Today(march 15th) I sent a survey of 10 questions to every nation leader, admin, a few mods, and anyone else who’d be willing to do it. This article isn’t going to be my opinions but rather I seek to dive deeper into the ideas members of our server have. Before I begin I’m going to have to add a disclaimer, no matter how much I try not to be biased I’m still going to be. No one can completely be neutral on anything so naturally because every non neutral nation I’ve been apart of has been an alliance nation im going to be slightly biased towards alliance. Everyone polled unless they stated otherwise will remain anonymous.
The first question I asked everyone was “What are your thoughts on the current meta of ccnet”. I got 2 types of responses on this, people who think it’s gone too far in min maxing, and people indifferent. As Cam (the admin) said “Everything has become a MinMax nightmare. No one wants to try new things, challenge themselves, ect.” A large part of ccnet wants the meta to have a major change. As another player said “the meta is horrible, especially during seiges, destroying terrain and the same pot fight every time” and also many people said things similar to an anonymous player that said “certain metas that make the game more “arcade like” make the game annoying.” Overall players with beliefs like this made up the vast majority or ccnet players. However the majority of this group finds the ability to min max in areas such as forts very enjoyable. “But things like fort development or design metas for practicality are enjoyable and I like to see what people invent.” The major complaint of a lot of people is that a evolving meta is good, but when the meta comes to extreme and non creative means like terrain destruction and PvP logons it gets annoying. Many players after explaining their reasoning gave some ideas for improving the meta, the most common way that kept popping up was “there should be an ally cap.” Or “I wish there was a limit on how many nations could join a seige in either side.” A lot of these players also brought up concerns about how dp was introduced to be a solution to this problem but many players still don’t think this is a perfect solution. The main takeaways we can have as a community is that metas being developed generally is a good thing but when it gets to the point where we’re destroying rather than innovating it leads to a toxic environment that makes seiges and regions more toxic and hard to understand for a new player.
Question 2 was “Do you feel like there’s still room for innovation on the server?” The majority of players said yes but everyone took the question in a different direction. A lot of players said that seige and naval innovation was plateauing but believed industry and the economy could still grow greatly such as Cam saying “There are lots of game elements on nations players have not yet explored to their full potential. I wish players would larp more. […] Make fake religions, make businesses, make a snow removal service or something, there are so many options.” And other players saying things like “I believe innovation in a more socio economic sense is definitely possible as the server has neglected these elements of a geopol.” Or Paul saying “There’s always room for improvement in a server environment, and ccnet is not an exception. I would say the player support has to be stronger.” All of these players and others who didn’t go into detail agree that nations when people talk about development and innovation it’s only focused on war and other things get shoved to the side. However another big group believes that the server has lost room for improvement and innovation as things that could be done have been done. A player said “The cycle goes like this: a player invents something for seiges ( because nobody cares anymore about anything else ) this is then tested and used at a seige. The enemy’s can have two reactions: either report it to staff and staff will not allow it, or implement it themselves.” Although this player is likely exaggerating the staff involvement in innovation their opinion is still valuable, it shows us how there is room for innovation but because of how the players have structured the server we lose ability to innovate in some areas. Paul also said “I would like a server where players don’t need that much staff intervention in the meta.” And another player who said (in reference to the question) “in nations 2 probably not. The server has been running for quite a while and making major changes at this point would probably cause more problems.” Overall these arguments show the bigger picture issues that some players have, that if they want to develop their tech people may force admin intervention, or find it annoying that there isn’t more content to explore. Many players said things similar to piggylord who said “Innovation on player side is severely limited as no new craft types and very limited armament combos for vehicles on the server side there’s a lot of possibilities.” Showing how many players agree there would be more innovation if there was more content. The major takeaways I find from the players on innovation is that there’s room to innovate currently but its held back because players don’t find a point if it’s not for seiges. But when it comes to seiges there isn’t enough content for players to experiment with and when they find something out somewhat toxic environment forces the admins to be stuck choosing what’s legal.
The next question which I admit I should have worded better was “Do you like that there’s been the same war going on for the majority of the server?” Which got 2 very distinct sides. There were players who don’t like the war, the majority of which think something major needs to change. Paul said “I don’t as a staff member it’s boring, I can’t imagine how players feel.” And others saying “I don’t personally like it. It would make it would make the server diplomacy way more interesting if we had way more sides and perhaps the ally limit lower” or “No I find it incredibly boring, it was refreshing to see AUS and OE make peace.” The common problem these players see is that the sides get repetitive, sure it keeps players having people to fight but they’ve been fighting the same people since 2022. Many people just want something to change to make wars and diplomacy more interesting. However another big group of people think that a 2 mega alliance system works. Players have said things like “I like how it is - major nations having forever wars, and neutral nations stirring up things sometimes. It creates a more community-unified social aspect of the server.” Or another player who said “It doesn’t really matter to me, the conflict can be fun, 2 sides isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s more that the 2 sides haven’t evolved.” And also a player saying “Conflict is good since it’s a war server, but two sidedness isn’t great, especially when there aren’t region conflicts. If there’s a seige all of the participating nations allies show up from across the world.” Most players who think like this don’t care too much about the fact it’s just 2 sides. They enjoy the combat, and having fun with their friends. In a lot of responses from both sides people said that everyone takes things too seriously and the server should be focused on having fun fighting not who’s fighting. Players from this side also argue that even though the sides have stated partially the same there will always be betrayal, and the sides will always change. Overall players agree that fighting the same battle a thousand times isn’t very fun but the devide is that some people find that it changes enough and fosters community and some players think there needs to be a major change for the server to be enjoyable.
Those first 3 questions will be the bulk of this article so expect the next 4 or so paragraphs to be much shorter. Question 4 is what’s the most enjoyable part of ccnet for you? I asked this question to figure out what part of the game the community as a whole likes and I think these correlate to what features the community wants to flesh out more. Some of the common things people like and want include “Trading and industry”, “building”, seiges and Movecraft”, “Growing my nation/town”, “Slimefun and industry”. Those were quotes that just kept popping up among the playerbase. I know that my opinion doesn’t necessarily matter in what gets developed but I feel the server should focus on industry and trade features. And if as a community we want to have those features given to us we need to advocate for ourselves to get those features.
Question 5 I regret writing being “Thoughts on Nations 3?” I should have written it as thoughts on nations getting major changes or something similar to that. But the past is the past and I got major insights into how players feel about major changes. Many people think that it would be good thing to have big changes. Players said things like “I think that a complete data wipe with same map and all features would be INCREDIBLE” or “if my thoughts on n3 include ending nations 2, then yes, n2 must end for the sake of our mental lives.” Players on both side of the war think that it’s fine too far and we need a reset. However many players had said things like “I’m against it because lot of players would surely quit” or “I wouldn’t like to lose all the history if n2” overall the majority of players find the idea neat but think it’d make the community worse or just think it’s a horrible idea.
The next question was “What do you think nations could add to make it a more fun server?” Here is another section where we can take notes and advocate for what we want as a community. I’m not going to include many quotes but instead a large list of wants of the community. Coded in events less stressful then sieges, more automation in industry, adding raids, coups, small features to hold us over to cw, fleshing out the economy, more activity’s to accomplish, a healthier environment. Overall the players want more industry and smaller combat events. However almost half of responses said everything they want is coming in hedgmond. The community wants new content and industry to play with as we wait for sw to come out.
The last question I’m going over the results of is “Are there any problems you have with nations or the community as a whole?” And reading most of the responses I felt disappointed in us as a community. The majority of complaints were about the toxic environment “Toxicity and a arcade like meta”, “there’s a lot of toxicity :(“, “Just the toxicity mainly”, “I’m not a massive fan of how players conduct themselves. It’s not a great way to represent themselves.” There were other smaller issues people had but I’ve talked about all of those already. It’s just again and again people said it’s a toxic community and I think as a group of strangers on the internet who play Minecraft together we need to do better to make this server a place where people can have fun playing with each other.
Thanks for reading. Credits to Noah for making a staff list, all the nation leaders who responded, the community as a whole for being great, and our amazing staff team working to make the server a fun place.
Last edited: 18 hours ago x 2
