User

This is what separates you from other admins still currently on the team. It takes a competent person to recognize when they have that 'Jaded' feeling. It also takes a competent person to recognize that they should step aside if they know they're not giving maximum effort. Things can only progress if motivated people continue to step forward, but when you have someone like the "Chairman" just chilling there halting progress it prevents others from having equivalent authority to push whatever is needed to better the server, it's extremely counter intuitive.

Honestly it doesn't help that there's two dudes with ultimate authority just sitting there above everything @Telanir @Tythus. Severs usually only progress when the owner is actually passionate about what's going on within the community.

@501warhead

- In response to retention, I offer you this. Based on what I've witnessed, new players are literally gold for Kingdoms and groups that want to succeed. I know people that actively brought new players to our ranks the moment they saw "Welcome New Player to LordoftheCraft!" broadcasted to the server. I also know people who actively hire new players and fully dedicate their LoTC experience to giving them something to do, a good example of this being @ChumpChump who you'll find hiring and giving jobs to new players on every map. I genuinely believe without a doubt that if you treat nation leaders, as well as people like ChumpChump, as player retention solutions then the problem would most definitely be addressed on a more intimate level. Some sort of bi-weekly meeting with Nation Leaders on an official capacity to check on their status, how their cities are doing, what they think the issue is if they're not doing well, how they think you can help them, what you think they could do better, plugins they think would make their management easier, plugins that support assigning tasks to new players, the list goes on and on. At the moment nations are treated as some arbitrary group of players with no real significance, treat the leaders of these nations as the official representatives of player groups that they are. There should always be an active discussion with them, they're the ones that truly interact with players on a much deeper level. I'm confident that you'll see the issue of player retention in a different light if you do this actively. The issue of player retention won't be your burden to bear alone, or the 2 other active admins you work with. - In response to the lack of media team director candidates: I am without a doubt guaranteeing you that if you make an official server post asking people to submit applications with the criteria that I previously listed, there will be countless people who are both capable of editing videos and capturing footage. I looked around the forums briefly and haven't seen any official attempts at searching for someone with these skills. You never know what kind of skilled people you find when you widen the search to the hundred or so people that frequent the forums. Edit:

The amount of people accepted this year and the amount still playing doesn't really disprove my "flat line" statement. I said if you were to look at a graph of the average amount of players online daily since 2012 it would be a flat line, you can't deny that. The averages were always similar to what they are now or higher, it's always been that way since Availer and Vaq were in charge with the exception of a few very low periods in 2013/14. As you said, 200 actively playing since the beginning of 2018 is very good. However, if 1400 other people just applied and never looked back that most definitely is a problem. My question to you is this, have you and the other admins actually sat down together and brainstormed why the retention rate is what it is? This is an honest question, I'm not implying that you guys don't do this. I have witnessed many reasons first hand countless times and can list all of them for you, I'm just curious to see if you guys have identified any of these things yourselves. As for your response to my statements about the media team, all I'm seeing is a lot of "I tried this, I tried that". Why is it only you trying all of this? Of course it would be exhausting if only one guy is tackling it alone, it most definitely would be hard to balance out you're right. In order to achieve this you could make the criteria for being the Media team leader very very clear. For example: "We are looking for a Media Team Director who can oversee and manage the following tasks: - Showcase existing / upcoming plugins in the form of brief trailers - Create war claim videos that highlight the story behind the battle as well as footage of the fight itself - Manage the LordoftheCraft youtube account - Create contests that allow them to submit their own videos, the winner has their video posted on the Youtube channel in addition to a reward" I'm sure there are a lot of people that would jump at the opportunity. If they fail at doing this, fire em. If they get lazy, fire em. I'm sure you've done this before already but what's the harm in doing it over and over again? Something like this shouldn't just be scrapped indefinitely. Another thing I'd like to point out is how rigid you guys are. Changes take a long time and most of the time when a new rule set is presented it's received the same way the last rule set was. The entire process seems extremely rigid. Why not create the rules with players live? What I mean by that is literally run EVERY single part of the rule by players in a public discussion thread, the players shouldn't be blind sided by anything. You might say that would take a long time but that's simply not true, if done efficiently and effectively it's definitely possible and is done by many other successful servers so it's not a new concept. Lastly, why can't you prioritize activity? In my eyes that should be the most important thing next to the satisfaction of players. They go hand in hand.

Why do you have to throw 5k into thin air, makes no RP sense.

You guys are doing just enough to maintain what was accomplished 6-7 years ago at this point. The server isn't dying, but if you were to look at a graph of server player count since 2012 it would literally be a flat line. That's the main issue in my eyes, there's no real attempt at growing. The past few years on LoTC has just been a micromanaging fest. It's not hard to do things like advertise on your youtube account which has a decent following, it's not hard to promote the things that cause the server to break 200+ players for a single event (Wars). You guys practically shun wars, and you don't use your Youtube channel for anything useful whatsoever. It's clear that the past few renditions of the Media team have totally failed, so just take matters into your own hands. Make small videos showcasing the increasing amount of well made plugins on the server, make videos of events that literally happen every day, make videos of war claims with BACK STORY to show people that it's actually a dynamic server (even though that's debatable). Hire someone on Fiverr or something with the donation money to get a nice trailer narration voice. DISPLAY these videos on the front page of lordofthecraft.net. The videos, as useless as they are, still get a good amount of views. They would get even more views if you showcased more than just builds. Another very obvious thing, the fact that people need to ask "What does X admin even do" is such a massive red flag. Admins should be actively involved, actively improving, actively making feedback threads, actively asking what the players want, actively trying to do things. If all of these things were being done then people would know who they are and exactly what they do. It goes without saying that discussing things in a discord chat a few times a week while having zero presence in game or on the forums is most definitely not good leadership. Look at Shiftnative's forum activity when he was server lead, I'm not saying he was perfect but if all Admins had that kind of passion and level of effort the server would be a booming environment. I haven't mentioned competency at all but that seems to always have been a massive issue on LoTC as well. Not everyone is meant for leadership roles, and you guys seem to have a problem with being bias and reacting emotionally to things.

Edgie steps up and speaks.

Edgie and his wife approach Sarrion. "Come, join us!!"

thanks! ❤️ ^.^!!!

dude you're so fuucking retarded

hey this is a powerful underrated media tool that could potentially draw in players! https://www.youtube.com/user/TheLordOfTheCraft/videos

"you're so cringy..." says Kal'Loritho Mali'Orilahe second of the sun maiden

Hmm! Vey interesting concept! COUNT ME IN! ?

the server is nothin like when u played, everything u enjoyed would result in a ban today. turn around while you can brother, edgies took over