Why are a lot of servers empty?

[Wuzzy]

Minetest won't be taken serious by most outsider players as long it continues to ship a (mostly) crappy default subgame by default.
I think using Minetest Game as default subgame is currently THE core reason which prevents Minetest from gaining any significant number of players.

Minetest Game is not a game, it's more like paramat's personal hacking playground. Nothing against paramat, paramat is just dominating development atm. :D. The goal of MTG does not seem to be about creating an actual game. As long it is like this, Minetest will hardly be taken serious by outsiders. And I bet deep down every developer knows this. Stop pretending. So: When will you finally boot Minetest Game? I don't mind if you still use MTG as your hacking playground, just don't make it the default subgame. :P
But it's not just the MTG developers: The modding community also heavily depends on MTG. Other subgames are rarely modded. MTG still dominates most of MT. This is bad.

Second reason is probably that many players are not even aware of the fact that there are even other subgames. I'm thinking of the players who obtained MT not from the official website ith wikis and stuff, but from 3rd party download sites, or from their GNU/Linux distro. These players never saw the website, all they see it the main menu. And in the main menu it's not clear at all that other subgames exist and that Minetest Game is not the only one.

A big important milestone for Minetest will be the re-introduction of a subgame/mod installation and update helper.

Another reason is that there does not seem to be any advertisement whatsoever. There are also no serious attempts to win over Minecraft modders to Minetest. Microsoft acquiring Minecraft is/was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to promote Minetest, especially with focus on freedom. I don't think this possibility has been used very well.

The final and most obvious reason is that Minetest is still unfinished and of alpha-stage quality. It's really that simple. :-) Getting MT to 1.0.0 will be important for obvious reasons.

BTW: Linuxdirk just tells the truth. You claim that Linuxdirk is a liar, but you did not post any proof, quote or whatever. Shame on you. :P


But anyways. I don't think MT having a non-huge amount of players is actually a bad thing. Minetest has at least a healthy amount of players, large enough that you can practically always find some game on some server. IMO Minetest does not have to be popular to be successful.

[maikerumine]

I think that most of the aforementioned comments regarding mtg are mostly true, in fact, quite spot on.
As one who spends the majority of my time creating subgames and testing them for months to get things correct and user friendly, I feel I can contribute to this conversation with some already mentioned suggestions.

As a part time server owner operator, I get it, I understand what the player base wants and needs. :)

The 3 MOST asked for mods that I feel should be included in MTG should be:
1. Armor
2. Mobs
3. BUILT IN CRAFTING GUIDE

then there are Skins and believe it or not, Home decor type items and nodes because kids LOVE to build and play house.

Without at least the mobs, mtg is as boring as watching paint dry. It is sad but true, and if you play mtg for the first time, your interest will drop rather quickly. Fortunately for the majority of us here, we do find mods and learn how to add them to our game, but this is a BIG challenge for all new users, as there is no real clear and concise way to do so.


Then those prospecting players just up and leave the community.

In the olden days, there were only but a handful of servers, now the server list is super saturated, therefore max player cap isn't even reached on 98% of the servers active at any given time, because: There isn't a large player base. No big deal really.

As for Minecraft servers having over 4000 players on at once: FALSE.
Minecraft has a playable player cap at about 80-150 and then you need some serious hardware.
What you are seeing there is a "server hub" which redirects you to it's other servers, could be in the hundreds.

All in all, mtg needs at the very least mobs and armor added, at the bare minimum.

Minetest engine NEEDS the means to be able to access and install subgames from a TRUSTED repo.

Furthermore, The full packaged game NEEDS a better variety of POLISHED subgames to choose from when shipped.

Until these things are met, mt will just be kind of bleh to new players.

[Linuxdirk]

Minetest Game is not a game, it's more like paramat's personal hacking playground. Nothing against paramat, paramat is just dominating development atm. :D. The goal of MTG does not seem to be about creating an actual game. As long it is like this, Minetest will hardly be taken serious by outsiders. And I bet deep down every developer knows this. Stop pretending. So: When will you finally boot Minetest Game? I don't mind if you still use MTG as your hacking playground, just don't make it the default subgame. :P
But it's not just the MTG developers: The modding community also heavily depends on MTG. Other subgames are rarely modded. MTG still dominates most of MT. This is bad.

This and 100 percent of this!

Best thing would be either crowdfund or convince a game designer because none of the devs that are responsible for MTG are really into gaming. Because this would probably never happen the launcher could be modified for NOT shipping a default game but on first start showing the user that there are various games available (like the old in-client mod installer but actually working and optically pleasant). The client could showcase 3-5 large and actively developed games and provide a list of other subgames. (Yes, paramat, this involves some coding work *g*)

A big important milestone for Minetest will be the re-introduction of a subgame/mod installation and update helper.

This is a must-have No-one (except us tech aficionados maybe) wants to manually download or install mnods/games or likes to update them using Git and other tools.

[Wuzzy]

I won't refer to Minetest as the “launcher”, however. This is just mean and plain wrong. A launcher is a separate application which launches the real game. Minetest is not separate; subgames run within Minetest. Example for a game with a launcher: Scorched3D.

[Inocudom]

Minetest Game is not a game, it's more like paramat's personal hacking playground. Nothing against paramat, paramat is just dominating development atm. :D. The goal of MTG does not seem to be about creating an actual game. As long it is like this, Minetest will hardly be taken serious by outsiders. And I bet deep down every developer knows this. Stop pretending. So: When will you finally boot Minetest Game? I don't mind if you still use MTG as your hacking playground, just don't make it the default subgame. :P
But it's not just the MTG developers: The modding community also heavily depends on MTG. Other subgames are rarely modded. MTG still dominates most of MT. This is bad.

This and 100 percent of this!

Best thing would be either crowdfund or convince a game designer because none of the devs that are responsible for MTG are really into gaming. Because this would probably never happen the launcher could be modified for NOT shipping a default game but on first start showing the user that there are various games available (like the old in-client mod installer but actually working and optically pleasant). The client could showcase 3-5 large and actively developed games and provide a list of other subgames. (Yes, paramat, this involves some coding work *g*)

A big important milestone for Minetest will be the re-introduction of a subgame/mod installation and update helper.

This is a must-have No-one (except us tech aficionados maybe) wants to manually download or install mnods/games or likes to update them using Git and other tools.

Speaking of updates, there hasn't been a nightly build for Ubuntu 12 (and Linux Mint 17) since last June, and that is not good at all. If Minetest explicitly requires newer versions of Ubuntu (and Linux Mint 18,) that should be explained in easy-to-understand, crystal-clear terms. Nobody likes guessing games, okay? Don't do what Valve does.

Yes, I think it is pretty obvious that the developers never play Minetest, but instead see it only as a hobby/chore. You see, there was a time when Celeron, PilzAdam, and Paramat actually played Minetest, but the end is the same for all three of them. When they became developers of it, they stopped being players of it, and their passion for it slowly drained away.

Another thing I have noticed about open-source games is that they never, and I mean never, have characters that are memorable. They are always quirky and/or ugly. Characters surpass even environments.

[azekill_DIABLO]

a Wilson score

OMG what is that brain-melting-thing.

Servers are empty because...

• Minetest is international, not everyone is playing at the same moment
• Most servers are unoriginal and provide the same mod-set and gameplay
• Most tiny minetest servers have a pitiful connection / delay-time

[Andrey01]

a Wilson score

OMG what is that brain-melting-thing.

Servers are empty because...

• Minetest is international, not everyone is playing at the same moment
• Most servers are unoriginal and provide the same mod-set and gameplay
• Most tiny minetest servers have a pitiful connection / delay-time

My comments to your opinions:
1. If Minetest is international it means it has many people from diverse countries. And it means people must be a lot at the same time, i think. But as Minetest has small community therefore it has a few players on servers at the same time.

2. Regulus Mars server, Not So Simple server, just test, Capture the Flag, VanessaE`s Dreambuilder servers, Inside the Box and etc have the gameplay is unlike Minetest Default game, although a lot of servers have only default gameplay.

3. About pitiful connection i can nothing object. The connection for each server goes fine and it depends from how many mods the server contains at itself.

P.S. If honestly i can not understand myself which base reason Minetest has so small community. The game has huge amount of mods that pretty advanced for it...

[azekill_DIABLO]

Minetest looks too 'geeky' for people, and for the second reason, go see my topic about minetest name-change

[sorcerykid]

The rise of mobile users is another factor to consider. Certain "unofficial" Minetest clients cannot connect to resource-intensive servers. That userbase is thus more inclinted to populate servers that are leaner and faster. Beyond that, I don't think this there is any single, root cause for this ongoing trend.

When I first started playing Minetest in 2015, there were only a handful of highly active servers while the rest were mostly abandoned. Sadly there no way to survey what types of devices and apps people use to play Minetest, so we'll never really know how much they factor into the overall distribution of players across various servers. But based upon my observations, however, there appears to be some correlation between popularity and accessibility.

[azekill_DIABLO]

Another reason : I can't see all the servers everytime, sometimes, some of them won't appear, cause they are offline... which is kinda discouraging. And many servers I loved are now gone...

[BBmine]

Another reason is admins replacing their map sometimes.

[azekill_DIABLO]

^^^yeah and this is.... FRUSTRATING.

[BBmine]

I know an admin who wants to replace his map and worldedit builds to the new one. I'm trying to convince him not to. (Not naming names :P)

[SFP]

Some people want to join servers which already have a lot of players playing there, and already abandoned servers will stay abandoned.

[sorcerykid]

Another theory worth considering is that the order of the server listing is completely nonsensical. Plenty of other server operators have noted this peculiarity. Yet nobody is able to explain why the sorting algorithm behaves this way.

• http://irc.minetest.net/minetest-hub/2017-10-08
  

Moreover, the signal bars that are used to indicate "server ping" are also meaningless. They only reflect network latency with respect to servers.minetest.net which is hosted in Europe. They don't provide any meaningful insight to users elsewhere in the world. I pointed out this discrepancy several months ago in another topic.

viewtopic.php?p=285901#p285901

Undoubtedly these to factors combined don't exactly help the situation.

[Kosmos]

My Minetest story
When i started playing Minetest(v0.4.13), i blow up the world with TNT and did what you can do in MTG. After 20min i stoped playing MT, reason: it was boring. So i started playing Voxelands, i think you know about that, it was a bit more interesting (some mobs). But only one year after that i reagonized how much great mods and subgames are avaible for MT. Than i played on some server like CTF.
The developers
The Minecraft developers are still payed by there company, but the Minetest developers get money (as i know) only through donations. And know think: Who'll work more on a game:
a) Payed developers with enought money to feed themselfes and there family.
or
b) Developers that have to work and are allowed to develop the game (they use as i know there freetime, correct me if there is anything wrong) and get not every time the same money (like january 300$ and february 20$)(i don't know very much about the donations but i know there are some).

The players
Think about: Why should a new player play Minetest, is there any challenge? The most of the new player see the MTG and think: "This is not very much." They also can change to Minecraft, i mean ~20$ and you can play a fully game with mobs, bosses, armor etc. also great mods with more mobs, more bosses and more armor.
The other thing is the multiplayer. Once i tested my LAN-Server, the player second player was very time-shifted. And the animation is not very ehmm... good.

[rubenwardy]

b) Developers that have to work and are allowed to develop the game (they use as i know there freetime, correct me if there is anything wrong) and get not every time the same money (like january 300$ and february 20$)(i don't know very much about the donations but i know there are some).

The majority of the developers get no donations. I've received $0 from 5 and a half years of contributions, a year of which I was a core developer. Paramat is the only one to have received donations due to him working on it fulltime, and also posting on the forum asking for them - he has 7 backers on patreon including me.

[GreenXenith]

b) Developers that have to work and are allowed to develop the game (they use as i know there freetime, correct me if there is anything wrong) and get not every time the same money (like january 300$ and february 20$)(i don't know very much about the donations but i know there are some).

The majority of the developers get no donations. I've received $0 from 5 and a half years of contributions, a year of which I was a core developer. Paramat is the only one to have received donations due to him posting on the forum asking for them - he has 7 backers on patreon including me.

And you have to remember, that is only because paramat works on Minetest pretty much full-time. The other devs have outside lives to care about aswell.

[Andrey01]

probably we never can increase the players number as in MC :(

No, we never ever will. MT and MC are not comparable.

From the beginning on MT had better marketing, better netcode, better graphics (even if they just were developer graphics cobbled together by Notch himself in alpha and early beta), and looked more polished. Plus: Minecraft is an actual game unlike Minetest Game which is only an incomplete reference implementation of the Minetest engine.

If all of the things above change MT could gain a lot of players because they would basically get a free version of Minecraft. And if MT had a full-featured modding API I guess even modders would come.

Better netcode and better graphics??? Before 0.4.15 many servers worked badly (slow connection and also map loading was just horribly). The graphics was bad, too because of ugly textures. Now all it works fine.

[Linuxdirk]

Now all it works fine.

Okay, so please set up a server farm with 50000 slots in total and 8500+ active players at the same time (regardless of the online community not being large enough to fill this server) without noticeable lag.

[Andrey01]

Now all it works fine.

Okay, so please set up a server farm with 50000 slots in total and 8500+ active players at the same time (regardless of the online community not being large enough to fill this server) without noticeable lag.

What? In minetest amount of players doesn`t increase even 350 players nowadays online on ALL servers! How can i set up ONE server with 8500 players? I just say NOW many servers work BETTER than BEFORE. As i already said i was on few servers before, they worked very bad (when i joined during the long time i was seeing just grey screen instead of the world. Still lag is slow loading of the map itself. Well, and some other small bugs.

[Linuxdirk]

Still lag is slow loading of the map itself.

And inventory handling, and punch detection (PvP, PvE), and placing nodes. Literally everything has a delay between 0.5 and 10+ seconds depending on total player count regardless of connection speed.

Even when toying around with a LAN server with me and 1-2 other clients connected I can feel the lag. Heck, even when recording my Let’s Play on a local server with me connecting to it from the same machine (workaround for not having admin permissions when simply starting the game as singleplayer) it sometimes lags.

[Stix]

Still lag is slow loading of the map itself.

And inventory handling, and punch detection (PvP, PvE), and placing nodes. Literally everything has a delay between 0.5 and 10+ seconds depending on total player count regardless of connection speed.

Even when toying around with a LAN server with me and 1-2 other clients connected I can feel the lag. Heck, even when recording my Let’s Play on a local server with me connecting to it from the same machine (workaround for not having admin permissions when simply starting the game as singleplayer) it sometimes lags.

Funny, in my experience when hosting a LAN server for 2-4 other players on a relatively weak laptop there was no lag whatsoever.

[sorcerykid]

Another theory worth considering is that the order of the server listing is completely nonsensical. (snip) Moreover, the signal bars that are used to indicate "server ping" are also meaningless.

Interesting how these concerns I raised a year ago are still being shared by numerous other server operators on GitHub, IRC, and here in the forums :)

[Stix]

Another theory worth considering is that the order of the server listing is completely nonsensical. (snip) Moreover, the signal bars that are used to indicate "server ping" are also meaningless.

Interesting how these concerns I raised a year ago are still being shared by numerous other server operators on GitHub, IRC, and here in the forums :)

Yes, it was rlly confusing for me when they were implemented, as for example laggy just test was shown to have high ping, while a relatively fast server like JT2 was shown with lower ping.

So i might ask the question, what benefit is there for implementing them like this, as information on how high a servers ping is from where the serverlist is hosted is useless for players and outright confusing.