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A thread has been opened up with the announcement of this idea. Use this thread as a place for questions and discussions. Please do not go to other staff than me about this, as I am the one who’s cracking the idea and the one who will be the one actually responsible for implementing it.
Also, if you wish to just complain about this (which is totally fair!) then please send ME a dm. My discord username is rinadeithe. I will answer any complaints about it.
If you DM other staff, then they will respond with “Please contact Rina or the thread made specifically for the topic.”
Open discussion
Hello everyone! Rina here.
I recently made an internal suggestion to the staff team regarding ranks and P2W.
The idea is that we close down Tebex (our online store) and implement all those features in game as content to be unlocked. It is very important to state here that ==IT IS PURE SPECULATION==, and even if we were to do such thing, then it wouldn’t be implemented until next reset.
The reason
Ottercraft has the last 18 months been on average been able to cover costs less than 4 of those months. It has only made revenue at about the times of resets where a lot of old timers has returned and played, which in turn has attracted more players.
Now the problem isn’t that ottercraft isn’t making money to cover costs. ==Ottercraft won’t close down due to money anytime soon. Please do not see this as plea for money.==
But because we havne’t been focused on cover costs, we could focus on things like player retention and fairness to players. This was also the reason for the first changes to ranks.
We quickly stopped focusing covering costs for these 18 months, and instead chose to focus on how to increase player retention, and having everyone be on equal footing. These changes has been seen in the change of ranks and the voting rewards to name a few.
The idea (Better explained)
It is no secret that Ottercraft, like any other survival server, struggles with player retention. While our most loyal players finds new ways to engage with minecraft on Ottercraft, then those players are only a fraction of the total number of players.
These changes would allow us to extend the game with our own content. We’ve already implemented this to some extend with vote ranks and vote perks. Our idea wouldn’t stop with voting though. We would look at how to make the end game more exciting. This could be lootable or craftable items giving more homes, or even us experimenting with some actual new features.
Generally we want to extend player retention by removing map initial perks and actually making it more fun to play on OtterCraft.
Perks
This actually have a lot of perks from a player, moderating and administration perspective. I can’t name them all here, but here’s some:
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Easier to update, as all perks would reset with the map.
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Everyone is equal at every start.
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Player retention will automatically be higher
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We can stop focusing on unfair perks. Both direct and indirect.
Roadmap
We havn’t actually made one yet for this, as we wanted your opinion first before planning anything (This is still in the idea stage).
This is what our improv roadmap:
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We would close down the store as soon as possible, as we don’t want people buying a rank that would dissapear.
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Then we would brainstorm on how to implement these features.
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Create an actual roadmap.
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Lastly we would have these new features ready for the next reset.
The features would be implemented as unlockables that you would get from playing, but not from voting.
The problem
The crutch of it is that to make it fair for everyone, then we would have to take away all ranks for everyone. This is not something we are going to do if any supporters are against it. After all, those of you who have bought a rank, have done so in the faith that you keep those perks. This is the same reason why the old ranks were grandfathered.
We will continue to do our best to limit p2w, expand retention and make OC more fun in the future, but it will be to a certain extend that we will be able to do this.
We truly believe this is the best way forward for Ottercraft. Both players and staff alike. It is without a money incentive and just because we really want to do something fun for you guys.
- Rina