Changing /AD

[Fragmentiize]

Feature request

Checklist

• [x] I have read and agree to the README (found on https://github.com/Minehut/Meta)
• [x] This is not a bug report, support request or plugin request
• [x] I have searched the Issue Tracker to make sure this is not a duplicate issue
• [x] This issue does not contain any sensitive information

Platform

In-game, both

Describe the feature

Due to the excessive advertisements and spam resulting from that in the lobbies, I am suggesting an overhaul in the /ad functionalities. Here are the ideas (separated for clearer understanding).

1. Remove the lobby ranks' relationship to /ad. This means to remove their cooldowns and color/formatting/"click here" functions.
2. Create a relationship between server plans and /ad. This means that the higher the server plan is, the more functions it receives when it comes to /ad.
3. Instead of cooldowns being on the ranks, add the cooldowns to the server plans. Server Plans' Functions:
   • FREE: 6 minute cooldown for /ad
   • MH20: colors - 5 minute cooldown for /ad
   • MH35: colors, formats - 4 minute cooldown for /ad
   • MH75: colors, formats, "click here" - 3 minute cooldown for /ad
   • MHUnlimited: colors, formats, "click here" - 2 minute cooldown for /ad
4. The server owner can set the advertisement message, so all anyone has to do is /ad (server name). It will output the designated message the server owner sets it to.

I will be using Cured as the server example. Let's say it is on the MH20 plan. It has the function of using colors in its /ad message and the cooldown is 5 minutes. Someone advertises Cured and the advertisement message I put is sent through in the lobbies, and now it is on a 5-minute cooldown. If someone tries to advertise it again within the 5 minutes, they will receive an error stating something like, "The server, Cured, is currently on a cooldown. It has (time remaining) remaining before it can be advertised again."

How the feature is useful

Limiting advertisements to the server plans instead of players' ranks would mean a reduction in the duplicate/similar advertisements for the same server. Several players with LEGEND and PATRON ranks advertise the same server, drowning out other servers. This would allow servers more room to advertise. This will also reduce spam in the lobbies and hopefully allow conversations.

There is one more thing to note. On this page, https://minehut.com/shop/ranks, it says, "Ranks give you a special prefix and cosmetic unlocks in the lobby..." This is slightly misleading as it doesn't state anything about perks relating to /ad. Without that, it just states that it is pure cosmetic when it is not. This is part of my mindset of moving /ad perks to server plans instead of ranks to actually keep true to the "cosmetic" statement.

Use 👍 and 👎 reactions to indicate you agree or disagree with this suggestion! Feel free to discuss the idea in the comments.

[tarna]

Per server ad cooldown was something that was suggested in the original /ad GitHub issue but it was then later removed cause people said that someone can just advertise bad things about a server and then the actual owner and players wouldn't be able to advertise it. So your idea of the server owner setting a preset advertisement fixes that issue.

But if this were to be added, what would the point of ranks be? The main point of ranks now has been for the lower server ad cooldown. The other perks really aren't that useful. And if that was removed for the ranks, they wouldn't really be worth it anymore.

[Checkmate128]

I don’t like this idea because a server with more people should result in more advertisers. Imposing this system would base the rate at which a server can grow via ads upon the server’s plan rather than the small percentage of players that do ads. If you want to reduce ad spammage, it would be more effective to use an algorithm to detect adbotters.

[expxx]

I don’t like this idea because a server with more people should result in more advertisers. Imposing this system would base the rate at which a server can grow via ads upon the server’s plan rather than the small percentage of players that do ads. If you want to reduce ad spammage, it would be more effective to use an algorithm to detect adbotters.

Unless im mis-understanding, theres a serverwide cooldown. So you can have more advertisers. If anything there'd be less.

[drtshock]

Yes we talked about limiting 1 player per server to /ad based on their rank cooldown, but I don't remember discussing tying the /ad to the server plan itself. This is really interesting :) Do you think there's anything we could give to ranks to help offset the loss in perks? As Tarna mentioned, the /ad perk is one of the main reasons people purchase ranks right now so this would be a blow to that.

[Checkmate128]

I don’t like this idea because a server with more people should result in more advertisers. Imposing this system would base the rate at which a server can grow via ads upon the server’s plan rather than the small percentage of players that do ads. If you want to reduce ad spammage, it would be more effective to use an algorithm to detect adbotters.

Unless im mis-understanding, theres a serverwide cooldown. So you can have more advertisers. If anything there'd be less.

What I meant is that tying the ads to the server plan rewards a server for spending money while the current system where players can advertise at certain intervals rewards servers with larger and more active communities. A system where a server can receive 1 ad per set amount of time removes this benefit because each server reaches the maximum benefit with one active advertiser.

[JIBSIL]

By doing this you'd be essentially screwing over all the people who bought Patron rank... I just bought Legend rank so I could ad. It's a major source of income for Minehut and that is simply not acceptable unless you want a ton of chargebacks, as people bought ranks on their alts and don't care if they're banned. It's a good idea in concept but in reality I know people who paid over 1k$ just for the /ad function. Don't do it or you'll have a lot of unhappy customers.

[tarna]

By doing this you'd be essentially screwing over all the people who bought Patron rank... I just bought Legend rank so I could ad. It's a major source of income for Minehut and that is simply not acceptable unless you want a ton of chargebacks, as people bought ranks on their alts and don't care if they're banned. It's a good idea in concept but in reality I know people who paid over 1k$ just for the /ad function. Don't do it or you'll have a lot of unhappy customers.

Patron rank isn't that much but ya I do agree. If something like this were to be done, something new would need to be added to rank perks to make them worth it.

[ahoulton]

Don't do it or you'll have a lot of unhappy customers.

@JIBSIL, then they will learn not to spend money on a VIRTUAL rank on a BLOCK GAME just so they can get money.

Think about it carefully, what's the point of buying PATRON/LEGEND if all you do with it is auto ad.

[JIBSIL]

@ahoulton So you'd rather cheat people out of thousands of dollars to "teach them a lesson"? People do that not as an irrational choice but as an investment, expecting it to pay itself off. There's really no good reason to buy high ranks if not for that. Ranks are free money in Minehut's pocket.

[CoreyShupe]

@JIBSIL That still leaves the issue - lobby spam and just the lobby being unbearable to be in due to the ad spam, as well as it being hard for new servers to start without joining in on the spam and making things worse.

I think we’re looking for a way to help this, and if not for nerfing the periods or nerfing ranks I’m unsure how we would go about working through this. I think this suggestion in this issue is pretty good, do you have any alternative suggestions to make the lobby at least bearable?

[JIBSIL]

@CoreyShupe I would suggest a command to ignore ads, and an ad quota. So Patron gets 50 in one day, legend 40, pro 30, vip 20, default 10. Or something like that. Or you could limit is per server, so that each server can only get 50 ads no matter what the rank. And then keep cooldowns & formatting/colors how it is

[CoreyShupe]

That’s a really good idea, I quite like that, what does everyone else think about the “ad quota” idea. It would solve bot spam and the like, and we could potentially implement server set ads so nobody can defame a server.

I figure it could be abused though if we did it per server so I figure per player would be a better idea potentially.

[maxhaomh]

@CoreyShupe Even having an "Ad Quota" can be abused/ bypassed easily. NFA Alts are available for insanely cheap prices. A solution to this would be having "Whitelisted" accounts that can advertise. This can be configured in the Minehut Console. I feel like color codes and clickable messages should be enabled for everyone if such a large limitation was added. Ranks will of course be devalued, heavily. Something will need to be added to compensate players that purchased ranks.

[s-wendel]

Some perks you could change ranks to have:

• Reduced Server Plan pricing
• Extended Server Plan timing
• Monthly / Exclusive Server Icons
• Changing Server Icons to glowing if the player has a rank rather than the server having a server plan
• Allowing longer server MOTDs

[JIBSIL]

@max-yh The captcha system Minehut imposes for proxies and clean ip's with more than 5 connections gets rid of the botting strat... How many whitelisted accounts would you propose? A way to fix this is to simply limit the number of ads per day per server, and determine how many ads a server gets by the plan that it has

[JIBSIL]

@s-wendel Right now Minehut is making a 100/0 profit off of ranks - 0 cost, 100% profit. Adding such things for servers, if they eventually pay themselves off and more as time goes on, would be a bad idea unless Minehut needs money now. Doing such a thing would essentially be a bond- Minehut needs to say, buy a datacenter for 100,000,000$. They need it now, not in ten years. So they "borrow" money from people, and they eventually make their investment back. But unless Minehut would be planning an infrastructure project such as the example I mentioned, a "bond" like ranks would be useless.

I agree with the other suggestions. Just an FYI that custom server icons for months, like Holloween or the holidays, already exists

[ntrogen]

Patron and legend's value have been completely destroyed, it's annoying to see so many new patrons and so many new gen server advertisements. I used to be able to get 75 players with no issues without using any alts but come the sale I'm struggling to get even 20 players, sales are destroying ranks and making them useless now there's people with like 10 alts with patron and legend and nothing being done about botters. There definitely needs to be an advertisement system revamp

[Blocksnmore]

Here's a potential idea for how to somewhat keep ranks valuable: Have the global server cooldown but also add a limit for how many different servers you can advertise within a given time, Ie: Default 1 server, VIP 2 servers, etc. And you can advertise another server once one of your servers you advertised has their cooldown end. (Explanation if you didn't understand: I advertise both server a & server b, because I have VIP I can't advertise more than that. Once server a's cooldown ends I can once again advertise a server that isn't on cooldown.)

[BirdLogics]

Yes we talked about limiting 1 player per server to /ad based on their rank cooldown, but I don't remember discussing tying the /ad to the server plan itself. This is really interesting :) Do you think there's anything we could give to ranks to help offset the loss in perks? As Tarna mentioned, the /ad perk is one of the main reasons people purchase ranks right now so this would be a blow to that.

One feature which could make it more worthwhile to purchase ranks is to allow higher ranks to hide ads. Even if not all ads are hidden, just a reduction and limit to the rate of ads which can be shown would be really nice. Based on the reactions from some people above, it would still probably be better avoid removing all /ad perks related to ranks. Putting both per server and per person limitations could help restrict advertisements without making people who purchased ranks feel cheated.

In addition to a cooldown, perhaps there should be a limit to how many people are shown the ad. Rather than showing the ad to everyone in the lobby, which drowns out conversation and other ads, a selection of people could be shown the ad. People with higher ranks could be given the ability to show ads to more people. The concept of showing ads to specific number of people also opens the possibility for cross lobby advertisements.

Another option would be to allow people to purchase ads independently from ranks. Ads could be purchased and they would be automatically be shown to people throughout the day, month or whatever period Minehut chooses. This option also allows Minehut to have better control over the number ads being shown. If people start getting flooded with advertisements, Minehut can increase ad prices. By the principles of supply and demand, with higher prices, less people will buy the ads. To allow flexible pricing, I don't think ad purchasing should follow a subscription model but should instead be a one time purchase to show ads to a certain number of people over a period of time.

[JIBSIL]

Yes we talked about limiting 1 player per server to /ad based on their rank cooldown, but I don't remember discussing tying the /ad to the server plan itself. This is really interesting :) Do you think there's anything we could give to ranks to help offset the loss in perks? As Tarna mentioned, the /ad perk is one of the main reasons people purchase ranks right now so this would be a blow to that.

One feature which could make it more worthwhile to purchase ranks is to allow higher ranks to hide ads. Even if not all ads are hidden, just a reduction and limit to the rate of ads which can be shown would be really nice. Based on the reactions from some people above, it would still probably be better avoid removing all /ad perks related to ranks. Putting both per server and per person limitations could help restrict advertisements without making people who purchased ranks feel cheated.

In addition to a cooldown, perhaps there should be a limit to how many people are shown the ad. Rather than showing the ad to everyone in the lobby, which drowns out conversation and other ads, a selection of people could be shown the ad. People with higher ranks could be given the ability to show ads to more people. The concept of showing ads to specific number of people also opens the possibility for cross lobby advertisements.

Another option would be to allow people to purchase ads independently from ranks. Ads could be purchased and they would be automatically be shown to people throughout the day, month or whatever period Minehut chooses. This option also allows Minehut to have better control over the number ads being shown. If people start getting flooded with advertisements, Minehut can increase ad prices. By the principles of supply and demand, with higher prices, less people will buy the ads. To allow flexible pricing, I don't think ad purchasing should follow a subscription model but should instead be a one time purchase to show ads to a certain number of people over a period of time.

Maybe allow ranks to hide their rank ads? Like VIP can hide VIP and default, Pro can hide pro and VIP and default, Legend can hide legend + pro + vip + default, patron can hide all

[hapily04]

Yes we talked about limiting 1 player per server to /ad based on their rank cooldown, but I don't remember discussing tying the /ad to the server plan itself. This is really interesting :) Do you think there's anything we could give to ranks to help offset the loss in perks? As Tarna mentioned, the /ad perk is one of the main reasons people purchase ranks right now so this would be a blow to that.

One feature which could make it more worthwhile to purchase ranks is to allow higher ranks to hide ads. Even if not all ads are hidden, just a reduction and limit to the rate of ads which can be shown would be really nice. Based on the reactions from some people above, it would still probably be better avoid removing all /ad perks related to ranks. Putting both per server and per person limitations could help restrict advertisements without making people who purchased ranks feel cheated. In addition to a cooldown, perhaps there should be a limit to how many people are shown the ad. Rather than showing the ad to everyone in the lobby, which drowns out conversation and other ads, a selection of people could be shown the ad. People with higher ranks could be given the ability to show ads to more people. The concept of showing ads to specific number of people also opens the possibility for cross lobby advertisements. Another option would be to allow people to purchase ads independently from ranks. Ads could be purchased and they would be automatically be shown to people throughout the day, month or whatever period Minehut chooses. This option also allows Minehut to have better control over the number ads being shown. If people start getting flooded with advertisements, Minehut can increase ad prices. By the principles of supply and demand, with higher prices, less people will buy the ads. To allow flexible pricing, I don't think ad purchasing should follow a subscription model but should instead be a one time purchase to show ads to a certain number of people over a period of time.

Maybe allow ranks to hide their rank ads? Like VIP can hide VIP and default, Pro can hide pro and VIP and default, Legend can hide legend + pro + vip + default, patron can hide all

@JIBSIL I see no reason why a preference such as hiding ads should be restricted for ranks, as it is simply a preference.

As for the actual issue at hand, I think that a set server advertisement would work, and that server has a cooldown. This would make it to where one person couldn't necessarily "ruin" the advertisement for the server. This would also combat the current issue of people just buying more accounts to advertise the same server, resulting in more lobby spam. Lastly, this would put everyone on an even playing field in a sense. I don't really like the whole idea of server plans getting different colors/formatting as well as a shorter cooldown and I'll tell you why. It's already extremely difficult for newer servers to gain exposure. Allowing the servers that are already at the top to flood the chat more over the people trying to grow their servers will just keep the issue of newer servers not being able to grow.

[Bufferless]

Tbh I don't think the plan ad cool downs should be a thing. The whole /ad thing needs to be changed to something else, if you compare old Minehuts chat from 2019 it was less spammy and people were chatting. The Minehut chat right now is so spammy if you filter out [AD] with a mod you will only see people ever type 1 - 2 minutes or more. Ranks should not get an advantage over other players since this had led to people just buying more accounts and buying 20 accounts patron ranks. The sales should only go for VIP and Pro rank since patron and legend was suppose to be a rare rank, like if you were to go back to 2018 - 2019 you would might see at least 1 patron.