Development Communication

Recently there has been a severe lack of communication from the people making decisions, and it feels a lot like choices are being made by a very very small group without much consideration for community opinions or the feedback once a change is implemented. I know a lot of people are feeling frustrated at this recent trend, especially considering we continue to see a lot of changes that seem to be driven mostly by the potential money it’d generate as opposed to actual improvements to gameplay. LemonCloud has insane potential as a server and I’d really rather not see this lack of communication and care continue because it’s really ruining people's perception of the server and is starting to cause people to just stop attempting to even suggest changes. Here are more of my reasons why it has been awful, and my suggestions on how it can be improved!

More Frequent Changelogs

Since the start of August we have had a total of 3 changelogs. People are being left in the dark on changes for too long and are having to attempt to figure out if things are intentional or not on their own, as well as guess what has actually been changed, as the official changelog doesn’t come out for weeks after said change was made. 

Changelogs need to be a lot more frequent so the player base is actually aware of what is going on. It shouldn’t matter whether or not there are a lot of changes to send out, if there have been changes they deserve to be mass announced to the public in a timely manner via changelogs. They should come out at least weekly, with larger changes getting pushed immediately on top of the weekly changelog. 

It also doesn’t help that it appears some changes don’t get announced in changelogs either. One example is I’ve heard that Skyblock’s dynamic pricing is no longer fully based on the previous 24 hour period and instead the modifier will slowly decay over time, which definitely feels like it is the case, yet this change is missing from changelogs. I don’t know if I’ve heard wrong, or it is an oversight, but something's definitely been changed about dynamic pricing and it is not explained by any of the recent changelogs. Regardless, the potential inaccuracies with the changelogs make it even harder to know changes so it’d be nice if a better system was in place so we know we’re actually getting all the changes if things are just getting forgotten now. 

Engage with Suggestions and Feedback

Right now there are many suggestions or feedback posts with large amounts of discussion or upvotes that will go weeks or months with little to no response from those making decisions for the server. All suggestions, but especially these popular ones, should be getting a proper response. Instead of leaving posts for months just to deny and close them when they are inactive, try to be part of the discussion and explain why you would be denying it and still be willing to listen to the feedback the community gives based on that statement. 

The lack of communication in response to suggestions or the feedback on new features or changes is what hurts the most. A lot of these discussions are coming from long term players who genuinely care about the server and want to see it succeed. Not every suggestion has to be accepted if you have reasons to not do so, but just express that in the moment. Continually just brushing off people trying to give feedback on something they enjoy and want to keep playing has just left a lot of people feeling hopeless to the point they won’t bother making suggestions because they assume it’ll go nowhere like all the other ones. People would be a lot more understanding of decisions if there was more transparency on why they are being made, as we are essentially clueless before changes get added. 

The biggest example of this right now is obviously the reclaim changes, specifically on Factions, and the feedback that has been made since its announcement to this day. There have been valid concerns from players which have gone completely unresponded to about this massive change. If you’re not going to accept someone’s suggestion on how the system can be improved, and implement your own solution (being Soul Scrolls in this case), then you should be able to tell the community your reasonings for that decision and realistically should be asking for further feedback on that before adding it. Keeping all of this a secret from the player base is honestly just a pretty bad look because it’s making it seem like you don’t want to tell us the real motives for the feature. 

You should be willing to at least entertain the feedback of your active player base because they’re ultimately the ones who are keeping the server alive and right now there are several examples where it feels like we aren’t getting that which is getting increasingly frustrating (hence this post). With all the money being spent on advertising these last few months, it’s not a good look to any new players that these suggestions are just being left there, and that the general community also jokes about how suggestions are never considered. If the player base saw an improvement in the way suggestions and feedback are handled then I know people would be more willing to spend more money on the server too, since people right now are avoiding financially supporting the server as they feel their opinions are not cared for.

Feedback Team

An easy way to make sure that the community is more involved in decisions being made for the server and its gameplay would be to reintroduce the Feedback Team (and actually utilise them). A selection of long term active players for each gamemode that understand the gameplay loop of their respective gamemode/s and can act as a consultation point for changes within dedicated chats. 

The reason it failed when it was last a thing was because it ended up not really being used, so you’d have to be willing to spend the time discussing with its members. Including prominent community members in the discussion around certain changes can make sure that a lot of perspectives can be brought up and considered, and can be an easy way to make sure that things are fine tuned before implementation or scrapped completely after realising it wouldn’t work the way you first thought, before they cause damage to the gamemode.

Dev Updates

I think it would be cool if we could get semi-frequent (monthly or so) dev updates where you could tell us what areas of the server you’re currently looking at or considering changing. It would be the perfect opportunity to communicate with the community and let them know where you are at in the server’s development, and a great opportunity to show what you are working on and provide reasons for the upcoming changes. 

These sorts of updates would be so beneficial to keeping the player base informed on what’s to come, and would give us a starting point for feedback instead of everything being reactive. Since a lot of changes just happen without any prior indication that they will, a lot of feedback on them is coming after they have been implemented and potentially caused some sort of harm to the gamemode, its economy, or the player base's perception of those making the decisions. Telling us what’s in the works means that the wider community can then provide feedback before it is actually implemented on the server and would likely result in an outcome that more people could understand and agree with. 

Obviously this only works if you’re willing to actively engage with the community’s feedback, as previously mentioned in this post. 

TL;DR

The lack of communication from those making decisions is harming people’s perceptions of the server and should be corrected. There should be more transparency surrounding changes, and the community should be a lot more involved through things like the Feedback Team or Dev Updates. The biggest thing that needs to change is to just be more active in suggestions and feedback posts because right now the player base is often just in the dark and a lot of people are feeling hopeless when it comes to trying to help improve a server they love.

Huge +1

I think one of the biggest things worth emphasizing here is that posts like this and the suggestions/feedback we've made over the last few months aren't just people complaining for the sake of complaining, as some players have suggested. A lot of us have been part of this server for a very long time, have spent years on its staff team, and genuinely care about the community. If anything, I think the willingness for players to write posts like these shows how much we care and want things to improve, rather than just giving up and going to another server like others have done in the past.

I especially agree with the point about bringing back the feedback team. Of course, it needs to actually be utilized this time. I understand that admins have a lot of responsibilities already and that feedback team could be viewed as another burden, which is why it could be organized differently than in the past. I think having a few active players who have consistently contributed to suggestions act as "leaders" for their respective gamemodes within the feedback team. Rather than relying on admins to initiate every conversation once a suggestion is made, these players could help bring relevant suggestions up, facilitate discussions, and compile the feedback for staff to review. This would help keep the feedback team active even when management is busy, while also providing a space for direct community input from loyal players. Obviously, these players wouldn't be running the team themselves, with staff still having oversight and the final say of how it all operates. The idea would simply be giving staff a helping hand with keeping things organized and active to make sure community feedback isn't being neglected, as many of us feel it has been over these last few months.

As @Zacxry said, we don't expect every suggestion to be accepted, but people still want to be heard. I know there are many long term players who would enjoy to be part of a feedback team, and having a dedicated space where we can directly discuss changes with staff would go a long way towards bridging the current communication gap between players and management.

BIG +1

I honestly couldn't have said this better myself, the constant lack of communication from management and being unwilling to listen is honestly beyond frustrating.

ditto to all Zac said, and thank you for adding this support to the discussion!

This is exactly what the server needs — more transparency. It’s something I’ve said since the first week I joined.

The server has so much potential and so much room to grow, and there are constantly great suggestions coming from players that seem to get overlooked.

When you really think about it, players are giving LC valuable ideas for free — ideas coming directly from people who actively play the server, understand how it works day-to-day, and in many cases spend their own money supporting it. I genuinely think listening to that feedback should be one of LC’s biggest priorities, yet at the moment it often feels like the opposite.

I’m not sure what the long-term vision is for the server, but right now it feels as though there’s a much bigger focus on monetisation than there is on the overall longevity and health of the server.

More than anything, it sometimes feels like running the server has become a chore rather than something driven by passion, creativity and excitement.

If that is the case, then as someone who genuinely enjoys LC and wants to see it succeed, I really hope the team can find that spark again before it’s too late.

Brought a tear to my eye.

Well said.

Bravo 👏

Couldn't have said it any better. Not sure if we'll get a management response to this though.

Even if they dont know wether they are going to accept or reject a suggestion, a simple message to say theyve seen it and are looking into it would be just fine, instead it just seems like whenever you take the time to make a suggestion, especially when its regarding a recent change, its just completely ignored.

Something else that I forgot to mention that fits into this is that the official feedback posts ahead of a gamemode reset need to be posted earlier. I think there has been a few times now where resets have been delayed for whatever reason, yet the feedback post isn't made until dev work is actively being put into said reset. It feels like this kind of speeds up the feedback process in a way as now it is a rush to push out the reset, and discussions can get cut short which could make or break some really cool ideas. If these posts get made before the dev work officially starting, it'll allow for more ideas to be fully fleshed out by the time it gets to implementing them, and if there is any complications that delay a reset the entire process won't need to be as fast tracked to get it out.

Of course this would be easiest to do if reset schedules were more structured and kept to their schedule as much as possible, instead of waiting until a gamemode has died to reset it. I know there's been a lot of talks about how Prison will be running on 3 month long seasons, Skyblock on 4-6 month, etc. but this Prison season is currently 83d long and there is no indications of it resetting anytime soon. Just in general I think sticking to a schedule for resets instead of just vibing it out would be beneficial for players as well, allowing them to better manage their time and resources, as well as give new players an indication of what to expect when they join.