While there are a lot of great ideas that come from other servers and other sources, I'd like to think that using decent original ideas to build your server is probably the best way.

I'm sure anyone who reads this is aquainted with map-voting features in other servers. At some random point during the map, timed by the server's code for each map, a vote comes up; is this map great, good, okay, not so good, terrible?
Now that information must be translated to a database that just counts the basic math of the vote and attaches it to the existing database for new totals, so that over time a hopefully real representation could be visualized as in a pie chart for instance with their combined percentages of votes over several months of time. And unless the database is reset, you only get to vote once per map.


So why not implement the same idea and ask the players who are in the server what they think about races, so that they are tweaked because of a majority's viewpoint that things should be changed for that race.
For example: "Which race is the most powerful or over-powerful?"
1: Vagabond
2: Spiderman
3: Crypt Lord
4: Flame Predator
5: Human
6: Hell Hunter
7: Molecule

At first the numbers won't mean anything, but after awhile a pattern emerges. The server coder would change the races to be more balanced. Then reset the vote, and start from "Zero" so to speak.



Now, let's say you look at the server from the perspective of players on specific races. You determine over time (several weeks+) that vagabond and spiderman are responsible for more than double the points scored by any other race and a kdr significantly higher than all other races. You could then begin to question the players about those specific races: "Which skill is the most over-powered on the vagabond?"
1: Flickering Shadows: 30-48% chance to be invisible from far
2: Adrinaline: 20-66% speed increase
3: Scout: 13-55% chance to deal extra damage
4: Levitation: Lower gravity to .68-.26 of normal
5: Complete Invisibility: Teleport to and become invisible at increasing speeds
6: More than 1 skill is over-powered.
7: All of it is over-powered.
8: None of it is over-powered, the race is correctly balanced with the rest of the races.


Eventually, over time you would have a concensus and you could adjust it accordingly, or determine that a popular majority agree to the race being well-balanced.




Obviously you could extend this to shopmenu prices and really get them down to a science where the majority of players feel that each price is correctly set. So you could end up with a scroll of respawning costing $5877.
And just like map vote, only 1 vote per person per question is tallied. Inotherwords, the same people don't get spammed with the votes every time they play. They would only show up again if the vote-count was reset.
And certainly, Ibis would override everything and anything so that the game wasn't compromised because the votes weren't being taken seriously and may need to be reworded (for instance in the above example the #7 answer is pretty much a trap, there's no way that any race's abilities are all over-powered compared to all other races; so it's just to catch the jerks who feel like throwing monkey wrenches into the system without them knowing about it). But the fact remains that how a question is phrased will likely direct the response, and even by being emotionally cold and asking the questions in a linear computer-kind of way may not be enough to dissuade the masses from anarchist thoughts about the vote. So occasionally, you'll just have to reset the count and rephrase the question in a different way.

I hope to think of other new and unique ideas for the server. I was about to play when this one came to me, and I decided that instead I would write all about it while it was fresh in my mind. Some of you won't like it at all, maybe because they think Ibis should be responsible for all phases of decision-making, or perhaps for other reasons. But it's actually not that easy to come up with new ideas that haven't been tried elsewhere, because there's really a lot of great ideas out there. But if you don't agree with me, I would challenge you to come up with something that is new and unique which can help Ibis servers. That way, whether you agree or not this post helps the server become more than without it. We should always push to be more than we are today. Never settle. Always compete. Always become.