Hey, thanks for the detailed thread. I have some comments to add and some clarity to a few points you have brought up.
Where was the update hype?
Cubecraft fails to generate excitement and anticipation for updates that have more than enough content to be labeled as something big. The release of the 1.19 update, for instance, was missing the expected hype due to its beta status. The absence of pre-release promotion and engagement with the player community left the update feeling underwhelming and poorly received.
We deliberately did not hype up the update at this time. We intentionally launched the update as a beta as we knew there would be many bugs and stability issues for some time. For some context: this is the largest update we've ever done to CubeCraft; not only from a content side, but updating nearly 10 Minecraft versions is no easy feat. Our server platform was completely redone and much of our backend systems had to be written.
No amount of internal testing and QA would have revealed many of the issues we experienced at launch.
We had already rolled the update out to Java a few months prior, and even with a playerbase of nearly 1,000 CCU, it wasn't enough to reveal a lot of the issues we saw at scale with 20,000+ players. We also wanted to gather feedback about a lot of the changes we made during the 1.19 update and make changes, including the EggWars update.
However, when we took the server out of beta, we put a lot of energy and effort around promoting the new content and updates. This came in the form of our Party Update followed with an
anniversary animation. This was one of the largest marketing pushes we had done in quite some time. After all the changes we had made during the beta period, we have seen far more positive results
Awful Release Times
Another significant flaw in Cubecraft's marketing strategy is the choice of release times for updates. Releasing the 1.19 update on a Tuesday morning seems counterintuitive, as this timing did not align with the optimal availability of players. Why was the update not released on a Friday morning or Sunday? I understand the devs want enough time during the week to fix the bugs, but the lack of hype and no given public release time was very underwhelming. This decision could have negatively impacted the initial reception of the update, diminishing its potential success.
For similar reasons as I mentioned above, this was also not the "entire" update. There is more that happens behind the scenes and at the time, releasing on a Tuesday was the most optimal. We'd much rather release an update at a time where the most people can be available and can patch bugs as quick as possible. Releasing on a weekend for instance would have been a poor decision since it means bugs and stability issues would have not been resolved at a time when the most players are on the network.
As I mentioned earlier, we anticipated there would be bugs with as massive as a release as this was. Releasing on a Tuesday allowed us good time to fix a number of major stability issues and by the time we hit the weekend, with the most players online, the network was in a far more stable position than it was on day 1 or 2 after the release.
1.19 Beta Hidden from the Public: Disregard for Community Input
The decision to hide the 1.19 Beta from the public contradicts Cubecraft's claim that community input is only a small portion of decision-making. If the community is such a “small input” compared to its overall player count, why was the beta update deliberately hidden? This move raises questions about transparency and the server's commitment to valuing the opinions and feedback of its player base. Is the feedback of the community worthwhile or not? If so, why is feedback on the forums completely overlooked? This is where you receive the most thought-out suggestions from your most dedicated members. Not the comments on a YouTube video or Discord threads.
The update was not entirely hidden from the public - we saw many hundreds of players join our testing network and helped us find some pretty major issues before release. We also hosted multiple testing sessions on Discord and were very communicative about these sessions. I will say we could have been a bit more visible ingame with our NPC (i.e. in the beta lobby), but we were certainly not trying to hide this update from the public.
I've mentioned in more detail on
another thread that forums are not our only source of collecting feedback. Unfortunately, they are not used by a wide number of users and therefore should not be our
only consideration for feedback and suggestions. We do still read the forums and do implement ideas and suggestions from here still, but again, exclusively relying on the forums for feedback misses a lot of the big picture.
Neglected Social Media Platforms: TikTok, YouTube, Instagram
Cubecraft's negligence of key social media platforms, including TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, is noticeable. Cubecraft has a large social media following, yet the server's lack of active maintenance on these platforms reflects a disregard for potential avenues of growth and engagement.
I would also like to point out a time Cubecraft successfully created hype for an update: The Release of Skyblock on Bedrock Edition. The highly anticipated update included a timer that would count down to 0. Players joined the server and waited in excitement to see the timer hit 0. How did an overhaul as big as the 1.19 update not have a count-down or any sort of anticipation?
I also discussed this a bit in the thread I linked above, but we've actively been using our socials in recent months a lot more than we have in the past (i.e. polls on YouTube, Q&A's on Instagram, etc.). There was not near as much activity during the 1.19 migration since we did not have as much to talk about in terms of updates, but now that we're actively releasing content, they have content posted on them quite regularly.
A few examples:
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Mini win stream update on Twitter
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Mob Vote hunt on Instagram
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MinerWare update on Twitter
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Backrooms Bundle on Instagram
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Lucky Islands update on Instagram
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Chaos SkyWars weekend on Twitter
I will admit our YouTube and TikTok are definitely not as utilized as Twitter and Instagram. Some of this is a balancing game and there's other factors to consider as well. Engagement on YouTube vs Twitter vs TikTok looks way different. I'm not an expert here (don't ask me to make a TikTok video xd) and I work primarily in development, so I don't have a lot to add here unfortunately.
Inability to Recruit New Developers
Cubecraft's excuse of not having time to reach out to potential developers is a
severely overlooked flaw. In a previous post,
Laura noted how difficult it is to find new developers due to the large amount of time it takes to find new potential candidates. If the issue is finding candidates, why not have the
candidates come to you? The server's decision not to actively seek new talent through platforms like jobs.cubecraft.net raises concerns about the commitment to enhancing the player experience and maintaining a competitive edge. I can only imagine how difficult the entire 1.19 overhaul was with the size of the development team - and I commend everyone involved in the incredible amount of work, but without a doubt,
more help would have been beneficial.
This seems to imply that "more devs = more (or faster) updates" which is not necessarily the case. There is often an optimal level to strive for. Having 20 devs work on a single EggWars update for instance would likely have not only disasterous results, but would also result in large amounts of additional resources being placed on project management to ensure everyone had work to do, people weren't stepping over each other, code gets tested and deployed properlty, etc.
There is also a overhead that comes with bringing on a new developer. Considering the scale at which we run Minecraft servers, we have a
lot of code. Training new developers and them learning our codebases can take a couple months, and typically this is something seen for any company bringing on new team members.
In our case, bringing on devs during the migration would have meant more time has to be spent from existing devs who might otherwise be working on the migration to help mentor and train new developers. It would have been very unwise for us to bring on new developers during a time when major parts of our codebase and infrastructure were being redesigned, and ironically would have caused even further delays, rather than reduce how long the migration took.
In terms of the 1.19 migration, many of the delays we encountered were not particularly caused by the size of the dev team. We've learned a lot from our 1.19 migration and ways to better approach updates in the future.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Cubecraft had missteps from the 1.19 update, ranging from poor update promotion to neglect of crucial social media platforms, that have collectively contributed to a decline in its overall appeal. To ensure sustained success and player satisfaction, Cubecraft must reevaluate its marketing strategies and adopt a more proactive and professional approach for future updates.
And to wrap this up, we've learned a lot from this migration period. Hopefully, we don't find ourselves in a position where we have to pause regular updates for nearly 9 months again, and we've taken many steps to ensure that we can avoid this (i.e. keeping our server software up to date).
We've also learned a lot about incorporating feedback from the community and have actively been looking to do more outreach. We made a lot of changes to EggWars after we saw a lot of initial dissastisfaction with the changes brought along in Season 2. We've also done a lot of outreach for our upcoming FFA update, asking the community directly what they wish to see in the update and are also hosting a kit competition which will allow community members to get their kit ideas right into FFA.
So far, we've seen very positive results with many of the changes we've made in recent months and direction we've taken in terms of updating and how we handle community outreach. I recognize that we are also not perfect in all of these areas and feedback on ways we can improve is most certainly welcome. I also want to stress that we will make mistakes. Nobody is perfect, but the important part is that we learn from our mistakes.
Thanks for the detailed points you brought up and I hope this answers some of your questions or offers some clarity as to why some decisions were made the way they were.
