Clearly this signifies Era's Greatest Downfall.

There's no way in hell a Halloween event, no matter how well planned and executed would bring back a playercount for an extended amount of time. At best, you'd get a few people back for a few days. They'd leave right afterwards.

And honestly, who really cares about Halloween? Most holiday events in all online games consist of useless novelty items and a couple of mini-games or something.

What the hell were you expecting, drastic server changes just for Halloween?

When the summer of 10' come, then we will make some great beaches with palms and everything like in Miami. :fro:

I'm going to make it simple for you: an online game, at its base, consists of two things: core gameplay and novelty ****. Core gameplay always takes precendence over novelty gameplay. This is what has the depth and fun-factor that keeps people playing the game beyond that of a week. If the only online games you play are mini-game based, I'd love to know what they are. Last I checked, Mario Party was still a console-based franchise.

Secondly, I very much enjoy how you're attempting to correlate real life with gaming. Yes, the holidays are a big deal to a lot of people - in real life. In fact, that's why holiday events in online games are oftentimes very underwhelming - because they're expecting you to get your holiday fulfillment from real life. They don't completely neglect it, they can help get you in the spirit (or whatever the **** you want to call it) for the holiday, but they're not there to replace the real thing. If you're such a lover of the holidays, I hope to god you don't spend all of your time on Graal or some other online game to "celebrate it". And honestly, trying to compare what Target makes to a holiday compared to Graal is, well, laughable. What's the ****ing point, the two are entirely different entities. I was under the impression we were discussing holiday events in games, not trying to compare the amount Graal and a random chain store makes from the holidays.


Okay, so once again - core gameplay should always supersede novelty gameplay. If people are only interested in what the next holiday event brings to Era, then Era has entirely failed as a server. Are holiday events fun? Yes. Are they the number one priority? Absolutely not. Maybe you haven't noticed, but with the population drop there's also been a huge drop in quality developers. We just can't devote weeks and weeks of effort to make sure all your festive holiday spirit needs are attended to. Not everyone enjoys novelty events. Everyone (in theory) enjoys the core gameplay. We still gave both players an option. If it's not up to your standards, move on.

But seriously - this goes out to everyone complaining about the holiday events. If it's such a big ****ing deal to all of you, I have three questions:
- If Era did it wrong, which Graal server (GRAAL, please don't link me to the nearest walmart.com revenues for Easter) did it right?

- I'm going to assume that very few of you are in a gang in real life and routinely raid each other houses, texting back and forth "got ur fukin base ***s get it bak". That's what Era's here for. It's not your one stop place to fulfill all of your festive holiday wishes and dreams. Go out, yes, out. Go to a real costume party or whatever floats your fetish down the rainbow, then come back next week and play Era how it's meant to be played.

- Seeing that the development team is undermanned right now, it's impressive they got any kind of halloween event finished. Couldn't you for one second at least thank them for that effort, THEN launch into your little *****fest about why YOU weren't entirely satisfied with it? Give constructive criticism. Give suggestions. But don't just go "IT SUCKS, FIX IT."

If you didn't find the time to read it (though most people that say they didn't read it did, they just use that excuse as a way to "deftly" avoid particular parts of an argument they can't combat), then nearly everything you say in your argument is invalidated.

I never said that Graal hates holidays, I tried expressing to you that holidays won't be the primary concern of each and every server. I don't think that's very hard to understand. If I viewed Graal as simply a dumb, novelty game I'd be right up there with you lamenting the fact that their holiday events aren't nearly as spectacular as they should be.

Be specific in what about last year made it better. You keep bringing up the past, yet not bringing up the specifics as to what exactly made it better.

Finally, in a debate there are guidelines to "comparisons". We were comparing holiday events in online games compared to Graal's events, not comparing retail stores to Graal. Therefore, your comparison is neither relevant, nor logical.

Let me give you an example (seeing as how my other post was overly "complex"): There are two crates of apples, sitting side by side. We are trying to figure out which are the most ripe, and we begin comparing and contrasting the attributes of the apples in both crates. Then, you, the intrepid scholar steps up and exclaims "The apples in the right crate are more ripe, it's obvious! These oranges over here are perfectly ripe, therefore the apples in the right crate must be as well. Thank you."

Bravo.

I don't think the halloween content was meant to attract people. relying on holiday events to increase the player count is definitely the wrong type of approach. you don't know what you're talking about. please be quiet.

So write one down.

So in other words you're going to be a negative nancy without bringing anything constructive to the table at all? Nice, now go away. I bet if we had made Halloween better than last year, you'd be here complaining about why we wasted our time on Halloween when there's more important things to do :rolleyes:

FYI: We're not planning on going anywhere anytime soon, so what you see is what you get. If you don't like the way we're doing things, that's fine, but don't come on the forums just to troll and cause problems for everyone -- try being helpful. If you want Era to improve, help us help you...if not, I'm sure nobody will care if you leave.

Honestly, what do you think would happen if we were gone? Do you expect some magical savior to sweep in and make all your dreams come true? No. There's nobody around who is capable of finishing what we have started on Era Dev (at least not as well as us :cool:). You'd be stuck with PWAs managing the server, and "New Era" would go back to being no more than an idea. But hey, at least we'd be gone, right?

If you have complaints about a PR, send me a forum PM or ticket through the support center. I can't do anything with general accusations...and don't just complain because they've punished you and you don't like them. Don't break the rules and you won't have that problem (not accusing you, just saying -- you have never contacted me about a problem with a PR)!

I've already addressed this. We've basically rescripted the entire server from ground up -- everything is more organized, more efficient, and more user-friendly (for future developers). We've finally begun working on the gameplay-side, and have hired Crow to help with that. Expect more updates and announcements in this area soon.

I'm not sure if you've read the other thread, but raiding seems to be the most popular thing to do with gangs. Nobody is stopping you from roleplaying...you don't need some fancy scripted system to pretend to be a gangster ^^. This doesn't mean we're going to completely ignore the RP-side of gangs, but gang competition and raiding will come first.

We have plans to create an event system similar to the one MontyPython suggested. It will encourage more participation because not only ONE person is rewarded.

A quest is done once and then never looked at again. If you have any ideas to make this more interesting, please share, but quests have never been a big part of Era. I don't think aimlessly exanding the gmap will solve anything, either.

O.o Well expanding the Gmap would be a ******* idea, I agree with you on that, maybe ill see if I can use my noobish LATing skills to start a new quest or somthing

As for everything else, well youve put things in perspective, that will probably be the last youll be hearing from me. Unless I dont understand something again, but now you know how to handle me:] Now id like to help you out with some things if you dont mind.

I guess evil can turn to good cant it? :confused:

Or is it the other way around :/

I still enjoy how not one of his "millions" of ideas pertained to the halloween event, which he seemed so stuck on.

Deleting that ****'s not going to help much, considering most of it's quoted. :]

Problems solved anyways monty, dont get your panties in a bundle. I walked over from the dark side since I saw the light.:noob:

Let me become LAT on era, and I will do everything I can for the people and make new levels for houses and weapon shops that dont have one.

It's really sad to see buildings just being there, they dont give any purpouse, and no one can get in or anything...

Asking to become LAT isn't going to get you anywhere.
Most likely you'll just be told to wait until they're accepting applications.

BUT, if you make a new thread and post some of your levels, and if the levels are good, then you might get a consideration before they're officially hiring.
(This is the way that things have always been on Era, because applications only show that a person can make 3 good levels in their lifetime. Forum posts can show that you can make 3 good levels in a day and can show the evolution of your work, etc.).

Tsk tsk tsk Rjax, dont do it the graal ghetto way and say, hire me for LAT im good. When I was manager on Noctorious and people just pmed me asking, can I become LAT when it wasnt listed on the application, i backlisted them.

Since there is no application out right now im afraid that demisis is right.

There actually is an application up, but we will not actually hire anyone right now. If you apply, your application will be looked at and saved depending on whether or not we like it, and when the time comes that we finally start hiring, you will be contacted concerning your application.

When I originally posted the thread, I was counting on something to be completed which would require me to hire more LATs...unfortunately it fell through.

We are definitely looking for graphics artists though. desperately, might I add

edit: if/when we decide to hire LATs, I will make another announcement so that everyone has a chance to send in an application if they haven't already.