Player Retention | Long Duration Worlds
I know this has been asked many times before, but this time, I’m trying to get some opinions.
Session based?
If you run a session based/have experience with one, what was it like? Was it better to go with sessions, or should the server stay on at all times?
World border?
Is it a good idea to restrict world border? If so, by how much?
Semi hardcore?
If we end up going with a session based mechanic, would it be a good idea to ban a player until the next session if they die (items retained, or not?)
Then, mods.
I know it’s a complex topic, and the answer may be different for everyone.
Is a terrain gen mod worth the effort, does it somewhat help with player retention, or is it just “lazy”, as you lose the need to terraform when building?
And finally
What are some of the things that you enjoy the most (and hate about) on a multiplayer server (things the managers do, modified game mechanics, etc etc?)
What mechanics (as a server owner or player) do you employ to keep a world fun over a longer duration of time (to combat the “two-week syndrome”)?
Thanks in advance for answering my bombardment of questions lol. Feel free to throw in personal experiences or stories, all questions are open ended!
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Requested by _.dominic#0
Session Based
Personally, I’d recommend just trying to go with consistent activity throughout the day, not individual sessions. Session based gameplay is not automated, meaning it’s entirely contingent on you showing people around. You also can never get consistent players and build a community that way.
World Border
It’s always a good idea to lower the world border, but it depends on your storage capabilities and the type of gamemode you’re running. For an SMP, 20k ish seems to be a good one. I would always recommend pregenning with chunky to cut down on lag/TPS drops
Semi Hardcore?
Check out a server called hotdog water. They have a server that’s hardcore and when you die, you can vote in their discord to reset the world
Custom Terrain
I’ve experimented with this with Terra. The terrain on its own will not retain any more players. You need to work it into existing systems, lore, mechanics etc. Like making a new dimension with quests and bosses or something and that has custom terrain, imo.
Overall just having unique content is the most important. The only thing that will extend the 2 week Minecraft phase is giving players something that they can’t get from vanilla Minecraft
Unique content is what I need help with 🤣 , but thanks for the input!
Unfortunately if there was a guide for how to make unique content it would immediately not be unique 😭
Yeah, seems like I may need to pray that my players understand the concept of lore
@Torrent just curious, how do you implement lore on your server? Like to get the story out and have the players build upon it
Personally I work lore into basically everything we do. Here’s a few ways we’ve done it:
- custom quests with consistent lore
- events based on lore. For example on the 26th we are having an event using the movecraft plugin where aliens invade the planet and you have to raid their ship with fighter jets (we did it 1 year ago and it was really fun)
- item descriptions: we have a lot of custom items that all have consistent lore in item descriptions
- plugins like MCMMO can have translations that expand on lore. All of our skill names and descriptions are consistent with lore
- we use a server assistant chatbot (serverassistantAI) that knows our lore
I would say quests and NPCs are the biggest one
You can also incorporate it into your builds
So quests huh… would be interesting to incorporate into a somewhat vanilla server
And finally, videos. We’ve done some animations that expand on our lore: https://youtu.be/impVd5iqHRU?si=LD_eI2CNoKjnU1CX
Kiokugames
YouTube
Tales From Torrent Trailer(A Minecraft Machinima)
The trailer for the upcoming Minecraft Machinima animated series.
With the pilot episode rise of the tinkerer.
The full episode will be coming out June 25th.
That’s the thing, if you’re trying to run a vanilla server you can’t really add extra content like this. You pretty much have to market yourself as something more unique than just vanilla
I have dum players, dumber than usual :minecraftTroll:
But yeah I see, thanks for the heads up
Get smarter players 😭💀
If you’re looking for a quest plugin would highly recommend BeautyQuests
Very solid plugin and very easy to use. You can do a lot with it, but don’t expect it to be as complex as BetonQuests
I use fabric unfortunately
Have about a month (slightly less) until scheduled launch, so about 20 more days until the trailer needs to go out
Sigh
I do have one or two custom mods in mind, however i dont know how to implement it, let alone how mod dev works xd
would be nice if I can get more input on this thread 🙂
In my humble, honest opinion, I’d switch to paper/pufferfish
Just way more flexibility when it comes to finding plugins to make your server unique
Anything custom you need can be done with resource packs
our entire ecosystem is based on mods, so that’s not really viable