A Long Rant

BenRekt · Feb 4, 2016

Notice I named it "A Long Rant", this is much longer than the majority of my school papers so enjoy my essay.

I know this is becoming a common occurrence but this will probably be my last rant post for a long while. There are many things I want to discuss, so I will go paragraph by paragraph addressing what I believe is wrong with the server at this time.

Like I have said this is in reaction to the recent harmful additions of the "new" anti-cheat plugin. I say "new" in quotations because it was added before already and failed pretty miserably. This leads me into my next point which is that I personally believe staff need to consult the player base publicly before deciding on whether adding a plug-in is a good idea to help stop impulsive implementation like the most recent anti-cheat.

Similarly to what I just mentioned, I believe staff need to do much more thorough testing before adding plug-ins. Currently, it seems that there is a common cycle on how plugins are added, which can be seen with the recent anti-cheat as well as vampires and traits. It seems like plug-ins are left unconfigured, thrown onto the server and left to sit until the whole player base, both RP and PvP screams out to finally have it removed or fixed (hint, hint: the traits plug-in). I'm sure I will get an answer about how Cayorian is too busy to manage the plugins on this server or is working on something else way more important, but the fact that dedicated players continue paying the server every month means that we should be entitled to, at the very least, some kind of quick response and eventual fix to large issues, which as far as I have seen, we have never gotten. The only examples I need are 1. Traits 2. Vampires and mostly recently, 3. Anti-Cheat.

Onto my next rant "point". Staff do not give any real response to idea posts, as well as the fact that we are never told, in detail, what direction the server is going towards and goals the staff have. We usually get the general "PvP is now our main focus" and then a change is made a month later, to something completely unrelated. Similarly, it feels like the core problems of MassiveCraft have been completely neglected. Like Afrovia leader Mafrorific has told me in the past, there is still no incentive to defend (or raid for that matter). The lag is still here, no matter how much people like to insist that completely removing hopper functionality and cannons has somehow improved the honestly terrible hit registration that I can only find on Massive. PvP and RP are still completely separate, even though they have so much potential to work well together. The economy is non-existent in the survival worlds. I know I will probably be shown a graph on how RP items are the new thing to sell but the fact that items that should be valuable are absolutely worthless means that something must be fixed. On a related note, there have been no changes made to help improve the economy in the survival worlds (where most RP items do not matter for the most part). Despite many people agreeing that /fix must go, nothing has been done or even a simple response given from staff saying "we are working on it" or "no this will not be happening".

Continuing on, I feel that staff are not allowing people to have open conversations in their own faction chats which is a huge problem for a factions server. With a recent member of the community, who will not be mentioned by name, being permanently banned for talking about a competing server, I, along with a huge majority of both Deldrimor and Sunkiss no longer feel "safe" expressing our thoughts in faction chat, which is why we will basically only speak in TeamSpeak, because we do not want to feel like we are constantly being monitored by staff. To give a childish comparison, it somewhat feels like the staff have become the NSA of Massive. This is not to say that people being racist and offensive in chats should not be punished, but banning someone for mentioning a competing server is not just in my eyes. I believe that Massive should simply acknowledge the fact that there are other server that exist and stop being so insecure about what others may think if another server is mentioned. Saying this, if someone goes around spouting the IP in alliance or any other public chat, they deserve their ban because pure advertisement should not be allowed, and I believe most people would also agree.

The only reason I am still making these rant posts is because I still have faith in the server that it can be fixed and made better. This server has so much potential, but it does not matter if nobody, both players and staff, are willing to act upon it. I feel like I have contributed more than my fair share of ideas, and hope that more people will contribute ideas from their points of view. I feel that if staff decided to dedicate more time to giving serious thought to player-made ideas, people would feel much more inclined to share what they think would make the server a better place for both themselves and the people around them. I know some of the things I have said here will come off as disrespectful but I can no longer continue playing with a good conscious when I see so many major problems that have yet to be acknowledged, especially on a server I once considered to be the greatest server I have ever played on.

Your Peer,
BenRekt

ChensSpaghetti · Feb 4, 2016

BenRekt said:
I believe staff need to do much more thorough testing before adding plug-ins

This might trigger PvPers, but:

You can't really test anti-cheat privately. It has to be tested with the player base. You can't test it with like, a dozen people, and expect accurate results. Just sayin'.

BenRekt · Feb 4, 2016

Kyrakshi said:
and closed

I hope not, but either way I said what I wanted to say and if people don't like it, my apologies but this is simply what I think and what I've experienced.

StereoTurtle said:
This might trigger PvPers, but:

You can't really test anti-cheat privately. It has to be tested with the player base. You can't test it with like, a dozen people, and expect accurate results. Just sayin'.

You really can just test it with a dozen people. It is so broken that it would be obvious to see why it doesn't function very well on the server.

Kyrakshi · Feb 4, 2016

BenRekt said:
I hope not, but either way I said what I wanted to say and if people don't like it, my apologies but this is simply what I think and what I've experienced.

Good job, Ben. I always respected you for having the courage to be the one to say stuff like this. Even though I'm kinda done with Massive and none of this is relevant to me it's still cool to see how the community's getting along.

ChensSpaghetti · Feb 4, 2016

StereoTurtle said:
This might trigger PvPers, but:

You can't really test anti-cheat privately. It has to be tested with the player base. You can't test it with like, a dozen people, and expect accurate results. Just sayin'.

Also, @BenRekt you have my respect. Unlike most PvPers, who are giving others a bad opinion of the community, you usually display your opinion in a calm, rational, polite, and educated way (from what I've seen). Good job man.

BenRekt · Feb 4, 2016

StereoTurtle said:
Also, @BenRekt you have my respect. Unlike most PvPers, who are giving others a bad opinion of the community, you usually display your opinion in a calm, rational, polite, and educated way (from what I've seen). Good job man.

Kyrakshi said:
Good job, Ben. I always respected you for having the courage to be the one to say stuff like this. Even though I'm kinda done with Massive and none of this is relevant to me it's still cool to see how the community's getting along.

Thanks, even if one person just appreciates what I've said it makes anything that comes as a result worth it. Also Kyra get in ts.

ChensSpaghetti · Feb 4, 2016

StereoTurtle said:
Also, @BenRekt you have my respect. Unlike most PvPers, who are giving others a bad opinion of the community, you usually display your opinion in a calm, rational, polite, and educated way (from what I've seen). Good job man.

BenRekt said:
Thanks, even if one person just appreciates what I've said it makes anything that comes as a result worth it. Also Kyra get in ts.

It's not that I agree, I just respect your approach to ideas and opinions. You're very well spoken and all the other things I've said in my other post, from what I've seen.
EDIT: I understand you may have been talking about Kyra. Just wanted to clarify.

Shaneski101 · Feb 4, 2016

BenRekt · Feb 4, 2016

StereoTurtle said:
It's not that I agree, I just respect your approach to ideas and opinions. You're very well spoken and all the other things I've said in my other post, from what I've seen.

Thanks, once again.

Shaneski101 said:
View attachment 75084

That's exactly how I feel, lmao.

Gabauchi · Feb 4, 2016

I do agree that there is a rather large disconnect between staff and player.

One thing though, I believe that the staff's policy as far as plugins go, is to implement it, give it a couple weeks to see how the player base feels, then give it a couple more months to see if it's just the nostalgia filter kicking in, and then remove it if it's comepletly broken. They also have a tedancy to have faith in the things they've created,a and will usually wait longer than necessary to remove them.

BenRekt · Feb 4, 2016

Gabauchi said:
I do agree that there is a rather large disconnect between staff and player.

One thing though, I believe that the staff's policy as far as plugins go, is to implement it, give it a couple weeks to see how the player base feels, then give it a couple more months to see if it's just the nostalgia filter kicking in, and then remove it if it's comepletly broken. They also have a tedancy to have faith in the things they've created,a and will usually wait longer than necessary to remove them.

Even when I had a largely-agreed post where a large amount of people were agreeing that Vampires needed to be removed or nerfed, it still took (I believe) around 6 months for it to finally be removed. That doesn't matter though because it was actually re-added this week, without any communication between the staff and players.

I could see why you would think that though, and I believe that at one time as well, but as this point I can no longer see it that way.

Genecide65 · Feb 4, 2016

This is a very nice and rational rant and i hope the staff consider what you have brought to the table!

65jes89 · Feb 4, 2016

StereoTurtle said:
This might trigger PvPers, but:

You can't really test anti-cheat privately. It has to be tested with the player base. You can't test it with like, a dozen people, and expect accurate results. Just sayin'.

Yes you most certainly can. Unless I'm mistaken, Massive has a test server. If not, they could easily get one quite cheap. It's not very hard to find a free hacked client online. If it really becomes needed, ask for a few volunteers. I would happily participate in testing the plugin, on another server. However, when I get banned in the middle of a fight for "Kill aura," it goes a little bit beyond the realm of being reasonable.

ChensSpaghetti · Feb 4, 2016

65jes89 said:
Yes you most certainly can. Unless I'm mistaken, Massive has a test server. If not, they could easily get one quite cheap. It's not very hard to find a free hacked client online. If it really becomes needed, ask for a few volunteers. I would happily participate in testing the plugin, on another server. However, when I get banned in the middle of a fight for "Kill aura," it goes a little bit beyond the realm of being reasonable.

I see your point, Jes. Yet another PvPer who voices his/her opinion in a reasonable manner (most of the time). You have my respect as well.

HeartAched · Feb 4, 2016

10/10 post. I honestly hate the feeling of being watched constantly as well, or as it seems. And I hate the fact that you mention a server and get banned permanently. It feels like you're stuck to this server, and can't say anything else..

65jes89 · Feb 4, 2016

Honestly though, I understand where ben is coming from. It really feels like literally nothing is ever done that actually benefits pvp, despite extremely well-thought out posts from various members of the community, which would require little to no effort to implement. I mean, take kit pvp for example. It's been months since it was taken down. Months. And apparently, it's been constantly worked on since then. Yet, when you take a look at the changelog, we have 6 points in from cythyan for an arena build. And that was over two weeks ago at this point. It just feels like nobody really cares. The only pvp change that's actually benefited the community recently was the potion crafting recipes. Other than that... Uh... I think vamp was the last thing. And I'm not going to get started on that, at the risk of the rest of this post just consisting of a whole lot of cursing. I mean, we were told that the vampire plugin was "old broken, and un-editable." Yet, vamp was just re-added, changed, and the work involved with it appears to have been so small it wasn't worthy of a mention in the changelog. Gonna stop talking about vampire now before I get any more pissed off.

BenRekt said:
Continuing on, I feel that staff are not allowing people to have open conversations in their own faction chats which is a huge problem for a factions server. With a recent member of the community, who will not be mentioned by name, being permanently banned for talking about a competing server, I, along with a huge majority of both Deldrimor and Sunkiss no longer feel "safe" expressing our thoughts in faction chat, which is why we will basically only speak in TeamSpeak, because we do not want to feel like we are constantly being monitored by staff. To give a childish comparison, it somewhat feels like the staff have become the NSA of Massive. This is not to say that people being racist and offensive in chats should not be punished, but banning someone for mentioning a competing server is not just in my eyes. I believe that Massive should simply acknowledge the fact that there are other server that exist and stop being so insecure about what others may think if another server is mentioned. Saying this, if someone goes around spouting the IP in alliance or any other public chat, they deserve their ban because pure advertisement should not be allowed, and I believe most people would also agree.

Now this. You have no idea how much this makes me mad. Just the flat out idiocy in the situation in question baffles my mind. The player in question who was banned gave out a single ip in faction chat, with one or two other people on. And I had already given the ip to both of these people via skype chat, said player just was not aware of this at the time. So at most, two players were "contaminated" with the idea that there might be other servers than massive. But you want to know what the funniest thing about this is? The said player has literally brought over a dozen players to massive from other servers. Of this, there's probably been a couple years' worth of premium bought between all these players. Yet, the mention of a single ip got him banned. Permanently. I'll stop talking about this now at the risk of breaking the whole giving away ban info rule, but I believe I've made my point quite well. Massive really feels like a dictatorship with Kim Jong Un style censorship. And I'm really not exaggerating.

BenRekt · Feb 4, 2016

65jes89 said:
Other than that... Uh... I think vamp was the last thing. And I'm not going to get started on that, at the risk of the rest of this post just consisting of a whole lot of cursing. I mean, we were told that the vampire plugin was "old broken, and un-editable." Yet, vamp was just re-added, changed, and the work involved with it appears to have been so small it wasn't worthy of a mention in the changelog. Gonna stop talking about vampire now before I get any more pissed off.

Can't agree enough, sadly.

spoonly · Feb 4, 2016

It's pretty clear (this is how it seems to most of us) that the focus on pvp has dwindled in the past few months.

Example #1 we have the ratio of PvP : PvE/other events there are on the server. The number of random server events/PvE invasions the server hosts heavily outweigh the number of PvP oriented events. Why are they rare? Who knows. Why is there usually only one PvP tournament for every season of the year? Who knows. You know how happy PvPers would be if there was one every 2 weeks or month, even in doing that it would be a turn in the right direction.

Example #2 is the long absence of KitPvP. For about 3 months or so KitPvP has been gone, or under construction. Most of us liked KitPvP for what it was so I'm not sure what the changes are and why its taking so long. And honestly I wouldn't have a problem with waiting long if we heard updates about it's construction. All we keep hearing is coming soon. For some people that isn't enough to go on. What is so hard about making a KitPvP progress tracker thread on the forums where changes are discussed, a possible re-release date listed, and maybe a few screenshots on how the construction is going? It's just not that fair to keep people in the dark about something we've been waiting on for a while now.

spoonly · Feb 4, 2016

65jes89 said:
The only pvp change that's actually benefited the community recently was the potion crafting recipes.

yeah that has been the best thing for pvp since kit came out

Alj23 · Feb 4, 2016

Great post Ben. I can't say I agree with everything you've said, but I can respect you for speaking your mind.

With that being said, I'd like to address a few points.

On the topic of plugins being thrown on to the server without configuration, namely your reference to MassiveTraits, I'd like to offer views on my experience and direct involvement in configuration and balancing of traits. Many hours were spent with spectec finding and noting changes we believed needed to made to MassiveTraits. These changes were carried to Direction staff, and from then on it was above my pay grade, so I can't exactly tell you what happened or what their initial response was. After initial implementation, more hours were spent on rebalancing and reconfiguring MassiveTraits. This was during the period in which spectec probably put in over 20+ man hours using the MassiveDamageLog plugin that allowed us to find the cause of the random damage and healing burst that plagued the server.

I won't speak on the lag and tech. Lag has existed on MassiveCraft from the beginning and we deal with it in all forms and iterations. I understand that there is a new anti-cheat plugin that was implemented. I haven't played recently due to IRL obligations, so I can't really give an accurate analysis or opinion of the plugin's effect on the server.

In terms of goods that "should" be valuable but aren't, it's not a matter of fixing an issue, it's seeing it for its true light. When things became easier to manufacture, market, and sell, the product becomes cheaper, and is mass produced. When things such as diamonds became easier to produce from fishing, and God armor became mass produced from fishing, the price only did what was expected to happen, it dropped. Sure, this could have been halted by the removal/nerf of fishing earlier on, but that's in the past. Nothing we can do about that specific incident now. Even then, had we nerfed fishing, we would still be in a similar boat (heh, puns) with the introduction of /fix and the change to base durability. Server provided and introduced features that severely diminishes the need to play the game the way it was intended. (Example: Grinding vanilla XP to repair armor). Funnily enough, and I'm paraphrasing him here, MonMarty stated that the FeedAlways trait should be removed because it removes the need to play the game the way it was intended, eating food to survive. He labeled it a game breaking feature. The same logic applies in my above argument concerning /fix and altered base armor durability.

Sure, the staff could temporarily fix the economy. Hell, a week of economic theorizing could temporarily fix it. A minimum price on multiple "valuable items" could be set, raising prices exponentially. But then we move away from a player driven laissez faire economy, to a centrally planned staff controlled economy, and trust me, that's not what we want. Small changes can be made after extensive discussion that would gradually influence the direction of the economy. MassiveCraft's economy is the most unique I have ever seen on a MassiveCraft server, in that it is real. It does not perfectly model real world economies, since every player can be a member of every realm of economic influence, but it does model the aspects of moving from a primary production economy to a service based economy. Each player created business is an example of service based economics. A healthy balance is key.

On the topic of lack of staff interest in PVP: I personally believe that the players have the most influence and power on creating fun and worthwhile PVP. It is no secret that I strongly dislike PVP for the sake of fighting. I strongly dislike people fighting people for no other reason than wanting to fight. I believe that every fight should be perpetuated by a larger overall goal in mind. The Imperials, The Solaris Insurrection, and The Viridian Crusade are all examples. Every fight during its respective campaign was because an overall goal was shared by a collective of people. Sides went to war and fought each battle with and select goal in mind. If every self proclaimed PVP faction put aside their pride and stopped warring for the petty sake of that they can, and focused on some self building and achieving goals that would overall better the community as a whole, we'd be in a much better place than we are now. I am also an extreme advocate of player driven movements with reason, rather than fake resistances and server (staff) controlled resistance. I was not a fan of spectec's resistance to the Undead war. It felt fake. In an earlier post made this week, Ben suggested lore complaint factions being able to influence lore through battles. I would be a fan of this idea if the staff created the basis for this to exist, and gave us roads we could take and fight for the storylines we believe in and favor. I would not be a fan of wars fought with predetermined outcomes regardless of who won a battle. If outcomes were determined based on player interaction, and players were left to their own devices on how they will achieve their preferred outcomes, that would be preferable.

I will reiterate for clarification: I believe players hold all the power when it comes to the the direction of the PVP community and how we choose to shape the survival worlds. A campaign with ample support from players and an organized central direction can succeede on the server, regardless of staff endorsement.

I won't speak on your last point, because I a.) dont know anything about the most recent player banning you can reference, and care not to make assumptions based on facts I don't know about, and b.) from my time as a staff member have conflicting views that don't mesh well with the general populace. I see both sides of the argument, and have a hard time leaning one way because of understanding of player and staff difficulty determine the distinction between advertising with malice intent and general good natured suggestion of servers offering different play styles.

-Alj23

BenRekt · Feb 4, 2016

Alj23 said:
Great post Ben. I can't say I agree with everything you've said, but I can respect you for speaking your mind.

With that being said, I'd like to address a few points.

On the topic of plugins being thrown on to the server without configuration, namely your reference to MassiveTraits, I'd like to offer views on my experience and direct involvement in configuration and balancing of traits. Many hours were spent with spectec finding and noting changes we believed needed to made to MassiveTraits. These changes were carried to Direction staff, and from then on it was above my pay grade, so I can't exactly tell you what happened or what their initial response was. After initial implementation, more hours were spent on rebalancing and reconfiguring MassiveTraits. This was during the period in which spectec probably put in over 20+ man hours using the MassiveDamageLog plugin that allowed us to find the cause of the random damage and healing burst that plagued the server.

I won't speak on the lag and tech. Lag has existed on MassiveCraft from the beginning and we deal with it in all forms and iterations. I understand that there is a new anti-cheat plugin that was implemented. I haven't played recently due to IRL obligations, so I can't really give an accurate analysis or opinion of the plugin's effect on the server.

In terms of goods that "should" be valuable but aren't, it's not a matter of fixing an issue, it's seeing it for its true light. When things became easier to manufacture, market, and sell, the product becomes cheaper, and is mass produced. When things such as diamonds became easier to produce from fishing, and God armor became mass produced from fishing, the price only did what was expected to happen, it dropped. Sure, this could have been halted by the removal/nerf of fishing earlier on, but that's in the past. Nothing we can do about that specific incident now. Even then, had we nerfed fishing, we would still be in a similar boat (heh, puns) with the introduction of /fix and the change to base durability. Server provided and introduced features that severely diminishes the need to play the game the way it was intended. (Example: Grinding vanilla XP to repair armor). Funnily enough, and I'm paraphrasing him here, MonMarty stated that the FeedAlways trait should be removed because it removes the need to play the game the way it was intended, eating food to survive. He labeled it a game breaking feature. The same logic applies in my above argument concerning /fix and altered base armor durability.

Sure, the staff could temporarily fix the economy. Hell, a week of economic theorizing could temporarily fix it. A minimum price on multiple "valuable items" could be set, raising prices exponentially. But then we move away from a player driven laissez faire economy, to a centrally planned staff controlled economy, and trust me, that's not what we want. Small changes can be made after extensive discussion that would gradually influence the direction of the economy. MassiveCraft's economy is the most unique I have ever seen on a MassiveCraft server, in that it is real. It does not perfectly model real world economies, since every player can be a member of every realm of economic influence, but it does model the aspects of moving from a primary production economy to a service based economy. Each player created business is an example of service based economics. A healthy balance is key.

On the topic of lack of staff interest in PVP: I personally believe that the players have the most influence and power on creating fun and worthwhile PVP. It is no secret that I strongly dislike PVP for the sake of fighting. I strongly dislike people fighting people for no other reason than wanting to fight. I believe that every fight should be perpetuated by a larger overall goal in mind. The Imperials, The Solaris Insurrection, and The Viridian Crusade are all examples. Every fight during its respective campaign was because an overall goal was shared by a collective of people. Sides went to war and fought each battle with and select goal in mind. If every self proclaimed PVP faction put aside their pride and stopped warring for the petty sake of that they can, and focused on some self building and achieving goals that would overall better the community as a whole, we'd be in a much better place than we are now. I am also an extreme advocate of player driven movements with reason, rather than fake resistances and server (staff) controlled resistance. I was not a fan of spectec's resistance to the Undead war. It felt fake. In an earlier post made this week, Ben suggested lore complaint factions being able to influence lore through battles. I would be a fan of this idea if the staff created the basis for this to exist, and gave us roads we could take and fight for the storylines we believe in and favor. I would not be a fan of wars fought with predetermined outcomes regardless of who won a battle. If outcomes were determined based on player interaction, and players were left to their own devices on how they will achieve their preferred outcomes, that would be preferable.

I will reiterate for clarification: I believe players hold all the power when it comes to the the direction of the PVP community and how we choose to shape the survival worlds. A campaign with ample support from players and an organized central direction can succeede on the server, regardless of staff endorsement.

I won't speak on your last point, because I a.) dont know anything about the most recent player banning you can reference, and care not to make assumptions based on facts I don't know about, and b.) from my time as a staff member have conflicting views that don't mesh well with the general populace. I see both sides of the argument, and have a hard time leaning one way because of understanding of player and staff difficulty determine the distinction between advertising with malice intent and general good natured suggestion of servers offering different play styles.

-Alj23

Great post. I still believe that /fix would bring up diamond / god armor / god weapon prices significantly, and that the economy isn't in a good place but you have very valid points.

Alj23 · Feb 5, 2016

BenRekt said:
Great post. I still believe that /fix would bring up diamond / god armor / god weapon prices significantly, and that the economy isn't in a good place but you have very valid points.

Sure, it would. But very slowly. And let me be clear, I'm not asking for sudden results. That's never a good thing. Had we seen sudden results in price jumps from fishing, we would be way worse off. Gradual is key.

If those changes were made, we'd still have to see the burn off of an excess of these materials and items to see price increase. I'd forcast anywhere between 8 months - 1 year to see a rise in prices if those were the only changes made. The economy has seen large deflation of prices because supply increased rapidly and exponentially, but demand did not. Gradual inflation is what we are looking for. Economist suggest between 1-2% inflation per year. If the MassiveCraft economy saw that trend in terms of God armor for example, starting at a base price of 200 silver aka 2000 regals, prices would be around 2,060 and 2,120 respectively.

Let's take a real world example: Oil prices. A barrel of oil is nearing $30, and has been decreasing steadily for awhile now for numerous reasons.

Alternative extraction methods
Political turmoil in Middle East
Alternative fuel sources

In MassiveCraft, alternative extraction methods was fishing, political turmoil is increased production by every player, and alternative fuel sources is the short lived MassiveArmor, and by extension the immense amount of armor everyone can produce.

MonMarty · Feb 5, 2016

BenRekt said:
Like I have said this is in reaction to the recent harmful additions of the "new" anti-cheat plugin. I say "new" in quotations because it was added before already and failed pretty miserably. This leads me into my next point which is that I personally believe staff need to consult the player base publicly before deciding on whether adding a plug-in is a good idea to help stop impulsive implementation like the most recent anti-cheat.

Informatively speaking:

That plugin has never been on the server before.
The plugin has not necessarily "failed". It's too sensitive, surely.
Player base consultation requires a lot of bureaucracy and is unnecessary.

On my personal opinion: I am not a fan of the anti-cheating plugin, but I support the pvp/tech department in their implementation. It's important to understand the context behind it.

BenRekt said:
It seems like plug-ins are left unconfigured, thrown onto the server and left to sit until the whole player base, both RP and PvP screams out to finally have it removed or fixed (hint, hint: the traits plug-in).

Informatively speaking:

The plugin was tested privately by Gethelp first.
The plugin was then tested on the server by staff privately.
The plugin was then tested with small amounts of players on the server.
The plugin was then released to the full public.

Testing protocols are in place. Whether they are adequate is not guaranteed. I am not satisfied with how the Anti-Cheat plugin performs purely speaking from a roleplay point of view. It seems to somehow cause severe latency issues for people with crappy connections and computers, which has caused me to jokingly refer to it as the "Wage gap" plugin. I however maintain a little bit of patience as the plugin has been on the server for just a few hours over 24 hours now, and still needs further configuration. Final configuration can only take place on the server itself. We cannot do play testing in cases of shitty internet connections or computers because all staff members have adequate equipment to play Minecraft with.

BenRekt said:
but the fact that dedicated players continue paying the server every month means that we should be entitled to, at the very least, some kind of quick response and eventual fix to large issues

You are entitled to such. However:

Cayorion does not communicate much with players because he prefers to work.
The vast majority of the staff are not permitted to communicate with players due to lack in proper PR skills.
What little staff are permitted to communicate boils down to:
- Diaphonos
- Addrion
- MonMarty
- Thortuna
- Ryciera

I won't speak for the others on the list but I am 100% punctual when it comes to communicating changes and messages to the Roleplay community. Why don't I do this for the pvp community? A multitude of reasons:

I don't PVP
I don't often know what I am talking about in terms of plugins. I was not present when the Anti-Cheat was implemented nor do I know the status of its configuration as I was working on something else at the time.
I don't particularly care for the PVP community

I feel like I need to expand on the last point before someone wildly spins it out of proportion like the first reply to this thread kind of cynical people: I don't particularly care for the PVP community because it doesn't particularly care for the work I do. This is also fine because I don't take decisions for PVP'ers. The PVP and Game department take decisions for PVP'ers, I only toss in my educated guesstimations on what will happen and support their work when needed, for example I make a world map for Gethelp when he wants a new KoTH map. From a rotten core of some PVP'ers I only get shit by being called the Antichrist and a whole bunch of slurs against homosexuals, down to being called "The source of everything that is wrong on MassiveCraft". From those in the mid ranges of toxicity I have to deal with them trolling in Regalia because "hey let's show those roleplayers what losers they are". Squarely put I've never receive any words of encouragement, recognition or appreciation from any PVP'er, even when I jump into the fray to try and help out due to some vague sense of obligation. And that's fine. I am not the kind of person that goes looking for such as I find enough reward in my work. But to receive the extreme opposite, slander and ridicule, makes me disinterested.

BenRekt said:
Staff do not give any real response to idea posts, as well as the fact that we are never told, in detail, what direction the server is going towards and goals the staff have.

I could talk for hours about this sort of stuff, but I generally assumed nobody particularly cares to hear my road map. As for ideas. It's a bit of a stretch to assume staff don't care because of a lack of responses. The reality is that I stopped looking at ideas because I fear either making empty promises that I cannot keep because the Tech department is unable to create more time for something, or rejecting something outright as being inadequate or impossible to achieve. Players often have zero clue how much coding goes into something that they feel is incredibly small and easy to achieve.

If there is more clamor for me to be more outspoken about internal staff mechanics, I can bring this up during the next meeting on Wednesday and we can discuss what can be done. Potentially we can also bring back open Teamspeak meetings but I'm not 100% a fan of that myself as players tend to be disruptive with joining/leaving the channel.

BenRekt said:
The economy is non-existent in the survival worlds. I know I will probably be shown a graph on how RP items are the new thing to sell but the fact that items that should be valuable are absolutely worthless means that something must be fixed. On a related note, there have been no changes made to help improve the economy in the survival worlds (where most RP items do not matter for the most part). Despite many people agreeing that /fix must go, nothing has been done or even a simple response given from staff saying "we are working on it" or "no this will not be happening".

The economy is not nonexistent, supply and demand still operate perfectly fine and the financial boom has shifted to the third and fourth sector. Anyone who still tries to make a buck with diamonds is basically forcing themselves into Indian trash dump sorting child labor. It's very unrewarding because there's so much of it already.
I have never seen a solid suggestion thread to remove /fix. I have not seen the amounts of "many people" anywhere. It may have been part of another thread and I might have read over it, but I cannot recall ever seeing that anywhere on the forum.

BenRekt said:
Continuing on, I feel that staff are not allowing people to have open conversations in their own faction chats which is a huge problem for a factions server. With a recent member of the community, who will not be mentioned by name, being permanently banned for talking about a competing server, I, along with a huge majority of both Deldrimor and Sunkiss no longer feel "safe" expressing our thoughts in faction chat, which is why we will basically only speak in TeamSpeak, because we do not want to feel like we are constantly being monitored by staff.

Since this applies: Kidmodo was banned for insulting others over Alliance chat to my knowledge. He also continued to call Thortuna a whale on his ban appeal. Faction chat to my knowledge in terms of offensive language has never been used to ban anyone, just measure the severity of a ban as a catalyst.
MassiveCraft staff monitor certain factions/players chat when it is deemed necessary. In this particular case, screenshots were submitted by someone in which members from certain factions were planning a mass advertisement spree on MassiveCraft for a competing server. Since this is against the rules, the game staff had reason to look into the faction chats of various factions. Keep in mind hundreds of factions exist on the server. Just because 2 of them are monitored when there is more than adequate reason to believe some members within have motive and plans to harm our server, doesn't mean that it happens to all factions. On MassiveCraft you are permitted to invite friends to a minigame server or a skyblock server or whatever. It becomes illegal when you try to draw players away from Massive to go play on another server instead because it harms our business. To us there are various degrees of security for channels. General is an "A" class channel in which all rules apply. Alliance is a "B" class channel in which /some/ lenience is made occasionally. Faction is a "C" class channel in which moderation never occurs unless the server has reason to believe the communication therein could be with the intention to harm the server as a business. By all means you could insult negativity about staff members or even ERP in your faction chat (as long as you don't violate international law of course) and staff wouldn't punish you, even if they were aware of it. Actually harming the server by trying to draw members away or attacking the hardware with DDoS however revokes your privacy privilege.

BenRekt said:
The only reason I am still making these rant posts is because I still have faith in the server that it can be fixed and made better. This server has so much potential, but it does not matter if nobody, both players and staff, are willing to act upon it.

I'm going to make a very unpopular suggestion to you and @65jes89 now. Both of you have energy and emotion towards the server, I am aware of this. You both criticize the server and try to improve it because you care, instead of just hopping to another, I am aware of this. Sometimes or maybe often though, there are obstacles in the way. Be it for example my disinterest to do anything for PVP'ers or Cayorion not having enough time. In such cases, could you consider actually joining staff? I think if you have the energy to write this, you will have the energy to help us improve the server with the input you provide, as well as work. Mind you, this is not an invitation for you to just toss your opinion directly at us and to require us to work on it. It doesn't work like that. That is how the squire system failed, the squires had a lot of opinions but no motivation to actually work for anything beyond PVP play testing in arenas. If you join staff, you will be expected to communicate with staff members, cooperate with them in a team work environment and make your contributions to make your voice be heard. That being said, it's also not a full-time job, our "minimum" specifications for being rank 1 is 10 hours of work in 10 weeks. That's almost 10 hours on 1680 total. Staff members also take breaks all the time. It's not a continuous obligation. Heck you might even come to realize how much work is done internally in the staff, and see all those vague rumors about the staff internal structure melt away that have been flung into the world by disgruntled ex-staff.

Ofcourse. You will have to get over the whole community castration issue. As soon as any PVP'er joins the staff, they become outcast among the PVP'ers and part of the enemy. It would be nice to see someone from the PVP community step up to the challenge, put some hard work in place to get done what they want done, and to defy the constant vicious cycle.[/QUOTE]

Jackmo_Jones · Feb 5, 2016

It saddens me that for the past year Massive PvP has been on constant life support and at this point all I can muster in response is apathy. :/

Gumee · Feb 5, 2016

Just gonna toss my opinion in here.

There needs to be less of a gap between staff and players. It feels like staff are authoritative bullies to too many members of the community. I know that staff are working their hardest to benefit the server as a whole, but there's just to much disconnection, especially with the PvP community. I'd like to see more interaction, like talking about an AntiCheat plugin before installing it. Believe it or not, some people have valuable information to share. Also, I think that the staff are more directed towards the PvE/RP side of the server. The only people capable of handling a dispute between players are the moderators and there job is to literally distribute punishments to maintain order. No one likes someone who's seen as a punishment distributing machine. Of course there needs to be respect for staff authority, but I think the reason there's so much disrespect for staff is because they don't show a lot of respect for the players.

Alj23 · Feb 5, 2016

MonMarty said:
Ofcourse. You will have to get over the whole community castration issue. As soon as any PVP'er joins the staff, they become outcast among the PVP'ers and part of the enemy. It would be nice to see someone from the PVP community step up to the challenge, put some hard work in place to get done what they want done, and to defy the constant vicious cycle.

This statement really confuses me, because I was a staff member for 8 months, and actively PVP'ed for those 8 months without every being ostracized or demonized because of my staff position. I spent good time lobbying for changes that I believed would benefit the PVP community when I was staff, and proposed ideas. I continued this work even outside being staff and well into squire work.

Spectec is the embodiment of PVP'er turned staff that greatly helped the PVP community. I can say without doubt that without his contributions, PVP would not be anything it is today, and probably would have died over a year ago.

Gethelp and Traxex20 are two current examples that fit this description.

So, when you say something like this, it really throws me for a loop, because there are specific examples that contradict your statement.

Kidmodo · Feb 5, 2016

MonMarty said:
Since this applies: Kidmodo was banned for insulting others over Alliance chat to my knowledge. He also continued to call Thortuna a whale on his ban appeal. Faction chat to my knowledge in terms of offensive language has never been used to ban anyone, just measure the severity of a ban as a catalyst.

.

Just to let you know he wasn't talking about me (Kidmodo dat Raptum Guy) rather someone in sunkiss. Also I never called Thortuna a whale, pretty sure I just said she had the ego the size of one. Two different things

Thortuna · Feb 5, 2016

I don't often know what I am talking about in terms of plugins. I was not present when the Anti-Cheat was implemented nor do I know the status of its configuration as I was working on something else at the time.

Since i know this i will adress this point.

The anti cheat went through several cycles of testing with staff until we found that it was not enough to just test and configure with staff. We needed to put it on the server and see what we had to tweak and configure better, Cayorion stayed up until 4 in the morning configuring last night on this plugin. We are still doing configurations and tweaks as we go on and have reports about something being to harsh or not functioning as it should so if you do have feedback then please bring it to a gamestaff in a ticket or on the bug report forum and i will personally make sure the feedback gets seen and taken into account when continuing to tweak this plugin.

As for Vampires being brought back. Cayorion spent a good while (how long i cant say for sure but atleast several hours) to tweak/recode parts this plugin, the tweaks were made based off the feedback the players had given in previous threads. We believe the plugin now functions ok and that vampires should no longer be "OP" as they gain nothing more then what you would with traits. If we are wrong then please do inform us so we can re-evaluate. There is going to be a Post about Vampires being re-added, but writing a good post and getting the needed screenshots and such can take a day or two since the PR department was not aware of us adding the plugin back in until late last night.

Last i will say that the reason kit pvp is not brought back yet is due to us waiting for coders to fix bugs in the plugin we have chosen to give you a better Kit PvP experience, we have waited, pushed, poked and are trying out best to pep talk these coders to fix the bugs we need fixed because without them being fixed we simply cant release it yet. A new Koth map was added and is currently as we speak being worked on to be set up. Hopefully we find no pressing bugs with that and can roll that out as soon as possible.

I hope this atleast updates you a bit on what is going on since i saw you requested that in one of the posts.

MonMarty · Feb 5, 2016

Alj23 said:
This statement really confuses me, because I was a staff member for 8 months, and actively PVP'ed for those 8 months without every being ostracized or demonized because of my staff position. I spent good time lobbying for changes that I believed would benefit the PVP community when I was staff, and proposed ideas. I continued this work even outside being staff and well into squire work.

Spectec is the embodiment of PVP'er turned staff that greatly helped the PVP community. I can say without doubt that without his contributions, PVP would not be anything it is today, and probably would have died over a year ago.

Gethelp and Traxex20 are two current examples that fit this description.

So, when you say something like this, it really throws me for a loop, because there are specific examples that contradict your statement.

I think this turns into a matter of memory and perspective. I recall clearly spectec's never ceasing complaints about how everyone jumped at the chance to accuse him of admin abuse, ergo the 3/5 complaints reports against him, as well as the fact that he said numerous times pvp'ers made his life hell as soon as he became staff. On Gethelp's regard, he refuses to PVP on his main account because of incessant accusations of the same nature to the point where he uses alts to PVP. When a staff member is forced to PVP on an alt, that says enough.

BenRekt · Feb 5, 2016

Lots to reply to, I'll try to respond to everything you wrote as concise as possible.

MonMarty said:
Informatively speaking:

That plugin has never been on the server before.

The plugin has not necessarily "failed". It's too sensitive, surely.

Player base consultation requires a lot of bureaucracy and is unnecessary.

On my personal opinion: I am not a fan of the anti-cheating plugin, but I support the pvp/tech department in their implementation. It's important to understand the context behind it.

Guess I remembered that wrong, I distinctively believed people were being banned for clicking "beyond possible speeds and triggering anti-cheat" at one point but if you say it's never been there, I will take you at your word.

MonMarty said:
Informatively speaking:

The plugin was tested privately by Gethelp first.

The plugin was then tested on the server by staff privately.

The plugin was then tested with small amounts of players on the server.

The plugin was then released to the full public.

Testing protocols are in place. Whether they are adequate is not guaranteed. I am not satisfied with how the Anti-Cheat plugin performs purely speaking from a roleplay point of view. It seems to somehow cause severe latency issues for people with crappy connections and computers, which has caused me to jokingly refer to it as the "Wage gap" plugin. I however maintain a little bit of patience as the plugin has been on the server for just a few hours over 24 hours now, and still needs further configuration. Final configuration can only take place on the server itself. We cannot do play testing in cases of shitty internet connections or computers because all staff members have adequate equipment to play Minecraft with.

Like you said, you do not know whether the testing was done adequately or not, which is personally something I think you as a staff member should look into when you have the time. I'm not trying to say that you shouldn't trust your staff members by any means, but it feels like whoever did this supposed process of testing for the anti-cheat plugin probably didn't do all the steps you mentioned, as with even just a little bit of testing it probably would've been clear it wasn't a plugin that should be implemented publicly. I was also told by a staff member that the 10-second bans were not configured yet, which is alarming because it means that it was released publicly without being configured the way it was intended, if what the staff told me was true.

MonMarty said:
You are entitled to such. However:

Cayorion does not communicate much with players because he prefers to work.

The vast majority of the staff are not permitted to communicate with players due to lack in proper PR skills.

What little staff are permitted to communicate boils down to:

Diaphonos

Addrion

MonMarty

Thortuna

Ryciera

I won't speak for the others on the list but I am 100% punctual when it comes to communicating changes and messages to the Roleplay community. Why don't I do this for the pvp community? A multitude of reasons:

I don't PVP

I don't often know what I am talking about in terms of plugins. I was not present when the Anti-Cheat was implemented nor do I know the status of its configuration as I was working on something else at the time.

I don't particularly care for the PVP community

When you referred to staff not having proper "PR training" that set off a few red flags for me. I believe most players would prefer to feel like they are talking to a person, not a "trained PR professional" for lack of a better word. I feel this is also a major flaw in MassiveCraft because it creates somewhat of a disconnect between players and staff because it feels like staff treat the server more like a business than an actual community, at least in my some of my and other players' personal experiences.

Slightly off topic, but I also believe staff need to give players a chance to defend themselves before they are issued a punishment. This means at the very least, you give them a chance to explain themselves in a conversation with the staff member who is looking to ban them in-game or in the server's teampseak. Even if the ban is deserved, people deserve a chance to get into TeamSpeak or at least chat with the staff to explain the situation. When you ban or punish someone without giving them a chance to share their POV, you give yourself so much bad PR because you look like dictators, not moderators looking to give everyone a good time.

Also, not to sound rude, I do not care if Cayorion communicates with player, as long as he communicates what he is currently working on to some degree that players know what to expect in the future. I'm not talking specific dates but we want to know whats going on when we are so heavily invested in a server like MassiveCraft.

MonMarty said:
I could talk for hours about this sort of stuff, but I generally assumed nobody particularly cares to hear my road map. As for ideas. It's a bit of a stretch to assume staff don't care because of a lack of responses. The reality is that I stopped looking at ideas because I fear either making empty promises that I cannot keep because the Tech department is unable to create more time for something, or rejecting something outright as being inadequate or impossible to achieve. Players often have zero clue how much coding goes into something that they feel is incredibly small and easy to achieve.

If there is more clamor for me to be more outspoken about internal staff mechanics, I can bring this up during the next meeting on Wednesday and we can discuss what can be done. Potentially we can also bring back open Teamspeak meetings but I'm not 100% a fan of that myself as players tend to be disruptive with joining/leaving the channel.

I honestly don't know why you wouldn't believe people care about where the server is going. I don't want to say you're lying by any means, but when there are people who devote half their weekend to playing on the server, you can be sure at least a good chunk of them want to know whats your goals are for the server.

In terms of the idea posts - people like myself do not want responses going "Yes this will get done", not by any long shot. All that is really requested, by myself at least, is that you, or another staff with authority over the matter at hand, gives some thought to the idea presented - and gives a somewhat thoughtful response on whether or not this is something you will discuss with staff, and the pros and cons of the idea. People like myself make a huge effort to help improve the server while still remaining players, and it would mean so much if we could get that in return if our posts received a somewhat equal effort in return, just letting us know that the post has been taken into consideration.

MonMarty said:
Since this applies: Kidmodo was banned for insulting others over Alliance chat to my knowledge. He also continued to call Thortuna a whale on his ban appeal. Faction chat to my knowledge in terms of offensive language has never been used to ban anyone, just measure the severity of a ban as a catalyst.

MassiveCraft staff monitor certain factions/players chat when it is deemed necessary. In this particular case, screenshots were submitted by someone in which members from certain factions were planning a mass advertisement spree on MassiveCraft for a competing server. Since this is against the rules, the game staff had reason to look into the faction chats of various factions. Keep in mind hundreds of factions exist on the server. Just because 2 of them are monitored when there is more than adequate reason to believe some members within have motive and plans to harm our server, doesn't mean that it happens to all factions. On MassiveCraft you are permitted to invite friends to a minigame server or a skyblock server or whatever. It becomes illegal when you try to draw players away from Massive to go play on another server instead because it harms our business. To us there are various degrees of security for channels. General is an "A" class channel in which all rules apply. Alliance is a "B" class channel in which /some/ lenience is made occasionally. Faction is a "C" class channel in which moderation never occurs unless the server has reason to believe the communication therein could be with the intention to harm the server as a business. By all means you could insult negativity about staff members or even ERP in your faction chat (as long as you don't violate international law of course) and staff wouldn't punish you, even if they were aware of it. Actually harming the server by trying to draw members away or attacking the hardware with DDoS however revokes your privacy privilege.

I think I agree with you for the most part on this, even if I don't think staff should be able to monitor faction chat at all, unless it is really threatening another player or group like you said at the end of your statement. Also I was referring to Avenginq only, but I guess it does apply to Kidmodo as well, and if he did what you said, he knows the rules, he was a staff and that's all I will really say because I still consider Kid a good friend even if he was very rude to staff members (and was fairly punished as well).

MonMarty said:
Ofcourse. You will have to get over the whole community castration issue. As soon as any PVP'er joins the staff, they become outcast among the PVP'ers and part of the enemy. It would be nice to see someone from the PVP community step up to the challenge, put some hard work in place to get done what they want done, and to defy the constant vicious cycle.

If you look at @Alj23 's post there's really my "argument" as to why I don't really agree with what you said.

Also -
Is there anything you have to say about what I had to say about the "problems" I mentioned (raid/defense incentives, incorporation of RP and PvP, etc.)?

I'm not asking for a concrete "This is the solution we have and were going to do it ASAP" - I just want to know your personal thoughts - do you even consider them a "problem"? I welcome your opinion but if you don't want to give one for fear of other people lashing out at you I understand.

EDIT:
Just read @Thortuna 's post.
If it's true that you believe you could not properly test it, I believe it would be beneficial to inform the server that the plugin is being implemented for test purposes. I think this would have greatly changed many players' perspectives, which also plays back to the idea that myself, as well as many others, feel like we are being left in the dark.

Winterless · Feb 5, 2016

StereoTurtle said:
Also, @BenRekt you have my respect. Unlike most PvPers, who are giving others a bad opinion of the community, you usually display your opinion in a calm, rational, polite, and educated way (from what I've seen). Good job man.

And that mentality right there is killing the server. "Unlike most pvpers." That is no different from racism.

Winterless · Feb 5, 2016

MonMarty said:
Informatively speaking:

That plugin has never been on the server before.

The plugin has not necessarily "failed". It's too sensitive, surely.

Player base consultation requires a lot of bureaucracy and is unnecessary.

On my personal opinion: I am not a fan of the anti-cheating plugin, but I support the pvp/tech department in their implementation. It's important to understand the context behind it.

Informatively speaking:

The plugin was tested privately by Gethelp first.

The plugin was then tested on the server by staff privately.

The plugin was then tested with small amounts of players on the server.

The plugin was then released to the full public.

Testing protocols are in place. Whether they are adequate is not guaranteed. I am not satisfied with how the Anti-Cheat plugin performs purely speaking from a roleplay point of view. It seems to somehow cause severe latency issues for people with crappy connections and computers, which has caused me to jokingly refer to it as the "Wage gap" plugin. I however maintain a little bit of patience as the plugin has been on the server for just a few hours over 24 hours now, and still needs further configuration. Final configuration can only take place on the server itself. We cannot do play testing in cases of shitty internet connections or computers because all staff members have adequate equipment to play Minecraft with.

You are entitled to such. However:

Cayorion does not communicate much with players because he prefers to work.

The vast majority of the staff are not permitted to communicate with players due to lack in proper PR skills.

What little staff are permitted to communicate boils down to:

Diaphonos

Addrion

MonMarty

Thortuna

Ryciera

I won't speak for the others on the list but I am 100% punctual when it comes to communicating changes and messages to the Roleplay community. Why don't I do this for the pvp community? A multitude of reasons:

I don't PVP

I don't often know what I am talking about in terms of plugins. I was not present when the Anti-Cheat was implemented nor do I know the status of its configuration as I was working on something else at the time.

I don't particularly care for the PVP community

I feel like I need to expand on the last point before someone wildly spins it out of proportion like the first reply to this thread kind of cynical people: I don't particularly care for the PVP community because it doesn't particularly care for the work I do. This is also fine because I don't take decisions for PVP'ers. The PVP and Game department take decisions for PVP'ers, I only toss in my educated guesstimations on what will happen and support their work when needed, for example I make a world map for Gethelp when he wants a new KoTH map. From a rotten core of some PVP'ers I only get shit by being called the Antichrist and a whole bunch of slurs against homosexuals, down to being called "The source of everything that is wrong on MassiveCraft". From those in the mid ranges of toxicity I have to deal with them trolling in Regalia because "hey let's show those roleplayers what losers they are". Squarely put I've never receive any words of encouragement, recognition or appreciation from any PVP'er, even when I jump into the fray to try and help out due to some vague sense of obligation. And that's fine. I am not the kind of person that goes looking for such as I find enough reward in my work. But to receive the extreme opposite, slander and ridicule, makes me disinterested.

I could talk for hours about this sort of stuff, but I generally assumed nobody particularly cares to hear my road map. As for ideas. It's a bit of a stretch to assume staff don't care because of a lack of responses. The reality is that I stopped looking at ideas because I fear either making empty promises that I cannot keep because the Tech department is unable to create more time for something, or rejecting something outright as being inadequate or impossible to achieve. Players often have zero clue how much coding goes into something that they feel is incredibly small and easy to achieve.

If there is more clamor for me to be more outspoken about internal staff mechanics, I can bring this up during the next meeting on Wednesday and we can discuss what can be done. Potentially we can also bring back open Teamspeak meetings but I'm not 100% a fan of that myself as players tend to be disruptive with joining/leaving the channel.

The economy is not nonexistent, supply and demand still operate perfectly fine and the financial boom has shifted to the third and fourth sector. Anyone who still tries to make a buck with diamonds is basically forcing themselves into Indian trash dump sorting child labor. It's very unrewarding because there's so much of it already.

I have never seen a solid suggestion thread to remove /fix. I have not seen the amounts of "many people" anywhere. It may have been part of another thread and I might have read over it, but I cannot recall ever seeing that anywhere on the forum.

Since this applies: Kidmodo was banned for insulting others over Alliance chat to my knowledge. He also continued to call Thortuna a whale on his ban appeal. Faction chat to my knowledge in terms of offensive language has never been used to ban anyone, just measure the severity of a ban as a catalyst.

MassiveCraft staff monitor certain factions/players chat when it is deemed necessary. In this particular case, screenshots were submitted by someone in which members from certain factions were planning a mass advertisement spree on MassiveCraft for a competing server. Since this is against the rules, the game staff had reason to look into the faction chats of various factions. Keep in mind hundreds of factions exist on the server. Just because 2 of them are monitored when there is more than adequate reason to believe some members within have motive and plans to harm our server, doesn't mean that it happens to all factions. On MassiveCraft you are permitted to invite friends to a minigame server or a skyblock server or whatever. It becomes illegal when you try to draw players away from Massive to go play on another server instead because it harms our business. To us there are various degrees of security for channels. General is an "A" class channel in which all rules apply. Alliance is a "B" class channel in which /some/ lenience is made occasionally. Faction is a "C" class channel in which moderation never occurs unless the server has reason to believe the communication therein could be with the intention to harm the server as a business. By all means you could insult negativity about staff members or even ERP in your faction chat (as long as you don't violate international law of course) and staff wouldn't punish you, even if they were aware of it. Actually harming the server by trying to draw members away or attacking the hardware with DDoS however revokes your privacy privilege.

I'm going to make a very unpopular suggestion to you and @65jes89 now. Both of you have energy and emotion towards the server, I am aware of this. You both criticize the server and try to improve it because you care, instead of just hopping to another, I am aware of this. Sometimes or maybe often though, there are obstacles in the way. Be it for example my disinterest to do anything for PVP'ers or Cayorion not having enough time. In such cases, could you consider actually joining staff? I think if you have the energy to write this, you will have the energy to help us improve the server with the input you provide, as well as work. Mind you, this is not an invitation for you to just toss your opinion directly at us and to require us to work on it. It doesn't work like that. That is how the squire system failed, the squires had a lot of opinions but no motivation to actually work for anything beyond PVP play testing in arenas. If you join staff, you will be expected to communicate with staff members, cooperate with them in a team work environment and make your contributions to make your voice be heard. That being said, it's also not a full-time job, our "minimum" specifications for being rank 1 is 10 hours of work in 10 weeks. That's almost 10 hours on 1680 total. Staff members also take breaks all the time. It's not a continuous obligation. Heck you might even come to realize how much work is done internally in the staff, and see all those vague rumors about the staff internal structure melt away that have been flung into the world by disgruntled ex-staff.

Ofcourse. You will have to get over the whole community castration issue. As soon as any PVP'er joins the staff, they become outcast among the PVP'ers and part of the enemy. It would be nice to see someone from the PVP community step up to the challenge, put some hard work in place to get done what they want done, and to defy the constant vicious cycle.

[/QUOTE]

PvPers don't just randomly flame Rpers. We get irritated with Rpers when they try to change a style of play they are not involved in and have never even experienced for themselves. A good example of this would be random non premium rpers that post a suggestion that boils down to "Remove PvP features cuz i got raided and pvpers are teh sux."

MonMarty · Feb 5, 2016

BenRekt said:
When you referred to staff not having proper "PR training" that set off a few red flags for me.

Staff members don't engage in "PR" training. Some of them simply have communication skills that others don't. I'm able to write lengthy messages in which I try to convince the other side of another point of view, but I'm also able to quickly take a step back and disconnect myself from whatever emotional flux is happening. The ability to step back in particular and not get defensive and emotional about an accusation is what sets apart those who speak publicly, and those who are asked not to speak. It's sort of a worst case scenario situation where we want to avoid a particular case deteriorating even further because a staff member cannot keep their cool or whatever. Not saying those not on that list are all hot heads, just saying they specifically trust the people on that list to do the talking for them.

BenRekt said:
I honestly don't know why you wouldn't believe people care about where the server is going.

I've written a bunch of lengthy posts about staff thought and what not, and generally speaking they get about 120 ish views or so in a short amount of time and about 7 winner ratings or 10 agrees. That's it. Those aren't representative numbers. The replies are also very minimal which always gives the impression nobody really cares. The amount of hours I put into posts seems kinda pointless if I only get 3 replies out of it and I don't see any particular trend changes in the community as a result of it.

BenRekt said:
Also I was referring to Avenginq only

Like I was indicating, in the past 3 days maybe those chats have been occasionally fished for offending content. And the following should also be understood about Hawkeye logging: yes, it logs everything, but it filters. No staff member was just like "oh well going to load up the entire chatlog of Deldrimor and ready trough it!". What in all likelyhood happened in that a staff member specifically searched for a keyword let's say apple. And as such, the following things show up:

1835255604 2016-01-22 14:47:52 ContestedSnow Chat regalia2 2828,82,3001 ~Sitrius Ravenburg asks: Are we all playing stare at Apple?
1835255899 2016-01-22 14:48:03 Absinthe Chat regalia2 2833,82,2997 ? ~Zakiyya Amirmoez says: ...Apple? That's an Ailor you idiot.
1835257197 2016-01-22 14:48:54 Rhubarb_ Chat regalia2 2837,82,2997 ~Karim Amirmoez says: Apple. Huh. Such an odd-...

It should be understood that never is an entire faction log read. Maybe sometimes there is a disconnected conversation and it's important to see what is happening on the other side, but in all likelihood a staff member did a keyword search and found the offending person speaking about the subject. They probably never even read the faction chat at all. We call it word flagging internally.

BenRekt said:
I'm not asking for a concrete "This is the solution we have and were going to do it ASAP" - I just want to know your personal thoughts - do you even consider them a "problem"? I welcome your opinion but if you don't want to give one for fear of other people lashing out at you I understand.

I recognize them all as problems. I recognize PVP'ers as our biggest cash cows. I recognize that roleplayers are not that strong of an investment curve because they bring in less donations. I recognize that as such PVP plugins should theoretically be prioritized. I often tell Cayorion every single chance I get to prioritize PVP related matters. I see there are many PVP related problems in the PVP community both player generated/staff generated. I help Gethelp and Thortuna drill any requests trough to Cayorion if they benefit the PVP community and they are having trouble getting Cayorion to agree to something or do something immediately. I want to help the PVP community. But I face a lot of rejection from them for doing so, which in the end made me disinterested.

Yet of course I have responsibilities. Two days ago there was a major direction meeting where trough my urging, a major step forward was taken for PVP'ers, but I'm not allowed to talk about it or take credit because we have internally decided to keep quiet about it in order to prevent negative behavior from certain individuals. I'd love to prove those PVP'ers that say I don't care about them or ruin their gameplay on this server wrong by simply showing what I have done/will do. But. I can't.

We have an iron willed codex which strictly regulates how open we can and will be with regards to dispensing information. It's the same codex that causes disgruntled ex-staff members to effectively get ahead by spewing whatever bullshit they want, and because we aren't allowed to contradict them or engage them in arguments about it, they are generally assumed correct. Please understand that despite these drawbacks, this codex makes MassiveCraft hugely professional and clean of any corruption, a day and night comparison to many other servers. We have our reasons for keeping the codex and enforcing it as strictly as we do.

Winterless · Feb 5, 2016

StereoTurtle said:
This might trigger PvPers, but:

You can't really test anti-cheat privately. It has to be tested with the player base. You can't test it with like, a dozen people, and expect accurate results. Just sayin'.

I just tried it twice in real world scenarios, first with laur7391 and second with Chappers65. Both times it achieved nothing but hitreg lag or altogether removed hits and weird rubberbanding. It's actually hilarious how badly calibrated it is. @Chappers65

Sevak · Feb 5, 2016

MonMarty said:
Informatively speaking:

That plugin has never been on the server before.

The plugin has not necessarily "failed". It's too sensitive, surely.

Player base consultation requires a lot of bureaucracy and is unnecessary.

On my personal opinion: I am not a fan of the anti-cheating plugin, but I support the pvp/tech department in their implementation. It's important to understand the context behind it.

Informatively speaking:

The plugin was tested privately by Gethelp first.

The plugin was then tested on the server by staff privately.

The plugin was then tested with small amounts of players on the server.

The plugin was then released to the full public.

Testing protocols are in place. Whether they are adequate is not guaranteed. I am not satisfied with how the Anti-Cheat plugin performs purely speaking from a roleplay point of view. It seems to somehow cause severe latency issues for people with crappy connections and computers, which has caused me to jokingly refer to it as the "Wage gap" plugin. I however maintain a little bit of patience as the plugin has been on the server for just a few hours over 24 hours now, and still needs further configuration. Final configuration can only take place on the server itself. We cannot do play testing in cases of shitty internet connections or computers because all staff members have adequate equipment to play Minecraft with.

You are entitled to such. However:

Cayorion does not communicate much with players because he prefers to work.

The vast majority of the staff are not permitted to communicate with players due to lack in proper PR skills.

What little staff are permitted to communicate boils down to:

Diaphonos

Addrion

MonMarty

Thortuna

Ryciera

I won't speak for the others on the list but I am 100% punctual when it comes to communicating changes and messages to the Roleplay community. Why don't I do this for the pvp community? A multitude of reasons:

I don't PVP

I don't often know what I am talking about in terms of plugins. I was not present when the Anti-Cheat was implemented nor do I know the status of its configuration as I was working on something else at the time.

I don't particularly care for the PVP community

I feel like I need to expand on the last point before someone wildly spins it out of proportion like the first reply to this thread kind of cynical people: I don't particularly care for the PVP community because it doesn't particularly care for the work I do. This is also fine because I don't take decisions for PVP'ers. The PVP and Game department take decisions for PVP'ers, I only toss in my educated guesstimations on what will happen and support their work when needed, for example I make a world map for Gethelp when he wants a new KoTH map. From a rotten core of some PVP'ers I only get shit by being called the Antichrist and a whole bunch of slurs against homosexuals, down to being called "The source of everything that is wrong on MassiveCraft". From those in the mid ranges of toxicity I have to deal with them trolling in Regalia because "hey let's show those roleplayers what losers they are". Squarely put I've never receive any words of encouragement, recognition or appreciation from any PVP'er, even when I jump into the fray to try and help out due to some vague sense of obligation. And that's fine. I am not the kind of person that goes looking for such as I find enough reward in my work. But to receive the extreme opposite, slander and ridicule, makes me disinterested.

I could talk for hours about this sort of stuff, but I generally assumed nobody particularly cares to hear my road map. As for ideas. It's a bit of a stretch to assume staff don't care because of a lack of responses. The reality is that I stopped looking at ideas because I fear either making empty promises that I cannot keep because the Tech department is unable to create more time for something, or rejecting something outright as being inadequate or impossible to achieve. Players often have zero clue how much coding goes into something that they feel is incredibly small and easy to achieve.

If there is more clamor for me to be more outspoken about internal staff mechanics, I can bring this up during the next meeting on Wednesday and we can discuss what can be done. Potentially we can also bring back open Teamspeak meetings but I'm not 100% a fan of that myself as players tend to be disruptive with joining/leaving the channel.

The economy is not nonexistent, supply and demand still operate perfectly fine and the financial boom has shifted to the third and fourth sector. Anyone who still tries to make a buck with diamonds is basically forcing themselves into Indian trash dump sorting child labor. It's very unrewarding because there's so much of it already.

I have never seen a solid suggestion thread to remove /fix. I have not seen the amounts of "many people" anywhere. It may have been part of another thread and I might have read over it, but I cannot recall ever seeing that anywhere on the forum.

Since this applies: Kidmodo was banned for insulting others over Alliance chat to my knowledge. He also continued to call Thortuna a whale on his ban appeal. Faction chat to my knowledge in terms of offensive language has never been used to ban anyone, just measure the severity of a ban as a catalyst.

MassiveCraft staff monitor certain factions/players chat when it is deemed necessary. In this particular case, screenshots were submitted by someone in which members from certain factions were planning a mass advertisement spree on MassiveCraft for a competing server. Since this is against the rules, the game staff had reason to look into the faction chats of various factions. Keep in mind hundreds of factions exist on the server. Just because 2 of them are monitored when there is more than adequate reason to believe some members within have motive and plans to harm our server, doesn't mean that it happens to all factions. On MassiveCraft you are permitted to invite friends to a minigame server or a skyblock server or whatever. It becomes illegal when you try to draw players away from Massive to go play on another server instead because it harms our business. To us there are various degrees of security for channels. General is an "A" class channel in which all rules apply. Alliance is a "B" class channel in which /some/ lenience is made occasionally. Faction is a "C" class channel in which moderation never occurs unless the server has reason to believe the communication therein could be with the intention to harm the server as a business. By all means you could insult negativity about staff members or even ERP in your faction chat (as long as you don't violate international law of course) and staff wouldn't punish you, even if they were aware of it. Actually harming the server by trying to draw members away or attacking the hardware with DDoS however revokes your privacy privilege.

I'm going to make a very unpopular suggestion to you and @65jes89 now. Both of you have energy and emotion towards the server, I am aware of this. You both criticize the server and try to improve it because you care, instead of just hopping to another, I am aware of this. Sometimes or maybe often though, there are obstacles in the way. Be it for example my disinterest to do anything for PVP'ers or Cayorion not having enough time. In such cases, could you consider actually joining staff? I think if you have the energy to write this, you will have the energy to help us improve the server with the input you provide, as well as work. Mind you, this is not an invitation for you to just toss your opinion directly at us and to require us to work on it. It doesn't work like that. That is how the squire system failed, the squires had a lot of opinions but no motivation to actually work for anything beyond PVP play testing in arenas. If you join staff, you will be expected to communicate with staff members, cooperate with them in a team work environment and make your contributions to make your voice be heard. That being said, it's also not a full-time job, our "minimum" specifications for being rank 1 is 10 hours of work in 10 weeks. That's almost 10 hours on 1680 total. Staff members also take breaks all the time. It's not a continuous obligation. Heck you might even come to realize how much work is done internally in the staff, and see all those vague rumors about the staff internal structure melt away that have been flung into the world by disgruntled ex-staff.

Ofcourse. You will have to get over the whole community castration issue. As soon as any PVP'er joins the staff, they become outcast among the PVP'ers and part of the enemy. It would be nice to see someone from the PVP community step up to the challenge, put some hard work in place to get done what they want done, and to defy the constant vicious cycle.

[/QUOTE]
I believe the reason a lot of PvPers don't want to apply for staff is because they're no longer allowed to PvP on their main account. Also it seems in the past that people (qgmk as an example) who have gotten a rank got very distant from the rest of the PvP community and stopped raiding. In this day and age, one person no longer PvPing in the factions world can make a huge difference.

What Ben is talking about when he says the anticheat has been on before he is not talking about the same plugin but there was definitely some sort of anticheat. I remember specifically Sarinex/DrewRat24 getting perm banned from anticheat. I also remember spectec pulling me in to a channel on Mag ts a long time ago because Massive's anticheat was picking up that I was using "God mode."

MonMarty · Feb 5, 2016

Sevak said:
I believe the reason a lot of PvPers don't want to apply for staff is because they're no longer allowed to PvP on their main account.

That's a fable, staff members are still permitted to PVP. I just strongly urge them not to. And that is only done because I don't want them to have to deal with over 9000 complaints filed against them and reports of power abuse. Even if an accusation is false, it really slashes into someone's motivation.

Zacatero · Feb 5, 2016

MonMarty said:
That's a fable, staff members are still permitted to PVP. I just strongly urge them not to. And that is only done because I don't want them to have to deal with over 9000 complaints filed against them and reports of power abuse. Even if an accusation is false, it really slashes into someone's motivation.

So your saying the amount of reports/complaints/accusations completely outweighs their desire to PVP. So they just stop, or are forced into using an alt. It really sucks that people would have to blame losing a fight on admin abuse lol

MonMarty · Feb 5, 2016

Ziburinis said:
So your saying the amount of reports/complaints/accusations completely outweighs their desire to PVP. So they just stop, or are forced into using an alt. It really sucks that people would have to blame losing a fight on admin abuse lol

It goes to such ridiculous proportions that people have told me straight to my face they expect me to use god mode even before I PVP.

Kibaa · Feb 5, 2016

MonMarty said:
Informatively speaking:

Player base consultation requires a lot of bureaucracy and is unnecessary.

???

I guess it's not necessary per se but... That's like if a government imposed a curfew on their city without telling anyone about it, and then hundreds are arrested at night because their governemnt didn't inform them that they are implementing this new system. I'm not trying to say this in an offensive way because i've had my fair share of fights with you and I have zero incentive to get into another one, but bruh..

MonMarty · Feb 5, 2016

Kiba Araqnuibo said:
???

I guess it's not necessary per se but... That's like if a government imposed a curfew on their city without telling anyone about it, and then hundreds are arrested at night because their governemnt didn't inform them that they are implementing this new system. I'm not trying to say this in an offensive way because i've had my fair share of fights with you and I have zero incentive to get into another one, but bruh..

This comparison is often made, but it cannot be made. A government rules over people. People on average spend 80 years in a country. People pay taxes their entire lives and contribute to society trough working as the working class or entrepreneurs. Our server "moderates" people who have an average sticking force of 3 months. The vast (VAST) majority of them do not pay taxes (donate). Players on the forum often assume they are representative to the server when they are not. By the time we get the relevant polling tools ready and distribute them across the server/forum/facebook and then get to the implementation and iteration stage, a large chunk of the people who once voted are no longer actually playing by the time it all gets implemented. And then in many situations players have no clue what they are talking about because they lack general statistic tools that we have available to ourselves, when it concerns matters that they aren't personally involved in. It's sort of like asking an a High school Student to have a say in how the mechanical engineering of an electric substation is going to look like.

Conventional input gathering doesn't apply. It slows down the work process largely because players are horrendously divided on many things. Even matters like god apples cause constant arguments, ergo the reason they aren't being brought back or nerfed is because there is no "main trend". Everyone just disagrees with everyone.

A Long Rant

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people need to hear it sometimes

people need to hear it sometimes

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