Answering Your Questions, Input Form and Dancraft's Future on April 20th, 2018
There has been a lot going on behind the scenes at Dancraft these past few months. This post aims to answer some questions that the community has been asking, and let you know what we have learned from the most recent input form.
Is Dancraft Resetting?
We have seen this question being asked a lot lately, and we’d like to clarify that Dancraft is not resetting. Well, that’s the short answer. The long answer is that at sometime in the future Dancraft probably will reset. But that time in the future isn’t tomorrow, or next week, or the week after that: there isn’t a date in our calendar. If we do ever plan to reset the server, we’ll let you know via an announcement post well in advance.
It may be worth noting that when Dancraft resets, your rank and all non-consumable packages are kept. If you purchased consumable packages like keys within 30 days of the reset, they are given back to you too.
Is Dancraft Dead?
If we look at the definition of dead, which is “No longer alive” (Oxford Dictionary), I think we can objectively say that Dancraft is not dead. But people probably aren’t using the term so literally when they declare Dancraft “dead”, in fact, “dead” in this instance probably has a different meaning for everyone that uses it. Because of this, it’s very hard to grasp what people actually mean when they ask “Is Dancraft Dead?”.
Content-wise, since August 2017, Dancraft has: released a completely revamped network, a new Ulti server, two major Ulti updates, a new Skyblock server, a new Factions server, Oldschool Factions, Oldschool Skyblock, Creative, a new KitPVP server (which was closed), along with loads of other updates like DanGames changes (prior to August, Dancraft didn’t have kit upgrades, a lobby, etc) and the release other new servers included in the revamp like OP PVP.
So, we can say that there have been a lot of updates, but quantity doesn’t equate to quality. The content updates aimed to go above and beyond the needs the community, and were based on feedback from input forms and players. Despite this, we think that some updates haven’t met expectations, needs, and some have been outright disliked by almost all members (e.g. shop prices in Skyblock).
To conclude, “deadness” in terms of content: we think that whilst we have released a lot of content, the content isn’t thriving. We thought that it was great, but in retrospect, we were out-of-touch with what you, the community, want. We can, and will, do better.
Playercount-wise, Dancraft isn’t anywhere near as big as it used to be. From November 2012, up until about late-2016, at peak, we always had over 100 concurrent players online. We know you don’t want to hear about how “this is a general Minecraft trend” or that “Minecraft isn’t like it used to be”, so we’ll keep this short:
Dancraft’s current playerbase is the lowest it has ever been, but it isn’t getting any smaller (in other words, we have “bottomed out”). We really don’t think “dead” is the correct term to use to describe the current playercount, but can see why it might seem fitting to some people. We’ve got a lot planned to grow and market Dancraft, and we will let you know about this soon.
Will There Ever Be Community Staff Members?
In the past, Dancraft has had community members help in enforcing the rules (prior to 2015). We are aware that a lot of players want to help out, and think that community staff members could be a solution to some problems like rule breakers, and administrators being out-of-touch with the community.
To be completely honest: we are opposed to the idea. But, in light of recent feedback, we think that a Community Manager, and perhaps some Helpers (players who have abilities to kick, and issue some light sanctions to enforce the rules) could resolve a lot of problems with the community and server. More about this soon.
Input Form
Firstly, we’d like to thank everyone who took the time to complete the input form. We’d also like to especially thank those who wrote very detailed answers, these have been very, very helpful in better understanding the community’s perspective.
Below we have detailed some of our most-important findings and conclusions drawn from what you have told us. Only what we believe to be most-important has been mentioned, because this post would quickly turn into an essay if we noted everything. If you’d like to request a specific piece of data, let us know in the comments and we can add that to the post too.
Gaming Time and Distribution
The questions regarding how long you spend on Minecraft, on Dancraft, etc were to allow us to better understand how long people spend gaming. The sample cannot be considered representative of anything other than those who play Dancraft at least once a week, or check our Discord/Twitter/forums, because they are the only people who would have filled in the form. We can also assume that players who don’t care that much about Dancraft, understandably, may not want to waste their time filling in a form like this. Nonetheless, here’s what we found:
About 75% of people who completed the form spend over 5 hours gaming a week, about 60% play more than 5 hours of Minecraft a week, and about 40% spend more than 5 hours on Dancraft a week. Unsurprisingly, more people play on Fridays and weekends than on weekdays (about 15% more).
This data on its own is not that significant, but when paired with answers to other questions, it can paint a very helpful picture for us to base future updates and changes upon. For example, most people that spend a lot of time gaming, but not as much on Minecraft, said that they were looking to play Oldschool Servers. There are a lot of conclusions that can be drawn from this, e.g. those that currently play Minecraft aren’t really interested in older versions of Dancraft (meaning Oldschool updates might not make those players spend more time on Dancraft).
Dancraft Servers
The findings from questions like “Do you play Dancraft Factions?” and “Do you play Factions on any other servers?” were very insightful. As said previously, it is important to note that people who prefer to play elsewhere might not take the time to complete the form. Here’s the rundown:
Dancraft’s Future
As said at the start of this post, there has been a lot going on behind the scenes. We aren’t making any big changes soon, and this section isn’t as detailed as initially planned. In fact, it’s just a list of what will be happening to Dancraft. They’re big changes.. and they might surprise you, but rest-assured we aren’t going ahead with anything without feedback first, and there will be more information announced in the near future. Here’s what will be happening to Dancraft in the upcoming months (prior to/around July 2017):
That’s really it. Two changes, but there’s a lot more to them than two paragraphs.
We will release more information about the above soon. We wanted to let you know what we have planned so that, well, you know that we have some things in the works!
Let us know if you have any questions in the comments!
15 CommentsDancraft Input Form on March 19th, 2018
Dancraft was launched in October 2012, that's over five years ago. Together, as a community, we have smashed through amazing records, like hitting 1,250 concurrent players online.
The general sentiment among the older community is that Dancraft isn't what it "used to be". We agree. We want to change that.
This form gives us insight into the opinions and perspectives of you, a Dancraft player, so that we can better cater to your needs.
Complete it at:
https://goo.gl/forms/IIGK3CQqOCOT1MJC2
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Minecraft 1.8.8 (running Spigot)
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