How to Slightly Revive Mineplex Java

Coming back from a one year hiatus, it has been very disappointing seeing the player count dwindle below what I even thought was possible considering the server was once the biggest on Minecraft. This is even more pronounced for myself as an Australian, as in the evening when I am most active the server generally only has around 50 players online. This renders most games unplayable.

One thing that has always stood out to me with Mineplex is the lack of features to keep players coming back. The achievement system is fundamentally broken. Why? Because the primary reward, gems, are a fundamentally useless currency for the majority of the player base. Once you have unlocked all the kits you want, which honestly doesn't take very long, gems serve no purpose. Communities are dead for the most part so spending gems on them is like flushing them down the drain. I personally have over one million gems saved up and I know of people with a lot more. Due to this, there is no motivation to unlock achievements besides flexing to your friends (which isn't very much motivation to most people.)

Onto the mission system, Mineplex was on the right track here. However, the difficulty of the challenges outweigh the rewards. While shards are definitely a better currency than gems, I know of people who have unlocked all cosmetics so shards are practically useless to them. This leaves XP, which for a lot of people is great motivation. The renowned title of 'Level 100' is a major goal for a lot of people. However, this is a long and tedious process and can leave a lot who attempt it feeling burnt out. Not to mention one of the best games to grind XP, Cake Wars, is filled with closeters making winning nearly impossible unless you party up with these cheaters (which I do not recommend). Therefore, a little boost may be necessary to keep legitimate players motivated.

I would like to see two things implemented to the server. One, a proper use for gems. This will get players online to grind for the achievements as there is now motivation to unlock them. Two, daily and weekly rewards for each game with a hefty XP reward. XP motivates players, and we know this. Players grind Bed Wars for hours and hours on Hypixel just to up the number next to their name when they chat. It seems kind of silly, but it works. These challenges don't have to be difficult. It can be as simple as win x number of games or eat x amount of cakes in the case of Cake Wars. With more players online to complete the challenges, this will hopefully outweigh the closeters leading to more exciting and enjoyable games. Plus, with challenges for each gamemode this will encourage players to spread out and potentially revive games that have been dead for months. New levels to 150 could be added too so existing Level 100 players have something to work towards too.

Let me know of any feedback you may have, thanks!

 

True, I have done this, so I can confirm it it surely motivates the player. But that is also coming from a big server with a lot of value, so Mineplex should have done this before. The current XP system (towards lvl 100), while being fair, doesn't feel rewarding at all, so they need to change this.

 

I don't agree with adding more levels, level 100 is a good number to stop at, and tacking on a fifty extra levels and essentially setting a bunch of completionists to 100/150 is a bad idea. That being said, Mineplex does need a way to allow for continued enjoyment of stats grinding, and I think the way to do this would be a prestige system. Once players hit level 100, they'd be able to prestige, wiping all their gems and xp and essentially starting from scratch. I don't think achievements, shards, cosmetics, or purchased kits should reset, purchased kits theoretically could I'd just find that annoying.
Only thing I don't really know about is what the point of prestigeing would be. I'm sure there'd be many who just did it for the challenge, but some cosmetic reward (colored names in chat?) or something could be a good motivator.

 

Level prestige idea has actually been an idea originally polled in the level 100 discord and a lot of them agreed with it. Unfortunately we don't know if LT/Owners would agree with it, hence why the suggestion has been floating around for years.

 

Everything else in your post is good except this. I have always hated on colored names in chat since it automatically makes everything hard to read (unless it is limited to at maximum of 5 colors).

 

This was just a random suggestion that hadn't been done before, I think a better reward would need to be found.

 

Adding more levels to achieve would for me be monotonous... it'd just be the same thing which will eventually fall prey to diminishing returns until there's no enjoyment to be gotten from it anymore. However, it's an easy thing to do (from a technical point) which seems to work for some people - it'll definitely retain the completionists in the player-base.
What proposition do you have for adding some value to gems? It seems to me that you've highlighted that they don't have much value beyond buying the various kits for games, but there's no proposals for change that I can see.
Ditto with shards - the thread establishes that they too don't have much use once one has everything that can be bought with them, but no solution.
As people with an interest in Mineplex, it would be in our interests too to propose concrete ideas which could potentially help it flourish. Developers and co. don't have to be the only think-tanks here. They're most likely aware of the same things we are, so just pointing at things (which may have been pointed at countless of times already) doesn't do much.

 

nano games is one of the only playable games right now, so increasing xp for it could do wonders because rn it's pretty small even if you win a modest amount of the games