Let's talk about Community Team.

[2MuchFireBallTonight 23]

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT
COMMUNITY TEAM (unironically)

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Community Team or otherwise known just as CT has in recent months grown stagnant and their responsibilities and place on staff has been called to question multiple times by both players and staff alike. This is due to everyone's uncertainty and non-confidence in the state of what it is and what their ambitions and responsibilities actually are. Yet nothing has been done and it sits idle.

 

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What is Community Team?

 

Well currently Community Team works on player applications, player pastes, and mapart for players, sometimes doing community events. Obviously here and there they do the regular(?) Monk guidance but really in the grand scheme of things being on CT is a free alleyway to getting pex and doing thirty minutes of work once a month. It’s a nothing-burger job.

 

Between Admin to Admin it’s evident that there’s not one decided direction for the Community team. I think Community Team could and should serve a much larger purpose on this server and whether the lack of this is due to laziness or shere complacency it’s really unknown.

 

The focus is currently on Applications, a handful of members actually do Map Art and likewise pastes (they screw these up 50% of the time). Recently all teams on LOTC have begun going on the up, Moderation is decently effective and has good members, Story Team has become less cringe, and Tech Team has finally begun doing plugins and server maintenance.

 

Community Team? I wish we could say the same.

 

What should Community Team be?

 

I stand firm on the fact that CT needs to be given the belt by Admins and their role and focus needs to be realized. Their part on this server could be much larger and essential to the servers future growth – the potential is there but the drive isn’t.

 

The Community Team needs a reform entirely in my opinion and here’s how I would do it if I was an Active Admin.

 

Applications

 

Starting with Applications I believe that these should be moved to a lesser responsibility. Firstly not only should applications be easier for new players but it shouldn’t be the focus of the team. It is laughable that they can currently get away with doing applications and that’s about it and still be called Community Team. If this is the status quo we want to stick with, please can we just call it the Application Team.

 

Any person who has played the server for over a year should have enough knowledge and background to be able to understand what it takes to play on here. It should be an opt in for players with 1+ year experience to be screened by a CT manager whether they’re capable. It should be a small on the side thing which anyone wanting to help out in the slightest can get approved for.

 

While a concern here may be access to PII or accepting alts. In the first place access to PII should be removed from CT other than managers. Aswell it's already been shown that CT does not act as an effective screen to players alting. Have a handful of CT members approved to see this information and process new players properly and they approve the player-done applications.

 

Media Team

 

Social Media, advertising, and overall the whole umbrella of marketing should be the primary focus of the Community Team. Admins truly need to decide if the famed “Road to 500” is a goal they want to obtain. If so, this is the route they want to take.

TikTok is one of the largest social media platforms and Minecraft servers that are five times more dull than LOTC make it big on there. With the current tenure promotions of the server have come to a complete halt and Social Media output has been hearing crickets ever since. The Community Team needs to seek out more content creators or actually put theirs to work. Upload one to two TikToks a week- talk about the ongoings of the server, talk about its TEN YEAR HISTORY, post warclaim highlights, promote the nation building aspect. You then repost that Tiktok to Youtube Shorts, repost the exact same video to Twitter.

 

A prime example on the impact of YouTube and social media on minecraft servers should be the StoneworksMC server. Where the server's success was purely based on popular YouTube videos. There are many other servers within the genre of RP that thrive off  communities on TikTok and YouTube that LOTC doesn’t not even interact with in the slightest. We’re missing out – entirely behind the curve of this revelation in the marketing world.

 

This is so ******* important why are you lazy DO THIS STUFF MORE ^^^^^

 

Server Statistics and Data Management

 

Player Retention Reports? Application Statistics? Server Activity? Where have these important metrics to server growth gone? Firstly, server growth has overall stagnated which has been evident and my previous points prove why this is. While this is a bit smaller it was a nice touch to have these and having this focus could really help with fixing issues with the servers growth.

 

Fix Leadership

 

This is one of the largest issues with teams on LOTC and it falls primarily on Community  and it is like I previously mentioned, the team is riddled with complacency. Members on the team aren’t given direction and while they may possess a certain skill the overall problem falls on the Leadership of the team not having driven any longer or even further up not knowing what they’re capable of.

 

Every issue starts at the top. Leadership needs a ******* shake down and their responsibilites and roles on this server sorted out. Reassign them focuses, promote more people to fulfill needs, remove managers who don’t do anything. Constantly have people in positions who are ready to work, willing to do the work, and motivated. Marketing is a large job most of the time and if CT actually put effort into it I wouldn’t complain about the pex they get.

 

The Community Part of CT

 

An argument I foresee upon this topic is the concept of quantity over quality, for so long has LOTC fully focused on the idea of purely quality over quantity within its policy making and standards. While YouTube, TikTok etc would expose the server to a younger generation of players that many will see as cringe. I would urge all not to fear or view this with a negative mindset but more-so as a chance to educate these players into becoming better RolePlayers.

My question to the community in this regard is; how many of you were the quality RPers you are today when you first joined the server? To even the most jaded boomers I have a hard time believing you haven’t improved in your roleplay, was Aegis, Asulon, Anthos the same as LOTC is today? I would guess not. LOTC is a unique genre within Minecraft and no other RolePlay server is the same as it; people joining for the first time don’t have the culture and sense of history as our current players, but neither did we all when we first joined. Rather than looking down on our younger and less experienced player base we should look towards them as a fresh crop of roleplayers to be brought up into the next generation of history makers on our server.

 

Were the stories written over ten years ago any more valid or special than the experience of a new player in the modern era. It was a different time, a different culture, a different playerbase (aside from the few who remain). While build quality can increase, while the roleplay of our experienced players can and will be better. How can we apply the standards we now hold in our late teens, late twenties and so on to children who have never experienced our server, our culture. Should they not be given a fair short to make history, to usher in a new “age of heroes”; in my mind to do this recruitment is the way, YouTube, TikTok, show people what we have built in the past ten years, and turn them not away but embrace them and they too will lay the bricks for the next ten years.
 

(Aegis Build)

(Salvus Build)

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This post wasn’t proof read or anything, a large portion was to actually give constructive criticism and prove why Community Team is genuinely a shit team. It just takes some action and ONE person to make a change and move it in the right direction. CT could play a much bigger role in the future of this server and inaction will be the doom of it. This may not be the best post but I hope it gives some motivation and opens the eyes of some people of what could be.

 

Also we didn’t talk about the Community events, I know Melpomme I believe puts a lot of effort into those, while those are a neat aspect I do think it falls on deaf ears a lot of the time.

 

Anyway, Thanks for reading if you did!

 

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Spoiler

This post was made by a group of several people and posted via an alt account as to not post off our reputation but purely on our words.

 

Edited October 10, 2022 by 2MuchFireBallTonight

[Laeonathan 3965]

Did you just copy and paste the last 2 weeks of internal discussions and make a document out of it?

 

Ill give a proper response from my perspective soon in a few hours. Though while not formulated that respectful, it 75 % true.

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Leadership:

I personally doubt its a leadership issue. While we IMO had some communication issues it's been nothing severe. Something to know about staff is that communicating accross timezones is incredibly annoying if schedules don't align.

 

Applications:

They're so easy and simply processed at this point. Something I've noticed that the Application quality barely correlates with the actual player's quality in terms of RP. If I see some long-time members of the community or even myself (ooops) rp something I could just facepalm. In the end especially new players tent to be chaotic and everyone starts. We don't need people to be expert rpers when they join.

 

Media team / Retention:

There's nothing to say we really need to get into that lol

[AnimeWolf0080 1493]

Thank you for the feed back, these are all the things we are working on and more. Should you want to talk, please feel free to reach out. I'd enjoy to get to know your side a bit more.

[NotEvilAtAll 9941]

Man I haven’t heard about the Road to 500 in a while. Crazy to think we thought the lockdown server highs would never end.

 

I think most of what’s caused LOTC to stagnate recently (slide back a bit in numbers, even) is general boredom with Almaris. Almaris has already been in place for longer than Arcas lasted, and Arcas itself was a very long map too. School’s back, lockdowns are 100% over, and not much interesting is happening on the server.

[satinkira 5898]

[MeteorDragon 2822]

All I'm going to say that I've seen some genuinely terrible applications get accepted. Not sure of the standards now as I've not been on the team for a few years but they really were terrible. Not naming names or anything but still.

 

If what Laeo said was true and this was an internal discussion, then that's kinda a yikes.

[Statherian 3318]

re-re-re-reserved for when I'm not out drunk and can actually be assed to properly reply

[rukio 8910]

I miss the days when some literacy was expected of new players. We're not going to retain players by making the server app easier, it just leads to lower quality new applicants. Those applicants rarely stick around to my knowledge. If you see a new player roleplaying in a semi-good way your (some people's) thought immediately jumps to 'it's an alt' and the number of times that thought has been proven correct is too high. 

 

I also miss the days when community team couldn't access my IP. I don't think anyone on staff should have access to the IP itself except MAYBE moderation managers and admins. There has to be a way to prevent these people from seeing them because (full offense meant) I don't trust lower-level staff to not be malicious with that sensitive information, especially with how easy it is to get on to some of these teams, and it was an issue in the past as well with older moderation teams having people who were aiding in the ddosing/doxxing/etc of people by retrieving their ip for players. 

[creamynoteblock 2426]

8 hours ago, 2MuchFireBallTonight said:

A prime example on the impact of YouTube and social media on minecraft servers should be the StoneworksMC server. Where the server's success was purely based on popular YouTube videos.

[Xarkly 12618]

Whoever you guys are, it's pretty obvious you know what you're talking about and your takes are fairly accurate. I especially agree with the Recruitment/Media stuff - it's actually unbelievable how shit our recruitment is.

 

Did you post this on an alt because of how Staff would react?

[JARVISPOSTING 308]

 

Jarvis, it seems that some staff members are afraid of giving feedback without reprimand.

Expose them. Leak their IP's. Dox them. Hang them upside down by their socks. Force feed them baked potatoes. Drop them in a vat of boiling sprite.

[Orlanth 3539]

Ferrymen pvp videos have recruited more people to the server in the last year than the LOTC main youtube. 

[MaltaMoss 1771]

Insane how some members of staff feel as if they are being pressured into silence, going far enough to conceal their identities just to propose basic reform and retooling of a team in desperate need of help.  I wont do this. I agree with many facets of this post and think that the community team, and Administration as a whole, should took a long look at it. The claims that this is somehow literally everything community team has been talking about implementing over the past whatever amount of time seems like a fallacy. Take notes.

[kindEmperor 1020]

lol, I think CT needs a different color, that's the real issue everyone is scared to bring up smh... Though in actuality a lot of these points stand true in their own way, I feel like a lot of people who apply to CT do it because they got denied by another team, and see CT as an easy opportunity to get on staff, (in the sense, that hey I'll join that team get pex and + I don't have to do much work to improve the server !!!) though this is an arguable point and there's a lot more too it, It's just a shitty example. Either way who cares, just take world teams old color and make it the new ct color 

 

Also like to mention the use of advertising, strange how this system is not abused as the post states there are loads of social platforms (tik tok) that would get the attention of loads of people if not none, but still it adds a bonus and a benefit and makes sense.... This should of been used years ago.

 

 

Edited October 10, 2022 by Ragrin

[Thrawn 72]

The official LotC YouTube channel description still says that the server is "set in the Isles of Axios," for god's sake!

 

Easily agreed that LotC social media should be popping off. I've always said that FitMC would make a great LotC history video - if we could get a video of similar production quality recapping the history of various nations, I think it would attract a crowd. Don't have as much experience with TikTok, but yeah, surely you could attract a crowd there too.