TotalFreedom's Player-base Decrease

I think the main issue right now is advertising. Since MC is gaining more players each year (see https://www.businessofapps.com/data/minecraft-statistics/), I think it'd be worth our efforts to focus more on that so that more people can at least know of the server.

So here’s an insider fact for you all - it is extremely, extremely difficult to maintain a player base for a server like TF. The main reason for this is a glaringly obvious lack of things to do. We don’t really do anything well; the trademark feature of TotalFreedom, being the freedom aspect, is being remodelled every single day. By this I mean the rules are evolving, and are growing increasingly restricting. I will expand on this point in the thread made by @"characterslimits"#428 soon.

TotalFreedom is more of a creative server than a freedom server, and it does that quite shoddily. The holy grail that can fix all of our problems is @"Miwojedk"#64’s thread. When I was EMM I tried to work categorically through the thread and deliver on what I could - while I did get through a fair bit, the developer stuff was the real limit.

The fact is that we do not need anymore advertising. I think we’re covered for the next few years thanks to SEO. This type of advertising does not have an “expiry” date, so I doubt we will be pouring more resources into marketing.

The main issue is retention. It was a pain in my ass earlier too, and that culminated in Ryan essentially just making the EMM in charge of retention. I had a lot of ideas. One idea that I think should still be implemented is a “new player’s handbook”. New players have no idea where to start, what to do, or how to have fun on this server. They should be greeted by a book detailing exactly how to begin, our features, what do to etc.

These issues are not new. I made a thread on this way back when I was AECD, and all of those points still stand.

Lockdowns are likely the biggest reason for 2020's playercount

totalfreedom player count. just advertise right??

nope lack of quality to keep people around, its like filling a cup with a hole in it. big enough for most to go through but some bits of moisture are left on the sides

just seal that hole then. add quality to this server

nope, plastic factory is running on like two men. you cant fix that massive hole because theres not enough supply. furthermore they got this new dumb fuck formula they got to follow which takes ages. just like how you cant add quality to the servers gameplay because the devs full priority has been set to be updating TFM to 1.17 and nothing else

alright fuck freeop, what about other freedomesc ventures, anarchy and creative anarchy

the plastic factory doesn't have the workforce and they're too scared to try a new formula on the case its not exactly a fit or dissappointing the masses. last time they tried a new plastic it wouldn't attach right. the metaphor here is that the developer priority is getting to 1.17 alone and skyblock didn't fare well so literally nothing else will. i personally think theres a market and welcome additions to here for a creative anarchy and anarchy survival. obviously TFM needs to update and the dumb fuck satya nadella is like "Hurr Durr Java 16" which given we aint had a proper update on this 1.17 version for quite awhile now (believe its been a fat minute, 3 months). i hate being this guy because im getting development on this certain plugin which has been tampered with so much is really not easy. but this is ultimately starting to be one of the huge points on why this server isn't going many places

but then get more devs right??

no because if a cup cant carry shit then whos
else going to be invested to change that. this is just a huge ass chicken an egg race at this point and its honestly driving TF to the ground. this and the more stricter rules against NSFW sayings which to my knowledge has had its staple here in the past.

either way its pissing me off now since i obviously stated very recently how much TF meant to me especially during the original lockdown where i was at my lowest for quite some time. and honestly i dont know how to properly end this rant anymore. its a vicious cycle of what if's and a load of buts and i've no clue how it is to end

I said it on discord and I'll say it again. The server is basically a giant Spiderman pointing meme. Everyone is blaming eachother for the decline in players, when really the community as a whole can be to blame. The reality is the decline in players in Minecraft as a whole. 7 years ago TF didn't need anything fancy to be popular. It was all third party hosted. But I agree, people don't want to stick around on a dead server, because it's no fun. Half of TF's fun was actual community and having the slot count full at peak times.

I don't think it's fair to push the blame onto ownership though. A lot of factors have caused the decline in TF's playerbase.

Everyone may say, well what do you suggest that makes it better? That's actually a pretty difficult question to answer on the spot. Firstly, the original concept of TF used to be so simple. You can have freedom, as long as you're not a douchebag to other players. That was it, that worked. Free op, mob disguise, worldedit. You name it, we had it, or if we didn't, then you'd make a suggestion.

Now its more of a case of
"server is dead"
"Ok what do you suggest"
"Idk thats your job"

from my POV, regardless of who is owner and regardless of the executive team, TF is currently fucked.

Let's imagine for a moment that Panther did something. That something being introducing a new gamemode or something because the Freedom aspect of TF is legit the most uninteresting thing since An Inspector Calls. What would happen on the thread?

Quote

You're killing the server
You're incompetent
You need to do x and not y

And you know what would happen? Nothing. Back to square one. Nobody would make any meaningful suggestion to change what had happened, nobody would make any attempt to salvage what the thread was suggesting to implement. Two days later we would get a thread by someone who said the above trying to say "We need action. Panther isn't doing anything."

And then we'd get into a state of "oh wow TF is dying we need someone who knows what they're doing" and the blame then falls on Ryan. Why? Because he's a scapegoat cuz nobody here wants to admit that they're wrong. About Minecraft.

Yall, we have something you won't find in many other places, and that's a sense of community. It's so unique that I can't even begin to describe what I mean. We are squandering this by infighting and the inability to actually do anything because no matter what, we throw bullshit at the owner, executives and anyone else who dares disagree with what we're saying.

that isn't to say the community is the whole source of the decline, there are numerous things to "blame"

However, I'm not even going to bother going into detail about these things. You know why? Nothing will change. Nothing is going to get fixed, this thread is gonna fall somewhere obscure, and TF is gonna die. I can guarantee this because its happened before.

This happens at the begining of litterly every school year, and everybody freaks out. Give it a month or 2 and things will probably start returning to normal, you have to remember that a majority of our playerbase is still in school and so they can't join the server while at school

Ryan has just summarised it pretty accurately in admin chat and I'll explain it as a simple vicious cycle

1. Playerbase is almost non-existent
2. Devs lack the motivation to work
3. We don't have things to make the playerbase grow or prevent it from bleeding
4. Go back to 1

↩  Tizz Glad Ryan’s made it public that we are inevitably fucked. I thought we would be keeping that under wraps to keep morale somewhat up 🤣 😭

↩  RedEastWood why? it's obvious to anyone with a functioning brain cell? (Apart from dragon apparently)

What the fuck did I just wake up to

[url=https://ibb.co/qrxw3SM][/url]

Erin it can’t be ☹️☹️

↩  Luke bruh this litterly happens around this time every year

Proof, see these posts, I'll make them available to those without proboards access once I get home:
https://totalfreedom.boards.net/thread/67994/w…ics-august-12th
August 2020

https://totalfreedom.boards.net/thread/65269/feel-bad-server
October 2019

https://totalfreedom.boards.net/thread/63709/state-totalfreedom
March 2019 (this one is closer to exam time for most schools so yeah)

https://totalfreedom.boards.net/thread/58341/a…ggestion-thread
Feb 2018

https://totalfreedom.boards.net/thread/64838/why-more-concerned
Aug 2019

https://totalfreedom.boards.net/thread/64478/tf-mtfga-action-plan
June 2019

Couldn't find just one post for begining of school year in 2018, but did find like 10 inactivity notices about people going to school

https://totalfreedom.boards.net/thread/58734/feel-number-admins
March 2018

https://totalfreedom.boards.net/thread/58313/admin-activity
Feb 2018

There's a lot more I could sift through but I don't really want to search through the whole forums rn

↩  DragonSlayer2189 Except this isn’t with school opening all of a sudden.. this has been declining for months..

↩  You! still it takes time for people to get used to school stuff, and for those in college, some people still haven't started school, my older brother starts school next week. I predict that things will likely start improving a bit more starting late October to mid November, will peak a bit during winter break, then go back down and kinda stay the same for a bit before increasing again at the end of the school year.

I brought this up earlier in the Discord server (Like a few minutes ago)
From what I've noticed across the board when it comes to Freedom servers, not really many people care enough for them. Sure, we have events and stuff like that, but that still doesn't make a difference.
From my time moderating Freedom servers, they've soon died down after some period of time, some lasted longer than others.
But that doesn't mean we should just give up, we should give the players something more that DOESN'T require a shit ton of Developer work.
Just something to think about.

Maybe it's time to pull the 🔌 on TF...

↩  Shdwo It probably is, to be honest. However if Ryan shuts it down, no doubt someone else will try to take over TF.

Quote

↩  DragonSlayer2189 I predict that things will likely start improving a bit more starting late October to mid November, will peak a bit during winter break, then go back down and kinda stay the same for a bit before increasing again at the end of the school year.

This is expected but the decline will still be here. There’s no confirmation we’d have more players than Winter last year and it’s probably going to be low numbers.