How to get more players to stay?

I see those factions servers all the time and they have 30+ people online at once... How do they keep their players?

I looked at one server and for donators they offer flying and MOBDISGUISE in factions!
Do we really have to become a "Pay-To-Win" server to become popular?

We have all the same features, a great hand built spawn, nice plugins, no lag, great donation features (yet don't make the donator over powered). We get about 5-10 new players when we repost the server on Planetminecraft and most of the time none of them stay.

Our server is like all the popular ones, except just can't keep a large user amount. We have great staff who know what they're doing and do not abuse. There are only 2 OPs on our server, and we know each other irl, we don't OP anyone. Staff powers aren't abusive, all they have is moderation powers, ban/kick/mute, etc.

Any ideas how to get the server out? I've tried advertising on some forums but people tend to ignore those threads and just search on PlanetMinecraft.

Do our donation features look fine? http://rpgnetwork.us/donate

The server has been out for over a year now, and we reset the map enough so they don't leave because of too much overpowered factions/old bases everywhere. There's actually lots of free space even close to the spawn.

 

No, you don't have to become Pay-To-Win to win. You just need proper advertising. You seem like you have two problems: A lack of donations and a lack of players that stay. The former is caused by the latter.

These other servers keep their current community by... The community. There are thousands of PvP-Factions servers, but each has a unique community. Garnering a large player base is hard, but once you do, more people will stay.

You have proper grammar, mature staff... Those things will help you keep mature players (although the Enjin website...).

Advertising at PlanetMinecraft is terrible. None of the people there are actually looking for servers; when I advertised my server there, I got some griefers and spammers.

You have to find other ways of advertising -- I can't really give you ideas myself, but I do know that if you have dedicated players that enjoy your server, they will donate to support you. Don't worry about the rewards; they look fine.

 

Thanks for the reply. We get a few donators sometimes, the people that do stay. But it seems that the majority of players that do stay are the players we have made staff, or the players that have donated.
We have enough money to keep the server running for a while, but I'm just not sure why people don't stay. I'll try bumping up the rewards on voting, maybe the votes will help.

 

I'm not sure about PvP/Factions servers; but I've had two servers, both with very different community reactions.

My first server which I ran a few years ago was a normal survival server. It had all the usual plugins, and was advertised based on simplicity. Hardly any of the players stayed and it was empty a lot, because it was boring

Then I made a special Army plugin and set up a rather unique server, which attracted a surprising amount of people.

I would say having something unique about the server is a huge asset, think of something your server can have that the other Factions servers just don't. You can always request a plugin to implement your idea over in Plugin Requests.

 

Being unique is good, I took 1 look at your site and it put me off from visiting the server.
For crying out loud please do NOT use Enjin! if you want more players you need something that is more or less easier to understand has a nice front page without too much text, your homepage is practically a blog page, make a welcome page which highlights your features also reduce your banner size, why? its not a banner its like font 70 text on my 1080p monitor 1200px wide and 245px height is not nice at all.
I went onto your server and i was the only player online 6.42pm GMT you have a really nice spawn.
I couldn't find a player to player trading place or a mall what ever you call it though.

Edit: you need community features

 

It all depends on the source of players if you ask me. I get most of my players from my Youtube channel, so most of the people who join are genuinely there to play with me & my friends that help me with videos, so we don't see too many greifers/spammers (although, there is always a couple of bad apples). Just find a decent source of advertisement, I'd suggest Google ads, which seems to be the hottest way to advertise right now.

 

Thank you for the feedback! That is what I've been looking for from my players. I will try to fix those.

We currently have a nice YouTube video up and many users have commented good things on it (1100 views only :/), but I will be making a new one soon as my new computer is arriving soon. I will be able to record again.

EDIT by Moderator: merged posts, please use the edit button instead of double posting.

 

By the way, I know you're looking for stayers, but the best way to get influxes of new players is Planet Minecraft, and they let you bump it daily. About 30 new players each time, only about half trolls!

 

That's what we do. We used to get lots of new players, but now we get 5 new players on average. Sometimes we get a few more. I'm not sure what changed, but nobody seems to really join like they used to.
Is this banner really that bad?

 

Another big thing something players seem to care about. Ping

I ran a community for a reasonable period of time (2 years)

I started with no money but an iMac I got for my previous birthday, 8GB Ram.

I home hosted with a pretty shitty line (3MB down, 200kbps up (it must have gone up during heavy load..))
I had 2000 people in the first month, a constant 20 and a top of 40.

I was advertising on tonnes of websites, and we got in the top 400 in minestatus pretty quick, that seemed to get a fair few players.
Things went well and got donations and stuff, then I was moving so I moved the server to BeastNode, players dropped off fairly quick then.. My guess, ping. (800 ping) whereas 50 ping when it was homehosted.

I still don't know how the line coped with the traffic, lol. It was just my home internet, I used to play BF3 while the server was running the same network. Lol

 

We use PytoHost and they have amazing speeds, 99.9% uptime (actually) and our server is always running good.

We have 5,100 unique players yet only about 100 play. :/ (not at the same time)
I've looked at getting our site sponsored on other websites like minestatus but there's no way we can afford $850 for a bid.

 

Try get your players to vote for a bit of money or something small

 

Well, this is the banner I used:


Kinda kept it simple, just wanted to attract people to the Army theme with the skins in the pic. It worked.

I tend not to like to include all sorts of info in the banner, like FACTIONS|MCMMO|24/7|JOIN NOW

 

Well, I had one before that just said RPG and Factions and it didn't really work out that good.
I'll try redoing it again maybe with 2 players pvping.

Currently they can vote for 2 diamonds per vote on 5 websites. We barely get any voters, I'm really not sure why. 10 diamonds every 24 hours seems good to me.

EDIT by Moderator: merged posts, please use the edit button instead of double posting.

 

That should give them the urge, have they got creative or anything where they can spawn diamonds?

 

Duck tape.

 

Nope, nobody has creative, except my and my friend who is also OP. ( I know him IRL, he doesn't abuse )

 

** Duct tape

 

I was raided saying duck.

 

PytoHost was a different story for me, I couldn't even get 2 players on without extreme lag, they were so terrible lol I complained and they refunded. I was gutted tbh and went to DaddyCheese I think VPS is the way forward now a days.

I died on your server and /ragequit

 

Hmm, we've been with PytoHost for a while and they've been good.

 

Yes, we all get raided differently.. Lol

 

I've noticed a lot of my regular players are leaving lately for minigames server such as Hunger Games, Survival Games, MineZ, MCInfected, etc. I've played all four of those and I have to say they're quite entertaining and addicting, but it's not survival MC at all. They're all like playing other games.

My server used to be more popular, so I sat down with a few of my regulars to think what has changed since its golden days. We came up with three things:

• I have a safer spawn now, with PvP-free shops. Conclusion: My players liked the old spawn with only a tiny cube being PvP protected and the ability to kill people inside shops. Problem is new players don't stay because of this as it's dangerous to go shopping even in full diamond armor.
• I used to have a Skylands plugin. Conclusion: What the other guy said, get something that makes your server unique.
• Players left. Conclusion: Some people only stay because their friends are there. For a lot of my regs, my server was their first server, so they met a lot of good friends on there and some of them only log on for the nostalgia.

Other than that, I guess I could improve on the community front. Mine's a hardcore (the old hardcore, not the new definition since deathbans) survival PvP server so I can't really tell people not to raid to keep players around.

 

Thanks for the information. I was thinking about adding: http://dev.bukkit.org/server-mods/drop-party/ to make the server "more unique". I haven't seen many servers with this plugin before.
Do you think this would make people stay? Maybe Daily drop partys. And every day at 8 or something we would start one? Or a random time of the day so its fair for all players who say can't play at 8.