Critique/ Advice towards MCGamer and its updates.

[Sean]

Hey, so this is mainly directed towards the administration team and development team.

In a summary what this post is going to be about is: The way MCGamer releases new products, what I believe they are doing wrong and what needs to be improved in future updates. This post is in no shape or form slanderous/ hate towards the development team. I understand the amount of work you put in and the amazing ideas you come up with. No doubt MCGamer has one of the best development teams in the Minecraft community. In this post I will be referring to a number of scenarios, where I will critique them and give the best advise I can come up with. The reason I am doing this is because I think I can give pretty good advise as I am studying a Masters in Construction Project Management where some scenarios in that can relate to this such as organisation and planning. The basis of this will be about V2 but I will also refer to previous scenarios.

V2 is an amazing update with some great features undoubtedly, but the release of it has been bellow par. We first heard about the AntVenom merge in the spring time and we were told that it would be out for the start of the summer. It is not winter and all its features have still not been fully pushed. I understand that the delay was expected I believe because at first it was only a merge of 2 different servers but now the entire core plug-in has been re-wrote. That is understandable. But lets fast forward a few months.

MCGamer v2 beta is out, at a max 300 people are on. This is a very low figure compered to the amount of people who play. The main reason for this was a lack of advertisement/ poor advertisement. Not enough people came on/ did not have any reason to come on. This Beta should of been across all regions, this would of drawn a lot more players. The thread notifying the beta was not eye catching enough. You could of also drawn more people to play the beta by applying an incentive for them to do so. Ask YouTubers to play on it, Live stream more on it. Offer rewards to playing on it, such as if you join the server you will be entered into a draw for Plat donor. Maybe a medal on the forums saying "Beta Tester". See where I am coming from, the list could go on and on.

This relates to the next topic of the actually v2 release, as we know a lot of features are not there because they were not tested enough in beta, this could of been more successful if it was advertised more and more users joined. Also on this topic.

One of the big things that was missing from this update was the new forums. The reason: The art work was not finished. To me this is a lack of organisation and the art work should of been finished before you ever made the announcement as to when v2 was coming out.

The next topic is the leaderboard reset. There was a lot of hype that this was going to be released today but now is delayed because there was not enough testing. This should of been a foreseeable issue and people should of been told that it was going to come out a few days after the release.

The next issue is new games modes. Obviously MCSG is the main game type, but bar battlegrounds and creative the rest of them are almost never played. The main reason behind this is a lack of advertisement. I will give you an example, two days ago I wanted to play some QQ and I asked people in the hub to join. Do you know what they said?... Whats QuaterQuell. There is no advertisement to join these game modes. There should be regular chat messages advertising them a section on the forums explaining how to play each game mode and what they do (Actually this might be a good post for me to make). MCGamer needs to get some of its bigger YouTubers to play on them and advertise them. Another big problem with this is the knock on effect.

There is a good few people who would love to play, for example QQ. But we cannot play it because no one else is playing it and this just keeps going on and on.

Anyway that's all I have a enough to rant about now, so in a summary what MCGamer needs to improve:

• Advertisement.
• Organisation.
• Better time management/ planning.
• Realistic release dates.

I hope this has helped in some shape or form and I am looking forward to hearing the administration / development teams response.

 

[Ninetailefox92]

Really I feel this post is very critical of MCGamer and isn't really needed. The staff are under a lot of stress at the moment trying to deal with issues that have come up with the update so everything is perfect for the players, I won't go into every point you brought up but I think you are being overly critical of the staff, they have put a lot of effort and planning into this update, ok its been delayed but it is real life, things happen you don't expect.

Personally I feel this thread is just going to draw flame towards the administration and chad and is pretty inappropriate, give them a chance to do things right before hating on them. I am dissapointed really. I hope you choose to delete this thread.

 

[Miner9823]

I suppose this could definitely help, however, as Ninetailefox92 said, the staff team is currently under tons of pressure, but they could definitely use this when things lighten up for them eventually.
Thank you for the thread, Sean, this could really be useful.

 

[RvngeOG]

Wow, I have to say, good job on this post. I feel like this was necessary.

 

[Sean]

Really I feel this post is very critical of MCGamer and isn't really needed. The staff are under a lot of stress at the moment trying to deal with issues that have come up with the update so everything is perfect for the players, I won't go into every point you brought up but I think you are being overly critical of the staff, they have put a lot of effort and planning into this update, ok its been delayed but it is real life, things happen you don't expect.

Personally I feel this thread is just going to draw flame towards the administration and chad and is pretty inappropriate, give them a chance to do things right before hating on them. I am disappointing really. I hope you choose to delete this thread.

I completely understand they are going through a lot of pressure. I am making this thread to help them relive some of this stress and help them. I know the amount of work they put into the update and I appreciate that. I was not being over criticle, I pointed out some flaws and proposed solutions to rectify them. The only way to get better at something is to look at your mistakes and improve. Obviously there is going to be some minor bugs and snags in a huge update. Thats why I did not complain about them. I critiqued some stuff that was avoidable.

[Edit] Also I do not want any flame on this post, if there is a staff member should remove it straight away. As flame is what causes stress, not what I am doing which is giving advice.

 

[Diar]

Really I feel this post is very critical of MCGamer and isn't really needed. The staff are under a lot of stress at the moment trying to deal with issues that have come up with the update so everything is perfect for the players, I won't go into every point you brought up but I think you are being overly critical of the staff, they have put a lot of effort and planning into this update, ok its been delayed but it is real life, things happen you don't expect.

Personally I feel this thread is just going to draw flame towards the administration and chad and is pretty inappropriate, give them a chance to do things right before hating on them. I am dissapointed really. I hope you choose to delete this thread.

just because you're under stress doesn't mean you can't be criticized. MCGamer isn't very good at launching new things, and hasn't been for a long time. Unless you previously knew something was gonna be happening (which isn't the case for 95% of the community), you simply log into the servers one day and see there might be an extra item in the compass or in your hotbar or something.

Even right now, look at how MCGamer looks in the server list:

despite the servers not even being online right now.

there also hasn't been any announcements of how they're planning to promote the update; maybe some double points? most people will just join to take a look at whatever "v2" is and immediately disconnect

 

[Fletch]

just because you're under stress doesn't mean you can't be criticized. MCGamer isn't very good at launching new things, and hasn't been for a long time. Unless you previously knew something was gonna be happening (which isn't the case for 95% of the community), you simply log into the servers one day and see there might be an extra item in the compass or in your hotbar or something.

Even right now, look at how MCGamer looks in the server list:

despite the servers not even being online right now.

there also hasn't been any announcements of how they're planning to promote the update; maybe some double points? most people will just join to take a look at whatever "v2" is and immediately disconnect

Anyway that's all I have a enough to rant about now, so in a summary what MCGamer needs to improve:

• Advertisement.
• Organisation.
• Better time management/ planning.
• Realistic release dates.

I agree with both of these statements, I mean look at the network stats over the past 24 hours:

 

[Ninetailefox92]

just because you're under stress doesn't mean you can't be criticized. MCGamer isn't very good at launching new things, and hasn't been for a long time. Unless you previously knew something was gonna be happening (which isn't the case for 95% of the community), you simply log into the servers one day and see there might be an extra item in the compass or in your hotbar or something.

Even right now, look at how MCGamer looks in the server list:

despite the servers not even being online right now.

there also hasn't been any announcements of how they're planning to promote the update; maybe some double points? most people will just join to take a look at whatever "v2" is and immediately disconnect

The thing is I wasnt saying MCGamer couldn't be criticized, but just because you can criticise, doesn't mean you should criticise. The staff team are doing their best to get the update working as smoothly as possible and there have been unexpected bugs delaying this, you can't prepare for unexpected bugs as they are "unexpected"

Personally I believe the staff team are doing a great job, the posts on the front page have been very informative and helpful and keeping the community knowing what is happening. If 95% of the community don't bother to come on the forums and read the updates they can't complain.

In the end there is no point arguing over it, there are those who support MCGamer and those who wish to criticise them for any minor mistake made bringing down everyone. I know which side I am on. I will not comment on this thread further so don't bother replying.

 

[thejambd]

Did you skive English Sean? xD Advice* nub

 

[jtmboy]

Thanks for informing the staff team now they know what to do in the future. Most likely they can handle this now.

 

[DPinky]

Hey, so this is mainly directed towards the administration team and development team.

Ok, so why post it on the public fourms ?? E-mail it to them, if you want it to be directed to them.

I personally don't care that you think MCGamer is doing poorly. I also don't think new members or old members need to read this. It's just a match to start a flame against the staff. You should email the Admins this post and delete the thread to be honest.

 

[Diar]

The thing is I wasnt saying MCGamer couldn't be criticized, but just because you can criticise, doesn't mean you should criticise. The staff team are doing their best to get the update working as smoothly as possible and there have been unexpected bugs delaying this, you can't prepare for unexpected bugs as they are "unexpected"

Personally I believe the staff team are doing a great job, the posts on the front page have been very informative and helpful and keeping the community knowing what is happening. If 95% of the community don't bother to come on the forums and read the updates they can't complain.

In the end there is no point arguing over it, there are those who support MCGamer and those who wish to criticise them for any minor mistake made bringing down everyone. I know which side I am on. I will not comment on this thread further so don't bother replying.

The forums are basically just extra entertainment. If you just like playing the games, why would you check the forums?