CU Updates #6 - Crates, Surveys, and more

[haloman30 168]

Hello everyone! We have a new feature added to the Minecraft server, Crates!

 

What are Crates?

 

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Crates are essentially a random item generator. You can obtain keys for various types of Crates. There are currently 6 tiers of standard crates:

• Tier 1 - $500 - Contains very standard items, nothing too special, such as stone tools and basic materials
• Tier 2 - $1200 - Contains moderately decent items, such as minerals and Iron tools
• Tier 3 - $1500 - Contains some potions, brewing items, axes, minerals, and standard Golden Apples
• Tier 4 - $2800 - Contains Sponge, Melon Blocks, various minerals, and some Diamond tools
• Tier 5 - $3200 - Contains enchanted Diamond tools, minerals, and combat-related items
• Tier 6 - $5000 - Contains diamond armor and tools that are fully enchanted, a Nether Star, various minerals, and both types of Golden Apples

The prices listed above are the ingame currency costs for buying a key to open a crate. You can buy crate keys using ingame currency, but Donation Store purchases will be added later on. There are also crates for completing surveys, which are ONLY unlockable by doing a survey. You can use crates in Survival, Factions, and SkyBlock.

• Survival - Go to /warp shop and find the Crates area
• SkyBlock - Go to /warp skyblock, and look in the HelpCenter
• Factions - Go down the steps and enter the newly added doors to the interior of the spawn

 

Why are Surveys even a thing?

 

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The surveys were created to help get focused ideas on how to improve the MC server, and finds out what people like/don't like. It also presents ideas that staff have for the server to the players, to get their input. If you don't want to do a survey, then don't. The first survey was in April, and it had a pretty fair amount of responses. With the survey, changes have come and will keep coming to the server (cough cough Spawn). Originally, no reward was planned for these surveys. But shortly after the May survey was launched, it was decided that surveys should not go unrewarded. Hence the implementation of the Crates system.

 

April Survey Statistics

 

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Not all stats will be shown, but let's go over the basics.

 

Overall, Spawn was rated about average. Not terrible, not great. Most suggestions pointed to changing the theme of spawn to be more current, as it was Christmas for some time. Shortly after the survey got a few responses, the change was made and the spawn is now spring.

 

 

According to the survey, the most played gamemode is Survival (no surprise there). And apparently, more people sit in spawn for hours than play SkyBlock. In other words, most of you seem to just sit around and talk (don't feel bad, that's what I typically do too). In terms of improving spawn, not much helpful input was given, but oh well.

 

In terms of the least favorite gamemode, there seems to be some conflict. Factions, Survival, and SkyBlock are all even, then some said they are all great and they all suck. In either case, not too much to go on.

 

It seems many of you are pretty happy with the current server structure, but a few still dislike it. Let's look further down.

In terms of BungeeCord vs. Hybrid servers, more people prefer Hybrid. That being said, a lot of you also prefer BungeeCord. But that topic will be discussed more in the future.

 

But in terms of those who took the survey, EVERYONE prefers the global chat. Like the earlier bit about Survival, not too much of a shocker.

 

For those who voted, CUEmotes is a somewhat touchy subject, though many of you are either somewhat or mostly content with it. That being said, some changes were made but have not been announced yet. The "18+" emotes have all been removed. Not admin restricted, they have been entirely removed from existence. Most of you also voted to add even more emotes. Additionally, a couple responses suggesting the removal of said 18+ emotes and setting a cooldown were also mentioned. 

 

Most of you were either neutral to CUXPSell, or outright didn't know what it was or that it existed. The plugin was developed by a former admin of ND, Cars, but unfortunately I doubt many of your suggestions for CUXPSell will be happening anytime soon since Cars is currently MIA.

 

Most of you actually like the survey idea. Now that was a surprise to me. But it is good, because now I have a decent way of getting ideas and feedback. That being said, some suggestions were made. One of them was that some things should be less mandatory. The argument being that people may not know what some things are, and that people should be able to remain Anonymous as they may feel more comfortable being critical. The other suggestion being to add in-game rewards for doing surveys. First off, in terms of being anonymous, it was set up that people may enter 'Anonymous' into the field. The negative about being anonymous is that rewards cannot be validated. (It typically is not a problem but it could be in the future if Survey Keys are abused.) As for rewards, those are already implemented as mentioned above!

 

Well, for those who filled them out, everyone voted that Surveys should keep coming. As such, they will.

In terms of the MC server and CU/ND as a whole, most of you had good things to say. But the bad things to say were all the same - we need people. Also said is that we need Staff in different TimeZones, and someone suggested a CS:GO server. Not sure on the CS:GO server, but Staff in various TimeZones is definitely a good idea (CSGO is not out of the question, just that we are unsure of the real demand for it at this time).

 

 

To top everything off, the banner for the MC server on server listings will be updated at last:

 

 

[stickman147147 0]

Thats a sick banner.

[haloman30 168]

On 5/10/2016 at 8:47 AM, stickman147147 said:

Thats a sick banner.