Why the Server is Dying (And a Step-by-Step outline on how to fix it!)

[Tenebrae]

That's a lot of thinking...

Considering he was banned for being a troll.

[1cec0ld]

We good so far? Here's where this thread gets locked.
Didn't lock it.

The admins don't care

1ce: Other than his last-minute hobby of running this server, he's moved on. He has college, he's gone on to do other things than run an online gaming community, which isn't exactly helping his career in any way. Having a hobby is great, especially one such as this; but more time and effort should be put into running a server. Guess I should stop building then.
Tene: Really the only one still mixed up in the server. I doubt she even has FTP access, or at least knows how to use it You're an idiot lol; or if she can, actually uses it at all. Definitely an idiot. She's a moderating admin, not a structural one (who actually builds on the server and improves it). Someone call the retard police. She does more than I do to maintain the structure and core of the server. Anyone who says I'm smarter or more integral to the server isn't paying enough attention.

When the admins stopped becoming invested, the population numbers grounded to a halt and then steadily started to decrease. You guys can probably pinpoint that exact point in time when it happened. Right after pixelmon got released as a second server, which happened to be when we were most excited about having something new to do. Contradiction present.


The Economy Sucks
A server-wide wipe. Everyone gets wiped, regardless of their rank, stature, love towards the admins, position, or being an admin. Every single thing on this server gets wiped, save for the map. Already planning on it, just working on the date.

The economy can be moderated: It can be kept up and inflation can be kept under control by the admins initially. This should be the case until the server builds itself up with population and infrastructure. After that point, the admins can A) Take some notes from early US history and Hamilton, I hate history, and I'm not an economist. or B) Just let the main traders run the economy themselves.

There should be a constant influx of poor people, a constant build up of middle-classers, an occasional rise to the rich people, and a practical stand-still to the billionaires. With a wipe, all of this can be carefully moderated and watched. By some random economist who actually knows what they are doing. Which isn't me.

These are just the three main reasons. There are a ton of smaller ones, like better housing, more effective trading, and a fluctuating market. The current problem with the economy is also bouncing off the last point of the admins not caring. They let the economy build itself up, and this is what happens. Economies need to be regulated in some way shape of form. If they are not, THIS is the outcome. This big mess of a crap-pile that you can call an economy. What do you think bounties and death-penalty were, they were an attempt to remove some of the over-arching money spread from hell to earth and back. Welcome to bitch-and-moan town.


There is No Point of Playing on This Server
I tried to give the admins pointers about running a store. Uh, where? Ha! Well they slapped chest shops into Pokemon shop buildings and called it a day. I was actually against that shit. Tell me, what's the difference between doing that and setting up a chest shop anywhere else? You put down a chest, call yourself a shopkeeper, and then go on doing trainer activities all damn day.

The solution? Add incentive. It's that easy. Get a fucking coder. There has to be one that is interested in something like this. Get him to code up some plugins that accomplish the following:

JOBS. Add jobs. It's very simple, yet the admins have neglected to do this because they're afraid of either A) all the work (which was their reason for a lot things, and is a terrible one) or B) all of the chaos. Or C, all the fail in economy. Welcome back to the world of Pokemon, where people expect to get money by 'defeating other things' whether they be trainers(players) or pokemon(mobs). Get your head back in the Pokemon game, and out of the clouds. Truth is, with the right plan and structure, there won't be any less structure with a RISK, REWARD, and slightly IMPEDING system, which is generally more exciting because of the frustrations and the challenges that you face, than the regular boring system you have now. Here's a small list.

Shopkeeper: THE ONLY PLACE to buy things with money other than trading for it (unless you feel like trusting a stranger), is at a shop, run by a player. Keep the chestshop system, because you all seem to be hell-bent on running on that thing. I don't care what system we use, no one cares enough to maintain it. Not like anyone stocks stores either. But hey, allow the chests to be broken. Scary right? But allow them to be broken SLOWLY. This is the most naive thing you've said, and the reason I had to respond. You say 'get a coder' without knowing squat about Bukkit, and the limitations of unmodded Minecraft in general. There has to be some magic public int extends final function(magicValue x) that solves all problems and creates whatever we want in Minecraft. Sorry. That's not how it works. Block-Break-Speed is a value which can only be changed via client-server mods. So unless you want us to go that route, I'm putting a giant dent in everything you say after this point, including the "notify police" and "cause a chase" and "25% broken so they have a chance" etc. Learn to code, then you can tell other people how to code. Don't expect magic. That way, a thief can go in there, steal some stuff, and be on his merry way. And guess what, this just opened up another job spot for other people! But say when a chest is starting to break, it is broadcasted to the police force (YET ANOTHER JOB POSITION) and the shopkeeper, PVP is enabled for that player regardless of where he is for say, 10 minutes, he isn't allowed to use commands and then a chase ensues! How fun would that be? To make it more fun, selling only. That way they can't just sell off their useless stuff that easily, and gives them that annoying (but yet charming) trip of going to their homes and re-filling their shop inventory. I wanted to do this. After I got over the fact that I couldn't stop them from adding chestshops.

Police Force: I love this idea. Think about it. Instead of those whiny kids complaining to the admins about this PVP'er doing this or that, or some guy bullying them over chat, why not have them complain to the police force. Let's say a guy is calling people baaad words over chat. The victim files a complaint, the police force takes a vote on the nature of the situation and how to act, and then files a warrant to the judge who can then APPROVE (not do it himself) for the police force to mute the instigator. This is A. corruption waiting to happen. B. More time-consuming and wasteful than current, and by the time the 'motion' is passed, the 'criminal' will either be inactive, or will go inactive as soon as the punishment passes. Meanwhile the victim will have ragequit because the troll is laughing his ass off at the victim for 5 days as everyone waits for the "police/judge" to come to a fucking decision. But the real fun part is when it's less serious and more about the game. Say someone is camping Mt. Moon and killing people for their items. Someone files a complaint, the police force votes and sends a warrant to the judge, and who approves of them jailing the offender! Or gives 0 shits and troll goes on. GG. The police can use an enchanted sword to jail the offender and confiscate all of his items. While on the run, when does that happen, when the judge sends a command? Cue more corruption... the offender cannot use any commands, and can't even log out without being more severe, actual admin-like punishments being taken into action (like kicks, bans, permamutes, etc...). This not only gives players something to do, but also gives them the feeling that they are actually impacting the server. And when the police personnel are losing the public's favor, allow them to be voted out of their high-chairs and thrust back into the streets as regular trainers by the public! Ok, so you just want the mob to be in power. Lets put the Ash Gang in charge because they had the majority of votes! (back when they were actually a gang, I realize none of them have any balls left now) (or worse, the stng gang... yikes.) You can give them all sorts of tools like a limited log block that can sometimes even fail Oh you want us to re-code logblock now, welcome back to the land of head-in-the-clouds. , or fail when a thief uses a very rare potion to cover his tracks, those jail sword things (think GMOD Dark RP), handcuffs, a stripping tool, yay for naked players! jk, back to seriousness. and all of that good stuff. And remember, they can't abuse it, otherwise they'll just get demoted by the public. back to that mob/gang theory... It also opens up the door for another job:

Criminal/Thief/Bad Guy: Because there is a population in this server that do this. Not naming names, but suffice to say that they find this idea very appealing. You wouldn't even have to code anything for this job, just code the other jobs to allow for this. just. The most common rebuke is that this is the easy way to get rich. no, my rebuke says its the easy way to piss everyone off and create a storm of ragequitters. Well make sure it's not. Make sure that thievery is difficult to pull off, make sure the police force is doing their job (if they are not they can just get voted out) until there are no police because the crime is too strong. CALL BATMAN! and it's a great job to include. Now those people that like to use others for personal gain and just screw with other people don't get labeled as "breaking rules" because this kind of behavior isn't "acceptable." Well who the hell said that? Make it acceptable! It's more fun that way! This gives people incentive to actually care about making their houses sturdy and hard to break into, and not just leaving their shops after placing a chest down. you're thinking like an adult, which I commend. But as you address, we aren't dealing with adults. Kids want easy life, and the majority of players are kids.

Mayors: Basically govern everything about a town. They are the ones to go to when buying houses. They can also hire people to redecorate the houses in whatever image they see fit. Of course this should be moderated by the admins to not change the over all theme of the town too much, as towns should have the same positioning and shape of houses, but who cares if there are some really cool wall designs, or the concrete on the floor is changed to tile, or there are lamps now instead of torches, or maybe even an entire wall around the city? I doubt that not sticking 100% true to the game overrules players having fun, just make sure that they don't change entire towns to be too different from the games. This is an intriguing idea, my paranoid side sees 2000 things going wrong, and thinking I'd better take daily backups, but should it go well, I'd extend it to regional Mayor, or rename it Governor. Think, what dumbass wants to proclaim "I'm mayor of-Lavender town...." or worse, Viridian City. "I can sell TWO HOUSES."

Hitmen/Bounty Hunters: Now, the big problem with the player bounty system is that there is no point. You put a bounty on someone, they get your money, just so the person you want dead can respawn and continue on his way. No, if someone infuriates you, that's your problem or make it the police force's problem so that they can jail or mute him, or kill and confiscate his stuff. Bounty system as in rare mobs. Allow groups of mobs to spawn occasionally, that have really high health and damage to everyone but a bounty hunter. Let's call these Super-Bounty-Hunter-Mobs. They can spawn on roads and bridges, effectively blocking off the entire route because anyone that comes across them will die very fast. You can just say these are very hostile Pokemon. However, to bounty hunters these wild Pokemon are very weak, and don't do as much damage. They also drop more money and more rare drops than normal mobs, effectively allowing the bounty hunter to: A) Have fun and B) Impact the server and C) Earn money. But wait, there's more! What if there is a sudden strike of bounty hunters, because they feel that the mayor of Saffron is a bad mayor and now they won't clear out any of the Super-Bounty-Hunter-Mobs effectively screwing over anyone trying to get to that city or that is trapped inside of it. Wouldn't that be pretty fun? Emotions will run high, there will be arguments, hell maybe some people will even wage war on Saffron and the police force has to come in and calm everyone down. Then the admins can come in and try to appease the situation after all the events unfolded. Sure this can be frustrating to some people, but next week when you look back on it, how freaking fun would that whole fiasco seem?  Suddenly everyone wants to be a Bounty Hunter, unless you suggest some system of choosing those as well?

Elite 4 Managers: They set the rules of E4, based on a vote between them and the admins, and they also set up the fights, record them, and manage any rule breaking and report it to the admins. Sounds fine to me, we only had Admins spectate due to the possibility of cheating, which in the end didn't even matter.

Gym Leaders: Their job description right now is perfect, but the fact is, that they don't have any incentive to stay gym leaders. I love the way gym leaders used to have been. Build your own everything as long as it keeps up with the theme. The joy of people getting stumped by your puzzles and then not allowing people to pass your gym, impeding their way to becoming champion. Now all you can do is sit there and accept challenges. The problem with the previous system was the sheer amount of time it took them to do it. LETS GIVE ALL NEW GYM LEADERS CREATIVE MODE, THERE WE GO. Yay. I think. But even with the previous system, it did get boring after a while. So some solutions: Gym prize system. Every month, each gym gets rewarded for being either the best designed, most challenging, or most fun and creative. Those leaders will get a bonus, maybe a special gym leaders hat and some cash, or something like that. Or maybe even make it so the only way to run a gym in Johto is to get a "best gym of the month" week badge after which you can move onto Johto, provided that you cannot use the same Gym design there. Gym leader only perks were fine, but they were too powerful. Having /warp to anything but your own gym was too powerful for being lucky enough to have 100 swords and no gym leader in that spot. Oh, and make it DIFFICULT to become a leader as well, however you want to do that. Either raise the levels or have each gym leader pass a test. By the way, gym leaders should be hired by Mayors NOT admins. ok, then make the mayors figure out how to hire them. why are mayors starting to sound like Moderators <.<

Most jobs should be regulated by having 1 of STANDARD job kind to each city. One shopkeeper, Blacksmith, mayor, and Gym leader in Viridian. While there is only 3 judges in the entire server, for instance. And the Pewter Police force is also server-wide, just stationed in Pewter. If i had a central police, it would be in silph co. Pewter only has that reputation due to sharkfin.

Jobs don't necessarily have to pay the player. Although it'd be nice to receive say, $500 a week. But not too much. The annual pay should not be incentive to do the job, the fun part of the job and actually doing it should be. Things like bounty hunters should get most of their money from actually killing the mobs. Mayors and Judges don't have that option, so they will naturally get paid say, $5000 a week. But of course, it's harder to get that job, and you have to be appointed by popular vote to get to such a position. But if you suggest no wild/mining/etc then where does the money come from, if not their job. What about the jobless? I can't afford to be a shopkeeper, no one likes me so i cant be mayor, the judges have had that rank for months, and I'm not good at pvp so i cant be police. IM JOBLESS AND BROKE FOREVER HELP ME REWAS HELP


Random Events:
Along with all of these jobs, there should also be some more things to do for those who just want to be trainers. Maybe a meteor crashes somewhere in the wild in a 1000 block radius of a given coordinate. It contains some really high-level armor and now there's a giant treasure hunt to find it.

A giant might've spawned somewhere in the map, and the first person to kill it gets $1,000.

There is a nutrient-depletion throughout the entire map, and now plants don't grow for an entire week of real-world time. Or until some people donate lots of foliage items (like seeds and grass) to replenish the soil. I thought you were against a wild. Where does this 'growing' happen?

This would mix up all of the stale gameplay that we see now. Now I bet a lot of you are really skeptical about this. As in, think about how someone's day would be ruined if the last thing they need is a badge from Saffron and the nobody wants to kill the mobs because the bounty hunters are being assholes. Now the entire Elite 4 competition is postponed to give everyone a fair chance to compete. Or it's the last stat that they need for MCMMO is the one where you grow plants, but now you can't challenge the gym until the nutrient-depletion event is over, as it requires a certain level of the skill that grows plants. This could make sense if the gym is Cerulean, with all the grass and stuff. But the whole POINT of these random events is to ruin someone's day. If there is no risk, if there is no anger, if everything just goes your way on the server then what fun is there? It's the same easy path of working to get a high enough plant-growing skill and then challenging the gym and going on your way. Everything works out, nothing surprises you or impedes you, and everything is therefor boring. I have no problem making life hard for people, but lets get back to the kid-majority here.

That's why the server should be built around RISK and REWARD. Also should be built around players actually playing more CAUTIOUSLY in terms of house defense and what items they carry around. They should be aware that NOT EVERYTHING CAN GO THEIR WAY, and to SCREW with the players to make them more invested. Oh damn, Saffron is out of service because of all the mobs around it, now the shop owner quit because he's tired of this bullshit. Now Saffron doesn't have a shop, and he just happens to be the only one that sells diamond swords in the entire server. So has the gym leader. Sure this is annoying and frustrating, but THAT'S THE POINT. Things change, now you can't have that diamond sword, and you'll have to find another way to get one. Now you have to wait for someone else to take over Saffron gym, or even BECOME THE NEW GYM LEADER! It's frustrating and it's exciting, and this is what the server should revolve around.

Conclusion: This server should be structured like an RP server with commands and plugins making restrictions. But most of the social stuff, like people not liking someone else, someone breaking minor rules, being annoying, or someone that should be fired from a high-ranking position, should be left to the people. we left /votemute to the people. That went well until the majority of people (gangs) decided to mute random people as a troll. Hence my skepticism in the masses. Risks are important, and allow people to lose stuff. Make sure that they're aware that their hard-earned diamonds aren't entirely safe just because you found them first. Yes, EVERY single person is going to be angry that their house was broken into. But anyone who has a fun spirit won't quit the server, they'll be amazed that there will be a server that actually allows stuff that normally other servers consider taboo. Then they'll re-earn that fortune and build a better, more secure house. or ragequit. They'll look back on the experience and realize how much fun they really had. or ragequit. Give players power, and only have admins intervene when something serious is occurring, like say the Elite 4 refuse to run the Elite 4 battles. The admins should step in, obviously. But if a member of the police force is abusing his power, or a judge is corrupt, that should be up to the people to take a vote (Either a long-term vote on the server which is broadcasted as say, a court case, where everyone can weigh in and vote yes or no to someone being fired, or a vote on the forums which might be more appropriate, under a "court cases" tab).

Oh and another thing. Don't have rules. Have laws that should be enforced by the people whose job it is to enforce them. now you sound like rewas.
Maybe have some general rules, but make sure they aren't strict. For example, no hacking should be pretty standard, although the infamous "rule 1" should, actually MUST be changed into a law. and we're back in adult land again, come back to pokemon.Otherwise whenever someone swears the admins will be called in. Again, with this system, the admins should ONLY have to be called in for serious measures, like for example, someone hacking. Something that the players cannot handle themselves.

The Community
Yeah, the community isn't all that great. I constantly hear about admins not wanting to run events because of people whining about breaking the rules. Probably has something to do with the server being, oh I don't know, POKEMON themed. Pokemon is a kids game. Kids are generally annoying. Kids will flock to the server much more than adults will. Sure, have a strong adult population, but there will always be kids around ESPECIALLY on a game like Minecraft. I feel like if the Risk and Player-Managed server idea will take off, most of the problems will go away. Or at least, be interpreted as part of the server, instead of rule-breaking.


The Server Expanded Too Fast
Hate to say "I told you so" but refer to the phrase in quotations that you just read. Why in  Arceus 's name would you build Johto, and CONTINUE building Cinno and Hono or whatever the hell those regions are called if you don't even have enough players to fill Kanto!?!? So you solve this by opening another server, which not only showed everyone how boring the old server was, but when this one lost it's charm, everyone saw the abysmal nature of the entire server-community-group itself! thank you for agreeing that it wasn't the admin's lack of caring. Don't go to the second step until you have your foot firmly planted on the first! we did. you just seem to think the first step was smaller than we did. And in the Pokemon server's case, with around 15 30 people on average, it just had it's big toe touching the stair. If anything the server should've waited until there were about 40 people on average in Kanto, so it would get crowded and there would be interaction. No really, has anyone actually ran through the map and seen a single player whatsoever? no they were all in the wild because no one could afford a house. did i mention im not an economist? 40 people is literally the minimum. The optimal player count to open another region is something like 80. Think about it in these terms, when you open a new region you effectively cut that region's population in half. Forget all the reasons why this isn't, like you have to be prestigious or go through all the gyms to get to Johto. No, you can just walk into it anyways and walk around wherever. And it's not that hard to get 4 badges. If that's still the same system that I remember, of course. when johto opened, we had housing problems. there were enough people to keep houses full and 0 for sale. That's why we did it.


The Wild
Should not be there. It's a Pokemon game, the only wild should be carefully maintained and LIMITED. As in, a forest about 1000 blocks in a radius. Otherwise, the economy will be destroyed because the current server and economy structure just doesn't allow for free-mining. we noticed. thank you captain obvious, we tried to implement that on the pixelmon server, and it went swimmingly. notice the population count on there is equally as abysmal.

Items
First off, let me just restate that the economy is terrible. Everyone's running around with Sharpness 4 diamond swords and  Arceus  knows what illegally enchanted armor. So the solution? Illegally enchant the fuck out of everything, disable public enchanting permanently, and maybe open up yet ANOTHER job that allows for enchanting. Maybe, I didn't include it in the main list because I didn't really think it through all too well, and it could cause easy inflation. Plus how would this job-taker get all the enchanting material, and what separates him from a shopkeeper, etc.. (Although, he could be a blacksmith which allows for more job slots to be open and also make stores more specific). Basically what I'm trying to say before I went off on a tangent, is specify the items and contain them. Enchantments are too powerful to be put into a player's hands, make sure that shops have iron swords for $100, and diamond ones for $1000. But even still, a sharpness 1 diamond sword will be $2000, and sharpness 4 diamond sword will be $15,000. Something along the lines of that, so that enchantments are much more valuable than they are now. This system also gives people incentive to actually spend money and work for something. Speaking of...

Nothing to Spend Money On!!
Think about this for a second. Then get back to me. It's pretty straightforward, but with all of the above suggestions this can easily change. Just MODERATE it, admins. Again, death penalty, bounties, lowering mob prices, changing house prices, WE FUCKING TRIED. WE ARE NOT ECONOMISTS. PvP server: too easy to get money, raise prices. Pixelmon server: admins, i cant get money, lower prices or raise selling prices pl0x. Rewas, you tell us how to get a fucking perfect economy. Then allow legions of children, trolls, and no-lifers to tear it to pieces. Thank you.

The Safety Net
I was about to talk about this part, but then I realized how much I already have. The point is the server has a giant safety net where there is pretty much NO way for anyone to lose anything. kid-oriented. They earn and it and keep it forever, even if they are completely..ahem, silly about keeping them and sharing them with players. The bank is just completely ridiculous. i agree, that was an anti-xray thing. since no one xrays for chests anymore, it should be removed. wait... I like it for a reason to donate, but at the same time it just completely negates everything else I've talked about. They should still be able to be broken into and treated as part of the map, regardless of how much money people paid. If you want to follow everything I've listed out, and still include the VIP rooms as this safety bunker for everything, then the entire system will collapse on itself because of this giant contradiction. or everyone will donate. +1. Everyone and everything should be in constant danger, kind of like in real life. This adds excitement and spruces up everything.

Some ideas:
The bank is only a single chest for VIPs
The bank has single chests, double chests for VIPs mix this
The bank is only VIP rooms with 1 double chest allowed with this
The bank is the same way it is now, but everything can still be broken into.

How should this be moderated? Make sure that although everything is in danger, some places are safer than others. For example, houses you can have as many chests as you want, but it's doubtful that anyone will break into the bank, because of how much jail time they will face from the Pewter Police force, and how hard it is to actually steal stuff from there, so why not put the most valuable of items in there. But ONLY one chest full!

Oh and if stuff like stealing and breaking into houses is illegal, scamming should be too. kid-oriented.

And while we're here, make badges items again. I really loved that I could steal badges from people, when I wasn't strong enough to beat a leader, but clever enough to get a badge anyhow. Black market badges should be illegal, but not against the rules (as in Pewter Police Force Jail time, but not a ban). ok, suddenly all gym leaders have everyone by the testicles, as long as they don't get caught by the COMPLETELY COMPETENT PLAYERS.


Here's a quick re-visit to the stealing system:
There are things that are permanently world guarded (like trees and the ground) to not get vandalized, but then there are also partially world guarded blocks. These are blocks that can be broken, but VERY slowly refer to my "thats impossible" comment. and alert the police force and anyone with permissions that they are being broken. To avoid spamming, and to give the thief a chance, wait until they are about half broken or 25% broken? After they are called out, the Police force or judge can mark that target as "wanted" and they aren't allowed to use any movement commands or log out until the "wanted" mark is lifted (only lifted by the police force and judge or when the player is caught). Add your own little tweaks to it, but that's the basic idea.

Oh, and ADD A SCRIPT THAT DOESN'T ALLOW PEOPLE TO LOG OUT DURING COMBAT. Very annoying. i forget why we haven't done this yet, it really was supposed to happen. anyone can chime in on this. why didnt we... wait, i think it was that whole "we want to allow crime to a small level" thing. so how bout that, you want to remove some crime.




Those are the main problems that I see. Funny how I put this here, right after I talk about the community. That'll get people to listen to me, but it's truthful nonetheless.
I denounced a lot of the admins throughout this thing, so let me revisit them and what they should be doing, in my eyes.

Should be doing: Installing plugins, improving performance, attracting players, and maintaining the forums
Should NOT be doing: Intervening with the server's social problems all too much, dominating the server with their image, enforcing rules, giving themselves rights to do whatever the want. As in, if I can't build unprotected structures in the wild, neither should you.

Couple of pointers:
Yes, this will be a little tricky to code. But I'm certain there has to be someone that would love to code something like this. me. if it were possible. its not.
Yes, this entire system of jobs IS giving a lot of power to the players. Mayors have to have world editing permissions (of course only to their city) and the ability to give it to people. Yes, this can lead to Saffron City being completely destroyed. But this is the only way to really allow people to become invested in the server. To really have a sense that they are changing stuff and that they're work is worthwhile. Besides, how fun is it to catch criminals, or to see an entire city decorated the way you want it? That's fun. That would be not only a unique server, but a fun server. RIP pokemon. you will be missed.
Yes, admins will have to make sure that none of this goes wrong. no big deal, we just have to watch a bunch of teenagers control something that took almost a year to build. whats the worst that could happen? But the system is not as delicate as you might think with the proper plugins and proper structure.
No, I'm not saying follow this word by word. This is what the server SHOULD have. The specific ideals that the server should have are illustrated pretty well here, but even I see a couple of minors flaws in some of the jobs, that should be more definitely ironed out after examination, brainstorming, and testing by the admins.
Yes, all of this is time consuming. And yes, the server might even need to be re-launched as anew. But this is the only way.

The state of the server, going along with RISK, REWARD, and slight IMPEDIMENT of players, is ILLEGAL but not AGAINST THE RULES. As in, if you do it that action is heavily frowned upon and the Police force WILL be forced to put you in jail as part of the server and fun, but it will not get you banned. The only things that should ever get you banned are things like hacking otherwise everything else, like pissing off players for your own personal gain and things like that, should be completely allowed.

Towards the Admins that hopefully still care: Relaunch the server. Take it down for a couple of months, work real hard on it, and re-release it as something great and fantastic. it practically is, thats what it looks like while the build server is being worked on. Obviously keep it up for a while as a showcase for the people you're about to take under your team. Show some coders interested around, tell them about your ideas. I am confident that it's not the server's fault, it's yours, that it is suffering.

Of course if the admins have really moved on, which is the main reason and one that overshadows all the others that prove that the server is suffering, then there is absolutely no hope and the rest of you should move on as well. good thing we havent. thank you for your time. dick.

If you cared enough to write all that, you should care enough to read the comments I wrote in it, after I had already read it once before. So technically I read it twice. Long story short: this is a pokemon-themed server, not one that we can give control to. we cater to a bunch of children, who dont like losing shit. thats really about it. oh and changing block-break-speed is impossible without a mod.

[rewas321]

We good so far? Here's where this thread gets locked.
Didn't lock it.
Pleasantly surprised.

The admins don't care

1ce: Other than his last-minute hobby of running this server, he's moved on. He has college, he's gone on to do other things than run an online gaming community, which isn't exactly helping his career in any way. Having a hobby is great, especially one such as this; but more time and effort should be put into running a server. Guess I should stop building then.
Again, I don't know your personal life in-depth but it seems like it's a last minute hobby, instead of a full-time effort. All I'm really trying to do in this section is to get people to understand why the admins MIGHT have moved on. That is all.
Tene: Really the only one still mixed up in the server. I doubt she even has FTP access, or at least knows how to use it You're an idiot lol. Debatable. Although I don't know if MC servers use FTP or not. I never ran one, only ran other game servers. ; or if she can, actually uses it at all. Definitely an idiot. I'll make sure to interview her next time I'm hastily writing out a biography about what access she has. She's a moderating admin, not a structural one (who actually builds on the server and improves it). Someone call the retard police. She does more than I do to maintain the structure and core of the server. Anyone who says I'm smarter or more integral to the server isn't paying enough attention. The retard police aren't real.

When the admins stopped becoming invested, the population numbers grounded to a halt and then steadily started to decrease. You guys can probably pinpoint that exact point in time when it happened. Right after pixelmon got released as a second server, which happened to be when we were most excited about having something new to do. Contradiction present. Maybe, but I feel like the Pixelmon server was just an attempt to get people interested once again, because the population was dying down already. That's what many of the people on the Teamspeak felt as well.


The Economy Sucks
A server-wide wipe. Everyone gets wiped, regardless of their rank, stature, love towards the admins, position, or being an admin. Every single thing on this server gets wiped, save for the map. Already planning on it, just working on the date. Trying my hardest to not make this sound sarcastic: Good work.

The economy can be moderated: It can be kept up and inflation can be kept under control by the admins initially. This should be the case until the server builds itself up with population and infrastructure. After that point, the admins can A) Take some notes from early US history and Hamilton, I hate history, and I'm not an economist. Well don't take it out on me! or B) Just let the main traders run the economy themselves.

There should be a constant influx of poor people, a constant build up of middle-classers, an occasional rise to the rich people, and a practical stand-still to the billionaires. With a wipe, all of this can be carefully moderated and watched. By some random economist who actually knows what they are doing. Which isn't me. Not an economist. Not at all, just an admin that is interested in supervising this kind of thing. You don't have to do it, but keep a seat open for someone who might.

These are just the three main reasons. There are a ton of smaller ones, like better housing, more effective trading, and a fluctuating market. The current problem with the economy is also bouncing off the last point of the admins not caring. They let the economy build itself up, and this is what happens. Economies need to be regulated in some way shape of form. If they are not, THIS is the outcome. This big mess of a crap-pile that you can call an economy. What do you think bounties and death-penalty were, they were an attempt to remove some of the over-arching money spread from hell to earth and back. Welcome to bitch-and-moan town. Bounties didn't have the best outcome, but they were a good idea on paper. Death penalties I didn't account for which, by the way, was a great idea. The thing is those ideas were put into action too late. Everyone already HAD a lot of money and diamonds.


There is No Point of Playing on This Server
I tried to give the admins pointers about running a store. Uh, where? Admin meetings. Ha! Well they slapped chest shops into Pokemon shop buildings and called it a day. I was actually against that shit. As was I. At least, THIS version of it. Tell me, what's the difference between doing that and setting up a chest shop anywhere else? You put down a chest, call yourself a shopkeeper, and then go on doing trainer activities all damn day.

The solution? Add incentive. It's that easy. Get a fucking coder. There has to be one that is interested in something like this. Get him to code up some plugins that accomplish the following:

JOBS. Add jobs. It's very simple, yet the admins have neglected to do this because they're afraid of either A) all the work (which was their reason for a lot things, and is a terrible one) or B) all of the chaos. Or C, all the fail in economy. Welcome back to the world of Pokemon, where people expect to get money by 'defeating other things' whether they be trainers(players) or pokemon(mobs). Get your head back in the Pokemon game, and out of the clouds. Okay, sure it is a Pokemon-themed server, but that doesn't mean that nobody has jobs in the Pokemon universe. The problem is that you're treating all of the players like the actual main character in the game. You should be thinking of them as all the people around that character, including the trainers, shop owners, mayors, and the rest of the bunch. A "Pokemon Themed RPG Server" instead of the "Pokemon Trainer Server" sounds a little more interesting, doesn't it? But that's just an opinion. Truth is, with the right plan and structure, there won't be any less structure with a RISK, REWARD, and slightly IMPEDING system, which is generally more exciting because of the frustrations and the challenges that you face, than the regular boring system you have now. Here's a small list.

Shopkeeper: THE ONLY PLACE to buy things with money other than trading for it (unless you feel like trusting a stranger), is at a shop, run by a player. Keep the chestshop system, because you all seem to be hell-bent on running on that thing. I don't care what system we use, no one cares enough to maintain it. Not like anyone stocks stores either. #adminsdon'tcare But hey, allow the chests to be broken. Scary right? But allow them to be broken SLOWLY. This is the most naive thing you've said, and the reason I had to respond. You say 'get a coder' without knowing squat about Bukkit, and the limitations of unmodded Minecraft in general. There has to be some magic public int extends final function(magicValue x) that solves all problems and creates whatever we want in Minecraft. Sorry. That's not how it works. Block-Break-Speed is a value which can only be changed via client-server mods. So unless you want us to go that route, I'm putting a giant dent in everything you say after this point, including the "notify police" and "cause a chase" and "25% broken so they have a chance" etc. Learn to code, then you can tell other people how to code. Don't expect magic. Thank you for actually debunking this system, but I think you missed the point. I'm not trying to say "code this in, exactly as I said it" I'm just trying to shell out some ideas that you can code around. Don't necessarily change the block-breaking speed, but maybe add a special enchanted stick which is the only thing that can be used to break blocks that are world guarded. I have no experience coding in Minecraft, I'm not going to pretend that I do either, all I'm doing is throwing out some ideas for inspiration. That way, a thief can go in there, steal some stuff, and be on his merry way. And guess what, this just opened up another job spot for other people! But say when a chest is starting to break, it is broadcasted to the police force (YET ANOTHER JOB POSITION) and the shopkeeper, PVP is enabled for that player regardless of where he is for say, 10 minutes, he isn't allowed to use commands and then a chase ensues! How fun would that be? To make it more fun, selling only. That way they can't just sell off their useless stuff that easily, and gives them that annoying (but yet charming) trip of going to their homes and re-filling their shop inventory. I wanted to do this. After I got over the fact that I couldn't stop them from adding chestshops. Probably would've been the right way to go.

Police Force: I love this idea. Think about it. Instead of those whiny kids complaining to the admins about this PVP'er doing this or that, or some guy bullying them over chat, why not have them complain to the police force. Let's say a guy is calling people baaad words over chat. The victim files a complaint, the police force takes a vote on the nature of the situation and how to act, and then files a warrant to the judge who can then APPROVE (not do it himself) for the police force to mute the instigator. This is A. corruption waiting to happen. B. More time-consuming and wasteful than current, and by the time the 'motion' is passed, the 'criminal' will either be inactive, or will go inactive as soon as the punishment passes. Meanwhile the victim will have ragequit because the troll is laughing his ass off at the victim for 5 days as everyone waits for the "police/judge" to come to a fucking decision. This is just a simple outline for the system, don't consider it final. This was one of the flaws that I noticed while typing it out, but in most cases can be solved with some small manipulation of values. As in instead of a final judge decision, just cast a quick vote between the police officers. I've seen a lot of RP servers on generally open-sourced games do this kind of thing, it worked out decently. As for the corruption point, fuck yeah it is corruption waiting to happen. I'd love for some newbies with a fresh pair of eyes get unfairly treated by a judge, and then lead a campaign to take him out of office. But the real fun part is when it's less serious and more about the game. Say someone is camping Mt. Moon and killing people for their items. Someone files a complaint, the police force votes and sends a warrant to the judge, and who approves of them jailing the offender! Or gives 0 shits and troll goes on. GG. Maybe, but then he'll get a complaint filed against him and the repercussions that go along with that. The police can use an enchanted sword to jail the offender and confiscate all of his items. While on the run, when does that happen, when the judge sends a command? Cue more corruption...Or when the police officers (that are on the server) reach consensus. The judge just approves it after he is captured. And yeah, see the corruption note above. the offender cannot use any commands, and can't even log out without being more severe, actual admin-like punishments being taken into action (like kicks, bans, permamutes, etc...). This not only gives players something to do, but also gives them the feeling that they are actually impacting the server. And when the police personnel are losing the public's favor, allow them to be voted out of their high-chairs and thrust back into the streets as regular trainers by the public! Ok, so you just want the mob to be in power. Lets put the Ash Gang in charge because they had the majority of votes! (back when they were actually a gang, I realize none of them have any balls left now) (or worse, the stng gang... yikes.) You can always have the mayors vote on new policemen. And if the public really knows the motives behind the Ash Gang, as they already did, then I doubt they would be let into office. And even if they were and let all the criminals go free, then somebody would catch on and start a campaign to thrust them out of office. And wait, there were more than the original 4 Ash Gangers? I'm so proud. You can give them all sorts of tools like a limited log block that can sometimes even fail Oh you want us to re-code logblock now, welcome back to the land of head-in-the-clouds. Or code your own plugin. Yep. I can already practically see you cringing. , or fail when a thief uses a very rare potion to cover his tracks, those jail sword things (think GMOD Dark RP), handcuffs, a stripping tool, yay for naked players! jk, back to seriousness. and all of that good stuff. And remember, they can't abuse it, otherwise they'll just get demoted by the public. back to that mob/gang theory... Yahuh. It also opens up the door for another job:

Criminal/Thief/Bad Guy: Because there is a population in this server that do this. Not naming names, but suffice to say that they find this idea very appealing. You wouldn't even have to code anything for this job, just code the other jobs to allow for this. just. The most common rebuke is that this is the easy way to get rich. no, my rebuke says its the easy way to piss everyone off and create a storm of ragequitters. It would be their fault that they lost their stuff for not being well protected. Yeah it would create rage, but that's the point. That's the risk/reward system. Well make sure it's not. Make sure that thievery is difficult to pull off, make sure the police force is doing their job (if they are not they can just get voted out) until there are no police because the crime is too strong. CALL BATMAN! Sure, why not? Police aren't doing their job so some players form a gang to take over. Plus they get money for killing the bad guys and their stuff. and it's a great job to include. Now those people that like to use others for personal gain and just screw with other people don't get labeled as "breaking rules" because this kind of behavior isn't "acceptable." Well who the hell said that? Make it acceptable! It's more fun that way! This gives people incentive to actually care about making their houses sturdy and hard to break into, and not just leaving their shops after placing a chest down. you're thinking like an adult, which I commend. But as you address, we aren't dealing with adults. Kids want easy life, and the majority of players are kids. You could always attract an older and more mature population. But if your entire population is always going to be children, then this entire thing falls flat on its face.

Mayors: Basically govern everything about a town. They are the ones to go to when buying houses. They can also hire people to redecorate the houses in whatever image they see fit. Of course this should be moderated by the admins to not change the over all theme of the town too much, as towns should have the same positioning and shape of houses, but who cares if there are some really cool wall designs, or the concrete on the floor is changed to tile, or there are lamps now instead of torches, or maybe even an entire wall around the city? I doubt that not sticking 100% true to the game overrules players having fun, just make sure that they don't change entire towns to be too different from the games. This is an intriguing idea, my paranoid side sees 2000 things going wrong, and thinking I'd better take daily backups, but should it go well, I'd extend it to regional Mayor, or rename it Governor. Think, what dumbass wants to proclaim "I'm mayor of-Lavender town...." or worse, Viridian City. "I can sell TWO HOUSES." The pay isn't too bad either. Plus the voting power they'd get (Voting for what? I don't know, there's lots of things to think up to vote for) and you can throw in other small job descriptions as well. Just play around with it, see what works. This is just a basic outline with some simple examples, not a concrete idea.

Hitmen/Bounty Hunters: Now, the big problem with the player bounty system is that there is no point. You put a bounty on someone, they get your money, just so the person you want dead can respawn and continue on his way. No, if someone infuriates you, that's your problem or make it the police force's problem so that they can jail or mute him, or kill and confiscate his stuff. Bounty system as in rare mobs. Allow groups of mobs to spawn occasionally, that have really high health and damage to everyone but a bounty hunter. Let's call these Super-Bounty-Hunter-Mobs. They can spawn on roads and bridges, effectively blocking off the entire route because anyone that comes across them will die very fast. You can just say these are very hostile Pokemon. However, to bounty hunters these wild Pokemon are very weak, and don't do as much damage. They also drop more money and more rare drops than normal mobs, effectively allowing the bounty hunter to: A) Have fun and B) Impact the server and C) Earn money. But wait, there's more! What if there is a sudden strike of bounty hunters, because they feel that the mayor of Saffron is a bad mayor and now they won't clear out any of the Super-Bounty-Hunter-Mobs effectively screwing over anyone trying to get to that city or that is trapped inside of it. Wouldn't that be pretty fun? Emotions will run high, there will be arguments, hell maybe some people will even wage war on Saffron and the police force has to come in and calm everyone down. Then the admins can come in and try to appease the situation after all the events unfolded. Sure this can be frustrating to some people, but next week when you look back on it, how freaking fun would that whole fiasco seem?  Suddenly everyone wants to be a Bounty Hunter, unless you suggest some system of choosing those as well? You can't be a bounty hunter and something else (like a trainer), if you want it to be a permanent job. Not everyone would want to be a bounty hunter, but if you really want then set a limit. Or have mayors specifically hire bounty hunters as mercenaries to defend their cities.

Elite 4 Managers: They set the rules of E4, based on a vote between them and the admins, and they also set up the fights, record them, and manage any rule breaking and report it to the admins. Sounds fine to me, we only had Admins spectate due to the possibility of cheating, which in the end didn't even matter. I think the Elite 4 is the one place to make sure that corruption doesn't spread. And as long as the managers film the fights, then there shouldn't be a problem. If they don't, then the fight doesn't count. Admins approve someone moving through, of course.

Gym Leaders: Their job description right now is perfect, but the fact is, that they don't have any incentive to stay gym leaders. I love the way gym leaders used to have been. Build your own everything as long as it keeps up with the theme. The joy of people getting stumped by your puzzles and then not allowing people to pass your gym, impeding their way to becoming champion. Now all you can do is sit there and accept challenges. The problem with the previous system was the sheer amount of time it took them to do it. LETS GIVE ALL NEW GYM LEADERS CREATIVE MODE, THERE WE GO. That's a good point. As a new gym leader, you get 3 days grace period to remodel. Problem more or less solved, right? Remember, don't consider 3 days the concrete period of time, have it a week, have it an hour if you want. It's your choice. Yay. I think. But even with the previous system, it did get boring after a while. So some solutions: Gym prize system. Every month, each gym gets rewarded for being either the best designed, most challenging, or most fun and creative. Those leaders will get a bonus, maybe a special gym leaders hat and some cash, or something like that. Or maybe even make it so the only way to run a gym in Johto is to get a "best gym of the month" week badge after which you can move onto Johto, provided that you cannot use the same Gym design there. Gym leader only perks were fine, but they were too powerful. Having /warp to anything but your own gym was too powerful for being lucky enough to have 100 swords and no gym leader in that spot. Oh, and make it DIFFICULT to become a leader as well, however you want to do that. Either raise the levels or have each gym leader pass a test. By the way, gym leaders should be hired by Mayors NOT admins. ok, then make the mayors figure out how to hire them. why are mayors starting to sound like Moderators <.< Think of them as more social moderators than actual administrator moderators. As in, they can't actually kick or mute anyone. Too much power? Maybe. Lots of room for error? Definitely. But have a set of rules for mayors. For example, they need a reason to turn down a gym leader or someone else applying for a job, etc.. Just have a separate admin be a kind of "social-overseer" and moderate all of the mayors and people in power to make sure they aren't completely breaking the game.

Most jobs should be regulated by having 1 of STANDARD job kind to each city. One shopkeeper, Blacksmith, mayor, and Gym leader in Viridian. While there is only 3 judges in the entire server, for instance. And the Pewter Police force is also server-wide, just stationed in Pewter. If i had a central police, it would be in silph co. Pewter only has that reputation due to sharkfin. K.

Jobs don't necessarily have to pay the player. Although it'd be nice to receive say, $500 a week. But not too much. The annual pay should not be incentive to do the job, the fun part of the job and actually doing it should be. Things like bounty hunters should get most of their money from actually killing the mobs. Mayors and Judges don't have that option, so they will naturally get paid say, $5000 a week. But of course, it's harder to get that job, and you have to be appointed by popular vote to get to such a position. But if you suggest no wild/mining/etc then where does the money come from, if not their job. What about the jobless? I can't afford to be a shopkeeper, no one likes me so i cant be mayor, the judges have had that rank for months, and I'm not good at pvp so i cant be police. IM JOBLESS AND BROKE FOREVER HELP ME REWAS HELP Rewas won't be around to help you forever. I don't suggest no mining, I suggest have a region that is specified for mining, instead of the 16,000+ block square that surrounds the map. This region will be reset, say weekly, and regenerated randomly. It could also be used for hunting for food, and (here comes more naive coding ideas) maybe have a system where animals respawn there? And you can always kill mobs for money. And those aren't just the jobs that will be around. I'm sure that we can put in a lot of other simple jobs too, like Mt. Moon gets caved in and someone is hired to dig it out?


Random Events:
Along with all of these jobs, there should also be some more things to do for those who just want to be trainers. Maybe a meteor crashes somewhere in the wild in a 1000 block radius of a given coordinate. It contains some really high-level armor and now there's a giant treasure hunt to find it.

A giant might've spawned somewhere in the map, and the first person to kill it gets $1,000.

There is a nutrient-depletion throughout the entire map, and now plants don't grow for an entire week of real-world time. Or until some people donate lots of foliage items (like seeds and grass) to replenish the soil. I thought you were against a wild. Where does this 'growing' happen? Again, just an idea. Don't take it so strictly. But if you want to go forward with it, underneath houses is a common farm place.

This would mix up all of the stale gameplay that we see now. Now I bet a lot of you are really skeptical about this. As in, think about how someone's day would be ruined if the last thing they need is a badge from Saffron and the nobody wants to kill the mobs because the bounty hunters are being assholes. Now the entire Elite 4 competition is postponed to give everyone a fair chance to compete. Or it's the last stat that they need for MCMMO is the one where you grow plants, but now you can't challenge the gym until the nutrient-depletion event is over, as it requires a certain level of the skill that grows plants. This could make sense if the gym is Cerulean, with all the grass and stuff. But the whole POINT of these random events is to ruin someone's day. If there is no risk, if there is no anger, if everything just goes your way on the server then what fun is there? It's the same easy path of working to get a high enough plant-growing skill and then challenging the gym and going on your way. Everything works out, nothing surprises you or impedes you, and everything is therefor boring. I have no problem making life hard for people, but lets get back to the kid-majority here. Noted. But again, we can always attract older people as well.

That's why the server should be built around RISK and REWARD. Also should be built around players actually playing more CAUTIOUSLY in terms of house defense and what items they carry around. They should be aware that NOT EVERYTHING CAN GO THEIR WAY, and to SCREW with the players to make them more invested. Oh damn, Saffron is out of service because of all the mobs around it, now the shop owner quit because he's tired of this bullshit. Now Saffron doesn't have a shop, and he just happens to be the only one that sells diamond swords in the entire server. So has the gym leader. Sure this is annoying and frustrating, but THAT'S THE POINT. Things change, now you can't have that diamond sword, and you'll have to find another way to get one. Now you have to wait for someone else to take over Saffron gym, or even BECOME THE NEW GYM LEADER! It's frustrating and it's exciting, and this is what the server should revolve around.

Conclusion: This server should be structured like an RP server with commands and plugins making restrictions. But most of the social stuff, like people not liking someone else, someone breaking minor rules, being annoying, or someone that should be fired from a high-ranking position, should be left to the people. we left /votemute to the people. That went well until the majority of people (gangs) decided to mute random people as a troll. Hence my skepticism in the masses. Good point. Don't give power to the masses, give power to the public. As in, people who are elected to do certain jobs. And make sure that those people are kept in check by their siblings in power (ie. police keep checks on mayors and vice versa) as well as the every-day players and job-takers. You could argue that a gang could just constantly vote off the Police and mayors, but this system could be changed a bit. A mayor is corrupt. Someone starts a poll to vote him out of office. This someone has a gang of 15 people that also agree with him and vote him out of power. Have this poll be sent to someone else, like an admin or moderator to confirm it's legitimacy. Now by legitimacy I mean actual basis of removal, whether it being by something that is true, or they believe is true. This way, the admins can moderate that people aren't losing their positions for no actual reason other than trolling. But if a group of people really think that the mayor is corrupt, when he really is not, then it's his fault that he is voted out of office because he isn't doing anything to disprove it. Just like it is in real life. More or less. Risks are important, and allow people to lose stuff. Make sure that they're aware that their hard-earned diamonds aren't entirely safe just because you found them first. Yes, EVERY single person is going to be angry that their house was broken into. But anyone who has a fun spirit won't quit the server, they'll be amazed that there will be a server that actually allows stuff that normally other servers consider taboo. Then they'll re-earn that fortune and build a better, more secure house. or ragequit. Nothing you can do about that. If they want to be immature, then let them. They'll look back on the experience and realize how much fun they really had. or ragequit. Give players power, and only have admins intervene when something serious is occurring, like say the Elite 4 refuse to run the Elite 4 battles. The admins should step in, obviously. But if a member of the police force is abusing his power, or a judge is corrupt, that should be up to the people to take a vote (Either a long-term vote on the server which is broadcasted as say, a court case, where everyone can weigh in and vote yes or no to someone being fired, or a vote on the forums which might be more appropriate, under a "court cases" tab).

Oh and another thing. Don't have rules. Have laws that should be enforced by the people whose job it is to enforce them. now you sound like rewas. Heh.
Maybe have some general rules, but make sure they aren't strict. For example, no hacking should be pretty standard, although the infamous "rule 1" should, actually MUST be changed into a law. and we're back in adult land again, come back to pokemon. Why can't Pokemon be considered adult land? Pokemon-themed RPG server! But again, if your entire population will forever be kids, then yes, this post is void. But I believe that there are many older, mature people out there that would love to play on something like this. Who didn't dream for Pokemon to be real when they were younger? Otherwise whenever someone swears the admins will be called in. Again, with this system, the admins should ONLY have to be called in for serious measures, like for example, someone hacking. Something that the players cannot handle themselves.

The Community
Yeah, the community isn't all that great. I constantly hear about admins not wanting to run events because of people whining about breaking the rules. Probably has something to do with the server being, oh I don't know, POKEMON themed. Pokemon is a kids game. Kids are generally annoying. Kids will flock to the server much more than adults will. Sure, have a strong adult population, but there will always be kids around ESPECIALLY on a game like Minecraft. I feel like if the Risk and Player-Managed server idea will take off, most of the problems will go away. Or at least, be interpreted as part of the server, instead of rule-breaking.


The Server Expanded Too Fast
Hate to say "I told you so" but refer to the phrase in quotations that you just read. Why in  Arceus 's name would you build Johto, and CONTINUE building Cinno and Hono or whatever the hell those regions are called if you don't even have enough players to fill Kanto!?!? So you solve this by opening another server, which not only showed everyone how boring the old server was, but when this one lost it's charm, everyone saw the abysmal nature of the entire server-community-group itself! thank you for agreeing that it wasn't the admin's lack of caring. It was honestly a bit of both. Don't go to the second step until you have your foot firmly planted on the first! we did. you just seem to think the first step was smaller than we did. If the Pokemon server was stable when you released the Pixelmon server, this wouldn't have happened. And in the Pokemon server's case, with around 15 30 Debatable on the time of which this fact is taken from. people on average, it just had it's big toe touching the stair. If anything the server should've waited until there were about 40 people on average in Kanto, so it would get crowded and there would be interaction. No really, has anyone actually ran through the map and seen a single player whatsoever? no they were all in the wild because no one could afford a house. did i mention im not an economist? You're just tossing this problem aside with an excuse. This problem exists. In YOUR server. Do something about it. Become an economist or get someone who is. 40 people is literally the minimum. The optimal player count to open another region is something like 80. Think about it in these terms, when you open a new region you effectively cut that region's population in half. Forget all the reasons why this isn't, like you have to be prestigious or go through all the gyms to get to Johto. No, you can just walk into it anyways and walk around wherever. And it's not that hard to get 4 badges. If that's still the same system that I remember, of course. when johto opened, we had housing problems. there were enough people to keep houses full and 0 for sale. That's why we did it.This is a big problem with the whole "Pokemon-theme" aspect. Housing. Perhaps go back to the hotel system? I mean, the entire SS Anne is just going to waste, it could be filled up. I like the system where you can only live in one house, even if you're sharing it with someone though. Cudos.


The Wild
Should not be there. It's a Pokemon game, the only wild should be carefully maintained and LIMITED. As in, a forest about 1000 blocks in a radius. Otherwise, the economy will be destroyed because the current server and economy structure just doesn't allow for free-mining. we noticed. thank you captain obvious, we tried to implement that on the pixelmon server, and it went swimmingly. notice the population count on there is equally as abysmal. But the economies on the two servers are so much different! On the PVP you actually use items and blocks. On the Pixelmon you just get items to sell them for Gold Nuggets, to buy...more pokeballs I guess?

Items
First off, let me just restate that the economy is terrible. Everyone's running around with Sharpness 4 diamond swords and  Arceus  knows what illegally enchanted armor. So the solution? Illegally enchant the fuck out of everything, disable public enchanting permanently, and maybe open up yet ANOTHER job that allows for enchanting. Maybe, I didn't include it in the main list because I didn't really think it through all too well, and it could cause easy inflation. Plus how would this job-taker get all the enchanting material, and what separates him from a shopkeeper, etc.. (Although, he could be a blacksmith which allows for more job slots to be open and also make stores more specific). Basically what I'm trying to say before I went off on a tangent, is specify the items and contain them. Enchantments are too powerful to be put into a player's hands, make sure that shops have iron swords for $100, and diamond ones for $1000. But even still, a sharpness 1 diamond sword will be $2000, and sharpness 4 diamond sword will be $15,000. Something along the lines of that, so that enchantments are much more valuable than they are now. This system also gives people incentive to actually spend money and work for something. Speaking of...

Nothing to Spend Money On!!
Think about this for a second. Then get back to me. It's pretty straightforward, but with all of the above suggestions this can easily change. Just MODERATE it, admins. Again, death penalty, bounties, lowering mob prices, changing house prices, WE FUCKING TRIED. WE ARE NOT ECONOMISTS. PvP server: too easy to get money, raise prices. Pixelmon server: admins, i cant get money, lower prices or raise selling prices pl0x. Rewas, you tell us how to get a fucking perfect economy. Then allow legions of children, trolls, and no-lifers to tear it to pieces. Thank you. Don't get angry at me that you're restating yourself. I wrote this entire thing without reading your previous comments, please remember that. Everything you guys have done would've done very well if you hadn't done it so late. By the time you started implementing this stuff, the economy was already going 200 mph on a downhill slope! The little dirt walls you put up to stop it didn't help.

I'm not a economist either, but here's my two cents. The perfect economy you're referring to simply does not exist. Or at least, is very hard and needs to be very precise to pull off. But the real perfect economy is a dynamic one. Yes, the one that goes up and down, inflation, deflation, left, right, shortages and halts. Start with two things: Ways to make money (the easy part) and things to spend that money on (the hard part). Things that people will REALLY want to spend money on, like valuables that are normally very hard to get. Limit valuables (ie. diamonds) by limiting the area where you can dig, and resetting the area to your standards (ie. regenerating it once every 2 weeks or so, and maybe only spawning 6 diamonds in that entire area). Create demand for valuables for showing off how amazing diamond armor is in the elite 4! This will get people not only invested in the server but invested in the economy, because they have a goal of getting the all-mighty diamond armor. 

The Safety Net
I was about to talk about this part, but then I realized how much I already have. The point is the server has a giant safety net where there is pretty much NO way for anyone to lose anything. kid-oriented.  They earn and it and keep it forever, even if they are completely..ahem, silly about keeping them and sharing them with players. The bank is just completely ridiculous. i agree, that was an anti-xray thing. since no one xrays for chests anymore, it should be removed. wait... Waiting... I like it for a reason to donate, but at the same time it just completely negates everything else I've talked about. They should still be able to be broken into and treated as part of the map, regardless of how much money people paid. If you want to follow everything I've listed out, and still include the VIP rooms as this safety bunker for everything, then the entire system will collapse on itself because of this giant contradiction. or everyone will donate. +1. But then everyone will store all of their valuables in their VIP rooms, and there will be no point of breaking into anything. The VIP system is tricky. I love it because it allows for incentive to donate, but with this system it can potentially ruin everything. Everyone and everything should be in constant danger, kind of like in real life. This adds excitement and spruces up everything.

Some ideas:
The bank is only a single chest for VIPs
The bank has single chests, double chests for VIPs mix this
The bank is only VIP rooms with 1 double chest allowed with this
The bank is the same way it is now, but everything can still be broken into.

How should this be moderated? Make sure that although everything is in danger, some places are safer than others. For example, houses you can have as many chests as you want, but it's doubtful that anyone will break into the bank, because of how much jail time they will face from the Pewter Police force, and how hard it is to actually steal stuff from there, so why not put the most valuable of items in there. But ONLY one chest full!

Oh and if stuff like stealing and breaking into houses is illegal, scamming should be too. kid-oriented.

And while we're here, make badges items again. I really loved that I could steal badges from people, when I wasn't strong enough to beat a leader, but clever enough to get a badge anyhow. Black market badges should be illegal, but not against the rules (as in Pewter Police Force Jail time, but not a ban). ok, suddenly all gym leaders have everyone by the testicles, as long as they don't get caught by the COMPLETELY COMPETENT PLAYERS. Gym leaders just give out the badges, they don't touch anymore anywhere. The players get the badge and go on their way, whatever happens to the player outside of the gym is up to them. Not sure where you are going with this.


Here's a quick re-visit to the stealing system:
There are things that are permanently world guarded (like trees and the ground) to not get vandalized, but then there are also partially world guarded blocks. These are blocks that can be broken, but VERY slowly refer to my "thats impossible" comment. Just restating, we can work around the restrictions. I'm sure there's some way to mimic this system without hard-coding it. and alert the police force and anyone with permissions that they are being broken. To avoid spamming, and to give the thief a chance, wait until they are about half broken or 25% broken? After they are called out, the Police force or judge can mark that target as "wanted" and they aren't allowed to use any movement commands or log out until the "wanted" mark is lifted (only lifted by the police force and judge or when the player is caught). Add your own little tweaks to it, but that's the basic idea.

Oh, and ADD A SCRIPT THAT DOESN'T ALLOW PEOPLE TO LOG OUT DURING COMBAT. Very annoying. i forget why we haven't done this yet, it really was supposed to happen. anyone can chime in on this. why didnt we... wait, i think it was that whole "we want to allow crime to a small level" thing. so how bout that, you want to remove some crime. What? No. I want to remove the cheapness of someone about to die and then logging out or /home-ing away. It's annoying and breaks immersion. This wouldn't remove crime, it would just make fights harder. If someone kills someone, then they can /home away, but never in combat.




Those are the main problems that I see. Funny how I put this here, right after I talk about the community. That'll get people to listen to me, but it's truthful nonetheless.
I denounced a lot of the admins throughout this thing, so let me revisit them and what they should be doing, in my eyes.

Should be doing: Installing plugins, improving performance, attracting players, and maintaining the forums
Should NOT be doing: Intervening with the server's social problems all too much, dominating the server with their image, enforcing rules, giving themselves rights to do whatever the want. As in, if I can't build unprotected structures in the wild, neither should you.

Couple of pointers:
Yes, this will be a little tricky to code. But I'm certain there has to be someone that would love to code something like this. me. if it were possible. its not. Then, maybe mimic something like this?
Yes, this entire system of jobs IS giving a lot of power to the players. Mayors have to have world editing permissions (of course only to their city) and the ability to give it to people. Yes, this can lead to Saffron City being completely destroyed. But this is the only way to really allow people to become invested in the server. To really have a sense that they are changing stuff and that they're work is worthwhile. Besides, how fun is it to catch criminals, or to see an entire city decorated the way you want it? That's fun. That would be not only a unique server, but a fun server. RIP pokemon. you will be missed. It's still a Pokemon-themed server. The only thing is now you're treating everyone like the NPC's instead of the one-main character. Not everyone in the Pokemon world would want to be a trainer who goes to the E4. I sure didn't, so that's why the Ash Gang happened. You guys also realize this, by making some people Gym Leaders, but you aren't taking it to its full extent.
Yes, admins will have to make sure that none of this goes wrong. no big deal, we just have to watch a bunch of teenagers control something that took almost a year to build. whats the worst that could happen? It's not like there wouldn't be fail-safes, like backups. You point out that you would need to backup daily, but that's a small price to pay for a fun and unique server. More work? Yeah, but think of all the benefits of that work. Someone purposefully screws up a city, then they get punished. But the system is not as delicate as you might think with the proper plugins and proper structure.
No, I'm not saying follow this word by word. This is what the server SHOULD have. The specific ideals that the server should have are illustrated pretty well here, but even I see a couple of minors flaws in some of the jobs, that should be more definitely ironed out after examination, brainstorming, and testing by the admins.
Yes, all of this is time consuming. And yes, the server might even need to be re-launched as anew. But this is the only way.

The state of the server, going along with RISK, REWARD, and slight IMPEDIMENT of players, is ILLEGAL but not AGAINST THE RULES. As in, if you do it that action is heavily frowned upon and the Police force WILL be forced to put you in jail as part of the server and fun, but it will not get you banned. The only things that should ever get you banned are things like hacking otherwise everything else, like pissing off players for your own personal gain and things like that, should be completely allowed.

Towards the Admins that hopefully still care: Relaunch the server. Take it down for a couple of months, work real hard on it, and re-release it as something great and fantastic. it practically is, thats what it looks like while the build server is being worked on. I'm not well versed in the build server. Are you re-making the server, or just adding new regions? I don't think adding regions right now is the best course of action. Obviously keep it up for a while as a showcase for the people you're about to take under your team. Show some coders interested around, tell them about your ideas. I am confident that it's not the server's fault, it's yours, that it is suffering.

Of course if the admins have really moved on, which is the main reason and one that overshadows all the others that prove that the server is suffering, then there is absolutely no hope and the rest of you should move on as well. good thing we havent. thank you for your time. dick. That was a mean word, especially since I meant no harm by what I'm saying. It was just a warning to the general population. I personally don't see admins on the Teamspeak or many people on the server. I didn't see any news posts about the server or how it's going, so I can only assume. Just as any other new player who might stumble across this server.

If you cared enough to write all that, you should care enough to read the comments I wrote in it, after I had already read it once before. So technically I read it twice. Long story short: this is a pokemon-themed server, not one that we can give control to. we cater to a bunch of children, who dont like losing shit. thats really about it. oh and changing block-break-speed is impossible without a mod.

I'd actually like to thank you for actually giving reasons and opinions for why some of the above things won't work, instead of pretentiously saying that I'm wrong or pointing out my past experiences on the server (because that has anything to do with me being concerned as of now), and the ignorance behind those experiences. I know that a couple of the things that I said might've come out a little antagonizing, but I didn't mean anything by it. Responded to comments.

[Warmonger_2]

We'll I had a whole nice thing thing typed up but it failed so now you get this. I agree completely with what 1ce said. Sadly rewas the problem with your idea is that I requires too much perfection and cannot counter the problems of everyday life on a minecraft server. And to boot how the heck will it get started? Some simple math say you would need dozens of active players for this whole thing to work. And did you not say there are no people on? I don't think there are even enough people to fill the mayor positions right now. Anyways have fun arguing with the admins. You shall lose and be proven the fool like all the others before. Even though some of your ideas weren't half bad

[Jeffro826]

We'll I had a whole nice thing thing typed up but it failed so now you get this. I agree completely with what 1ce said. Sadly rewas the problem with your idea is that I requires too much perfection and cannot counter the problems of everyday life on a minecraft server. And to boot how the heck will it get started? Some simple math say you would need dozens of active players for this whole thing to work. And did you not say there are no people on? I don't think there are even enough people to fill the mayor positions right now. Anyways have fun arguing with the admins. You shall lose and be proven the fool like all the others before. Even though some of your ideas weren't half bad

You sir get a Rare Candy.  That is all.  Ok, maybe 2....or 3....or 17.  Depends on how often I feel like clicking the button ._.

[Tenebrae]

I did like the event ideas, but who's going to go search for Enchanted weapons and armour when when you already have multiple of those already.

[Colindeng2]

You sir get a Rare Candy.  That is all.  Ok, maybe 2....or 3....or 17.  Depends on how often I feel like clicking the button ._.

I see you watch Infinite Stratos now. That is truly an epic feat
 

[Jeffro826]

I see you watch Infinite Stratos now. That is truly an epic feat

The only bigger feat is waiting patiently for Episode 6 to show up on Crunchyroll.  No success thus far

[rewas321]

We'll I had a whole nice thing thing typed up but it failed so now you get this. I agree completely with what 1ce said. Sadly rewas the problem with your idea is that I requires too much perfection and cannot counter the problems of everyday life on a minecraft server. And to boot how the heck will it get started? Some simple math say you would need dozens of active players for this whole thing to work. And did you not say there are no people on? I don't think there are even enough people to fill the mayor positions right now. Anyways have fun arguing with the admins. You shall lose and be proven the fool like all the others before. Even though some of your ideas weren't half bad

Many other servers on Source engine games have successfully executed this sort of thing. I'm more or less stealing their ideas. If anything, this kind of thing should be easier on Minecraft, maybe not coding wise, but in general management and actual fun once this whole thing gets rolling.

Dozens of players? Not necessarily. If there are a small amount of players then none of the bigger jobs are required. If the server gets back to its 20-25 player average, then that's more than enough to fill up the gym leader roles, a few policemen, a judge, a couple mayors, and still have people allowed to do other jobs as well. And if there's less than that, then the same thing will happen when the Pokemon server first started out, where we'll just fill in the crucial positions until more players arrive. But it's important to have all these ideas open so newcomers will be intrigued. This is a fairly unique server with a great Pokemon-themed foundation that will definitely draw in a crowd. Remember, this is more or less the same thing as the server but with more features. The Pokemon server started out well, I guarantee you that this one can do the same.

The problem with this idea is how big it is. It's very ambitious and will take a lot of hard work, testing, and refining. As in a month or two of refining, AFTER all the coding and hunting for staff members. Then comes the advertising, waiting for the server to fill up which will take another month to get a good 20 player average, and ironing out the last of the kinks. This is not an easy project, and since only a few admins (as was proven to me, thank you 1ce) are still around, it's an overwhelming project for them to take on. It's not their fault, it's nobody's fault. Unless they really want to invest countless hours and money into this kind of thing shorthanded as they are.

I'm arguing for the fact that this idea COULD work, not that it should be implemented. If they don't want to do it, more power to them. But just take their decision with a grain of salt.

You shall lose and be proven the fool like all the others before. Even though some of your ideas weren't half bad

By the way, welcome to 2013, King Arthur. But thank you all the same.

[ryancpexpert]

STOP MAKING THREADS LIKE THIS GUYS!!!

[Jeffro826]

STOP MAKING THREADS LIKE THIS GUYS!!!

Despite the unneccesary large text, and my undying love for the color green, you do have a point.  All this complaining about the server population is getting old and boring.  Kind of like 87.3% of all senior citizen retirement homes.

[Colindeng2]

Despite the unneccesary large text, and my undying love for the color green, you do have a point.  All this complaining about the server population is getting old and boring.  Kind of like 87.3% of all senior citizen retirement homes.

I concur

[rewas321]

In no part of this post was there any complaining.

[Jeffro826]

In no part of this post was there any complaining.

When I say complaining, I say it very loosely.  Meaning I'm not targetting you specifically.  But it does seem as though other posts discussing this topic do complain and it's a bit annoying.  Anyway, proceed with your business.  I'm now going to get a hobby and find out who put me in the PC twice...

[WaffleDoc]

decpite I quit for a different reason I completely agree with your statements