WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT COMMUNITY TEAM (unironically)
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.
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)
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!
