"Is Brawl Dead??//???/" Actual Discussion

I'm damn near a player now, so I guess I'll add to the topic of Brawl's well-being aka "BRAWLS DEATH!!!". Most of my discussion is going to evolve around the frustration others are having and end with my ideas for revival.

For reference, here are a collection of these threads I'm talking about:

• Why MC-War and MCBrawl is dying. By @onik
• McBrawl Death Prediction By @Seventh_Elf
• Fixing the Mcbrawl Community By @MrWaffleman
• What I Think Brawl Can Do to Revive CTF By @SoCool21
• hg is dead/gonna die brawl cant do crap munchy mc is dominating By @Creaturelord
• Is Brawl dead now? By @inj3ct0r_Alpha
• Is Brawl truly a "Dead" server? By @Fleega
• REVIVAL OF BRAWL?!?!?! By @sharkbaitBOOhaha
• #MakeBrawlGreatAgain (uncut) - suggestions to fix Brawl. By @TrumpMustDie
• Isn't Brawl dead? By @chikenanater011
• How to Fix Brawl By @JaydenChadd

Slow Decline of Players
Ever since late July of 2014, I would say our player counts were above what they should of been due to YouTubers advertising MinecraftParty. That server gradually lost momentum as less and less YouTubers played and as more and more servers begun making similar games. Overtime, we lost those players who weren't sticking to other Brawl servers.

Then the various Minecraft updates started. I've included a list of these updates that required servers to update their version in order to allow the newest Minecraft client version on:

1.7.2: 8/25/2013 ~8mo later...
1.7.6: 4/9/2014 ~5mo later...
1.8: 9/2/2014 ~8mo later...
1.9: 2/29/2016 ~1mo later...
1.9.1: 3/30/2016 ~0d later...
1.9.2: 3/30/2016 ~1mo later...
1.9.3: 5/10/2016 ~0d later...
1.9.4: 5/10/2016 ~1mo later...
1.10: 6/8/2016 ~5m later...
1.11: 11/14/2016​

It was all going well until after 1.8 was released. Brawl couldn't really add the new features to their previous gamemodes in time, so we just had to quick patch the servers to allow new Minecraft versions on. During all this we also got hit with the EULA around late April early May which prevented players from joining for a bit and caused financial issues.

So now it leaves us in a spot with less players and less profit to work with to improve Brawl.

Expanding Past Recovery
In the past, Chap had really focused on creating more and more different kinds of gamemodes. The gamemodes he wanted to create were also really extensive and usually open-world based. This calls for a ton of development and build hours. Essentially since MinecraftParty, Brawl has been overshooting gamemode creation goals; as proven with The Future of Brawl thread.

Focusing on new gamemodes caused for the old ones to slowly deteriorate and lose players. Not only lose players, but it promoted negative environment for community members. With a lack of a development team, it appears the other staff don't care about the servers. Focusing on backend infrastructure and previous gamemodes is something that should of happened before ever adding more.

Community, You (kinda) Suck
Aye, gotcha to read this. But really, the community at Brawl right now seems to be really bad from my point of view. It could be because I mainly stay on the forums and read all the negative stuff, but everyone is just bashing and being so negative that its hard to be positive. To a degree, I understand your frustration, however, nothing good comes from the flame I've been seeing lately.

Moving on from that, as I've said with WarZ:

I really think that the current set of players probably need to move on. Sadly, Minecraft is and has been evolving and it may be best for Brawl to get into some different categories to bring in new players. Perhaps the old gamemodes can be revived for new and old players, but I don't think there is much hope for old players. We're all getting older and the same things aren't as appealing as they use to be.

As with the MCPVP YouTube channel, I'm pretty sure people get on the forums (and servers) just to complain about things being stagnant even though they haven't been around at all.

Everyone needs to pull a more positive outlook and work together in order to see Brawl possibly prosper. I know I wouldn't join a server with a bad community right off the bat.

"Chap is rich, lazy, and CS:GO something something!"
Ever since I've been with Brawl, Chap hasn't been overly active. There are months were he is around more than others, but for the most part he manages his employees and points everyone in the direction he thinks we should be headed towards. He is free to do what he wants with his business, many business owners take a role like he does. Do I think Brawl would do better with more interaction from him? Depends. If he has someone leading Brawl (more so than I did), then no. In the exact state Brawl is in right now, yes.

He isn't rolling in cash, nor is Brawl heavily profiting. We're just getting back into the green with the employee (lol, hi) and server cuts. Purchasing MCPVP and our premium domain names killed most of the funds he had personally saved up. His CS:GO inventory is up to him as he does make a salary too! But, most of it was either won or given to him if you are still concerned.

Selling Isn't a Viable Option
The servers are so spaghetti webbed into everything, I doubt it would be worth it for someone to buy out Brawl. It would take their developers a nice amount of time to get everything separated into a state where they could start working with it. On top of that, I personally wouldn't purchase really old gamemodes where the player count hardly exists. Perhaps there is someone out there that thinks they can re-do everything better and spark it back up, but I think it needs to stay right here for future improvement to even happen.

The only thing that is worth something is the domain names themselves because they could drive players to a newly coded server.

Purposed Revival Plan
Here is what I think would get Brawl back on some kind of right track:

• Sell the HG domain and code
• Implement cosmetics & voting that was initially planned
• Resolve all the issues regarding the network infrastructure/backend
• Recode/finish new Party, War, WarZ, and add a SG w/ Guns based gamemode [add more devs in here]
• Remove dumb servers we can't actually upkeep
• Redo all art assets on the site
• Pay YouTuber(s)
• Purchase ad spaces
• Email everyone possible
• More quick-to-play servers like Party

It's not mind blowing stuff, yet most threads I mentioned at the beginning have failed to mention things like this. The downside is that all of this would take tons of time and money (surprise, surprise).

The essence of Minecraft these days seems to be all about gamemodes that you can easily play for a quick second while you have time. I don't see networks that have multiple open-world based gamemodes succeeding as they are hard to maintain and difficult to draw in new players constantly. It will be a struggle for Brawl to get back up there, but I think it is possible. Hell, it hasn't bit the dust yet.

tl;dr You should probably practice reading as you are on a forum meant for discussions.

Thanks for reading,
chickenputty

 

Nice first reply spam comment that provides absolutely nothing to the discussion at hand!

 

Once we filled our need for developers, they were simply assigned to servers that needed the attention more than Party did (War, WarZ, backend, etc). Party needs a whole new framework (game style) done to it; player replay value and profit need to be improved before adding more and more games. Looking just at the costs put into Party and income its made, we have technically lost money on that gamemode. Not saying the players it brought in didn't make us money, I have no idea. I've only recently realized that minigames are oh-so-popular too.

Yup

Yes, every good developer should always comment their code. This isn't really needed for Party as it's easy to read already.

 

I guess it's discouraging when you take your own guess at what the thread is about without reading it fully. I really didn't side one way or the other. I even said, "It will be a struggle for Brawl to get back up there, but I think it is possible."

 

I was able to make gamemodes as a novice developer.

Chap has different plans in mind that I don't agree with. Can't really speak for him as this is his thing.