Java What CubeCraft Should Be Focussing On (According To A Random Player)

[xHappyMood]

Note 1: I write this thread without any knowledge about how CubeCraft, and more specifically the Developer Team works. If someone who does know something about it (a Developer for example) could explain, that would be great. But until then, this is just what I think should be focussed on.

Note 2: I will only be talking about what I think should be done on Java, because I don't know that much on bedrock and its bugs, games, etc.

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So lately CubeCraft has been releasing quite a lot of new games like Among Slimes and Colony Control. Now, don't misunderstand me, this is a good thing, the games are nice and original, and I really like that CubeCraft has been releasing new games again. But there are some things that could be better. One thing is that the community has been talking about the same bugs over and over, and even though some have been fixed by now, there are still some left as well. Second thing, the new games come with quite a lot of bugs. It is, of course, inevitable that there are some bugs in a game that has just come out, but there seem to be quite a lot, and big ones.

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That's why I have made a step-by-step plan of what I think CubeCraft should be doing to increase their playerbase even more.

Step 1 (if possible):

1a) If it's possible (I know that this is highly dependent on a lot of factors), I think CubeCraft should try to get even more Developers. I have seen some new ones join lately, so I guess they're already working on this, but I just wanted to mention this. More Developers will give you the ability to Develop things faster, and more things at the same time.

1b) Once again, if possible, get more mods to handle bug reports. As far as I know, only Keanu and Marieke do bug reports now, which is not enough. Bug reports take a lot of time to be handled now, too much time, which makes bugs be in place for so much longer. If you got, even a few, more mods to handle bug reports I think that would speed up the process a lot, which is only a good thing.

Step 2:

After that, I think CubeCraft should be focussing on two main things. Firstly, and most importantly, fix the most prominent bugs that the community has been talking about for quite some time now. This should already make more players join because I really have the feeling that sometimes people dislike CubeCraft for some of the bugs. Meanwhile, if you succeeded to get more Developers, you might want to make a start on developing some new games, that will get more players to join cube. One that I liked in particular and I think could be very successful is this one made by @Axyy and @ItzEnd3r. I think it could lead a lot of new players to CubeCraft as the whole concept of the game is very well thought out and original. It's not like anything I have ever seen on another server. Also, if you choose the one that I suggested, you don't need that much thinking about stats, kits, etc. because everything has been though out to the slightest detail.

Step 3:

After you have fixed the most prominent and asked for bugs, you can move on to develop new games with more Developers, as they're not needed for fixing bugs that much anymore. Of course, if any new bugs arise you will need some of the Devs to fix bugs again, but until then they can develop loads of new games to get more people to join the server.

Step 4:

When you have developed the games, you should be checking them for bugs more intensively BEFORE you release the game. Now, when you release a game it's so full of bugs that I wonder how you didn't notice they were there. For example, when Colony Control was released, there was a bug where no extra villagers would spawn if a guild went a level up. I have absolutely no idea how you missed something as big as that when testing the game. I know that you can't take every bug out before you release a game, but releasing games with that much bugs is not a good idea. You would be better off if you took out those very big and prominent bugs, before releasing games, as so many bugs in a new game looks kind of bad on you.

Step 5:

Go back to step 2.

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If you follow these steps, I think you will be releasing more high quality and original games. Most of the bugs will be solved, and new bugs will be solved quickly. This will make more players join cube, out of interest for the games, or because there are very few bugs, and a higher playerbase seems something you want to achieve very much

 

[Quis]

I totally agree with this in the first place. Afaik Keanu and Marieke are indeed the only moderators who handle reports.

The problem is. Moderator is an voluntary job. This means that they don’t HAVE to focus on bug reports. Moderators find player reports, appeals and other responsibilities way more fun and that’s the main problem.

Simple solution: make an apart big report team and it should work a lot better. Just like helpers, you can apply for it and you’ll get trainee for it. Very simple, should work.

 

[xHappyMood]

Simple solution: make an apart big report team and it should work a lot better. Just like helpers, you can apply for it and you’ll get trainee for it. Very simple, should work.

Sounds like a great solution.

 

[Ko7a]

(Quick DISCLAIMER I'm not sure if this is right this is what I heard and learned from my own experience)

try to get even more Developers

That is easy said then done because Developers get paid for their work and I think that CubeCraft would ofc higher more devs if more players applied for that position. Also, a problem is that it's hard to find the right Dev bc coding for each thing they do will be different for example if a Sentinal Dev wouldn't be able to code games because he is specialized with player movement and player reach then with entities. Therefore it's also not easy to get a game dev because everyone is specialized in their own way.

 

[xHappyMood]

(Quick DISCLAIMER I'm not sure if this is right this is what I heard and learned from my own experience)



That is easy said then done because Developers get paid for their work and I think that CubeCraft would ofc higher more devs if more players applied for that position. Also, a problem is that it's hard to find the right Dev bc coding for each thing they do will be different for example if a Sentinal Dev wouldn't be able to code games because he is specialized with player movement and player reach then with entities. Therefore it's also not easy to get a game dev because everyone is specialized in their own way.

Yes that is correct. That’s why I wrote ‘if possible’.
If they can’t get enough new devs they’ll have to wait until they fixed the bugs before starting on a new game.

 

[Maaarijn]

Good thread and I agree, but I think Cubecraft is already aware of this. The point is that developers cost money, as they get paid, and like mentioned above finding the right developers can be hard.
But I totally agree that there should be paid more attention to the bugs.

 

[KitsuneToru]

While I agree with some parts of what you've said, there are definitely some parts I strongly disagree with.

While it's true that new games could potentially draw more new players to the server, I feel like there are too many smaller things that should be fixed first. There are lots of new games that have been released recently that should get bug fixes and updates to those games first before they add even more games as they've got plenty of new ones already.

I definitely think that bug fixes should be a higher priority. While fixing bugs might not draw many new people to the server, it'll massively help user retention as the players who currently play on cube won't be turned away by the bugs that exist, and will stay longer which will greatly help in the long term as trying to keep the player count up with new games to counter people leaving because of things like bugs is not sustainable.

I feel like they should just generally prioritise less publicly seen things, like bugs and other QOL things over adding new games. Things like revamping the awful suggestions system by changing internally how they're handled because at the moment if a single part of a compilation is denied, the rest of the set of suggestions is denied, which is completely unfair; some suggestions are/aren't seen by pure chance and the staff team just say "we can't read every suggestion" and let's face it - this is not an excuse anymore. If I personally can keep up and read most suggestions that come up every day, a staff team of 26 mods, 8 sr mods and 3 helpers can definitely do the same.

The other smaller things I'd like to see changed, updated or fixed are the cube discord bot which I feel should be worked on - however I imagine this is already happening! I'd also like to see more community talks as these are absolutely really great ideas, and are excellent at gathering player feedback on ideas and topics. I'd then like to see more community feedback and transparency on future updates as while the staff team is good for internally testing, they will only find some of the bugs and some will be left. Additionally the staff team will almost certainly have different playing styles than a lot of the playerbase, especially on bedrock since a lot of the community there is much younger than the staff team. Additionally with transparency, I'd like more updates to what's going on post-community talk. The most recent talks on TD and KB haven't received a single update since the talk finished, which will automatically raise questions about what's happening considering the extremely quick implementation of the damage indicators talk. I'm not saying that cube has just abandoned the ideas, I'm just saying that if there's been delays or anything being transparent and updating the community would go a long way to making players feel reassured and to understand what's going on rather than drawing their own conclusions.

However, no matter how much anyone here says how they think the priorities should change it's hard to say if it's feasible to do or if they're already doing since we have very little knowledge on cube's actual priorities. I think it'd be a wonderful idea if they updated the community on some of their top priorities and timelines for these every few months, similar to how Ubisoft show their priorities on Rainbow 6 Siege (here's what this looks like for anyone who doesn't know what I'm talking about). Yes, the cube development team is insanely smaller than the ubisoft dev team obviously, but this does not prevent them from implementing a similar system. Just a short blog post 2-3 times a year explaining what they're working on, what sort of timeframe they hope for these to be out and why their priorities are changing would go an huge way to gaining player trust and understanding so people don't do things like suggest things cube is already working on, complain that cube isn't doing anything they want, etc.

 

[Technosword]

Simple solution: make an apart big report team and it should work a lot better. Just like helpers, you can apply for it and you’ll get trainee for it. Very simple, should work.

I don’t think it’s that simple. Bug reports are complicated and I doubt Marieke or Keanu have time to train a completely new rank of people. Secondly, these people would have to sign NDA’s as I believe a lot of bug information is private.
I think that CubeCraft does a good job fixing bugs. Please keep reporting them as we do look into all of them and try our best to patch them all. The community as a whole cares more about new content (how we attract new players and keep older players) and I think if we focused more time on small minor bugs then we would lose players. We have double (maybe more) the development resources than what we had at the start of 2020, and I think this is seen in bugs. Most bugs are fixed, and it’s quite time consuming though to fix a bug that only affects maybe 1 second of a game, or does something in a lobby. I think this is a good idea, but as of right now I don’t think it’s needed. Bugs, to me, are not as important as something like a new game or a new product for purchase, or even just keeping the server alive and available to everyone. All in all, I’m going to say that I think our bugs are not really an issue at the moment. (I would support adding maybe a mod or two to the bug team though)

 

[MeliodasWrath]

I think the things you address here should be considered, but there are likely lots of things that go on behind the scenes that we don't know about, and keep in mind they are a team of people who are probably better at managing teams and development ideas so just keep that in mind, they are doing what they can and maybe there are some reasons why this can't be done.

 

[xHappyMood]

While it's true that new games could potentially draw more new players to the server, I feel like there are too many smaller things that should be fixed first. There are lots of new games that have been released recently that should get bug fixes and updates to those games first before they add even more games as they've got plenty of new ones already.

I am aware of that. That’s why I added step 2 which says that IF and only IF they get new devs some spare devs could, if they don’t need all devs, make a tiny start on a new game, while the biggest part of the devs will first focus on bugs and AFTER that, move on to help with the game.

I definitely think that bug fixes should be a higher priority. While fixing bugs might not draw many new people to the server, it'll massively help user retention as the players who currently play on cube won't be turned away by the bugs that exist, and will stay longer which will greatly help in the long term as trying to keep the player count up with new games to counter people leaving because of things like bugs is not sustainable.

Exactly.

I feel like they should just generally prioritise less publicly seen things, like bugs and other QOL things over adding new games. Things like revamping the awful suggestions system by changing internally how they're handled because at the moment if a single part of a compilation is denied, the rest of the set of suggestions is denied, which is completely unfair; some suggestions are/aren't seen by pure chance and the staff team just say "we can't read every suggestion" and let's face it - this is not an excuse anymore. If I personally can keep up and read most suggestions that come up every day, a staff team of 26 mods, 8 sr mods and 3 helpers can definitely do the same.

Good point about the suggestions. I definitely agree that all suggestions should be looked at. If staff keeps on saying that they can’t look at every suggestion I might have an idea about how that might be doable, but I’ll think about it a little more before suggesting it (let’s hope it’s seen )

The other smaller things I'd like to see changed, updated or fixed are the cube discord bot which I feel should be worked on - however I imagine this is already happening!.

Probably, the bot isn’t that old yet so I imagine it is still undergoing a lot of development.

I'd also like to see more community talks as these are absolutely really great ideas, and are excellent at gathering player feedback on ideas and topics.

Community Talks are indeed a good way of knowing what the community wants. Still as @Fesa keeps saying, and he’s certainly right, they’re mostly directed at forums users while a lot of players (also active ones) don’t have a forums account or don’t go on it often. The announcements about an upcoming community talk are mostly on the forums and for example when the SkyWars community talk was there there were quite a lot of people not knowing what was happening. So I agree that there should be more Community Talks, but they should also be announced more visibly on the discord and, certainly, on the Minecraft server itself.

I'd then like to see more community feedback and transparency on future updates

Additionally with transparency, I'd like more updates to what's going on post-community talk.

Most certainly, if there had been some clarity I might not even have had to make this thread or at least I could’ve made it a lot more specific as I’d have known what devs are currently working on.

as while the staff team is good for internally testing, they will only find some of the bugs and some will be left. Additionally the staff team will almost certainly have different playing styles than a lot of the playerbase, especially on bedrock since a lot of the community there is much younger than the staff team.

True, I think it’d be something good to get a group of trustworthy players, that won’t just be leaking everything, to test the games together with the staff team before a game is released. More (test)players means more different playing strategies which means more bugs are found.

The most recent talks on TD and KB haven't received a single update since the talk finished, which will automatically raise questions about what's happening considering the extremely quick implementation of the damage indicators talk. I'm not saying that cube has just abandoned the ideas, I'm just saying that if there's been delays or anything being transparent and updating the community would go a long way to making players feel reassured and to understand what's going on rather than drawing their own conclusions.

Once again, good point. The complete radio silence regarding some of the community talks is a little disturbing and will indeed make people draw their own conclusions. I feel as if a lot of people are worried if there’s actually being listened to the community talks and that they aren’t just there to make it look like they want the community’s opinion.

However, no matter how much anyone here says how they think the priorities should change it's hard to say if it's feasible to do or if they're already doing since we have very little knowledge on cube's actual priorities. I think it'd be a wonderful idea if they updated the community on some of their top priorities and timelines for these every few months, similar to how Ubisoft show their priorities on Rainbow 6 Siege (here's what this looks like for anyone who doesn't know what I'm talking about). Yes, the cube development team is insanely smaller than the ubisoft dev team obviously, but this does not prevent them from implementing a similar system. Just a short blog post 2-3 times a year explaining what they're working on, what sort of timeframe they hope for these to be out and why their priorities are changing would go an huge way to gaining player trust and understanding so people don't do things like suggest things cube is already working on, complain that cube isn't doing anything they want, etc.

Exactly. I understand that CubeCraft doesn’t want to leak all of their future plans, but they can at least give some sort of an indication as to what they’re working on. Even something like “We’re working on a new game” without saying anything as to what sort of game it is would be a lot better than this kind of complete silence. Once again, a lot of people are starting to get worried if CubeCraft actually cares about them and listens to them.

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I don’t think it’s that simple. Bug reports are complicated and I doubt Marieke or Keanu have time to train a completely new rank of people.

I think it’s worth their time. It might take a few days to tell the new team the basics, and that will cause a dip in how many bug reports are handled, but after that, there’s an easy way to keep the amount of reports handled more or less the same until the new team is fully trained. You can learn the team the basics, then send them out to the field, make them actually handle bug reports already, BUT after they have decided to do something, they let Keanu and Marieke check first. Like this, the amount of reports handled should stay more or less the same, while the team learns through experience. Obviously, you’d need a good and trustworthy team for this, but that shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

Secondly, these people would have to sign NDA’s as I believe a lot of bug information is private.

What are NDA’s? If I understand correctly from the context it is something that you promise not to tell anything? Anyways, if you choose trustworthy people for this, you’d already have less chance of leaking. Secondly, I don’t really see why bug information is so private. It doesn’t really seem like a big deal to me if people know what bugs there are, most of them are quite obvious and known anyways. So that doesn’t really seem like a problem either.

I think that CubeCraft does a good job fixing bugs. Please keep reporting them as we do look into all of them and try our best to patch them all.

Of course you do. And that’s a good thing, but it HAS to be faster. A lot of bug reports take 2/3 days or longer to be looked at. That’s just too much. I know that Keanu and Marieke do everything they can, and I don’t blame them, you just need more people to handle bugs. It can’t go on like this.

The community as a whole cares more about new content (how we attract new players and keep older players) and I think if we focused more time on small minor bugs then we would lose players.

Wrong. People leave BECAUSE there are bugs. If you fix those you might not gain a lot of players with that, but you will stop the people leaving cube because of bugs. If there can be new devs that would be great, and you could already start on a new game while still fixing smaller bugs. But if there can’t be new devs it is still absolutely necessary to fix the bugs. (I’m talking about bigger bugs than “You can destroy the crops in BlockWars Bridges waiting lobby” that isn’t going to lose any players).

We have double (maybe more) the development resources than what we had at the start of 2020, and I think this is seen in bugs. Most bugs are fixed, and it’s quite time consuming though to fix a bug that only affects maybe 1 second of a game, or does something in a lobby

Indeed, more bugs are fixed, but once again, not enough and not fast enough. Also, the extremely small bugs like the destroying crops one I mentioned don’t really matter. They can wait.

I think this is a good idea, but as of right now I don’t think it’s needed. Bugs, to me, are not as important as something like a new game or a new product for purchase, or even just keeping the server alive and available to everyone. All in all, I’m going to say that I think our bugs are not really an issue at the moment.

Once again, that’s a huge misunderstanding of what the community wants. New games, purchases, etc. will get you new players, but new players don’t matter anything if a lot of players leave because of prominent bugs still being in place. The existing community wants bug fixes, and not so many games as are released now. Take a look around the forums and you’ll see that a lot of people agree with me. New people that join the community will be happy at first because there’s a new game, but after a while they too will notice that there are quite some bugs and will either leave or want the bugs to be fixed just as I do know. This is clearly not a sustainable situation and needs to be solved.

(I would support adding maybe a mod or two to the bug team though)

But you mentioned earlier that training new people would cost time? If you can train two mods to do this, why wouldn’t a few more work? You don’t have to train them all individually, as if you open applications I’m sure quite some people will be happy to help you out, and you can train more people at once (just like class goes in school).

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I think the things you address here should be considered, but there are likely lots of things that go on behind the scenes that we don't know about, and keep in mind they are a team of people who are probably better at managing teams and development ideas so just keep that in mind, they are doing what they can and maybe there are some reasons why this can't be done.

Correct. That is the main reason why I want more clarity and transparency. We need to have some indications as to what is going on behind the scenes. I am aware that they are, most probably, better at managing a team and getting their priorities sorted. I just thought why not tell people what I think should be done. You never know what’s happening due to the silence CubeCraft is giving us, so who knows, my thread might be helpful

 

[Technosword]

What are NDA’s? If I understand correctly from the context it is something that you promise not to tell anything? Anyways, if you choose trustworthy people for this, you’d already have less chance of leaking. Secondly, I don’t really see why bug information is so private.

NDA’s are non-disclosure agreements. This means that if information is revealed by that person they might be sued. Bug information is private because it’s more than just putting on a spreadsheet “Potions don’t drink”, you need to get server information and other things.

You don’t have to train them all individually, as if you open applications I’m sure quite some people will be happy to help you out, and you can train more people at once (just like class goes in school)

We should not open up applications to outside people, I think that this would be costly and not effective.

 

[xHappyMood]

NDA’s are non-disclosure agreements. This means that if information is revealed by that person they might be sued. Bug information is private because it’s more than just putting on a spreadsheet “Potions don’t drink”, you need to get server information and other things.

Oh okay, if you say so.

We should not open up applications to outside people, I think that this would be costly and not effective.

But as Quis said, you can’t force mods to do bug reports.

 

[Quis]

I don’t think it’s that simple. Bug reports are complicated and I doubt Marieke or Keanu have time to train a completely new rank of people. Secondly, these people would have to sign NDA’s as I believe a lot of bug information is private.
I think that CubeCraft does a good job fixing bugs. Please keep reporting them as we do look into all of them and try our best to patch them all. The community as a whole cares more about new content (how we attract new players and keep older players) and I think if we focused more time on small minor bugs then we would lose players. We have double (maybe more) the development resources than what we had at the start of 2020, and I think this is seen in bugs. Most bugs are fixed, and it’s quite time consuming though to fix a bug that only affects maybe 1 second of a game, or does something in a lobby. I think this is a good idea, but as of right now I don’t think it’s needed. Bugs, to me, are not as important as something like a new game or a new product for purchase, or even just keeping the server alive and available to everyone. All in all, I’m going to say that I think our bugs are not really an issue at the moment. (I would support adding maybe a mod or two to the bug team though)

I understand that new minigames and new rewards are very important, but it would be nice if it works. Of course it works, but without bugs gameplay would be a lot more fun.

It should not be a problem to lay down the bug reports for a while and train new people to help the devs and moderators. It might be hard but the results will be amazing.

 

[Katsia Stray]

Haven't read all the replies so I'm unsure if someone already said this

The devs work on different things. We have 2 (afaik) devs that work on Sentinel, and a few focus more on bugs and others on the games. Hiring more devs is possible, though as said above they are paid and not just anyone can be a developer. Some information is private on Cubecraft so you have to trust that person and that they will do a good job

 

[Ben]

We have 2 (afaik) devs that work on Sentinel, and a few focus more on bugs and others on the games.

4 game developers, 3 anti-cheat developers, 2 protocol developers, 2 content developers, 2 library developers, 2 platform engineers & 2 infrastructure engineers. As you can probably guess, not all of us work on games & bug-fixes (some of us not even working that much with Minecraft).

 

[xHappyMood]

4 game developers, 3 anti-cheat developers, 2 protocol developers, 2 content developers, 2 library developers, 2 platform engineers & 2 infrastructure engineers.

Oh yes this reminds me of something else. Get a web developer xd

As you can probably guess, not all of us work on games & bug-fixes (some of us not even working that much with Minecraft).

That's why it'd be good to get developers that can work on bugs and games. The rest seems to be going fairly well so I wouldn't say that you need more of those.

Also, now that you're here, are you allowed to give some details about what devs are focussing on or not?

 

[Jiadi_]

4 game developers, 3 anti-cheat developers, 2 protocol developers, 2 content developers, 2 library developers, 2 platform engineers & 2 infrastructure engineers. As you can probably guess, not all of us work on games & bug-fixes (some of us not even working that much with Minecraft).

More than I expected tbh.

 

[Ben]

That's why it'd be good to get developers that can work on bugs and games.

Get a web developer xd

Developers cost money. We can't just randomly release applications for roles without thinking about cost and whether or not it'd benefit us in the long term.

The rest seems to be going fairly well so I wouldn't say that you need more of those.

We have rapidly been hiring for certain teams based on new projects and the like that we want to work on, some of which aren't public. We have decided that we need more people for specific teams, so we hire more for them.

Also, now that you're here, are you allowed to give some details about what devs are focussing on or not?

Not really. We're still working on everything mentioned in the community talks, and we have plans for 2021, but I have nothing to share right now.

More than I expected tbh.

Running a network this size is a lot of work :)

 

[xHappyMood]

Developers cost money. We can't just randomly release applications for roles without thinking about cost and whether or not it'd benefit us in the long term.

About the web developer was a joke, and in my original post I said 'if possible' :p

We have rapidly been hiring for certain teams based on new projects and the like that we want to work on, some of which aren't public. We have decided that we need more people for specific teams, so we hire more for them.

Nothing is public in cube.

Not really. We're still working on everything mentioned in the community talks, and we have plans for 2021, but I have nothing to share right now.

Same things as above, it seems like every single thing is confidential.