AMA Look what you've done Charlie, now everyone's doing it.......

Staff member for the better part of 2 years, played this game for 6 and a half. AMA, (almost) nothing is off-limits, ask some interesting questions for a change and I'll answer them for a change :v

Also, no opinions (on people). All my opinions on anyone I can think of are either uninteresting, or completely inappropriate to say publicly.

 

What was it?

 

First thing I'd do - get more monetisation added. Not going into details publicly on what I'd add (yet), but a lot of gamemodes have really limited (or absolutely no) monetisation. No wonder we can't afford more than 1 dev. Assign 1 dev on working on monetisation until we are making enough money to hire another dev. Assign that dev on updating the other gamemodes while the other continues to work on monetisation until we can afford to have 4-5 devs hired total, and the ability to pay our build team (not a huge amount, of course, Brawl would need to grow a lot until builders would be getting paid as much as devs).

As soon as we get our first new dev, this is when the major changes come into place. Revamp upper management by ensuring each gamemode has someone managing it. We'd also have a general manager - probably me, since I'd be owner, which is a pretty typical occurrence in companies. They'd be in charge of coming up with ideas for the network as a whole - achievement systems, daily challenges, monetisation, etc.

Have several community managers - 1 of whom would be the main community manager (hopefully me, if I was owner, but it'd depend how busy the role is) who would cover the server as a whole, the others would have a smaller scope. These guys would be in charge of generating user feedback (by hosting focus threads, focus groups, polls, etc), managing a community trello (which would contain all popular community ideas), and the community discord (which would be revamped quite a bit).

We'd also have event managers, who would be responsible for hosting events very frequently. This would range from major tournaments (think: Quarter Quell, yearly CTF tournaments) to minor ones, like random old map events in CTF. Events would be a major part on Brawl, as Hypixel very rarely hosts any, but it is a great way to increase player retention.

Instead of upper management being a small percentage of staff members, instead this would end up being 1/3rd the staff team who have dedicated responsibilities other than moderating. As Brawl grows, so would this group of staff members. The dream would be having a fully functional team of 40-50 people, many of whom professional, similar to what Hypixel is currently managing with their subpar monetisation and management.

Gamemodes should all receive 2-3 several large updates, primarily focused on increasing retention among new and old players. Make sure every popular suggestion by the community is considered, don't leave anything out unless there's a good reason for it. When these updates are done, ensure there are 3 devs available for smaller updates, aimed at tweaking what's already added and fixing bugs.

Assign the rest of the devs on developing a new gamemode, from the ground up, alongside the community. See Hypixel's Prototype Lobby. No point in spending a year or more on a gamemode which we release to a community who don't want to play it. Doing it this way also removes (or, at least, limits) the "it's new!!! Let's all hate on it because Brawl is dead!!!!!" response which every single new gamemode we've added recently has received, as that would kill any attempt at a gamemode we make, regardless of how good it is. I have a few ideas for new gamemodes but, again, not publicising this yet.

Meanwhile, look at how playercounts are doing for all the gamemodes. If a gamemode is getting proper support with community suggestions being frequently added and a small update every few months, yet still is not popular, the gamemode would be removed. It's hard to say exactly which gamemodes I'd keep right now, since a lot of gamemodes are neglected and have more potential than we're giving them, but if I had to guess: War and WarZ, as they're gun gamemodes, which aren't very popular anymore so they'd have limited growth. HG wouldn't be brought back.

Once our new gamemode is out, all gamemodes are sustainable, and gamemodes which have proven to have no potential are removed, that's too far into the future for me to know what I'd do with Brawl. The very long term goals would be to release a Bedrock edition server, standalone games, "mainstream" Minecraft, prove to Mojang how important servers are for the longevity of the game (in order to get influence with how the game itself is developed), have a large paid staff team and try to get an eSports scene for Minecraft, even if it's very small - and, bring back HG. But again, all this is way too far into the future to tell if any of this is possible or even a good idea to attempt.

Not giving specifics on who would fill what roles, since that's basically me giving my opinion on every staff member we have, and I'm not down for the drama that could cause (I'm controversial enough as is).

All of that's what I'd do as owner, and all this is what I'm going to try to get done even though I'm not the owner, and likely wouldn't ever be, unless I buy the server from Chap. Which is possible, but very unlikely.

EDIT: First thing I'd do would make a MAGA themed hat which says "Make Brawl Great Again", obviously. Everything else would follow.

 

Not bad. My life is hectic as ****, and after years of being completely demotivated to do anything I'm finally getting that sorted. Slowly but surely cutting off all toxic people from my life (as much as I hate doing that, because some of those people are people I genuinely care about even though I know I shouldn't), changing jobs soon, setting goals for myself, and for the first time in a while I'm actually hopeful for the future.

Nah, you're chill. It's just my opinion on you isn't exactly interesting, and if I let people say opinions, I'd be constantly responding by saying "yeah you seem cool" (which is the main reason I never actually answer my AMAs).

Only difference between Admin and SMod should be that Admins have file/console access. There should be nothing else different. This is not the case at all at the moment from my experience as an SMod, but if it were up to me, that would change.

Admins/SMods, enough to cover all the roles I outlined in the "game plan" above. Mods and JMods, literally as many as possible - if you're suitable for the role you should be given the role, no matter how many we already have. Hypothetically, if 50% of the community were suitable for the role, 50% of the community would be staff. Obviously this is not the case at the moment, but you get the idea. Any JMod capable of detecting hacks properly would be promoted to Mod.

Impossible to give exact numbers because it's entirely situational.

For our current size, 4 Devs is perfectly realistic if we monetise the gamemodes properly. Builders - honestly, no idea. The more the better, obviously only those who are suitable for it though.

Would be a question for Roke. Let me know the answer if you do ask him

 

Not breaking the rule because then everyone will ask me to break it, but I will say that you gained a lot of respect from me for posting this thread even though you think it'll negatively affect your staff application.

Basic alt checking. We shouldn't need to have 1 Admin spending hours and hours doing alt checks. His time would be better off elsewhere. All that needs to be done is a new version of the IP checking but with hashed IPs, so Mods can't get IPs from it. (Not to mention, you can get the IPs of everyone logged on to a server with 1 CMD command, so it's a simple solution to a non-issue). Also better forum moderation tools - though, forum moderation takes someone about 10 minutes to do every day, so it's much less minor.

Not sure if this is what you mean by permission, but they should be involved in the making of some of the more major decisions with Brawl. There's only 4 admin+s at the moment (5 including redslime, but I'm not sure how much he's involved in these decisions), and that's not nearly enough perspectives for an informed decision to be made. With the addition of our current SMods and the people I think should be promoted to SMods, that would be enough.

Note: they should be involved in the making of these decisions, they should not have any responsibility regarding actually making the decisions. SMods (and Admins) should be aware of the decisions being made and the direction Brawl is heading and should be given an opportunity to discuss and give their input on it. Only 1 person should be responsible for making the decisions, but the decisions should be made based on many perspectives.

And yes, that does mean SMod will become very similar to Admin. But that's what SMods are currently supposed to be - Admins but without file or console access.