Dwarven Recruitment . . . The Decoy Approach

Today there were four people on the server at once, Myself (supacreator), Mimido, Train, and Arrowwave. Imagine a world were the dwarven city had, on average, more than four dwarves on all the time, day in day out. And imagine that this was a community that was well founded and consisted of all trustworthy members. Now Imagine if what i have said, is possible, and we do not need bukkit to achieve it.

Today in the city of Mons Domus, an idea was born to greatly advance the progress of the dwarven city project. An idea that, if it is realized, would weed out the poison of greifers, trolls, as well as the weak or unmotivated, while it would continue to bring in a continuous stream of new recruits to the city. The idea was, to create an elaborate decoy. A different server and a different forum, under a different name. This would have virtually no application to it, however, it is designed as a trap to all those that otherwise would threaten the city. they would come and participate during our recruitment period, without knowledge that it is a decoy. Only the most talented, motivated, and trustworthy will survive and pass the test. Their reward for passing a test they did not know they were taking, access to the real forums, and the true city. On set intervals the decoy would be closed, reset, the white-list cleared, and the forums reset. We would of course let the others who failed of what the server really was and then make them keep quiet.

If this Idea is further expanded upon, refined, and planned extensively, it might cause a MASSIVE surge in productivity, member happiness, and overall enjoyment. Once the new guys get in on the secret we would still be watching closely for a couple of weeks. inactive members will be removed. Veteran dwarves who have been lost from the project will once more return. And to boot we could all do dwarven mining on the decoy with newbies to test them out. Non the less, let us get a conversation going, on the subject. Any additional methods or ideas are of course welcome. But i am VERY convinced that we need more members than anything else.

There are downsides to this however. Probably the biggest one is keeping everyone completely quiet about the decoy. no non-members can know about this once the choice is made and action is taken. Next, this would be another server to run, in other words more money to be spent, we can reduce this by only running the server every odd month, and setting up a better donation system as well as more adds on the decoy than is necessarily a good amount . Also the extra work we may be required to get it up and running is considerable. Finally, There is a chance that some of the unwanted will leak into the city despite our tests, that is why we would need to double up on backups and make every rule ABSOLUTE, any disobedience (broken rules or otherwise completely stupid actions) whatsoever needs to have some form of punishment, not a ban if it is minor. There is still a lot we need to think about if this goes through. I for one am confidante that we can make it work, and that it would be effective.

Sret and Mimodo, you guys will have the final call.

Now everyone, please speak your opinion!

To add to what supacreator is saying here, and perhaps to clarify a little...

While we were on the server we kind of identified that what was really killing the activity was the fact that we had so few members in the first place, you almost never see someone else around when you're online. And then supa had a great idea of this decoy thing as a form of recruiting.

You see, instead of putting people through the stupidly lengthy application process which scares off all griefers, and about 50-75% of potential good members as well, we could put them through a trial. So what the idea is, is to create a new server, made just for the dwarf mining. We put it on a regular schedule, accepting new members each week, then resetting the server. No application required (it scares people off too quickly). We then watch how everyone handles it. How they play, how dedicated they are, and how willing they are to follow the rules. I will be there to offer guidance for players, but won't direct it myself. Once the test is done, or even during, any players we see who show potential as a good member of this city will get a personal invitation to become part of the dwarven city itself.

Doing it this way, we can potentially get many players through each week, and in the long run will have a much larger player base on the actual project.

Of course, there are the drawback which were mentioned too. My biggest problem is the fact that we would need to hire out a second server space for a new world. This is an extra cost on top of the server itself, which I'm not sure is worth the risk.

I actually took a backup of the server onto my computer today, so even if there is an issue with clanforge, and they lose everything, we will still have our world. Protecting from griefers shouldn't be too difficult

Given that we have a cap of 6 players online at the same time, shooting for lots of people on at the same time is not terribly feasible. But that can assumedly be upgraded somehow.

We already sort of have an auxilliary server: Trainman, myself, and a couple other formerly active members (Kation, Lorpius Prime) are also members of the GolemLand server that I am an admin on. It has no fee, no pressure to donate, a cap of 20 players on at once, is almost as vanilla as Dwarf City (we do run Bukkit, but only to allow chest locking and a dynamic livemap). It's got a good community, and my personal base is somewhat based on Mons Domus, at least the functional non-decorative parts of it. The farms, animal pens, store room, item grinder, and bedrock-level mines will be immediately familiar to Dwarf veterans.

We can always direct potential Dwarf City recruits over to GolemLand, and if they play nice with others there (most of us do), they can be further recruited to Dwarf City as well. We have a variety of community projects (subway systems in the overworld and nether, a Giant Pyramid under construction, an NPC city, etc.) to gauge users willingness to pitch in and help others, as well as plenty of space for them to set up their own personal base complexes and do their own thing (which we can also observe).

We could even set up a Dwarf Mining setup off my personal mines, part of the infrastructure is already in place after all (just no rail link up to the actual main store room, which is at a much higher elevation, so access is by ladder at present).

Here's the forum used by our GolemLand server: http://glacialsoftware.com/GolemLand/community/categories/golemland-minecraft-server.17/

What the hell?
And here I didn't even know there was anyone on at that time. This whole thing sounds completely nuts (which is usually a good thing) and I'll believe it'll work that well when I see it. We do however REALLY need to increase our sheer amount of people as we're basically running this with a skeleton crew, so I'm open for any ideas. Moreover, I'd be willing to take the risk of running a second server if needed and if it seems viable. It's really about time we deal with this, as it could be a huge aid in dealing with most other problems. I'm not sure I fully understand how this is supposed to work, though. Are the subjects to believe that they're joining a server where all they do is mine for an unknown purpose?

They would be thinking they joined a different full time server without knowledge that it is a fake. Its just to bait greifers to attack it so that they don't make it into the city

When supa first suggested this idea the other day I thought it was a little odd. After we developed on it more I decided that it could really work for us if we do it right.

As sret said, they need some kind of reason to join the server and mine in the first place for it to really work. I was thinking that the decoy server could run just a recent copy of the actual city for two main reasons. Firstly, it will be much easier to get things going; they can work on some of our old projects or mine resources from the mines. They will see our grand city is a decent state and hopefully increase their desire to contribute. Secondly, griefers who join will see our city as a huge target. Basically it will draw the griefers out more effectively.

Whether we decide to go with this decoy server system or not, I think there are plenty of ways to help boost our population on the servers. The most obvious way is to do another forum post which is how I got here in the first place. Looking at our members page there were a lot of people who were interested enough to create an account, we got a lot of peoples' attention that way. I don't know how many of you use Reddit, but it has a fairly large Minecraft community going. I was thinking of taking some screenshots of our the city and posting it to Reddit with an explanation of what we do along with a link to this forum (unless of course someone objects).

We also need to find a way of controlling how many come on the server so that there aren't too many people. A set number we don't exceed perhaps?

We can have 8 members on at a time, plus me and Sret, to a total of 10. Getting 10 people online at the same time without prior organisation would mean we'd have a massive group of us playing regularly. And if we get enough people to need to increase server size, I would be more than happy to pay the money for upgraded size.

Our main targets for getting members in is those that don't have a permenant server already, or aren't happy with their server. SW, it seems that the golemland server has quite a large number of players who are really happy with the server, and a lot of them who are also in the dwarven city spend a lot more time there than here. While that's no problem, most of those players you've mentioned (with the exception of trainman as you), barely come online at all here. Lorpius isn't even on the whitelist anymore. We would need to have our own server for running this decoy, just like we needed our own server for this project.

So, does everyone like the basic idea of a decoy server kind of thing to get players in? It offers a way to remove obvious griefers, and show us who plays really well, and who doesn't play well at all. What we actually put on this decoy is something different though. As long as everyone thinks this is a good idea, we can come up with something to put on the server, whether it's the mining, or a fake version of this server.

Thought I should bring this back to everyone's attention because we still have a very poor number of dwarves on the server. Also I have another problem/concern, Living quarters are in short supply. The Atrium as it is now can not support many more players. Each member deserves and needs a place to call their own. I don't think anyone disagrees with me there. So if we want a large number of players then we need to somehow expand the Atrium in one way or another.

Plenty of the apartments in the Atrium are "occupied" by people who never really get online or are not even whitelisted. I say that when we need room in the future, we demolish the decor of some old unused apartments to make room for new active members.

Arrowave wrote:Plenty of the apartments in the Atrium are "occupied" by people who never really get online or are not even whitelisted. I say that when we need room in the future, we demolish the decor of some old unused apartments to make room for new active members.

None the less there aren't many rooms depending on how many players are recruited.

Supacreator wrote:

Arrowave wrote:Plenty of the apartments in the Atrium are "occupied" by people who never really get online or are not even whitelisted. I say that when we need room in the future, we demolish the decor of some old unused apartments to make room for new active members.

None the less there aren't many rooms depending on how many players are recruited.

It would be a nice change of pace to have the problem of too many members.

If we ended up having such a surge of new members I'm sure we'd be able to come up with something to house them all

We have room for 16 dwarves, plus the large apartments... Honestly, I'm having trouble committing time to the project personally, which is making all this a little hard. But yes, we do need to get this running, and it should be soon

Why not dig a massive cave, and have like, houses in there, or in houses on big rocks suspended above lava in the cave. Have to be big but meh

Bran2939 wrote:Why not dig a massive cave, and have like, houses in there, or in houses on big rocks suspended above lava in the cave. Have to be big but meh

Maybe more atrium-style apartments dug into the walls of the farm caves?

Bran2939 wrote:Why not dig a massive cave, and have like, houses in there, or in houses on big rocks suspended above lava in the cave. Have to be big but meh

I think we have enough digging on our plate right now. It will probably be a long while before we need to worry about apartments again.

Arrowave wrote:

Bran2939 wrote:Why not dig a massive cave, and have like, houses in there, or in houses on big rocks suspended above lava in the cave. Have to be big but meh

I think we have enough digging on our plate right now. It will probably be a long while before we need to worry about apartments again.

Agreed... I'm sure we can make do. Perhaps some of us can share apartments. (It's not like we actually USE them)... I've got a free space in my bed, who wants it?

Brendanan wrote:

Arrowave wrote:

Bran2939 wrote:Why not dig a massive cave, and have like, houses in there, or in houses on big rocks suspended above lava in the cave. Have to be big but meh

I think we have enough digging on our plate right now. It will probably be a long while before we need to worry about apartments again.

Agreed... I'm sure we can make do. Perhaps some of us can share apartments. (It's not like we actually USE them)... I've got a free space in my bed, who wants it?

Silly trick question. It's a free space because dwarves never sleep