Making a Minecraft Division for GFLClan (take 2)

[MutedMike 151 / 4,188]

Before you start sighing with memories of the other server, I know you guys have already tried this already, and I know it didn’t go very well last time, but I would like to create a Minecraft division for GFLClan. I have over 20k hours in the base game myself and have created a name for myself in the overall Minecraft community over the course of 7 years. I have many tight knit friends who are not only very qualified for helping me make this a reality, but are willing to work endlessly to get the ball rolling in the first place. I want to create a mini game type server for the many different playstyles that Java Minecraft players are accustomed to, while also trying out new things to make our server stand out. The biggest problem I can think of when it comes to creating this server is getting people to not only start playing when it releases, but to keep them playing, however since Minecraft is still a very popular game, all we need to do is just promote it on the Minecraft server listing websites as well as just get a minimum player base. Even something as low as 5-6 gets people interested quickly. I already have ways of getting the potential server out to the public in other ways, since I’ve befriended multiple small-time streamers with a minimum view count of 8-9 unique viewers every stream. Most of my moderation learning has come from moderating Minecraft servers. I know the plugins like the back of my hand. I know I have the ability to make this work, and I am 100% confident I will have the drive to not just start this daunting task, but to follow it through until GFLClan as a whole sees its last player ever.

[annoying furry 6,300 / 63,950]

Only take 2? Maybe missing a few there

[MutedMike 151 / 4,188]

2 minutes ago, Aurora said:

Only take 2? Maybe missing a few there

this will be different. I promise.

[VilhjalmrF 2,099 / 30,689]

take #8237845*

[themadcerealman 1 / 148]

Hey, I do have a modded Minecraft server I'm not using. It's currently set to a bulky custom pack, but I could change that pretty easily. It has 14GB set to it so if someone wanted some lightly modded pack it should run it pretty well. I can even upgrade it next month if I need to.

 

[Token SomethingOrOther 20 / 848]

Yo. I literally run a minecraft server. And have run various servers for over a decade. If y'all need any help with that stuff, I'm here.

[Rena 2,779 / 33,642]

A 4th MC server? Yikes.

[Anathema Device 236 / 6,858]

I am very interested in this idea,  but my only question is what specifically have you learned from the past suggestions and attempts at this that is going to make this work for GFL?

 

It's easy to say it'll be different, it'll also inspire more confidence to say how you're taking the issues from the past and fixing them. 

 

That being said, I've played Java MC since beta .7, but I've never tried a mini game server, so I'll try it if you put it together ❤

Edited April 25, 2021 by Morganlefaye69

[Roy 10,832 / 0]

1 hour ago, Morganlefaye69 said:

I am very interested in this idea,  but my only question is what specifically have you learned from the past suggestions and attempts at this that is going to make this work for GFL?

 

It's easy to say it'll be different, it'll also inspire more confidence to say how you're taking the issues from the past and fixing them. 

 

That being said, I've played Java MC since beta .7, but I've never tried a mini game server, so I'll try it if you put it together ❤

 

Exactly this. Although Minecraft has been tried many times in the past and has failed, it can technically work obviously. However, in my opinion, in order to even consider starting up a MC division again, we'd need a dedicated and promising team and that team would have to tell us what the game plan is (this team should also be solely focused on MC and not have many other responsibilities in GFL). If we're trying something other MC servers do, tell us how ours would be better and how we'd get people (e.g. what websites can we advertise on and what other methods of advertisement can we try such as trying to find streamers, etc.). If we're trying something new, tell us how you're going to get new players into the game mode.

 

If you've worked with MC servers in the past and they were successful, tell us how successful and what you did to make them successful.

 

I can write more later, but that's it for now. Good luck with everything 🙂 

[Akris 806 / 18,197]

9 minutes ago, Roy said:

we'd need a dedicated and promising team and that team would have to tell us what the game plan is

We need more of this for every division/server we start up because imo we don't have it for a vast majority. 

 

Edit: If you would love an explanation or suggestion I would be happy to.

Edited April 25, 2021 by Akris

[Roy 10,832 / 0]

20 minutes ago, Akris said:

We need more of this for every division/server we start up because imo we don't have it for a vast majority. 

I agree. I do plan on making a post in the future offering suggestions for some divisions (just from my point of view, of course). I was planning to make it this weekend, but things came up with work so I've been busy.

 

I don't have a problem with spinning up random servers and seeing if they'll receive population. I've done that since GFL started (still do it sometimes behind the scenes ) and it's not like we're paying for the servers individually (plus, if that game mode works out, good game lol. We've had MANY successful servers from this strategy). Especially with game modes that don't require a very competitive technical setup and staff team.

 

For bigger and more competitive servers though in regards to content and the technical side of things (e.g. GMod RP and MC would be great examples for this), I do believe there needs to be a very promising game plan. I know things are a lot different now, but when we made GMod Purge in 2014 (which got to #4 in the world at 95-100 players most of the day), I worked very closely with @X2D, @nick027nd, SoJa, and a few others. I remember we were going on other servers and noting down everything they did and how we could do it better. Obviously, we had our own unique features as well. I feel like this is something that should happen more often, though, and contributed heavily to Purge's success at the time. I know I tried starting this up again back a couple years ago (available here for Admin+ I believe). I made an internal IPS database called "Server Comparisons" and basically my goal was any new game modes we wanted to explore, we would go on other servers and note down everything they do (good and bad) and what we could do better. We'd then make a record of all of this in the database.

[Akris 806 / 18,197]

1 minute ago, Roy said:

I agree. I do plan on making a post in the future offering suggestions for some divisions

Would love to bounce ideas off each-other sometime.

 

1 minute ago, Roy said:

For bigger and more competitive servers though in regards to content and the technical side of things (e.g. GMod RP and MC would be great examples for this), I do believe there needs to be a very promising game plan.

Completely agree. Take DarkRP for example they have taken time developing it, but I feel they took so long to release it the hype around it has died down. 

[Worgee 812 / 13,264]

Just make sure it's not hosted on the wrong machine and you'd automatically sit at 20+ daily players as the last one did for a while. The lag on the server was driving people off and after the manager and devs worked on fixing the lag they found out it was hosted incorrectly which was the cause of all the lag. This finding caused the server to shut down as there were no intentions of moving the server to a different machine.

 

Just do it right from the start if you intend to go for it again. However the mini-game entry might not be too popular in this community but would love to be proven wrong lol.

[Token SomethingOrOther 20 / 848]

Minigame servers are notoriously inefficient. Lotsa plugin overhead, relatively small number of players on at any given point

And if you want new minigames, then you need an active dev team. A minigames minecraft server isn't a single minecraft server. It's a bunch of smaller servers linked together with bungeecord.

 

To put things in perspective @K1P_ , if I'm making a minecraft server for someone, it takes a night to make a vanilla survival server, a weekend to make a survival server with protections and fun plugins and stuff, a week to make a minigames server using the standard minigames, and months to make a unique minigame/survival experience.

Also, quite frankly, you'd need a better coder than me. I can program, but it's sloppy and takes a long ass time. I'm a sysadmin, not a programmer (and even then, barely.

[VilhjalmrF 2,099 / 30,689]

Minecraft minigames is something I don't think will work out at all. Big servers like Hypixel have that covered and dominate minigames. SMP is definitely the path we should take (even though this is like what? the 20th time we did this?), but should consider how SMP plays. Like do we want to focus on factions, survival, vanilla, etc.

 

Doing SMP is simple and easy to setup, I should know because I'm a dumbass moron that does SMP shit. I personally enjoy servers like Minecraft Online. A very old classic SMP server with a friendly community.

[Token SomethingOrOther 20 / 848]

The server I'm currently working on has a few survival worlds and a creative world. With multiverse you can pretty easily have multiple maps on one server with very little additional resource costs

[JerryBomb 452 / 9,328]

Although I like the enthusiasm and the experience you say you have, a lot of people here are skeptical of yet *another* MC server attempt. It's been tried before, just never picked up. 

On 4/24/2021 at 4:59 PM, K1P_ said:

Even something as low as 5-6 gets people interested quickly. I already have ways of getting the potential server out to the public in other ways, since I’ve befriended multiple small-time streamers with a minimum view count of 8-9 unique viewers every stream. Most of my moderation learning has come from moderating Minecraft servers. I know the plugins like the back of my hand. I know I have the ability to make this work, and I am 100% confident I will have the drive to not just start this daunting task, but to follow it through until GFLClan as a whole sees its last player ever.

 

While this seems promising, I believe a minigames server is definitely NOT the way to go. When you have the big boys like Hypixel out there, you will have unmatched competition that will blow GFL away and it'll just be another failure. My opinion? Go with something unique. A type of server that doesn't quite exist like this one. But again, good luck convincing anyone important enough to make it happen that it's worth trying again. 

[Rena 2,779 / 33,642]

Apart from struggling with a dedicated team like Roy said, something else that played a factor is the fact that modded survival was the most attempted game mode. Minigames, jailbreak and factions were attempted but it ultimately ended up being modded survival.

There were several issues with all the servers and it will be very hard to make it work if we ever try again. Personally, I don't think we should even try it again in such a short amount of time and especially since the last one ended very badly. We wouldn't want the same problems happening again.

If we do ever try again, it needs to be a team that won't give up after a month and has a thick skin. A server that tries something new and fun, recieving frequent updates and new content.

Edited April 26, 2021 by Pachimo

[Token SomethingOrOther 20 / 848]

The thing is, small minecraft servers are really cheap, and scale up super easily. 2gigs ram can host like 10 people easily, and there's several services that will host that at less than $10 a month. Or as a second game on an existing server with 2 gigs of ram dedicated to minecraft.

I've been headadmin/ sysadmin for multiple minecraft server networks of various sizes for 8 years, and have run a personal server for 10.  Out of all the games I've played around with, minecraft is the one I use the most. There's thousands of free plugins, good open source optimization software, and a massive infrastructure for cheap modular hosting. It's almost relaxing lol.

[NOT Karkles 64 / 0]

I hope to see this successfully achieved.