Change the Spawn

[LoneSoldier55]

ten unique IP's per day can hardly be considered living

I help run a Space Station 13 server that gets at max 20 people on weekends and it's still fairly dead, usually peaking around 10-15 unique IPs every mid day, and it's still pretty dead.

[A. Pippenger]

I've never played Space Station 13 but it looks like a fairly different type of game, the type where it takes more people to play.

I don't think Minecraft needs that many, at minimum. A lot of people are happy to mostly play on singleplayer. And many are happy to play on small private servers or LAN servers. Some of the best times I ever had on this server was last year on days when only me and Cinnabars were on working on Ascaris, with one or two others popping on occasionally. It's not ideal but it's a stretch to call it dead, even in times like that.

Obviously the general preference is higher than that, but I think that for most people, 5-20 people on at once is ideal. We're already reaching lower at the end of that spectrum currently, since the population has been going up in 2015 so far. If we can make a few tweaks, play a bit more often, etc, I don't see why we can't keep this trend going for a while and get enough people. We really don't need that many.

What you're basically saying is "since I can't be a millionaire I'm just gonna stop working and be homeless." There's a huge middle ground too.

[LoneSoldier55]

it's called "the black and white fallacy" by the way

but remember that having four players on a map that's unlimited leaves a lot of interaction to be desired, and global chat isn't the interaction i'm talking about

[RevStoningpot]

i'm not reading all of this, just dropping in what i think and that's that. I liked the design a spawn world for making new spawns. rotating every few months would be great. if you mean to refresh the surrounding thousand blocks or so, it's just not of much use since it gets ruined pretty quick. but i have no problem with admins going around from time to time resurfacing and replanting. If no admins have time for that i may consider re-oping for the purpose of doing that.

[A. Pippenger]

I don't think admins should ever change the land surrounding spawn unless it's absolutely strictly necessary, because it's contrary to the purpose of anarchy and messes up the sort of emergent gameplay that makes this server so fun.


But I do agree that we should rotate the actual protected spawn area sometimes and that it should usually be something nice looking. That area is admin responsibility, so having it be nice shows that the people in charge know what they're doing. If the actual spawn is complete garbage and the land around is messed up too, we look less like "intentional anarchy server" and more like "shit server probably run by children", I think.

[SilasOfBorg]

What pip said. All of it.

[LoneSoldier55]

I don't think admins should ever change the land surrounding spawn unless it's absolutely strictly necessary, because it's contrary to the purpose of anarchy and messes up the sort of emergent gameplay that makes this server so fun.


But I do agree that we should rotate the actual protected spawn area sometimes and that it should usually be something nice looking. That area is admin responsibility, so having it be nice shows that the people in charge know what they're doing. If the actual spawn is complete garbage and the land around is messed up too, we look less like "intentional anarchy server" and more like "shit server probably run by children", I think.

the protected spawn shouldn't matter as long as it serves its purpose, which is to allow you to spawn and allow you to move out of it to the unprotected game world

of course you're now trying to grab players based on what they think of a protected spawn area that majority of people will not spend more than 5% of their time staring at since they'll be off traveling, base building, mining, and fighting in pvp instead of prowling spawn for dirt.
People who make sweeping assumptions on a subject before they know about it aren't the people who are likely to enjoy an anarchy pvp server anyways, not that this point will matter because you are desperately craving any new players you can get.

[SilasOfBorg]

We have exactly one chance to make a first impression on any noob. Why not make it a good one?

Past that, a nice build at spawn is a delicious contrast to the wasteland outside the protected area, and it can be place to showcase fun builds that all can see and explore if they so desire.

[RevStoningpot]

i don't know how long the spawn i designed (temple with massive maze under it) was around. but i remember a lot of activity in the chat around that time of people talking about where they were and what they were finding in the maze. So what is it that is desired here? The player count can easily be boosted by making a fun interactive spawn but that count is only boosted by spawn newbs. So if we want to attract good interactive players then spawn is not important due to: what lone said.

[A. Pippenger]

True, most good players don't choose a server based purely on how fun spawn is. However, many do choose servers based partly off of population. If most of the new players are noobs, it's still good for the server overall.


Also, even if people who actually use the spawn are noobs, it's not just about that. It's also about making our first impression.