Trouble maintaining membership?

[SojuSeed]

With every update that comes out and every conflict that arises between FTB and things like MCPC, or other things that tend to cause lag/stability issues, are you guys having any loss of membership? Our server gets things ironed out pretty quickly, but word is trickling up from our members that they're heading back to vanilla because they get tired of map resets due to bugs or world corruption, or just the near impossibility of running a stable server with good plugins on FTB.

 

[DZCreeper]

Nope, all I have to do is have backups, MCPC+, and 2 plugins.

Plugins are Essentials and World Edit. If I notice someone misbehaving and they say its not a prank, they get the ban hammer. Only 1 question asked and no chance to get back on the server.

I prefer server policies that limit updates to once every 2 weeks for new content, and updates that require switching Minecraft versions requires at least 50% of the players consent. Bug fix updates are installed on a per need basis and are received via FTP or Dropbox.

 

[UnionCraft]

We personally have a policy of no map resets for at least 3-6 months, even if we have to forgo an update. Many of our members joined us because they were tired of server maps resetting frequently just to update before anyone else. While we dont currently have a large member base (heavy whitelisting) the players we have now have been with us for almost a year.

Map resets should be an absolute last resort, I would highly recommend learning to use programs such as NBTEdit, that program has saved our server maps on countless occasions.

 

[HaoSs]

if there is a block bug. i remove it from all worlds using tekkitcustomizer. ban it. and wait for update + fix also world edit has a //regen command that will regen a selected region back to original state. But the most important thing to do ! Report the problem. go on mcpc+ github. make a ticket, contact the mod developer. ask if he supports in any way crash logs using mcpc ( some don't, like thinker construct dev ( shame on you! ), some do like applied energistics dev, not officially, but he will luck at the problem. ) Also don't make a huge server. 20/25 players max if you want to have a OK TPS. it will lag sometimes. Lest just hope someone will pick up TichThreading mod and will get back to full server with 3 months old map and 20 TPS all the time.

 

[SojuSeed]

The server maintenance admin was working hard to get plugins like MyTown and an economy plugin working. Getting things to work with mcpc was always a hassle and things would break down constantly. We've committed to maintaining the map as it is and have had it up for over a month now, but several players have left. We're working now to reestablish membership. At the peak about a month ago, we were doing about 20-30 members and things were good. It's hard to track how many people that left did so because of things like school starting up or because they were generally unhappy with the server. I was just exploring possibilities.

Thanks for the tips.

 

[pherce]

The server maintenance admin was working hard to get plugins like MyTown and an economy plugin working. Getting things to work with mcpc was always a hassle and things would break down constantly. We've committed to maintaining the map as it is and have had it up for over a month now, but several players have left. We're working now to reestablish membership. At the peak about a month ago, we were doing about 20-30 members and things were good. It's hard to track how many people that left did so because of things like school starting up or because they were generally unhappy with the server. I was just exploring possibilities.

Thanks for the tips.

Why would you run MyTown if you have MCPC+? Just run Towny. There are enough bukkit plugins out there to fix the issues that MyTown uses as a selling point: lasers (ic2 patch), wands (bedcraft), and any other dangerous item can be banned through the 40 item-banning plugins out there - if not flat-out protect from them. iConomy from April of 2012 STILL works out of the box, just drop the jar in the plugin folder and you can use the mini-db with zero hassle. I've been using MCPC+ on mod packs for over a year now and hardly ever have plugin issues (probably since Tekkit 3.0.4 and McMMO). Moving from Tekkit to Mindcrack was rough though with BukkitForge in its early days.

Your best practice is doing to be as DZCreeper suggested and backup often, and even grandfather your backups. If you're able to run something like rdiff for differential backups, or even hourly zips, then you can do something like restoring a single mca file while tracking down the problem. This will also let you restore just that area's clean chunks without making the entire server suffer constant rollbacks for trolls or buggy mods. Crash-reports folder is your best friend. Selected corrupted blocks with WorldEdit, rollback from LogBlock/Prism, brush bad blocks out with VoxelSniper. There are tons of options to avoid a massive rollback.

If you put in the effort to do the back-end stuff with plugins, mods, website, hardware/software optimization, and implement good backup/restore points, this will show your community that you can handle a crash while keeping their stuff safe. You will gain loyal community members for years.

 

[HaoSs]

" There are enough bukkit plugins out there to fix the issues that MyTown uses as a selling point: lasers (ic2 patch), wands (bedcraft), and any other dangerous item can be banned through the 40 item-banning plugins out there "

say what ? install 1x plugins to do the job of 1 mod ?