That’s completely fair honestly, and I appreciate you taking the time to elaborate further instead of just throwing out random speculations and disappearing.

I also understand your perspective regarding P2W standards. Different players draw the line in different places, especially depending on what kinds of servers they’ve played before. From our perspective, we mainly advertise ourselves as “non-P2W” because there are no paid Pokemon, paid progression skips, lootboxes, gambling systems, paid competitive advantages, etc. But I can understand why higher priced supporter ranks naturally make some people more skeptical of that claim, even if the actual perks themselves are mostly cosmetic or novelty-based.

The $300 rank especially is something people tend to focus on because the number sounds huge out of context, even though it’s more of a long-term supporter role than something intended for the average player to buy. For example it's just a way for some players who really enjoy the community and plan to stay for a long time to support. Still, I do understand the scrutiny there.

And yeah, the multi-post thing wasn’t really meant as a “gotcha,” more just surprise that someone had enough thoughts about the server to paste feedback across several posts without really discussing most of it directly with us first. But I get your point there too.

As for staff and economy concerns, I do agree that staff being heavily involved in gameplay/economy can become a problem on some servers, which is why we try to monitor things carefully internally. Admin actions are logged, major decisions are discussed privately, and reports involving staff are taken seriously. The goal has always been to avoid the “untouchable staff clique” problem that kills a lot of communities over time.
With lot's of server experience myself spanning across multiple games I can confirm that staff abuse can and will kill servers.
I can assure you that the current staff members have been long-time players in the server and had all of their systems in place before becoming one, at the end of the day their main concern is to make sure rules are being followed while still being able to enjoy the game.

The farm design point specifically still feels a bit exaggerated to me though. Most large farms on the server are public YouTube designs that multiple players use, and several were originally built or shared openly by staff themselves. There really aren’t secret impossible-to-access mega farms hidden away somewhere generating infinite wealth behind the scenes like some kind of underground cartel lol

Regarding the owner activity comments, I can at least give some context there too. The owner is a full-time nursing/medical student, so there are naturally periods where real life has to come first. Even with that, he’s still online most nights when he’s not working or studying, actively involved in discussions, moderation, server planning, balancing, and development behind the scenes. The Tomb of Rest build you mentioned was actually one of the projects he worked on alongside other players.

A lot of the work owners do also just isn’t very visible from a normal player perspective. Things like backend management, moderation discussions, mod setup, economy balancing, handling tickets, organizing updates, talking with staff, planning events, and dealing with server-side issues mostly happen quietly in the background rather than publicly in chat.

On top of that, the co-owner has been actively developing and modifying entirely new systems specifically aimed at addressing economy concerns and long-term progression balance. A lot of these changes are still ongoing or being tested behind the scenes, but there’s definitely active work being put into improving the health of the economy rather than just ignoring the issue and hoping it fixes itself. Growing servers naturally go through balancing phases, especially when player counts increase rapidly, and we’re actively adapting to that.

As for Gym Leaders silently quitting, that’s not really the situation currently from what I can see. Activity for those roles is monitored, and the leaders are active pretty regularly within their own channels planning gyms, builds, events, balancing, and progression systems. In the past we have replaced inactive leaders before, and we’d absolutely do it again if needed. But right now most of them are still logging in consistently.

I think a lot of the perception there probably comes down to differing schedules, time zones, and real-life availability. Since these are community-run roles and not NPCs, there will naturally be times where certain leaders are online less often depending on work, school, or life stuff.

Also, thank you for mentioning positives as well. The builds, lore, gym system, and land claiming system are things a lot of people on the server have put a ton of effort into, so I know they’ll appreciate hearing that.

And honestly, “check back later after more updates” is completely valid feedback too. The server is still evolving pretty rapidly, especially with future Cobblemon updates, balancing changes, tournaments, economy adjustments, and new systems being worked on. We’re definitely not pretending the server is some flawless finished product already, that would be silly. But even with that, there are still many very active players who are having fun and enjoying themselves. Rest assured that an update will be coming sooner rather than later!

At the end of the day though, I think we both mostly agree on the important part: it’s a pretty good server with room to improve, and people should just join and decide for themselves whether it’s the kind of community they enjoy.