When I first joined the Piratecraft server, I started to learn about it alone, without asking for help in chat or in the forum. I have read all the guides and, even though it was a little bit confusing to learn all the features of Piratecraft, I kept on building my own house and ship because, like most of you, I was fascinated by the world of Piracy.

The issue is that I see a lot of deckhands joining the server for a couple of minutes, chatting and then quitting forever. They knew they were joining a pirate themed server and not a random server because of the ip mc.piratemc.com, so the they were surely curious about the world of ships and cannons, but something went wrong. They got bored or got confused, we can’t tell for sure, but they suddenly decided to stop exploring Piratecraft after two minutes.

When I joined the server, I found it very, very confusing. I always played in SinglePlayer so I didn’t know anything at all about claims and plugins. Luckily I found the site guides and stayed here.
The problem is that a lot of people are too lazy to read them. Piratecraft server and site are united and interdependent but some maybe don’t even know that the site and the forums are so important.
I would suggest a larger advertising of the site in the game.

We all spawned in a shipwreck. From there, you had to find your way with vain attempts to break some wood in the lands nearby, which are all claimed. You start there and are not sure about what to do. You have a book and some items. Books are great, but some find them boring.
I would like to make a suggestion for the future. From 1.8, Minecraft can have first person text messages showing up on the screen of a player. I don’t know if you ever visited some big minigame servers, but some of them need to explain their brand new game rules in a fast and easy way.
The key is to be quick and simple. When a player joins a minigame, his hotbar is disabled and he is teleported to a high position where he can see the whole game area and a central message pops up: “Welcome to x game”. Then he is teleported to another view with another message “The goal is to x”. Then another “Use this x in order to win! Avoid the x and stay alive!” Or thing like that. After 20 seconds, you have a clear understanding of the rules. It is set up usually to be showed for the first three times, then it stops popping up (because the player probably doesn’t need them anymore).

Here are some examples I found on the internet.

Piratecraft is not a minigame and needs much more information to be explained, which is always available in the forums and website, but a brief, quick, exciting teaser of all the Piratecraft features would be a good way to give good basics for the deckhands.
Key topics are ships, cannons, ranks, warps, gates, money, admins.
Wooden sign are pirate themed, but not efficient! They are small and limited. Player’s bases and shops have enough of them.
When first spawning, a player could be teleported to a high view of the spawn with the message “Welcome to Piratecraft!”. Then a high view of a line of different ships sorted by rank with the message “Build and sail your own ships! Get high ranks for the big ones!” And a subtext “Go to /warp ships to see them! (A good next view would be showcasing a moving ship, maybe with a commandblock preset? But it’s too difficult I think and we can jump this one. Then the player can be teleported to a view of a set of cannons in line, sorted by rank and the text “Working cannons! The highest the rank, the more powerful the cannon!” and a subtext “Go to /warp cannons to see them!”. Then a view of armor stands and item frames, sorted by rank kits, with a message “Build, mine and kill in order to get a higher rank!” and a subtext “Go to /warp ranks to get more details”, then a view of the vertical/horizontal portcullis gates  with a text “You can build massive working gates for ports and castles!” and subtext “Go to /warp gates for further information”. A view of adimn’s heads with the message “Contact our admins for every problem” and a subtext “GodsDead, SuperGL, MCshovel, Austerity”.
All these views need to be in close areas, otherwise the new player wll have to load a lot of chunks to see all the slides.
The spawn can have a visible button to press so the deckhand can push it to rewatch the slideshow in case he missed something. The first time at joining the server must be forced though!
These are raw modifiable examples, ideas. I could have just given the suggestion of the pop up teleport text, but somewhere I read that is better to write actual detailed proposals instead of gripes with no solution given.

Also, I think the Cove town needs an update. Apart from the aesthetics, (all that oak wooden plank color isn’t that pleasurable), I would say that is a labyrinth. I struggled a lot to find the right way for the wood selling area and I had to annoy people to get some indications. I think the same can be said for the rest of the shops. While keeping the messy pirate theme, some better roads and coloured wool/clay blocks distinctions as street signs for the shops, maybe even item frames with shop’s selling items would be appreciated, at least by me.

It is a lot of work. Maybe somebody already said this in another topic and I am sorry if I missed it. Or maybe this project wouldn’t be that useful. Thank you anyway for the attention and the reply.