I want the community to have a voice, an opinion on what the server may have. Of course, there's ground rules that need to be set in place. If you think there are certain minigames or features that are likely to be suggested that are unachievable, completely unrealistic or not fitting to what you see in the server then you need to tell the community.

The community itself has a right to acknowledge and understand the state of the server. I suggest a google form be made, or some form of any kind in order for the community themselves to have a say in what they think about the server, what they may like to see, with the obvious 'no promises' on certain things, but that popular suggestions or suggestions that you like (as a staff team) can be voted on by the community which could be a 'next project'. It may not motivate you, you may not like it yourselves, but the community comes first on a minecraft server (as far as I can see it).

But having a 'next project' can motivate the staff team, give a goal to work towards and consistently throughout give updates to the community, build excitement and provide more hype about upcoming features. Get the community involved, e.g. have votes on a theme of a map for a minigame, have a build contest that revolves around the community building a map for the minigame itself (lay ground rules, lay a theme etc)- like as a build contest, so that contest winners and their friends want to explore their map in the minigame itself, and anyone that they bring to the server in the future they can show the minigame and be like: "Hey I built this map and they added it in!" etc etc. (show examples of what the map layout should generally look like, create plots for the map size, whatever is required).

Next:

The community of minecraft is changing. Right now, memes have built Minecraft back up again from what it used to be. Brought with this is a younger generation who is less knowledgeable about the game. The rank system as well as the general navigation of the server is very foreign, and very difficult. Unfortunately, there's no two ways about it, it needs to be changed, things need to be simplified.

For example, the 'rank examples' part of the server can be confusing, it needs to be clear and obvious what examples are what, multiple examples are included. Not only this, but utilize the website as well as the discord server to show off examples of certain rank-up builds, use the community's builds and maybe rotate them every so often to show new builds, give the community something else to work towards to after they've hit Diamond.

Of course, not everyone is going to be happy about changes- that is inevitable. Sometimes you have to make changes based on what you think is right, eventually, people will come to accept the changes. Discuss and gather opinions of the people in the community, ensure that the majority are happy with a certain change, or maybe get feedback on what they think should happen instead.