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Answering Your Questions, Input Form and Dancraft's Future



  • 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:



    Skyblock: about 35% of people who completed the form currently play Dancraft Skyblock, whereas 40% used to play it and no-longer do. 15% of people who filled in the form play Skyblock on other servers.
    Prison: surprisingly, 50% of people who completed the form used to play Dancraft Prison, but no longer do. Most responses in the input boxes below shared similar views - the Prison server is too easy to progress/it gets boring after prestiging a few times. Like Skyblock, about 15% of people who filled in the form play Prison elsewhere.
    Factions: about 40% of people who filled in the form currently play Dancraft Factions, and about 40% of people used to play Dancraft Factions but no longer do. It is important to note that Dancraft was a standalone Factions server in 2012, and has had a Factions server for most of its lifetime. Some people commented that they used to play Factions in 2013/2014, but haven’t liked the newer iterations whatsoever. This is different to responses in Prison that relate to people getting bored of the existing content, as Factions players clearly dislike the newer servers from the get-go (and therefore don’t play). This shows not only in written responses, but also in the data - almost 30% of people who filled in the form play Factions elsewhere.
    Creative: definitely not a popular server, but also our newest, so a lot of people may not have had a chance to play it yet. About 25% of people used to play Dancraft Creative, but no longer do (likely in 2013-2014), and 10% currently play Dancraft Creative. About 10% play Creative elsewhere.
    OP PVP: Like Prison, the results surprised us, and the feedback in the other sections allowed us to better understand them. 33% currently play OP PVP, 33% used to play OP PVP and 33% do not play OP PVP. About 25% of people play OP PVP elsewhere. It seems that these results are caused by: Ulti being more popular (lots of people said that they like OP PVP, there are just less fights) and the old map being preferred.


    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):



    Dancraft rebrand: Dancraft will be rebranding in a few months. We can’t release any specific information about this, but we can say that there will be a major update arriving at the same time. Dancraft’s old servers (in their current form, not reset) will always be available at legacy.dancraft.net, so if at any point you decide you want the old Dancraft back, it’ll always be there.
    Ulti splitting up: Ulti is one of Dancraft’s most-popular servers. Something we’ve been working on lately is a standalone more-competitive season-based version of Ulti with real-life rewards. This will be a separate server to Dancraft, but part of our parent company’s network, meaning players of Dancraft will have the opportunity to be part of the beta team, give feedback, and claim exclusive rewards. Ulti in its current form on Dancraft is going nowhere.


    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!

  • Nice to get an insight into the much anticipated future of Dancraft, Will be interesting to see how some of these changes are implemented.

    The stats from the input form aren't surprising and support the general trend and attitudes of regular players on the Dancraft network.

    That said Prior to July 2018 (2017 in the forum post) will there be any changes made to Factions?

    From reading the post a few times I get the idea the community can expect multiple separate servers to be forming, 1 being the Legacy Network and the 2nd being the ULTI split, as of now that would seem very counter productive, splitting already low player counts up, but if the player count is to rise before then it could prove beneficial. Do you plan on implementing these new servers straight away?

    Old school servers where what gave and maintained Dancraft's high player count way back when, so it would be fair to assume they along with other additions are what significantly contribute to an increase in player count. That said I think it would also be counter productive to separate new players and old players in the form of having 'New-School' and 'Old-School' servers, Minecraft servers in general are constantly modernising and losing touch from what made Minecraft popular back then. It would be nice to see and in my eyes beneficial for Dancraft to merge new players and old players into old school style servers.

    In terms of server administration I don't think at the moment and for some time active moderation would play much of a part as people expect, I think as of now active forum moderation would be more beneficial, people who are actively causing mischief and disruption on the server should be removed as soon as possible. To prevent bias in terms of players having double standards for friends breaking the rules, issuing sanctions based off of forum reports would be fair, monitored and recorded. An outlined and recognised member of the community acting as a community 'manager' would definitely be beneficial helping connect the often times non-existent relationship between server admins and the community.
  • With the current playerbase a single active staff member that is online (and not officially given the title of staff) is all that's needed. Keep other candidates for when the server grows once more.
  • @RD_
    We are still updating existing content and the server, so there may be small updates and changes to existing servers (including Factions), but nothing is planned.

    In regards to counterproductivity: we can only speculate upon what the results of these changes will be. There's lots of research and more to them than I explained above, but to clarify:

    Legacy Network: it will not be available within the first week of launch of the rebranded network. It not be updated, or marketed, but will be moderated and maintained (bug fixes, etc). It should, in theory, be fairly empty. It's there out of courtesy and respect for those who have invested a lot of time into the server, and expressed in the input form that they do not like resets, etc (namely Skyblock and Creative players).

    Ulti Split: marketing plans are ultimately what call for the Ulti split (there's a lot more planned for the future of the new Ulti server than we can explain). We will be marketing it as a separate server, and it will probably have a few players from Dancraft who like competitive Ulti. With our marketing plans for both servers, I doubt splitting up Ulti will result in any negative effect to Dancraft as a whole, outside of lowering the Ulti playercount (because people are playing on the new server).

    Oldschool Servers: we are moving away from Oldschool Servers with this rebrand. They will be available on the legacy network, but the new servers aim to be suitable replacements for all players.
  • ayo give an invite link to the discord
  • the reason players dont stick is because there are too many gamemodes for too much of a little playerbase, remove things like the second ulti server remove creative and only have factions ulti and skyblock (maybe oppvp) then when the playerbase starts to grow again(if it does) release those servers again with all the progress players have made saved.

    and find out why I can't connect, please.
  • also dan if you want more players to come, you should release a trailer and have an f top prize for factions. it usually attracts players and pushes them to spend money to get ahead. or pay youtubers to upload atleast once a weak so their fans want to come and play, stremers dont work as the players are only online when the streamer is on.
  • AND PLEASE ALLOW PLAYERS TO CONNECT WITH 1.7.10 AND RELEASE A SOUPPVP SERVER THAT IS ALIKE THE OLD 'MCTEAMS' AS THERE IS A DISTINCT LACK OF SOUP PVP SERVERS IN THE PVP COMMUNITY
  • Dan, you made posts like these many times. I completely have no idea why you still have faith in your server. You clearly messed up and you are trying to fix your mistakes why? You have built a reputation of unreliability and as your players, we know this very well. Second, how can you oppose staff members? That is one of the most crucial aspects of running a quality server. In the end, you can't fix this server. You already have screwed up big time (I can make a whole list) and no one is interested in regards to updates, etc.

    Also, by the way, why the hell are you constantly using the word "we"? Like who the actual **** is "we"?
  • @paksjr
    Appreciate the feedback. Thank you. I'm not too sure what (if) our current plans are, but they definitely won't be overkill.

    @Radgie
    Appreciate the feedback. I don't think we will be able to implement a Soup PVP server at any time in the near future (no time/resource to do so). We are planning on streamlining the "server line-up" (removing Oldschool Servers, putting more emphasis on our most popular servers, actively marketing specific gamemodes via content creators).

    @HeyItsHenry
    Appreciate the.. feedback?
  • @admin Yea, you're welcome! Clearly, you don't want to accept nor respond to my comment because you know that what I have said is true. Dan, don't act like a fool.
  • Answer my question, bud.
  • You know @HeyItsHenry, shut up. You stick around berate Dan and have a laugh about it! Just stop. Dan doesn't have to try to improve the server, he could shut down the servers, he could let it die, but he still tries to revive it to its former glory. if you really think this server and its updates are terrible, leave, no one wants a complaining dip wad like you
  • I think you should rename ur server, not dancraft, something else, idk what tho.

    Most people think of dancraft as a 'dead' server and one for hackers. This is why noone plays.

    Remove old school things, rename your server. Have factions, skyblock, ulti and kitpvp. A new server with an old player base might work, with new traffic coming in and not a server people ignore in their server list.
  • @ElijahBandit, this isn't a laughing matter by any stretch. I can state my own damn opinion if I want to. It's a pretty strong opinion, really.
  • This all sounds like great input to me. I try to stay on everyday for an hour or more, but it gets harder since there aren’t so many players on. Also if there are players, they are either AFK or just wanting to grind and not interact. I try to remember to vote everyday, to see if our rank can move up and get more noticeable. Hopefully these new changes Dan brings will change the server dramatically for the better.