AU has always been spotty compared to US and EU in terms of quality to value ratio. Other servers have AU, let's have AU too. Even if it's a much smaller amount of server hosting compared to US or EU, there still needs to be AU if there already was multiple years ago.

More serverwide community events. I'm talking livestreams, I'm talking tournaments. That sort of thing. Chad used to livestream back in 2012. It was awesome. Everyone in the TS back then would always get so excited when a Chad stream was coming up. It was great fun, and something everyone could enjoy. I'd certainly want to have fun livestreaming with the community.

But why stop there. Let's get some real YouTubers and Twitch streamers to realize this is the place to be when it comes to playing SG. Why not?

Anyhow, I'd probably look into reworking the donation system and introduce different in-game properties that would encourage donating. Not pay-to-win or something like that. That's lame. I'm a competitive gamer, so I know these things first hand just like everyone else.

Look at CS:GO. It's not pay-to-win, yet valve rakes in so much profit off of skins and cases. Players love the skin system. Even the operation system too. Let's look at those sorts of avenues for the server, to ensure the server is getting the money it needs to maintain AND grow.

I'd also promote the push for more competitive, organized play. Again, tournaments. Not just any tournament - Tournaments with prizes to be desired. Livestream the tournaments. Get thousands of people watching on twitch. Do it.

Full communication needs to be made between staff and players. Introducing the Dev Changelog was a great idea. Continue on that sort of path.

There are plenty of decisions made that never made sense to me. Some may disagree with me on this, but for the longest time I've always wanted to push harder bans. I wanted to do away with all of the 1 day for this, 3 day for this, 5 day for this, 7 day for this, permaban for this nonsense. You hack once, now it's time for a break. Second time, you're gone. That's it.

There's often too many uproars over bans either being unjust/unfair, or invalid.

This goes back to top-notch staff team. The staff that deal with ban disputes need to be the best hacker-spotters ever. I can look at a player, and just tell be the way he moves if he's likely a hacker. Once I actually see the portion of the video where he/she is supposedly hacking, its either they were or they weren't. I've played this game too long to not be able to spot hacks. Aeruner was an old admin, and he and I used to be some of the only sr staff that could actually reliably spot better sprint mod when that used to be banned.

Speaking of catching hackers, let’s get work started on making an absolutely phenomenal anti-cheat system. Strong, full-fledged devteam = better work production towards great anti-cheat. Remember, anti-cheat systems don’t care who they ban. They won’t hesitate to ban someone that is their friend, because they don’t have friends. They don’t ban out of anger or spite. They ban because they are programmed to under a specific, hardened set of parameters.

The forums are flooded with posts about “this server is dying” or “what happened to mcsg???”.

Honestly, yes some of this posts are not very helpful and are just angry people sharing their anger. But there is a reason why we see so many of these posts. A reason exists.

There are several other significant changes that I would bring about, but many of them escape my train of thought for now. I often put on the “I’m SixZoSeven, so let me just post witty or neat things that gets lots of likes from people.” Seriously, when I was staff I would very rarely directly speak out against other staff members. If someone said something I completely disagreed with in a meeting, I would often just stay out of the conversation or vaguely respond taking a neutral stance. That was my fault – I shouldn’t have been so afraid. As everyone can see by this post, I’m very clearly not afraid of people I used to work with disagreeing with me. It’s a good thing to have them disagree – at least it means they’re reading what I’m typing.

If I was older and wiser back when I was staff, I’d have done everything in my power to make MCSG the best server it could be.

Again, could write about more things…but many other ideas escape my current train of thought.

It would be amazing if you and I could work together just like the good old days

 

[Remy2402]

Not hiring someone for being dyslexic, is one of the most stupid arguments I've ever heard. I recommend you have a look at this website before you use that argument again.

http://www.dyslexia.com/famous.htm

Second of all, it was the staff cauaing the controversy most of the time.. Not Dave. And yeah, maybe he made mistakes. But don't we all? And like I said before: people change.

How was I meant to know that he was dyslexic and how do you know? I never said that he shouldn't be hired because of that, I said a contributing factor to not being hired should be his grammar. Don't put words into my mouth please.

 

[001nathan100]

How was I meant to know that he was dyslexic and how do you know?

Common sense, and I know because he's one of my best friends.

I never said that he shouldn't be hired because of that, I said a contributing factor to not being hired should be his grammar.

Hiring someone that has horrible grammar, caused a large amount of controversy within the staff team and who has not been in the staff team for over a year would be a bit stupid.

Don't put words into my mouth please.

 

[feminist]

So I haven't really responded much over the months to people requesting me to come back -- What I personally have to say might not appear popular to others. I'm just going to throw it out there, though.


Theoretically, if I were tasked with leading this community, I'd start at the core foundation of the staff team. I'd absolutely revitalize the staff team, change many mechanics and workings of the staff team, and build an extremely solid administration. I'm talking a staff team made out of steel - one that I'm proud to both lead and stand behind.

Again, I must warn you: Some of these things might sound crazy...but here goes:

Every new person hired, at every level, gets to talk to me. I don't mean that in a scary way - no, talking to me (or whoever is the leader) shouldn't be a scary thing. Anyhow, they'd personally be screened by me. Yes, I'm a firm believer in handpicking the cream of the crop hirees. I don't usually like to settle for less, so I'm aiming to have the type of staff team that other communities look up to. "Wow, look at so-and-so making a new server. I really hope their staff team is as top-notch as MCSG".

I'm absolutely serious. Top notch-staff team, handpicked. Should the need arise, trusted, competent administrators would also be granted the ability to screen hirees.

Communication and integration is next. If a staff member needs to talk to a dev, admin, or owner, then it should be possible. Absolutely. From what I've heard, it’s often hard for staff members to talk to admins/owner currently, and perhaps that's because the upper level staff don't want to constantly be bothered by useless messages. When you have a top-notch staff team like mentioned above, that sort of thing doesn't happen anyways. So again -- easy and efficient/hassle-free communicative abilities from lower level-staff to even the highest levels.

Key point: QUALITY OVER QUANTITY. I'd much rather have 50 fantastic moderators than 200 pure moderators. If a large portion of those 200 moderators don't do their duty well, and fail to work efficiently...what's the point of having them. 50 top-notch moderators will get the job done, and please the community while doing so.

I've heard from current staff that meetings are still somewhat dreadful - They take a while and there are STILL issues with timing. That needs to change. Meetings need to be 30 mins tops. That's it. Unless there is some monumental situation at hand, (leafygreentea came back and killed the entire sr. staff team) then really, 30 mins tops.

There's plenty more I've thought about regarding the staff, but those are just some more immediate and frontal thoughts/changes.

Moving On.

So this is a tricky subject, and potentially could get some people mad at me. But hey, that's going to happen when you're promoting some amount of change to the status quo. Anyhow, the development team would need to get revamped.

Like I said, this is tricky. Here's why: I don't have a full, working knowledge of the current financial operation of the server. (I have a rough idea, but its outdated and was at best a superficial understanding) I don't know exactly how money flows in and out, and what is allocated to what. Also, this is in no way bashing the current development team.

So, here's a couple things: Get a few, STRONG developers. Ava is a pretty cool gal. I've known her for a bit, met her IRL a couple times - she's a smart person who's off to do great things after college. That's for sure. But she's also not able to handle development single-handedly. Think of it like this: Let's say you have a soldier in your army. He's the best soldier you've ever trained. He's amazing. That doesn't mean you can send him out on his own to take out entire squadrons of the other army. It just doesn't work like that.

Same idea here - Ava can't just do everything. There needs to be, in my opinion, three developers that can get the job done, fully. This might be the most difficult task.

Somewhat related to development -- I'm going to perhaps be "politically incorrect" as this may appear as pure bashing of the sever (it's not, I'm purely giving my thoughts on things for the better of the server). The gamemodes. All of this stuff that came with the AntVenom merge. Stop. There are so many gamemodes that have extremely small, sometimes zero playerbase. Zero. That's not acceptable. Gamemodes shouldn't always be released just because someone else has it. There are exceptions to this - Having a creative and survival server are fine. Even other popular things are fine. It's more of "When has the last time anyone can remember playing something like Survival Bingo to the degree and extent that SG has been played"? I'm checking right now, and there's actually zero people on both the US and EU network. If I wanted to, I literally could play multiple gamemodes because no one else is playing them. Perfect what already is popular, then draft ideas for new gamemodes. The thing is, when a new gamemode is going to be released, it needs to be great from the beginning. A top-notch product needs to be made. SG was hands-down the single greatest gamemode innovation in Minecraft, and UHC is a close second now. Other communities made pretty good SG servers, and have hundreds of people playing on them. There must be a reason why very little play the UHC here.

Badlion has UHC. They just do. Everyone knows it - Mineplex staff know it, Hive staff know it. It's just a matter of fact. Don't attempt to outdo them in UHC...it just wont happen. Instead, let's get started in innovating the next big gamemode. That's what needs to happen.

That largely ties in with forging a stronger dev team, however part of this is also a shot called, or at least should be called in my opinion, by the administrative staff.

I recently heard AU was shut down. There is only one reason for this: The AU servers were simply not profitable. That shouldn't be the case -- the system should work that it's proportional to the AU playerbase. Again, I don't know the absolute specifics like numbers, and I understand AU hosting is much more expensive, but still, it was a thing many years ago, and shouldn't be going away. That's backwards progress. Not good. Should be forward progress.

I briefly read the announcement regarding AU server shutdown. I'm not at all denying that the quality to value ratio was off, but it was more often that not like that in the history of MCSG. For as long as I can remember as staff, AU has always been spotty compared to US and EU in terms of quality to value ratio. Other servers have AU, let's have AU too. Even if it's a much smaller amount of server hosting compared to US or EU, there still needs to be AU if there already was multiple years ago.

More serverwide community events. I'm talking livestreams, I'm talking tournaments. That sort of thing. Chad used to livestream back in 2012. It was awesome. Everyone in the TS back then would always get so excited when a Chad stream was coming up. It was great fun, and something everyone could enjoy. I'd certainly want to have fun livestreaming with the community.

But why stop there. Let's get some real YouTubers and Twitch streamers to realize this is the place to be when it comes to playing SG. Why not?

Anyhow, I'd probably look into reworking the donation system and introduce different in-game properties that would encourage donating. Not pay-to-win or something like that. That's lame. I'm a competitive gamer, so I know these things first hand just like everyone else.

Look at CS:GO. It's not pay-to-win, yet valve rakes in so much profit off of skins and cases. Players love the skin system. Even the operation system too. Let's look at those sorts of avenues for the server, to ensure the server is getting the money it needs to maintain AND grow.

I'd also promote the push for more competitive, organized play. Again, tournaments. Not just any tournament - Tournaments with prizes to be desired. Livestream the tournaments. Get thousands of people watching on twitch. Do it.

Full communication needs to be made between staff and players. Introducing the Dev Changelog was a great idea. Continue on that sort of path.

There are plenty of decisions made that never made sense to me. Some may disagree with me on this, but for the longest time I've always wanted to push harder bans. I wanted to do away with all of the 1 day for this, 3 day for this, 5 day for this, 7 day for this, permaban for this nonsense. You hack once, now it's time for a break. Second time, you're gone. That's it.

There's often too many uproars over bans either being unjust/unfair, or invalid.

This goes back to top-notch staff team. The staff that deal with ban disputes need to be the best hacker-spotters ever. I can look at a player, and just tell be the way he moves if he's likely a hacker. Once I actually see the portion of the video where he/she is supposedly hacking, its either they were or they weren't. I've played this game too long to not be able to spot hacks. Aeruner was an old admin, and he and I used to be some of the only sr staff that could actually reliably spot better sprint mod when that used to be banned.

Speaking of catching hackers, let’s get work started on making an absolutely phenomenal anti-cheat system. Strong, full-fledged devteam = better work production towards great anti-cheat. Remember, anti-cheat systems don’t care who they ban. They won’t hesitate to ban someone that is their friend, because they don’t have friends. They don’t ban out of anger or spite. They ban because they are programmed to under a specific, hardened set of parameters.

The forums are flooded with posts about “this server is dying” or “what happened to mcsg???”.

Honestly, yes some of this posts are not very helpful and are just angry people sharing their anger. But there is a reason why we see so many of these posts. A reason exists.

There are several other significant changes that I would bring about, but many of them escape my train of thought for now. I often put on the “I’m SixZoSeven, so let me just post witty or neat things that gets lots of likes from people.” Seriously, when I was staff I would very rarely directly speak out against other staff members. If someone said something I completely disagreed with in a meeting, I would often just stay out of the conversation or vaguely respond taking a neutral stance. That was my fault – I shouldn’t have been so afraid. As everyone can see by this post, I’m very clearly not afraid of people I used to work with disagreeing with me. It’s a good thing to have them disagree – at least it means they’re reading what I’m typing.

If I was older and wiser back when I was staff, I’d have done everything in my power to make MCSG the best server it could be.

Again, could write about more things…but many other ideas escape my current train of thought.

I completely understand how arrogant this sounds...but take a look at what I have in my signature. There's a reason I have those awards, voted by the community. And to think that was back when I was younger and didn't actually fully incorporate my personal potential for this community.

I used to have a ton of respect for you way back and this post completely confirms you deserved that respect.

It's always been a belief of mine that for a successful community to operate there needs to be an administrator, owner or developer who understands the competitive aspect of the server. Whether this knowledge has been by personal experience such as yourself, Sixzo or by reading and listening to the communities feedback it's crucial. We can take into consideration Badlion. Apart from the UHC craze which has completely taken over Minecraft, Badlion offers a competitive environment which is being tweaked constantly to satisfy the needs of a community.

Chad needs to be able to admit his mistakes and apologise to the community instead of needlessly convincing himself that he's correct. The removal of AU was the catalyst for the controversy regarding the way ownership is handled in this server and how to communicate with the player-base.

I do respect your stance on the moderation team, however, I don't believe that 50 moderators is capable of handling a server which is overrun by hackers due to the non-existed anti-cheat. Every single other large network has an anti-cheat which performs exceptionally when it comes to banning hackers and this eliminates the need of having a large amount of staff, many of them being liabilities.

MCGamer has always been criticised on the relationship between the staff and community. Please correct me if I'm wrong in this, my knowledge of the other regions isn't completely up to par. US and EU had/have standing figures in the clan scene which acted as a bridge between the community and the staff. This is completely pathetic as it relies on having a member of the staff consistently saying "Hey guys, the staff is good. I'm your friend and you like me, please believe me". This was the case for the AU servers when they were still a thing. This is why we need developers whose first priority isn't making a 'hilarious' April Fools update to cater to the staff team who still believes this server is doing fine. We need developers who will make an anti-cheat that works and then fire the liabilities of the staff team, who listen to the community and don't use their status as a staff member on a Minecraft server to impose a sense of superiority.

It's completely insane to me that despite SG having an in-built competitive system in Clan Battles that the staff have not capitalised on this aspect and created a competitive environment with bi-weekly tournaments (perhaps that is pushing it, monthly, maybe?) With Badlion and Kohi creating tournaments isn't as important to their success as they have the elo system which caters to the need of a competitive player. SG doesn't have this and the only leader board requires grinding out wins which many players have turned to cheating or boosting to get to their position. It doesn't reward skill, it requires free time and how desperate you are.

You have the respect of the community and have the answers to what we want. I dearly hope you have the respect of the staff and the administration team as you are a figure which can make these servers into something special and make MCSG, not MCGamer become what it once was.

Or we could just settle for Dave, the guy who the whole community begged to be demoted for 2 years straight. My opinion on him is biased as I've had nothing but bad experienced with him. If anyone could tell me something Dave has done for this server I would appreciate it. Also, Dave. Telling your Team Elite buddies to make a thread for you so that the administration team will see it and think "damn the community really loves dave" is a sad strategy. If you want to make a case for yourself and explain why you'd be able to do something great then please go ahead, I would be more than eager for you to be in an administration position if you could actually tell us by YOURSELF why you'd do it.

As for Dave telling Jimmer to make this thread, I'm not sure about the validity of the claims from the source I obtained it from, however, my point still stands. I do think Jimmer deserves a raise Dave, he's vouching for you pretty hard.

 

[Dave]

I used to have a ton of respect for you way back and this post completely confirms you deserved that respect.

It's always been a belief of mine that for a successful community to operate there needs to be an administrator, owner or developer who understands the competitive aspect of the server. Whether this knowledge has been by personal experience such as yourself, Sixzo or by reading and listening to the communities feedback it's crucial. We can take into consideration Badlion. Apart from the UHC craze which has completely taken over Minecraft, Badlion offers a competitive environment which is being tweaked constantly to satisfy the needs of a community.

Chad needs to be able to admit his mistakes and apologise to the community instead of needlessly convincing himself that he's correct. The removal of AU was the catalyst for the controversy regarding the way ownership is handled in this server and how to communicate with the player-base.

I do respect your stance on the moderation team, however, I don't believe that 50 moderators is capable of handling a server which is overrun by hackers due to the non-existed anti-cheat. Every single other large network has an anti-cheat which performs exceptionally when it comes to banning hackers and this eliminates the need of having a large amount of staff, many of them being liabilities.

MCGamer has always been criticised on the relationship between the staff and community. Please correct me if I'm wrong in this, my knowledge of the other regions isn't completely up to par. US and EU had/have standing figures in the clan scene which acted as a bridge between the community and the staff. This is completely pathetic as it relies on having a member of the staff consistently saying "Hey guys, the staff is good. I'm your friend and you like me, please believe me". This was the case for the AU servers when they were still a thing. This is why we need developers whose first priority isn't making a 'hilarious' April Fools update to cater to the staff team who still believes this server is doing fine. We need developers who will make an anti-cheat that works and then fire the liabilities of the staff team, who listen to the community and don't use their status as a staff member on a Minecraft server to impose a sense of superiority.

It's completely insane to me that despite SG having an in-built competitive system in Clan Battles that the staff have not capitalised on this aspect and created a competitive environment with bi-weekly tournaments (perhaps that is pushing it, monthly, maybe?) With Badlion and Kohi creating tournaments isn't as important to their success as they have the elo system which caters to the need of a competitive player. SG doesn't have this and the only leader board requires grinding out wins which many players have turned to cheating or boosting to get to their position. It doesn't reward skill, it requires free time and how desperate you are.

You have the respect of the community and have the answers to what we want. I dearly hope you have the respect of the staff and the administration team as you are a figure which can make these servers into something special and make MCSG, not MCGamer become what it once was.

Or we could just settle for Dave, the guy who the whole community begged to be demoted for 2 years straight. My opinion on him is biased as I've had nothing but bad experienced with him. If anyone could tell me something Dave has done for this server I would appreciate it. Also, Dave. Telling your Team Elite buddies to make a thread for you so that the administration team will see it and think "damn the community really loves dave" is a sad strategy. If you want to make a case for yourself and explain why you'd be able to do something great then please go ahead, I would be more than eager for you to be in an administration position if you could actually tell us by YOURSELF why you'd do it.

As for Dave telling Jimmer to make this thread, I'm not sure about the validity of the claims from the source I obtained it from, however, my point still stands. I do think Jimmer deserves a raise Dave, he's vouching for you pretty hard.

I had no knowledge of Jimmer posting that thread and I would make my case but I'm not good at communicating in text so it would not do it justice.