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[Matriox]

Hello,

I’m just going to post some feedback and suggestions here as I disagree with the way Cubecraft management is currently treating some parts of their business. And it is a business, which some people don’t realise, so I’ll try to factor that in throughout the thread .

These things have been complained about for a long time, there will always be people disagreeing with the way things are run, I am usually one of them . But I do think these specific things need to be done right, for any server. I’m not going to suggest anything I really think Cubecraft won’t benefit from.

If you look through my threads a lot of them are critical of the way Cubecraft management handle a lot of things and their protocols with stuff. I’ll just say: I’m not just here to complain. I really do want Cubecraft to take these suggestions and do stuff with them.. I am here to try and help.

The problem at the moment is that all Cubecraft admins are those old “management” admins. The “office” admins who were always less involved and active in the community, which was okay, until all the non-office admins left. After the likes of Younisco, Story, Marieke, Hazard, and Gemmie left, the interaction with the community fell to almost 0. We have been left in the dark in a lot of different areas of Cubecraft management, which leaves the community in the dark.

I think lots of things can be improved:

Feedback and suggestions ( - not good.)​

What’s the point…

Unfortunately, at the moment a lot of the community are left wondering, what is the point on making suggestions when none of them are planned or implemented anyway? Throughout 2023 and 2024 1 suggestion has been given the planned tag, a moderation suggestion. In 2022 and 2023, I would say close to 0 suggestions were implemented. Close to 0 meaning I wouldn't really call any of them actually "implemented" suggestions. They were either not related to server content, or were already on the agenda. In other words, for two whole years, community suggestions haven’t been considered. This is a great failure on the part of Cubecraft.

Cubecrafts system when I joined the forums in 2020 was fairly bad. It consisted of moderators “escalating” suggestions they thought were good. This system was controversial as what a moderator thinks is good is entirely subjective, especially seen as moderators didn’t need to factor in the amount of yes votes or no votes in a poll when deciding whether to escalate something. According to Cubecraft themselves, “this previous system was relatively biased”, in other words, if you didn’t have a moderator friend, usually your suggestion wasn’t going to be escalated.

In 2021, Cubecraft implemented a new system wherein community members could vote on suggestions and any suggestion with over 25 agrees was forwarded to the product team and you would be guaranteed a reply. This is probably by far the best Minecraft server suggestions system I have seen. It meant that any suggestion that was liked by a large portion of the community would be discussed. This shows Cubecraft really cared about what the community wanted and was there to listen.

Since then, this system has been removed. Likely due to a lack of staff resources, the team is indeed much smaller now than it was in 2021 and 2022, and that’s okay. But it doesn’t mean that the team is allowed stop all interaction and discussion with the community. This is where things go wrong. Sure, Cubecraft is going through a hard time right now. They have a very small developer and admin team compared to any time in the past 4 years. But still, Cubecraft need to learn from past mistakes. To quote Zed directly:

“2018 and 2019 were tough years for us. Our server shrank and with it our team, resources and ability to deliver the things that we all wanted to see happen … We’ve always been proud of our community (some exceptions do apply...) and we were upset at the increasing sense of frustration and upset. A lot of this has been due to a perceived lack of communication - where we have definitely faulted but as explained above the past few years have been tough and there’s not been a lot of positive news to give out and so, perhaps mistakenly, we chose silence instead.”

It’s a long quote, but it means a lot. It’s honest. It brought serious hope to a community who quite honestly, probably felt just like we do now. Zed revealed “[they] are hoping to take on more community suggestions where appropriate.” Undoubtedly, all were happy to hear this good news.

In this post too, Zed points out that new developers were hired at the later end of 2019, which meant that they had a lot more developers to give tasks and updates too. Now, there is a much smaller developer team. However, I don’t want drastic changes to the developer team, implementing all community suggestions, for example. My simple advice to Cubecraft is: listen. When your community is telling you something is wrong, you must listen. Lets look at some examples:

I’d like to center this feedback around specific occurrences over the past year, specifically suggestions I have seen from the community where there is close to unanimous support, which is fairly rare. These suggestions with such great support should lend Cubecraft an easy decision; implement them. Unfortunately, this hasn’t been happening. I have been looking at most suggestions on the forums and discord, what have I seen?

Spoiler: 5v5 Blockwars

The fact that 5v5 Blockwars hasn’t been added back is, quite frankly, scandalous. The support for it being added back is literally 100%, there should be no question about this suggestion.

Some screenshots:

-The announcement thread

-Agrees to this discord suggestion about blockwars 5v5

-come on…

In general, just look at the Blockwars channel on Discord, it is literally filled with support for the return of 5v5. To say I am in awe of the fact this situation has not been resolved is a total understatement.

Spoiler: Eggwars

Everyone’s been asking for leather armour back, among a lot of other things. This needs to be commented on. There should be no reason this doesn’t get the planned tag, again, unanimous agreement.

Spoiler: Bundles

I don’t want to re start up any drama here, but when a community tells you something is offensive or wrong, and a large proportion agree, you listen. I won’t write too much about this situation, I’m not religious, but it makes me angry to think a server purporting to be one that accepts and strives to cater for all would be so naive on a matter like this.

No matter how much Cubecraft want to make excuses for this situation, they need to learn something from it. A lot of respect was lost here, regardless of whether you're religious or not.

So as a community member looking in, what do I think is Cubecrafts attitude to suggestions at the moment:

Quite simply, it's clear Cubecraft think that their projects will be more lucrative than implementing any sort of community suggestions. They want to continue with their own internal projects and ignore community suggestions as they have not been built into the future roadmap.

This could work for them. But does factoring us into the roadmap bring benefits too? I would say the benefits would be huge.

Reallocation of responsibilities (Sr mods, QA)

​

So, we all know Cubecraft admins are pretty busy. Their team is the smallest it has been in a very long time, yet they still need to release as much content as possible to keep relevant in the competitive Minecraft Bedrock server community, and marketplace. Simply, I suggest Cubecraft use the staff they have available to them; specifically, the ones who are active in the community. The non office staff, in other words. Sr moderators and QA.

What can Sr moderators and QA do to take pressure off the admins while also making the community happier?

• Allow Sr mods have some autonomy in the Cubecraft discord server. They are the most trusted moderators, and are very active in the community too. This means that they are seeing community suggestions daily, and know what we want. Allowing Sr moderators to add community emoji requests or create channels based on community suggestions is a very simple but effective way of allowing the community be heard better. If Sr mods had the ability, this suggestion could have been implemented much faster https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/beta-games-discord-channel.362486/
• On the forums, they can handle most suggestions in relation to helper recruitment, e.g. they could have simply denied this https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/c...orts-for-applying-for-the-helper-team.361686/
• Perhaps the most drastic change would be allowing Sr mods to handle helper (and moderator?) staff feedback threads, to take pressure off of Capitan. I question marked the moderator staff feedback threads as it’s possible some Sr mods may be too close to some moderators. Obviously a separate subforum would be made for any Sr mod staff feedback then.
• Reopen partner applications. Sr mods can filter through the good ones and forward them to the partner manager.
• QA can handle any simple map change suggestions, like this one: https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/replace-block-under-egg-with-correct-colour-team-ink-map.363265/
• etc etc.

Java (what were you thinking…)
​

What’s my opinion on Java? Well quite simply I think it could have been handled better. Cubecraft went straight in for the “kill”, which killed the server. They removed most game modes in a bid to prevent decline, which ultimately led to mass decline. Something had to be done about Java, games weren’t starting, I do not disagree with that one bit.

In my opinion a much better first option would be to limit all games to 1 game mode(remove solo Eggwars, solo lucky islands, and team Skywars). This would have meant that no community was destroyed, all still had something. Cubecraft is built on communities, they don’t see this. Just like we don’t see their community behind the scenes, they don’t see ours. Really, they didn’t realise how massive the team Lucky Islands or Tower Defence communities were.

The Team Lucky Islands community brought in a higher player count than Eggwars for the most part, the removal of this game quite literally left me dumbfounded. Tower Defence, sure, I can partly understand. It didn’t bring in as much players as the big hitters like Eggwars or Lucky Islands. What was different about Tower Defence though is that the community was mostly made up of people who only played Tower Defence. This meant that when this game was removed, that community died completely. There was also a large community of people who loved to play the non-PVP games that Cubecraft had to offer; tower defence, Minerware, among slimes. Again, gone.

For the most part, these communities are gone, forever. They are not coming back. All have moved on to bigger and better servers. Harsh consequences for an overly dramatic decision.

All evaluations of this situation are very simple in hindsight, I completely understand that this luxury wasn’t available to Cubecraft at the time of the cull. Regardless, we can still reflect on the consequences that overly cautious actions bring to a server.

The End​

So, there’s some advice in there, some feedback, suggestions, and some personal opinion. Hope Cubecraft can use some of this.

Again, there’s no doubt we are in another of those “hard times” for Cubecraft. However, Cubecraft needs to learn from their mistakes in prior hard times and start to care about the community again.

 

[cryptofrogz]

I agree with the majority of stuff here, however this has always turned to shambles:

Reallocation of responsibilities (Sr mods, QA)​

I know it’s not any Sr mods Fault, But Anytime the allocation of listening to the community is put through the Sr team they get put under quite a lot of pressure and negativity although they are only taking onboard ideas of what the community want. They execute it fine and do what the community are suggesting but it is never enough for people and unfortunately that’s why it always fails. I believe that the lack of clarity usually can contribute to this as well. So it’s a no for me

QA can handle any simple map change suggestions, like this one:

I would say QA are best at what they do “Quality Assurance” although they are paid to do their job,I Don’t think this should be their main priority on a day to day basis. It would just create an extra job on their to do list . I mean if the QA team are happily open to this idea then sure go ahead but logically it wouldn’t make it that beneficial to them like you said.

Last of all I mean if a well made, well thought out plan was put in place it could be a lot more easier for people to feel like they have been listened to when suggesting something.
My short and simple suggestion:

@Camezonda on a Friday evening every week you can come check forums “suggestion” sub forum and at least reply with some sort of comment to all relevant suggestions made (it doesn’t have to say yes we are adding or no we are not, it could be a simple question regarding their suggestion) to make all players who have taken their time to suggest something feel acknowledged. It Shouldn't take more than 10mins and everyone who received a comment can at least go to bed knowing the one and only “Cam the man” has seen their post. It’s as simple as that

Cam we see you playing the odd game of Fortnite at work so there is no excuse to say “I don’t have enough time”

All players want and need is some reassurance and Acknowledgement
But that is the only thing that is lacked when it comes to feedback in the majority of suggestion.

 

[Matriox]

I Don’t think this should be their main priority on a day to day basis.

Absolutely not, but simple map changes like the one I showed in my feedback take very little time, and I've already seen QA doing these changes. So I'm guessing 5 minutes spare to make a simple map change won't be too bad? And these suggestions are also once in a blue moon really, so it wouldn't be often. It just means that admins don't have to discuss tiny changes like these, because the likelihood is that they won't think it's important enough to even discuss, yet it would be great for the community.

The QA team members are active community members and know how to play the game so they can see what would work and what wouldn't in my opinion

I know it’s not any Sr mods Fault, But Anytime the allocation of listening to the community is put through the Sr team they get put under quite a lot of pressure and negativity although they are only taking onboard ideas of what the community want. They execute it fine and do what the community are suggesting but it is never enough for people and unfortunately that’s why it always fails. I believe that the lack of clarity usually can contribute to this as well. So it’s a no for me

Can you elaborate on this? I don't really know of a time Sr mods have been given responsibilities like the ones mentioned

 

[s4mways]

Something I think cubecraft has definitely improved are the updates. Back in the days the server has released / created many things that nobody has asked for.

Pillars of fortune was a really good decision for example.

 

[cryptofrogz]

Absolutely not, but simple map changes like the one I showed in my feedback take very little time, and I've already seen QA doing these changes.

Yeah but I’m going to be honest I think QA mainly only focus on priorities such as game breaking bugs or stuff that can ruin people’s experiences. I mean yes it was a small suggestion but there is some more important stuff than that. Like I said above this could be easily counteracted if a response was left. (it doesn’t have to say yes we are adding or no we are not, it could be a simple question regarding their suggestion) anyone who has been given a response from a member of staff from the network is enough to put them at ease

 

[cryptofrogz]

Can you elaborate on this? I don't really know of a time Sr mods have been given responsibilities like the ones mentioned

Quite recently we had this, I mean I can’t really say recently anymore.
Thread ' CubeCraft Community Update!'
https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/-cubecraft-community-update.357919/
I was apart of the volunteer team and chose to leave quite shortly after it started (this project was ran by an Sr mod with the input of some chosen community members)

 

[Matriox]

Quite recently we had this, I mean I can’t really say recently anymore.
Thread ' CubeCraft Community Update!'
https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/-cubecraft-community-update.357919/
I was apart of the volunteer team and chose to leave quite shortly after it started (this project was ran by an Sr mod with the input of some chosen community members)

Well that's is a bit different

My suggestion more says that QA should be allowed change maps based on community support, and Sr mods should be able to add an emoji/channel to discord with community support, without either being forwarded to the product team, because they're obviously too busy for these suggestions it seems. They're just small things I thought of, more could be added too

 

[Camezonda]

I agree with the majority of stuff here, however this has always turned to shambles:

I know it’s not any Sr mods Fault, But Anytime the allocation of listening to the community is put through the Sr team they get put under quite a lot of pressure and negativity although they are only taking onboard ideas of what the community want. They execute it fine and do what the community are suggesting but it is never enough for people and unfortunately that’s why it always fails. I believe that the lack of clarity usually can contribute to this as well. So it’s a no for me

I would say QA are best at what they do “Quality Assurance” although they are paid to do their job,I Don’t think this should be their main priority on a day to day basis. It would just create an extra job on their to do list . I mean if the QA team are happily open to this idea then sure go ahead but logically it wouldn’t make it that beneficial to them like you said.

Last of all I mean if a well made, well thought out plan was put in place it could be a lot more easier for people to feel like they have been listened to when suggesting something.
My short and simple suggestion:

@Camezonda on a Friday evening every week you can come check forums “suggestion” sub forum and at least reply with some sort of comment to all relevant suggestions made (it doesn’t have to say yes we are adding or no we are not, it could be a simple question regarding their suggestion) to make all players who have taken their time to suggest something feel acknowledged. It Shouldn't take more than 10mins and everyone who received a comment can at least go to bed knowing the one and only “Cam the man” has seen their post. It’s as simple as that

Cam we see you playing the odd game of Fortnite at work so there is no excuse to say “I don’t have enough time”

All players want and need is some reassurance and Acknowledgement
But that is the only thing that is lacked when it comes to feedback in the majority of suggestion.

I can try and dedicate 1-2 hours a week to look at suggestions and reply to some. I could make a new tag and apply them to threads that I have replied to. To note, I am not the one that can implement them, I can forward and reply with an honest reply. Pls no stab me for my reply, it's better being honest than no reply at all lol

Also pls, I was playing Fortnite as I was testing something from our Fortnite team. I don't play fortnite during free time, I hate Fortnite :P

 

[privqted]

Its actually insane to me how feedback on Eggwars and Blockwars is basically ignored. Its so clear that everyone preferred 5v5 and that everyone preferred 2020~ Eggwars yet they refuse to even consider it. I genuinely don't get it.

The main thing that's said is "its only a small portion of the playerbase" yet they don't reach out the the wider community via twitter, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok ect, to see what they think. I hate to bring Hive into this but they do in game polls, where the player is notified of something and asked for their feedback while playing the server. Something like this could be so beneficial and actually show what the playerbase prefers. Eggwars didn't need all these new items such as netherite and tridents and they just don't fit into the game at all.
Also here's 2 polls I did over the last few days on Eggwars and Blockwars

Also this is something not directly related but definitely fits as a reply here. This post was written by a few people including myself and posted by @RelatedNoobs in November 2023 - https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/what-cubecraft-can-learn-from-the-1-19-update.356203/ and as big as this thread was, with all the replies from staff, none of it was followed through on. Update hype, doesn't exist as no one is ever told about anything ever. Release Times are still terrible and Social Medias are still neglected. This shows to me that even big threads with genuine feedback are looked at once and then forgotten, like alot of posts on the forums.

 

[cryptofrogz]

I can try and dedicate 1-2 hours a week to look at suggestions and reply to some. I could make a new tag and apply them to threads that I have replied to. To note, I am not the one that can implement them, I can forward and reply with an honest reply. Pls no stab me for my reply, it's better being honest than no reply at all lol

Also pls, I was playing Fortnite as I was testing something from our Fortnite team. I don't play fortnite during free time, I hate Fortnite :P

 

[Mr Jii Gamer]

Hello,

I’m just going to post some feedback and suggestions here as I disagree with the way Cubecraft management is currently treating some parts of their business. And it is a business, which some people don’t realise, so I’ll try to factor that in throughout the thread .

These things have been complained about for a long time, there will always be people disagreeing with the way things are run, I am usually one of them . But I do think these specific things need to be done right, for any server. I’m not going to suggest anything I really think Cubecraft won’t benefit from.

If you look through my threads a lot of them are critical of the way Cubecraft management handle a lot of things and their protocols with stuff. I’ll just say: I’m not just here to complain. I really do want Cubecraft to take these suggestions and do stuff with them.. I am here to try and help.

The problem at the moment is that all Cubecraft admins are those old “management” admins. The “office” admins who were always less involved and active in the community, which was okay, until all the non-office admins left. After the likes of Younisco, Story, Marieke, Hazard, and Gemmie left, the interaction with the community fell to almost 0. We have been left in the dark in a lot of different areas of Cubecraft management, which leaves the community in the dark.

I think lots of things can be improved:

Feedback and suggestions ( - not good.)​

What’s the point…

Unfortunately, at the moment a lot of the community are left wondering, what is the point on making suggestions when none of them are planned or implemented anyway? Throughout 2023 and 2024 1 suggestion has been given the planned tag, a moderation suggestion. In 2022 and 2023, I would say close to 0 suggestions were implemented. Close to 0 meaning I wouldn't really call any of them actually "implemented" suggestions. They were either not related to server content, or were already on the agenda. In other words, for two whole years, community suggestions haven’t been considered. This is a great failure on the part of Cubecraft.

Cubecrafts system when I joined the forums in 2020 was fairly bad. It consisted of moderators “escalating” suggestions they thought were good. This system was controversial as what a moderator thinks is good is entirely subjective, especially seen as moderators didn’t need to factor in the amount of yes votes or no votes in a poll when deciding whether to escalate something. According to Cubecraft themselves, “this previous system was relatively biased”, in other words, if you didn’t have a moderator friend, usually your suggestion wasn’t going to be escalated.

In 2021, Cubecraft implemented a new system wherein community members could vote on suggestions and any suggestion with over 25 agrees was forwarded to the product team and you would be guaranteed a reply. This is probably by far the best Minecraft server suggestions system I have seen. It meant that any suggestion that was liked by a large portion of the community would be discussed. This shows Cubecraft really cared about what the community wanted and was there to listen.

Since then, this system has been removed. Likely due to a lack of staff resources, the team is indeed much smaller now than it was in 2021 and 2022, and that’s okay. But it doesn’t mean that the team is allowed stop all interaction and discussion with the community. This is where things go wrong. Sure, Cubecraft is going through a hard time right now. They have a very small developer and admin team compared to any time in the past 4 years. But still, Cubecraft need to learn from past mistakes. To quote Zed directly:

“2018 and 2019 were tough years for us. Our server shrank and with it our team, resources and ability to deliver the things that we all wanted to see happen … We’ve always been proud of our community (some exceptions do apply...) and we were upset at the increasing sense of frustration and upset. A lot of this has been due to a perceived lack of communication - where we have definitely faulted but as explained above the past few years have been tough and there’s not been a lot of positive news to give out and so, perhaps mistakenly, we chose silence instead.”

It’s a long quote, but it means a lot. It’s honest. It brought serious hope to a community who quite honestly, probably felt just like we do now. Zed revealed “[they] are hoping to take on more community suggestions where appropriate.” Undoubtedly, all were happy to hear this good news.

In this post too, Zed points out that new developers were hired at the later end of 2019, which meant that they had a lot more developers to give tasks and updates too. Now, there is a much smaller developer team. However, I don’t want drastic changes to the developer team, implementing all community suggestions, for example. My simple advice to Cubecraft is: listen. When your community is telling you something is wrong, you must listen. Lets look at some examples:

I’d like to center this feedback around specific occurrences over the past year, specifically suggestions I have seen from the community where there is close to unanimous support, which is fairly rare. These suggestions with such great support should lend Cubecraft an easy decision; implement them. Unfortunately, this hasn’t been happening. I have been looking at most suggestions on the forums and discord, what have I seen?

Spoiler: 5v5 Blockwars

The fact that 5v5 Blockwars hasn’t been added back is, quite frankly, scandalous. The support for it being added back is literally 100%, there should be no question about this suggestion.

Some screenshots:

View attachment 229702
-The announcement thread

View attachment 229703
-Agrees to this discord suggestion about blockwars 5v5

View attachment 229704
-come on…

In general, just look at the Blockwars channel on Discord, it is literally filled with support for the return of 5v5. To say I am in awe of the fact this situation has not been resolved is a total understatement.

Spoiler: Eggwars

Everyone’s been asking for leather armour back, among a lot of other things. This needs to be commented on. There should be no reason this doesn’t get the planned tag, again, unanimous agreement.

Spoiler: Bundles

I don’t want to re start up any drama here, but when a community tells you something is offensive or wrong, and a large proportion agree, you listen. I won’t write too much about this situation, I’m not religious, but it makes me angry to think a server purporting to be one that accepts and strives to cater for all would be so naive on a matter like this.

No matter how much Cubecraft want to make excuses for this situation, they need to learn something from it. A lot of respect was lost here, regardless of whether you're religious or not.

So as a community member looking in, what do I think is Cubecrafts attitude to suggestions at the moment:

Quite simply, it's clear Cubecraft think that their projects will be more lucrative than implementing any sort of community suggestions. They want to continue with their own internal projects and ignore community suggestions as they have not been built into the future roadmap.

This could work for them. But does factoring us into the roadmap bring benefits too? I would say the benefits would be huge.

Reallocation of responsibilities (Sr mods, QA)

​

So, we all know Cubecraft admins are pretty busy. Their team is the smallest it has been in a very long time, yet they still need to release as much content as possible to keep relevant in the competitive Minecraft Bedrock server community, and marketplace. Simply, I suggest Cubecraft use the staff they have available to them; specifically, the ones who are active in the community. The non office staff, in other words. Sr moderators and QA.

What can Sr moderators and QA do to take pressure off the admins while also making the community happier?

• Allow Sr mods have some autonomy in the Cubecraft discord server. They are the most trusted moderators, and are very active in the community too. This means that they are seeing community suggestions daily, and know what we want. Allowing Sr moderators to add community emoji requests or create channels based on community suggestions is a very simple but effective way of allowing the community be heard better. If Sr mods had the ability, this suggestion could have been implemented much faster https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/beta-games-discord-channel.362486/
• On the forums, they can handle most suggestions in relation to helper recruitment, e.g. they could have simply denied this https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/c...orts-for-applying-for-the-helper-team.361686/
• Perhaps the most drastic change would be allowing Sr mods to handle helper (and moderator?) staff feedback threads, to take pressure off of Capitan. I question marked the moderator staff feedback threads as it’s possible some Sr mods may be too close to some moderators. Obviously a separate subforum would be made for any Sr mod staff feedback then.
• QA can handle any simple map change suggestions, like this one: https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/replace-block-under-egg-with-correct-colour-team-ink-map.363265/
• etc etc.

Java (what were you thinking…)
​

What’s my opinion on Java? Well quite simply I think it could have been handled better. Cubecraft went straight in for the “kill”, which killed the server. They removed most game modes in a bid to prevent decline, which ultimately led to mass decline. Something had to be done about Java, games weren’t starting, I do not disagree with that one bit.

In my opinion a much better first option would be to limit all games to 1 game mode(remove solo Eggwars, solo lucky islands, and team Skywars). This would have meant that no community was destroyed, all still had something. Cubecraft is built on communities, they don’t see this. Just like we don’t see their community behind the scenes, they don’t see ours. Really, they didn’t realise how massive the team Lucky Islands or Tower Defence communities were.

The Team Lucky Islands community brought in a higher player count than Eggwars for the most part, the removal of this game quite literally left me dumbfounded. Tower Defence, sure, I can partly understand. It didn’t bring in as much players as the big hitters like Eggwars or Lucky Islands. What was different about Tower Defence though is that the community was mostly made up of people who only played Tower Defence. This meant that when this game was removed, that community died completely. There was also a large community of people who loved to play the non-PVP games that Cubecraft had to offer; tower defence, Minerware, among slimes. Again, gone.

For the most part, these communities are gone, forever. They are not coming back. All have moved on to bigger and better servers. Harsh consequences for an overly dramatic decision.

All evaluations of this situation are very simple in hindsight, I completely understand that this luxury wasn’t available to Cubecraft at the time of the cull. Regardless, we can still reflect on the consequences that overly cautious actions bring to a server.

The End​

So, there’s some advice in there, some feedback, suggestions, and some personal opinion. Hope Cubecraft can use some of this.

Again, there’s no doubt we are in another of those “hard times” for Cubecraft. However, Cubecraft needs to learn from their mistakes from prior hard times and start to care about the community again.

I read the 50% of this and i agree with you in all of it

 

[Roxrock]

I feel like feedback and suggestions have been a suggestion box ever since I joined, and like a suggestion box I’ve begun wondering if there’s a paper shredder inside. Right now I feel like cubecraft is prioritizing new content more than polishing what they already have, or making well balanced and designed content. It was mentioned focus was being shifted onto bigger ongoing projects rather than any newer smaller ones, which was followed by the shortening of the team size and releases of new game modes, the latter change being the positive one. However, this implies that suggested ideas aren’t being considered for at least the time being, which I am not happy with. In the bedwars feedback community talk, it was mentioned big posts weren’t going to be read, and applying the same rule to feedback here means almost nothing probably gets read here.

For me, one of the reasons I decided to start putting a lot of effort into establishing myself in the community, reporting bugs, and creating feedback was because unlike many of my other favorite games, Lucky Islands doesn‘t already have a dedicated community keeping it alive and it was created by a very small business, and I felt that I would be able to encourage other players to try the game and help cubecraft improve it, so other people could experience the same enjoyment I got out of it. I have been successful with bug reports, the QA team is awesome and they get handled in a reasonable way. I don’t think I’ve inspired anyone to give the game a try, but I completely blame myself for that. However, I put in a good amount of effort to make suggestions for how lucky islands could be better designed, but I haven’t seen any output of any kind out of those suggestions (much like a suggestion box). This wouldn’t be such a big issue if lucky islands was given well designed updates, but in my opinion, it hasn’t recently and I’ve seen other players complain about the same issues.

I don’t think new content is a good way forward if the content being designed doesn’t have a lot of thought and effort put into it, as it will not be remembered for being mediocre, players won’t have passion for it, and won’t stick around in the long run. In contrast, games that are designed very well atract passionate communities that keep the game alive. I’ve sought out consoles that are older than I am because passionate creators got me interested in certain games, and I’ve gotten the same enjoyment they had out of them. However, those games lost their passionate developers long ago and are big in size or stopped making content. Those games already have passionate people keeping them alive and inspiring new players to try them out, and lucky islands doesn’t at all. Maybe with enough microtransactions, mediocre content could be sustainable money wise but it won’t be something I, or probably anyone will care much about. It would upset me if cubecraft went down this path because I believe a lot of already existing game modes have a decent amount of passion and care put into them, and I think they have the potential to be something special that gets remembered if more care keeps being put into them in the future.

For the time being, I’ve been on a hiatus for many reasons, many of which I can’t or shouldn’t talk about, but a big reason is the lack of any response to giving feedback. I’m still going to keep working on the big feedback post I have (it won’t be finished anytime soon though) but I expect to get ignored. I’ve started considering going to other servers that accept feedback to explain why lucky islands appealed to me and the problems with it, but I’m still not putting my hopes high that those other servers are capable of making a well crafted game. It’s unfortunate that lucky islands is a game that I can’t keep playing forever, updates change it and it will probably run out of players one day, the 1.19 update really made me realize this and was why I followed it with a high amount of activity. Unfortunately, how lucky islands (and cubecraft as a whole, lucky islands is just the only game I care about) continues to be updated is out of my control.

 

[hFurb4ll]

Hello,

I’m just going to post some feedback and suggestions here as I disagree with the way Cubecraft management is currently treating some parts of their business. And it is a business, which some people don’t realise, so I’ll try to factor that in throughout the thread .

These things have been complained about for a long time, there will always be people disagreeing with the way things are run, I am usually one of them . But I do think these specific things need to be done right, for any server. I’m not going to suggest anything I really think Cubecraft won’t benefit from.

If you look through my threads a lot of them are critical of the way Cubecraft management handle a lot of things and their protocols with stuff. I’ll just say: I’m not just here to complain. I really do want Cubecraft to take these suggestions and do stuff with them.. I am here to try and help.

The problem at the moment is that all Cubecraft admins are those old “management” admins. The “office” admins who were always less involved and active in the community, which was okay, until all the non-office admins left. After the likes of Younisco, Story, Marieke, Hazard, and Gemmie left, the interaction with the community fell to almost 0. We have been left in the dark in a lot of different areas of Cubecraft management, which leaves the community in the dark.

I think lots of things can be improved:

Feedback and suggestions ( - not good.)​

What’s the point…

Unfortunately, at the moment a lot of the community are left wondering, what is the point on making suggestions when none of them are planned or implemented anyway? Throughout 2023 and 2024 1 suggestion has been given the planned tag, a moderation suggestion. In 2022 and 2023, I would say close to 0 suggestions were implemented. Close to 0 meaning I wouldn't really call any of them actually "implemented" suggestions. They were either not related to server content, or were already on the agenda. In other words, for two whole years, community suggestions haven’t been considered. This is a great failure on the part of Cubecraft.

Cubecrafts system when I joined the forums in 2020 was fairly bad. It consisted of moderators “escalating” suggestions they thought were good. This system was controversial as what a moderator thinks is good is entirely subjective, especially seen as moderators didn’t need to factor in the amount of yes votes or no votes in a poll when deciding whether to escalate something. According to Cubecraft themselves, “this previous system was relatively biased”, in other words, if you didn’t have a moderator friend, usually your suggestion wasn’t going to be escalated.

In 2021, Cubecraft implemented a new system wherein community members could vote on suggestions and any suggestion with over 25 agrees was forwarded to the product team and you would be guaranteed a reply. This is probably by far the best Minecraft server suggestions system I have seen. It meant that any suggestion that was liked by a large portion of the community would be discussed. This shows Cubecraft really cared about what the community wanted and was there to listen.

Since then, this system has been removed. Likely due to a lack of staff resources, the team is indeed much smaller now than it was in 2021 and 2022, and that’s okay. But it doesn’t mean that the team is allowed stop all interaction and discussion with the community. This is where things go wrong. Sure, Cubecraft is going through a hard time right now. They have a very small developer and admin team compared to any time in the past 4 years. But still, Cubecraft need to learn from past mistakes. To quote Zed directly:

“2018 and 2019 were tough years for us. Our server shrank and with it our team, resources and ability to deliver the things that we all wanted to see happen … We’ve always been proud of our community (some exceptions do apply...) and we were upset at the increasing sense of frustration and upset. A lot of this has been due to a perceived lack of communication - where we have definitely faulted but as explained above the past few years have been tough and there’s not been a lot of positive news to give out and so, perhaps mistakenly, we chose silence instead.”

It’s a long quote, but it means a lot. It’s honest. It brought serious hope to a community who quite honestly, probably felt just like we do now. Zed revealed “[they] are hoping to take on more community suggestions where appropriate.” Undoubtedly, all were happy to hear this good news.

In this post too, Zed points out that new developers were hired at the later end of 2019, which meant that they had a lot more developers to give tasks and updates too. Now, there is a much smaller developer team. However, I don’t want drastic changes to the developer team, implementing all community suggestions, for example. My simple advice to Cubecraft is: listen. When your community is telling you something is wrong, you must listen. Lets look at some examples:

I’d like to center this feedback around specific occurrences over the past year, specifically suggestions I have seen from the community where there is close to unanimous support, which is fairly rare. These suggestions with such great support should lend Cubecraft an easy decision; implement them. Unfortunately, this hasn’t been happening. I have been looking at most suggestions on the forums and discord, what have I seen?

Spoiler: 5v5 Blockwars

The fact that 5v5 Blockwars hasn’t been added back is, quite frankly, scandalous. The support for it being added back is literally 100%, there should be no question about this suggestion.

Some screenshots:

View attachment 229702
-The announcement thread

View attachment 229703
-Agrees to this discord suggestion about blockwars 5v5

View attachment 229704
-come on…

In general, just look at the Blockwars channel on Discord, it is literally filled with support for the return of 5v5. To say I am in awe of the fact this situation has not been resolved is a total understatement.

Spoiler: Eggwars

Everyone’s been asking for leather armour back, among a lot of other things. This needs to be commented on. There should be no reason this doesn’t get the planned tag, again, unanimous agreement.

Spoiler: Bundles

I don’t want to re start up any drama here, but when a community tells you something is offensive or wrong, and a large proportion agree, you listen. I won’t write too much about this situation, I’m not religious, but it makes me angry to think a server purporting to be one that accepts and strives to cater for all would be so naive on a matter like this.

No matter how much Cubecraft want to make excuses for this situation, they need to learn something from it. A lot of respect was lost here, regardless of whether you're religious or not.

So as a community member looking in, what do I think is Cubecrafts attitude to suggestions at the moment:

Quite simply, it's clear Cubecraft think that their projects will be more lucrative than implementing any sort of community suggestions. They want to continue with their own internal projects and ignore community suggestions as they have not been built into the future roadmap.

This could work for them. But does factoring us into the roadmap bring benefits too? I would say the benefits would be huge.

Reallocation of responsibilities (Sr mods, QA)

​

So, we all know Cubecraft admins are pretty busy. Their team is the smallest it has been in a very long time, yet they still need to release as much content as possible to keep relevant in the competitive Minecraft Bedrock server community, and marketplace. Simply, I suggest Cubecraft use the staff they have available to them; specifically, the ones who are active in the community. The non office staff, in other words. Sr moderators and QA.

What can Sr moderators and QA do to take pressure off the admins while also making the community happier?

• Allow Sr mods have some autonomy in the Cubecraft discord server. They are the most trusted moderators, and are very active in the community too. This means that they are seeing community suggestions daily, and know what we want. Allowing Sr moderators to add community emoji requests or create channels based on community suggestions is a very simple but effective way of allowing the community be heard better. If Sr mods had the ability, this suggestion could have been implemented much faster https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/beta-games-discord-channel.362486/
• On the forums, they can handle most suggestions in relation to helper recruitment, e.g. they could have simply denied this https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/c...orts-for-applying-for-the-helper-team.361686/
• Perhaps the most drastic change would be allowing Sr mods to handle helper (and moderator?) staff feedback threads, to take pressure off of Capitan. I question marked the moderator staff feedback threads as it’s possible some Sr mods may be too close to some moderators. Obviously a separate subforum would be made for any Sr mod staff feedback then.
• QA can handle any simple map change suggestions, like this one: https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/replace-block-under-egg-with-correct-colour-team-ink-map.363265/
• etc etc.

Java (what were you thinking…)
​

What’s my opinion on Java? Well quite simply I think it could have been handled better. Cubecraft went straight in for the “kill”, which killed the server. They removed most game modes in a bid to prevent decline, which ultimately led to mass decline. Something had to be done about Java, games weren’t starting, I do not disagree with that one bit.

In my opinion a much better first option would be to limit all games to 1 game mode(remove solo Eggwars, solo lucky islands, and team Skywars). This would have meant that no community was destroyed, all still had something. Cubecraft is built on communities, they don’t see this. Just like we don’t see their community behind the scenes, they don’t see ours. Really, they didn’t realise how massive the team Lucky Islands or Tower Defence communities were.

The Team Lucky Islands community brought in a higher player count than Eggwars for the most part, the removal of this game quite literally left me dumbfounded. Tower Defence, sure, I can partly understand. It didn’t bring in as much players as the big hitters like Eggwars or Lucky Islands. What was different about Tower Defence though is that the community was mostly made up of people who only played Tower Defence. This meant that when this game was removed, that community died completely. There was also a large community of people who loved to play the non-PVP games that Cubecraft had to offer; tower defence, Minerware, among slimes. Again, gone.

For the most part, these communities are gone, forever. They are not coming back. All have moved on to bigger and better servers. Harsh consequences for an overly dramatic decision.

All evaluations of this situation are very simple in hindsight, I completely understand that this luxury wasn’t available to Cubecraft at the time of the cull. Regardless, we can still reflect on the consequences that overly cautious actions bring to a server.

The End​

So, there’s some advice in there, some feedback, suggestions, and some personal opinion. Hope Cubecraft can use some of this.

Again, there’s no doubt we are in another of those “hard times” for Cubecraft. However, Cubecraft needs to learn from their mistakes from prior hard time I agree with the majority of stuff here, however this has always turned to shambles:

I know it’s not any Sr mods Fault, But Anytime the allocation of listening to the community is put through the Sr team they get put under quite a lot of pressure and negativity although they are only taking onboard ideas of what the community want. They execute it fine and do what the community are suggesting but it is never enough for people and unfortunately that’s why it always fails. I believe that the lack of clarity usually can contribute to this as well. So it’s a no for me

I would say QA are best at what they do “Quality Assurance” although they are paid to do their job,I Don’t think this should be their main priority on a day to day basis. It would just create an extra job on their to do list . I mean if the QA team are happily open to this idea then sure go ahead but logically it wouldn’t make it that beneficial to them like you said.

Last of all I mean if a well made, well thought out plan was put in place it could be a lot more easier for people to feel like they have been listened to when suggesting something.
My short and simple suggestion:

@Camezonda on a Friday evening every week you can come check forums “suggestion” sub forum and at least reply with some sort of comment to all relevant suggestions made (it doesn’t have to say yes we are adding or no we are not, it could be a simple question regarding their suggestion) to make all players who have taken their time to suggest something feel acknowledged. It Shouldn't take more than 10mins and everyone who received a comment can at least go to bed knowing the one and only “Cam the man” has seen their post. It’s as simple as that

Cam we see you playing the odd game of Fortnite at work so there is no excuse to say “I don’t have enough time”

All players want and need is some reassurance and Acknowledgement
But that is the only thing that is lacked when it comes to feedback in the majority of suggestion.

also them just purely relying on player counts doesn’t say anything about what the community would actually like

 

[Eli]

I just want to preface my reply saying that everything I say or do in this site always comes from a lot of love and respect for CubeCraft, I have praised the administration at times when I believed their decisions were correct, and have also criticized them at times when I feel as though they've strayed from what I personally consider the greater good for their community and business. I do not pretend to hold the absolute truth, and I am fully aware that many of my observations may be misguided by a lack of knowledge of the inside workings of this server, but I try my best to be fair and use the information I have at my disposal.

I strongly believe that the current situation with CubeCraft's way of handling feedback from their community is part of an overarching tendency that this server's leadership has unfortunately not been able to break through, at least since very late 2017 when I joined the forums.
​

Spoiler: My Thoughts | Short Edition

• Cube in early 2020 felt pretty similar to nowadays. The community was similarly frustrated and the feedback channels were similarly poorly handled.​
• @Zed changed the course of CubeCraft as a community and company with the Admin Team overhaul, promising a breath of fresh air for the then upset community.​
• This was a very costly and risky undertaking, and I feel like the Admin Team knew their bonanza was temporary, so they worked quickly to get things done.​
• As a member of the staff team I witnessed significant improvement in the inner workings of the team, yet I know for sure this was no "Golden Age" for there were a lot of growing pains and difficult situations to handle with the new Admin Team.​
• This investment in new talent had mainly been possible thanks to the increase of players during the pandemic, as playercounts began a steady decrease, we saw (likely correlated) layoffs for many members of the Admin Team.​
• The responsibilities these members had undertaken did not disappear, they were just bundled up and handed to the next available employee.​
• Nowadays the Admin Team is almost exactly the same as it was in early 2020, with the exception of two people dedicated to "business".​
• It is frustrating to me how after so much effort was put into making the server better, we no longer have an essential Community Manager, and the communication channels feel similarly neglected as before.​
• It is important to note that many of the changes that were made during the Admin Team overhaul are still delivering a positive impact today, and we are thankful.​
• CubeCraft cannot continue without hiring a Community Manager, a smart and well-spoken individual can help them turn around the current narrative and ammend the relationship with the community.​

I understand that an additional employee is a costly undertaking, but like my mom always says, in a house where two can eat, three can eat as well.​

• The current efforts at simulating community engagement are just not it, we have been relegated as passive observers of CubeCraft's business plans. And are only listed if our ideas go directly in sync with pre-established upcoming projects/goals.​

Spoiler: My Thoughts | Long Edition

Let's Remember Early 2020

This community is currently at a state that feels oddly similar as the beginning of 2020, back then the community's animosity was relatively similar, long feedback threads like this one which challenged CubeCraft's most important decision making were a common thing, and alike today, many of those threads were either never replied to, or responded to with half-truths or cold corporate-esque responses in which there was no compromise for improvement. Back then CubeCraft's roles were also significantly more corporate-feeling, since the people in big positions of leadership were actually referred to as "Management". And most unfortunate of all, there were a series of "Administrators" out of which one of them had to keep up with all the massive responsibilities of moderation together with community management.

Then something spectacular happened, and under the leadership of @Zed CubeCraft decided to venture into a different approach in their administration of CubeCraft. For the first time in what seemed a very long series of months or even years of radio silence from CubeCraft's leadership, we began seeing open and honest conversations back and forth between the community and Admin Team. Then came an overhaul to CubeCraft's leadership, with the hiring of multiple new Admins each dedicated to essential parts of the server.

The Ups and Downs of the New and Improved Admin Team

It is of my understanding that part of the reason why CubeCraft could resort to such luxuries at this point in time was because things were doing well, or at least much better than before, the pandemic sure did inject the server with an influx of much needed players which helped support all these new initiatives. I would dare say the Admin Team knew this bonanza would be temporary, and worked diligently to address critical issues that needed improvement within CubeCraft at a very fast pace. We saw an overhaul to volunteer staff recruitment, moderation, and community management within the span of a few months.

As a member of the staff team during this period of time, I witnessed first-hand the immense amount of love and care that was put into making CubeCraft evolve with the times, turning the company into a much more inclusive and loving place. I witnessed how employees and volunteers alike started receiving improved treatment from higher ups, and the sense of community all around was high.

I also know that this was a significantly risky undertaking for CubeCraft, hiring so many new people was surely a big investment both monetarily and time-wise. And I am sure that there are lots of things that the current CubeCraft leadership would've done differently, having already handled the growing pains of a more elaborate leadership team. I do not pretend to label this era of CubeCraft as a "perfect golden age" because although it sure did seem like it, a lot of issues arose from having so many people in positions of meaningful leadership, especially when they were all so passionate and imaginative, surely an ambitious yet promising bunch.

Back to Where We Started?

As time passed and the pandemic ended, playercounts returned to normal and began a slow but steady decline, this, to my ignorant outside-view understanding, led to the removal of many of the Admin positions that had previously been introduced, but their responsibilities still stuck around! They just got bundled up and passed onto the nearest available employee.

Nowadays, the Admin Team at least from a superficial level seems to be at the exact same state as it was in Early 2020 prior to the overhaul. The exact same people are still around, with the exception of two new positions dedicated to "Business" (and Marketplace which doesn't relate to the CubeCraft server). Even the infamous do-it-all position of Moderation/Recruitment/Player Safety manager has made a return (Kudos to Gato anyway, he's doing one heck of a good job).

A four year difference and yet no dedicated community manager on sight, a four year difference and the server's official feedback channels feel as neglected as ever, a four year effort of apologizing for past mistakes and promising to be better and yet the community has been put back in its position as a spectator and occassional consumer, while CubeCraft's business plans unfold.

As a community member who has been with CubeCraft for so long, who has seen them make mistakes, and made a lot of pretty terrible mistakes myself, it's really frustrating to see how what once seemed like the opportunity of a lifetime to turn this place around, resulted into an abandoned experiment from which many things have been reverted to how it used to work years ago.

It's Never Too Late to Try Again

I sincerely hope that whoever reads this is left with the impression that I'm arguing CubeCraft is operating the same way it used to operate four years ago, that's far from the case. And MANY things that stuck around from the Admin Team overhaul are continuing to deliver a lot of good nowadays, and can continue to be exploited.

There's still a chance to build up the necessary momentum to correct CubeCraft's relationship with its community, but it comes at a cost. This is something that I've wanted to say for a while and hadn't really found the opportunity to do so but, CUBECRAFT NEEDS A COMMUNITY MANAGER. @Younisco showed us the earth shattering potential a smart and well-spoken individual has for a gaming community like CubeCraft, where player satisfaction should be the absolute number one priority. A good Community Manager can make you seem like you're doing a lot even at times when there's not a lot of resources to invest in new content, a good Community Manager can help you navigate complicated conversations that would otherwise be sloppily handled by someone whose attention is being half taken up by other responsibilities. A good Community Manager can make your playerbase understand that you are doing a good job, and that you're trying your best. Because as of right now CubeCraft, if you guys feel like you're doing your best that's awesome, just don't be scared to show it...

I understand that an additional employee is a costly undertaking, but like my mom always says, in a house where two can eat, three can eat as well.

I also want to note that CubeCraft's current approach at simulating community interaction is not it, ideas are only being listened to if they're relevant to fresh releases, and the only real changes that are being made are very very small QoL features. Feedback only comes through if it happens to line up with CubeCraft's short term goals. There also seems to be no willingness to revert any updates or changes, and if the community is being asked for an opinion, the decision has already been taken anyway. And I apologize for replying to you directly @Camezonda, I applaud your intentions but I don't think 1-2 hours a week and a few replies is going to help the community's current perception of their importance in CubeCraft's decisionmaking.

​

​

 

[Nightmare]

i can only speak for myself here, but in the past months i have fixed a lot of map bugs, changed some maps in a way that it improves the gameplay and when i saw someone mentioning something about an issue with a map, for the most part, i have immediatly fixed that aswell. With forum suggestions it is a bit different, as while we could fullfill the requests in theory, we can neither change the tags of a suggestion nor has it been our job so far to decide if a suggestion should be implemented or not, so we would still need to forward it, which sadly makes the entire process a bit more complicated. On top of that, i can probably count the amount of times i have seen a suggestion to change a map on these forums on one hand ^^ Usually its people requesting entire maps to be added to the rotation, but not changing small details of it

 

[Matriox]

i can only speak for myself here, but in the past months i have fixed a lot of map bugs, changed some maps in a way that it improves the gameplay and when i saw someone mentioning something about an issue with a map, for the most part, i have immediatly fixed that aswell. With forum suggestions it is a bit different, as while we could fullfill the requests in theory, we can neither change the tags of a suggestion nor has it been our job so far to decide if a suggestion should be implemented or not, so we would still need to forward it, which sadly makes the entire process a bit more complicated. On top of that, i can probably count the amount of times i have seen a suggestion to change a map on these forums on one hand ^^ Usually its people requesting entire maps to be added to the rotation, but not changing small details of it

Yes, it's rare. But the one I linked should definitely be easy to change and shouldn't require forwarding to admins. You should have the ability to change tags in my opinion if you do go and change anything you can from a forums suggestion, although rare enough. Would be great.

So for the things you changed, if any were off of a forums suggestion, it would be great if these were recognised and actually say what were implemented, whether it be by adding the implemented tag on discord or the forums. Just even to show the team is implementing community suggestions more through seeing tags

 

[Nightmare]

i dont actually think i have ever actively implemented a forums suggestion myself. Usually my map changes are due to bug reports, where people report places you can get stuck on/in, which i then change to fix that problem. The only time where i changed something based on community feedback, was the SG update. We reviewed some maps and made some major changes to improve the gameplay as a whole :) Implementing suggestions has never really been something the QA team would do. Which makes sense, because basically all of the changes would require a developer, not a QA member

 

[Roxrock]

i dont actually think i have ever actively implemented a forums suggestion myself. Usually my map changes are due to bug reports, where people report places you can get stuck on/in, which i then change to fix that problem. The only time where i changed something based on community feedback, was the SG update. We reviewed some maps and made some major changes to improve the gameplay as a whole :) Implementing suggestions has never really been something the QA team would do. Which makes sense, because basically all of the changes would require a developer, not a QA member

Would it be ok to create a bug report for something like this. It‘s not a bug in the sense that it causes the game to behave in a way it isn’t supposed to, but it seems to clearly be an unintended oversight in how the map is designed that prevents players from being able to do something the map maker seems to have intended, similar to bug reports where a map maker misplaced certain block on the map.

 

[Nightmare]

Would it be ok to create a bug report for something like this. It‘s not a bug in the sense that it causes the game to behave in a way it isn’t supposed to, but it seems to clearly be an unintended oversight in how the map is designed that prevents players from being able to do something the map maker seems to have intended, similar to bug reports where a map maker misplaced certain block on the map.

i looked at this post and i would agree that this is not intended. When you are unsure if you should create a bug report, then create a bug report, worst thing that can happen is it not being accepted :)

 

[Basketman]

Hey everyone,

I've been following this long and insightful thread and wanted to share my perspective, echoing some of the sentiments shared by @Eli . As someone deeply invested in the well-being of our server and its community, I believe it's crucial to speak up when things are going well and to offer constructive feedback when they're not.

Less structered text and more detailed;

Spoiler: Longer version

Admin team & Feedback/Suggestions

Let's start with the fact that indeed the changement of the Admin team (few years ago) was such a powerful and great decision for the server. It really made the staff team more approachable as a member. Having someone from the Admin team interacting each day with the players, talking to them, arguing changes and making sure that they were satisfied was rewarding.

Made it feel like they were listening to the community. That's why I believe that introducing a Community manager could be a well needed change into the Admin team. Someone who can pick up the work from Younisco, he did so well. I also know that indeed such position would probably cost CubeCraft money but if @Eli allows me to quote his mother:

I understand that an additional employee is a costly undertaking, but like my mom always says, in a house where two can eat, three can eat as well.

The painful part is to see all these great suggestions from community members that really took the time and effort to brainstorm, rethink, write it up and post it to help out the staff team and other community members to be ignored. I believe that such efforts should get rewarded with at least a good discussion and swapping opinions. But these days I barely see any interaction from the staff team on these suggestions. Usually they will just die out and are placed on the shelf to collect dust.

Just to point out how much interation there was on the CubeCraft community corner channel in the past year:

Most of these messages are from community members discussing great suggestions entered by others.

I really believe CubeCraft should see how important these suggestions are, because in the end CubeCraft is a business and to keep your business healthy you need happy and satisfied customers. We, the community are those customers and they should never forget what is important for us, to have a good time and create wonderful memories here.


I do have to say @Camezonda it's great that you already want to take action and invest some time into this situation, but chances are high that this becomes to much to handle in just a few hours each week. Which could result into great suggestions not getting the neccesary time and effort to read through it and discuss with others. I really believe we need a full time Community Manager again who is responsible to overlook all these great ideas and pitch them into the admin team on weekly, bi-weekly meetings.

The remaining admin team can focus most of their time to their own responsibilities and due to these meetings are still up to date with what lives under the community. This will also help out Rubik with knowing which games or ideas are in high demaning for updates or new releases to plan out the developers their work. This could help out Luke to let the designers focus on certain themes, games to build new maps, new skins, packs etc.


Responsibilities QA & SrMods

As a former SrMod I know that it's not always that clear to the members what seperates us from moderators regarding tasks. Some know indeed that they are responsible for the helper program (believe me that takes up quite some time and effort). But they do much other things in the background that usually are visible to the community.

But I am not sure if I would make it that SrMods can handle the staff feedbacks just because if this would be the case then there should be 2 staff feedback places. One for Helpers and Moderators and one for SrModerators and Admin.

And I think that this would be confusing and possibly have situations where members reported it in the wrong section where they felt unsafe by a SrModerator and that specific SrModerator had the chance to read it and know who reported them.

So I'm not sure what the best approach is here but each side has his pros and cons.


Other ideas and topics

I also want to introduce the following ideas to the topic. Let's say CubeCraft indeed decides to introduce a Community Manager again, how nice would it be if the Community Manager after reviewing sugesstions, participating in the conversation and discussing it with the other admin members. Could maybe post a monthly announcement asking for the opinion of others who might missed it. To for example see if a new idea would be a good idea by using a poll.

Or asking opinions regarding what Rubik did one day asking for ideas for new SkyBlock Quests. This could really bring the community and the Admin team closer and feel more familiar and welcome.

Shorter version tl:dr

Spoiler: tldr

Admin Team Changes & Introduction of a Community Manager

Current situation: The current situation for handling community suggestions is really awful. They usually just get ignored and start collecting dust on the shelf next to all the other great suggestions provided.

Proposal for Improvement: Given the current situation, I propose the reintroduction of the Community Manager role to continue to bring new life into the suggestions. This role would effectively pick up from where Younisco left off, bridging the gap between the community and the Admin team. While I acknowledge the financial implications as mentioned by @Eli , "in a house where two can eat, three can eat as well," emphasizing the potential for accommodating essential roles despite cost concerns.

Community Engagement & Feedback

Current Challenges: It's disheartening to see the large amount of creative and thoughtful suggestions from our community members often overlooked and not discussed by the staff. These suggestions frequently go unnoticed, which might demotivate our members from contributing further.

Suggested Action: To address this, I believe that a dedicated Community Manager could ensure these suggestions receive the attention they deserve. This role could facilitate regular discussions and integrate community feedback into the administrative decision-making process.

QA & SrMods Responsibilities

Clarification of Roles: As a former SrMod, I understand the confusion about the delineation of responsibilities between Moderators and SrMods. SrMods handle significant tasks, including the helper program, which demands considerable time and effort.

Feedback System Concern: I'm hesitant to recommend that SrMods manage staff feedback due to potential conflicts of interest, especially in cases where members may feel uncomfortable about SrMods accessing their feedback directly. This could create a sensitive situation if the feedback is about the SrMods themselves.

Innovative Community Interaction

Engagement Ideas: Imagine if our proposed Community Manager could not only manage but also revitalize our interaction with the community. For instance, a monthly announcement summarizing key suggestions and discussions, or conducting polls to gauge interest in new ideas, would significantly enhance engagement.

Conclusion & Acknowledgments

I appreciate the proactive steps some members have already taken, especially @Camezonda, for investing time to address these issues. However, the breadth and depth of community feedback require more sustained attention, which a full-time Community Manager could provide.

Some special thanks to:

Spoiler: Special thanks

@Matriox for starting this thread
@Lyriie for the insightful monthly recap threads, which are crucial for highlighting our community's creative suggestions.
@Eli and his mother for the inspiring quote, which reminds us of the value of inclusivity and investment in our community.