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The Big Picture

Col_StaR

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Plenty of opinions flying around the community. Some positive, some negative, some misdirected, some just plain confusing. The staff and the players have been very patient with us through this rocky time, and for that we are all thankful. However, there's a lot of speculation and assumptions going around, leading to much frustration and misrepresentation.

I've spent a lot of time with Chad and the Developers for this entire deal: pre-planning, during the update, and the post-update now. And I want to shed some light on some matters now as well as share my personal opinion on a few topics:

Development May Break (But We Always Fix)

Six months of planning went into this update, half a year devoted to a single step forward for us. Our Developers are some of the best devs in the Minecraft realm. We had contacted some outside help to assist us with this update, so we had their specialized skills as well. And, while we like to poke fun at Chad for his ender pearl skills, that man is a great leader with a strong grasp of both this community and its development. This was an excellent team working with a worthy plan.

In a perfect world, with all those factors combined, the update would have been utterly flawless. And indeed, after the testing on the preview network, things seemed to be working; the pieces were coming together and the planets were aligning for a new era for MCGamer. So then why were there so many issues, such as the ones that happen now?

Ava said it best in another thread:
Development is very unpredictable. It's not like being able to wake up in the morning and (mostly) know what your day will consist of - every day in development brings something different. You never know if something will work as anticipated, have some minor issues, or completely implode the universe.
Our new stats system hasn't yet been tested in a full-scale environment. Keep in mind that about the most players ever on our preview network was about 100 players, while we can reach 5,000+ on our live network. You're basically asking us to deploy something to an environment 50x the scale of the test environment, without even testing how it reacts.
TL;DR: when developing for a network as large as ours, things break unexpectedly.

As in life, there will always be issues. Development will get hung up on something. There will always be a deadline to make. There will always be some big issue that springs up. We were doing something big, and we all knew it, so we also knew to expect problems. But those problems can be worked through, and the fact that our network is in as good of a shape as it is in spite of those issues is a testament to the work that team has done; had anyone else attempted this, they surely would still be down trying to debug their own issues.

Everything that happens is simply a consequence of a project so large, and that's why the Devs are doing everything in their power to fix it now. No bug fixes are instant, and everything good takes time, but the Devs are working as fast as they can.

It Is a Full Team Effort

There has been a few threads thanking the staff for their efforts, something that we appreciate more than you guys may realize. When we work so hard to present something to the community, having it break down and not function as intended is difficult enough to cope with; having people openly insult you and the community you worked so hard to appease is further salt in the wounds. So when people are gracious enough to thank you for your efforts, rather than deride you for your failures, we can regain at least some of our morale.

The staff have been dealing with incessant flames and arguments, primarily ingame. Players have been highly cynical about the update, spamming some not so nice things about us anywhere they can; there's a lot more where that came from, including some threats against individuals posted on this forums (that have since been deleted and banned). The entire staff has done a great job keeping everything under control, shrugging off the hate in order to keep things civil.

While I may have posted a STATUS about working nine straight hours on the Update, that is nothing compared to the amount of work the Devs are putting into this. Even with the fixes, they are working tirelessly to make things right. Some have even skipped school so that they can work on this. As Devin stated in a previous thread:
Over the past 7 days, I have logged over 37 hours working on v2, and 25 over the past 3-4 days alone.

We already fixed many of the bugs last night, and many more bug fixes are to come tonight and throughout the weekend.
I hear he even skipped school for us...

It's a team effort to keep the peace, so be sure to thank the staff for their efforts.

Bugs are Temporary, Rage is Unnecessary

One of the biggest gripes about the update is the amount of bugs going around. I will admit that that is a fair point: if something isn't working like it should, you are justified in complaining. But the problem I see is that people seem to be assuming that these bugs are going to be a permanent, and thus they think poorly on us for that.

Bugs aren't permanent. In fact, the Devs are working to solve them right now. Check out Gideon's list of bug fixes at the end of his first post here: http://www.minecraftsurvivalgames.com/threads/mcgamer-v2-some-updates.148852/
Want to help fix bugs? Report them here: https://github.com/MCGamerNetwork/Issues

As mentioned previously, we expected a bumpy road with the update, and we even warned people about it in the Roadmap thread HERE. It's inevitably that there are going to be issues, but it's also inevitable that those issues are going to be fixed.

There is no need for premature rage or hate against an update because of the amount of bugs it has. These things get fixed; you just need to give us some time to iron out the kinks. A little patience goes a long way, and once the update bugs are fixed, we will have a full representation of the MCG V2 update to share with you.

"I Hate Change" (and other such false claims)

Want a shocking history lesson? Everything that's happening now has happened before. It was called MCSG V2. And did MCSG die after that like everyone was claiming it would? Nope, MCSG V2 was the most successful version of SG in the entire Minecraft world. We continue to survive over one year later, growing larger and stronger than ever.

Remember when we introduced the Hub system? People hated it, and we had at least four simultaneous polls demanding that we take it down. "It was too like ____ community" was a complaint I often heard, surprising considering that we were one of the last communities of our size to add a hub. Fast forward over a year later, and the Hub has become such an integral facet of the community that people can't imagine joining servers without it (hint: that Servers page was a lot more active back then).

And you remember all the countless times your favorite website has changed? Youtube? Facebook? Gmail? Fanfiction.com? How many people have petitioned those sites change back to the way they were before?

And remember how many times Minecraft has changed? Remember the big arguments about the sprint key and BSM when the 1.7 update was coming? Now can you imagine not being able to play with that?

The point is that we've been through this time and time again. Change occurs naturally and necessarily, and there's nothing anyone can do to change that.

And for the most part, once all is said and done, change is good. We change to become better than we were before.
The issue is that people naturally react like change is bad, and that's what we're seeing now. But with time, people will learn to accept and embrace it.

In regards to this update, history shows us the future. People rage now, but they calm down once they're acclimated to the changes. Bugs get fixed, player experience improves. New features get used, and become important functions that players rely upon. Despite all the initial cynicism and opposition to change, people embrace the changes and appreciate what it has done for them. Humans are stubborn in attitude, but adaptable in practice.

The Big Picture

The update was a bumpy road, but it's nothing we can't overcome. Heck, we're overcoming it now: servers are staying up, bugs are getting fixed, myths are being answered with facts, and flame has gone down significantly since only a day ago. And now that we can see past the smoke, I still see how much good this update can do.

It is the Administration's job to see the community in a big picture scale, as one of the largest communities of players in the world. What affects the network will affect players around the globe, and for that reason we must make the best decisions for the community as a whole. And for that reason, I put my faith in the update. This change is good, because its benefits that it will bring to the network and its flaws will be mended over time. And I feel that history will agree with me.

For that reason, I encourage everyone to be optimistic about the MCGamer V2 update. Keep your eye on the big picture, and you'll find a reason to be optimistic as well.
 

Nick

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Thanks for this Col!
 

BitoBain

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I've been looking for a thread about MCGv2 civilized and informed enough to post on for a few days, and this looks like it.

My opinions are that this update will bring a lot of good change. I mean a lot. I also think that people are so scared of change and so blinded by the little details that they will be unable to grasp the good changes that could come from this for a while. MCG has been needing some change particularly in the past few months, and I think this will cure many of our problems and bring life to the community. All of this criticism has come only in the first two days, and thus will be very short-sighted. We still have yet to even glimpse the new leaderboard system. However, it is important that we do not completely ignore the seemingly ignorant voices of the community.

Even the people who appear to know close to nothing still matter, since they make up the majority of the MCG population. If we see lots of threads complaining about the fact that the servers are randomly numbered, then we should probably fix that. (And the developers are, but many people don't seem to read the home page) There are other, more controversial issues, in which it is difficult to know if the community knows the greater good. One such issue is whether we will ever retier chests. People have complained about how easy it is to get good armor since MCSGv2, but the number of people complaining about it nowadays is now close to zero. Either people have just gotten used to the awful fact that you can easily get full iron from two or three chests, or we have legitimately began to like this fact. All I know is that people never wanted full iron to be available every three tier two's before MCSGv2, but if we were to reduce the amount of gear in chests now, it would cause an uproar. That is, until we got used to it, in which case it's anybody's guess as to whether that would be good or not.

Locating the line between simply getting used to a bad feature and actually learning to like it are two very different things. The true way to see if a feature is good long-term is to analyze how people viewed it before it was actually implemented. People have complained about the ridiculous leaderboards for a while now, so I think the fresh leaderboard will provide a lot of excitement.

This principle has proved itself to be especially true among maps. Maps that get a lot of attention and hype before they are added almost always get well-liked. Maps like Hub Games and The Fallen Colossi had a very small chance of being liked since they were added without warning.

As for my critiques on individual features, here they are.
  • Leaderboards: We haven't seen the new leaderboards yet, but I think they will be an overall good change. They will provide many players with a fresh start and a chance to prove themselves. It will make more people feel good about themselves. It will bring back old timers. The fact that we have both new leaderboards and continuing leaderboards should make almost everybody happy.
  • New games: Well, I've only played survival bingo so far, but it was pretty darn fun. My biggest complaint was that it would randomly kick me from the lobby at times. As for the other games, they seem fun and all, but they probably won't draw a large crowd to MCGamer. In the end, MCSG will continue to be what draws most people to our server. Probably the second most notable minigame is battlegrounds, which provides effective PvP practice.
  • Hub system: The hub is nice, but it's not necessarily a big plus to our servers. It's too big. There is no reason for the portals to go into games to be 15x30 or whatever. If the signs are an issue, we might try having them overlap a little. We will still be able to read them. As for the compass, it needs to take players directly to the sign area for each game. Now that we have added another 'layer' to the system of finding a game, this needs to be implemented so that it doesn't take 30 seconds to go from the hub to a lobby of a game. Finally, the flying is a bit tacky. I can see why we would make it a perk for donors, but having every user fly around just makes it seem like some ghetto creative server. It also takes away the meaning of parkour and the exploration of the lobby.
  • Disguises: Props to the developers for fixing the disguise feature, which was wanted for quite some time. Now players are completely, infallibly disguised. However, I never liked the disguise feature in the first place. It seemed to draw the community apart a little and cause a drop in morality standards. That's a story for another time, though.
  • Raffle Voting: It was an interesting decision to remove this, but I'll admit I agree. Raffle Voting was intended to solve the problem of overplayed maps, but since we have so many maps now, it's hard for one map to dominate the servers. Raffle Voting would have been much better back in the summer of 2012. My prediction is that a few people may miss Raffle Voting and several maps will fall completely out of remembrance because they will never be played, but few people will really care. It never should have been that big of a deal in the first place.
  • New Maps: It's good to see they chopped five of the lesser maps. We can't have too many maps. In the future, we should put a cap on the number of 24 player maps, as well as the proportions of each style. In the past year, we have had a boom in the 250 block radius map with plenty of PvP space, as well as laggy yet impressive structures. As we pick and choose favorite maps, we much remember that we need a balance of fast paced and slow paced maps. (Thank goodness we will never get rid of SG1-5) We can't just have 20 Turbulence-style maps. Should we continue to add in small maps at the rate we are, we might eventually end up with a map like Atlantis, except without the ladders and tunnels leading out of corn. We should put a map limit around 20 or 30, with around a third of them being slower paced, larger maps. I have also been noticing an increasing number of laggy maps. I'm mainly talking about Zone85, Mortal Skies, Eye of Horus, and Lobby games. We don't necessarily need a map to have huge, amazing builds for it to be liked. Excessive builds indeed do a great job of increasing a map's chance of getting chosen, but we don't necessarily like them. Maps that show a lot of the void tend to be the biggest laggers. Overall, I think we added a lot of good maps this update, though, so props to those builders.
  • New Commands: I am pleased with the decision to add the many new commands, which I am not yet familiar with. I just know we have commands to warp around the hub and into lobbies, as well as commands for friends. People have argued that these features make us too much like Hypixel or other servers, but that is like saying that Germany choosing to industrialize in the 1830's was making it too much like Britain. If certain features are making other servers successful, then we should implement them into our servers as well. Trying too hard to maintain our traditions could be a bad choice financially.
  • Style and builds: MCG has a variety of builders and users who can make maps and lobbies, but we have to make sure we theme our hub and lobbies appropriately. Our hub looks really futuristic, but I thought MCG was about PvP and open landscapes found in MCSG. We should have a hub that more accurately portrays what MCG is all about, and it should be smaller if possible. If the hub had a distinct style such as a medieval or city setting, that might help a lot. This criticism stems from my visits to the Hypixel server, which has a very distinct party theme, which looks very professional. MCG currently has kind of an "everything" theme.
  • Bugs: This update had a lot of bugs, which is expected with any big update. The biggest thing to remember is that we should fix bugs before we try adding a lot of new things. Bugs can detract a lot from gameplay and make people angry.
 
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