Getting players to use useless items. (Maps)
 

So, I've been thinking about this for awhile now and I really think this would work. I love the idea of giving craft-able items a large list of items that need to be collected because it gives players things to do and makes them work for their items, which in my mind, gives the player something to do, and in turn raises the player count.

Maps are never used, even the Brutals aren't used anymore. Why not put a chest in all the treasure maps that give you items that can not be found anywhere else, and it would force players to go through those maps in order to obtain the items for the craftables. I'm not talking 2 or 3 items, I'm talking 75 - 100 of them. It would give players something to do, and it would allow players to craft gear with decent stats, since they would be worth the time spent collecting items as well as get rid of some basically useless items in the game (Maps) that nobody uses anymore.

Another idea is that the person collects items that can't be traded, but can only be used on your account. You can sell them and display them, but they can not be traded, so it would allow players to work more instead of just purchasing the items to craft the gear.

Adventurers points or something stupid like that.

Give them points for doing different things:
Completing a Quest? +2 Points
Crypt? +10 points
Easy Map +1, Intermediate/w.e +2, Hard +3, Immense +4, Brutal +5, Deadly +10
Clearing a haunted house room +1
Other things.... +#

These are all (or should be) existing completion points in their respective coding so shouldn't be hard to add a line to each thing to add points to the player.

They could be another thing to collect/level/farm/show off.. and in the end they could be used to craft some 'Adventurers' set of gear that looks badassly awesome endgame trollage & can't be traded (must be collected/completed on your own). Or you could just convert them to NC I don't care.

Point is, you don't even have to create anything... just adding a player attribute for Adv. Pts. (AP) could get these idiots to run around the server for hours/days/weeks/11 more years. Which is the goal.

I love the idea, especially the way you put it. xD

I agree with the Adventurer's points because most items on the game are actually already hoarded to the max. I have at least 10,000 of each monster part in the game, and I'm sure others do too. These point could be used to make some gear or do some of the same things as Nihil Coin (Not items. Maybe god switching, House Repair for a week, things like that). It would definitely give these 'idiots' something to do.

I think GK has become more of an item game rather than an experience. There needs to be something to increase the fun of the game, and give players something to look forward to. How many people sit idle in traded simply because there isn't anything decent to work towards on GK. Yeah, grinding Exp, but who hasn't done that for hours and hours for months on end? We need something new to add to the experience, and give players a reason to play TOGETHER.

I anticipate the Brutals and other maps are still viable experience options for low level players. Even if that is not true, I don't see the value in adding an extra layer of complexity -- or forcing players to do something they don't like. In fact, I anticipate it would reduce the player count given a bigger audience (i.e., facebook).

Let me make sure I understand correctly; you're suggesting we force players to invest their time in order to utilize simplistic crafting which is currently available and open to all players?

If that's the case then Rogue's suggestion is much worse - if they acquire resources (which Spiker seems to be suggesting) then at the least a subset of players could grind these items and sell the resources because they're practically required by everyone. This is an O.K. suggestion.

However, in Rogue's suggestion it is required for everyone because they need "Adventurer Points" (how does this apply to any reality? Do I need to fix 100 cars before I can buy spark plugs?)

First off, it's not a viable option for experience. The amount of experience you get from Brutals or other maps can be obtained in Xmas dungeon in literally 15 minutes. Once you get to a certain point, the other maps are pretty much useless, and with the amount of people that do play that help new players just tell them maps aren't a viable option for Exp, since you could party with other players and gain levels super fast. The way to fix this would be to block out lower level players from the xmas dungeon, since it is just a xmas flood, which can ruin the fun in game play when you just grind over and over and over at the exact same spot. Literally no other way on Graal Kingdoms is useful to gain levels once you hit ~25 levels.

What I am saying is that we get players to start doing something in the mean time instead of being bored and going to a different server and/or a different game. These things aren't forced, they can be for fun. Like the Nihil Shop, but more of trophies for stuff.

Like I said, things can obviously change, these are just ideas.

Completing a dungeon gives you literally nothing. You get like 15 plat for brutals and such. Why not give something else, like with the deadly maps how they have a chest. Why not give a chest at the end of EVERY map, the contents of the chest can vary on the map difficulty as well as the amount of "Adventurer's Points" you have. If we are speaking of reality, how can we cast fire bolts from out wands and have swords that are made of fire. Look at Zodiac for instance, they have the "levels" after you max out your character. There needs to be SOMETHING that keeps players busy, even if it is before max level.

I remember hearing about a achievement like system that was in the works, where did this go? Is this still happening? Any news on it?

I think there should be high priced items that players can shoot for. Every single thing on Graal Kingdoms can be crafted in a matter of hours. Why not make some craftables have ingredients easy to obtain, but tough to obtain the amount to craft. For instances, the Bear Hat. 250 cloth is a decent amount to obtain and it keeps you busy for awhile. I love this aspect and I believe it should be continued.

This is part of iGK, though I expect it could be ported to GK.
Yes, it would be possible to give rewards at the end of standard maps -- or in the ice cavern instead. I'm not opposed to the suggestion of rewards at the end of the maps. Several modifications have been made to improve the game-based market and this could be an addition.

I'm more focused on new players and less on old players. These maps are still viable options for new players, including the xmas dungeons. I'm opposed to restricting current aspects of the game in order to promote busy work.

It would be really nice to add chest rewards to the end of lower-level maps, and possibly re-structure which enemies are spawned in which maps, because the Ice Cavern dungeon includes almost everything (save for bigworms and a few other things) and made the lower level maps totally pointless to run.

Maps used to act sort of like keys to open a dungeon temporarily, and so the rewards used to be more valuable as well. With everything easy to access through the Ice Cavern now instead, everything has become much easier to craft, and a lot of craftables have shown up in chests, making crafting kind of pointless to begin with when luck can produce the same results.

This is why I believe players who are too weak to fight the strongest monsters will still use regular maps. Yes, I think it's fine to add rewards to regular maps.

I actually collected a bunch of low-level maps and was doing them just because I was bored. But it would be nice to maybe get a little bit more out of it. The plat reward is a little on the low side.

Since I started playing GK I never did any other maps other than level 3s (because all the t-rex and devils) and immense, then brutals when they came out. There was no point in doing 1,2,4s when you could just set yourself up in the dungeon and kill everything.

Yeah..
The T-Rexes in the main dungeon, and HHE with skeletons always were better than level 1-3 maps cause you could Idle farm them in many ways without running around the map between maps. Once evilbomies and stuff got added to the kingdom dungeons years ago, Samurai dungeon idling made anything below brutal obsolete.

Egg dungeons were easy exp for awhile, but it was only once a year and you couldn't max all your stats in one go... Zombies and the Crypt trumped Samurai dungeon eventually, and even made brutals worthless short of singing to bigworms.

Now there's the ice dungeon and reapers which are both much better than zombies even, to the point where a player can reach 107 phys (easiest one to level) in a matter of 2-3 days if they know the spawn timers. With some tricks and whatnot, we were able to even idle-kill reapers to max out every stat short of alchemy to 107 in just a few days as-well.

Nowadays anything but a Deadly map is worth no more than the #plat the npc pays for it honestly.

This is true but when is the last time you seen a low level leveling on their own? Players party level noobs because they keep asking for help leveling. It's kinda a catch 22.. add stuff for the lower levels and the higher levels complain.. add stuff for the higher levels and the lower levels get a free ride. Alot of people just prefer to skip or grind thru the game to get to end-game status. But end-game status on gk is retirement. There is even a max out thread. Then those players don't get to enjoy new leveling areas only items.. and items make crummy updates. Theres no way to win.

A few things mentioned here about points would be neat. However I believe at one point there was an achievement system in the planning. Which this would have been similar to. EX: earning an achievement like treasure hunter being so many maps.. or master treasure hunter to signify you completed more maps. That would be cool and probably a better approach then a separate system if something is still being planned for achievements.

To me, this is a serious problem. It shouldn't be possible to max out a character in 2-3 days on any game, unless it's considered disposable.

No, players who are too weak to fight the strongest monster are just standing around in the ice cavern entrance, begging every higher level player than enters to join a party with them...

I never see any other players doing treasure maps, or even in the haunted houses, or the t-rex rooms of the main dungeon. Even the newest players are usually found pan-handling for a "leveling partner".

Given the right tools, with the amount of exp that vamps currently give. Someone could easily max out every skill with a buddy in 35-40 hours of non-stop grinding. It's a mess.

But, if this is changed in any form-- it's still a mess, since there's been so many players who've been able to take advantage of this. If gaining experience were to become drastically harder, we've then built a gap between old players who've become God-like, and new players who'll never have the chance to take advantage of good exp opportunities.

Not to say we haven't already built a gap to begin with. Everything from granting massive amounts of exp to giving items amazing stats have brought us to where we are today.

People who come to GK want to be able to compete. Sure, most games have an amount of time where a player must level up for a few weeks before they're able to do so, and that's fine. But in order to compete here, it's really no easy task. And not to say it's supposed to be easy-- but it shouldn't be as overwhelming as it is for something as simple as "competing".

A decade ago the only thing you needed to compete was: a pair of lucky boots, a glok belt, dual RoCs/RoTs/RoS', an ac+2 amulet, a bomy helm, a shiny shield and a flaming sword. Everyone was level 1-40, and got their exp from Lord Hunting and lvl 3 maps. If you had 4.0 speed you were probably a hax0r.

It was simple, fun, and anyone who joined could be competing against the rest after a month tops.

I've always believed a good hard reset is what we need. Not the only thing we need, but a start. I'd also say remove all the amazing exp opportunities. The 107 mental/agility tricks. The crazy dungeons. Maybe even brutal maps. To the point where 107 of anything is only a dream.

If not a reset, then something else. A lvl cap of 40? Anything to bridge the gap between the old and the new.

With 2 players switching between idle-walls in the two prime areas for the correct spawntimes.. you can 0-107 a skill in 2-3 sittings. Me and Conq did it and I got 50-96 wis in approximately 8 hours, then I stopped cause +11 is max. At the same time he got from like 90-103 magic and 10 levels on whatever other stat he was doing, while I got from 20-50 magic. All 4 of these skills at the same time.

All we had to do was set the areas up for farming one time, which took maybe 30 mins to get perfect.. then re-cast our lightning walls every 30-40 minutes.

I personally just played a League game and reset the walls between them... we weren't even playing GK, that's how ridiculously easy this was.
-----

In the case of newer players, the first 50 levels in a stat can be obtained in just about an hour... I ran reapers with my controller (fastest archer/ranger on GK as many have said) for my friend Rams when I got him to login... he got bored after like 25 minutes, yet was about level 40~. And 50 is all you need to messiah reapers yourself.

You don't even need to walk to the x-mas dungeon to max all your stats in a matter of 2-3 weeks.

I think a hard reset is a terrible idea. I think instead of trying to dumb everyone down to a lower level, we need to design GK with the intention that level 110 is the standard. Players already have an advancement state of a month or more. And just because someone COULD max level in 40 hours of nonstop grinding, doesn't everyone is going to be doing it.

Most new GK players are more casual players, and they will take a month or more to reach level 110, and much, much longer to reach 107 in all skill categories.

GK has already evolved over the past 11 years or so, 110 is the standard, and if you want SIMPLE competitive gameplay, stop trying to nerf everything. Put more huge variety of items in play, bring EAs and IWDs back down from their stupid rare status, and let the new players level up, and gear up, and stop the class division.

Instead of trying to reset everyone, just close the gap and make it less complicated for new players to become just as powerful as older players.



The reason this hasn't happened is simple, older players don't WANT new players to all have the same powerful gear as them, because then it tanks the trade value of everything the older player has worked for. That's what we need though, we need it to be possible for a new player to join, and within 1-3 months of HARD playing, to be able to stand toe-to-toe in Core etc, with the older players.

Very nicely explained. I agree completely. There's o lyrics 2 ways to fix the server and both involve making it harder to level. To fix the gap can be done by either a reset or doing something like allowing 110 to reset and pick from new upgraded classes.

Also what happened to the classes wasn't it planned to do something cool to them?

Alot of other MMO games let you reset yourself for some added benefits. And if you really want what you can do is make it only harder to level to 110 the second time around. So your not gaping the lower levels making it impossible to "roll over" levels.

The thing is.. you reach 110 by just maxing a single skill. And in reality, only 1 (or 2-3 depending on your goal) skill(s) even need to be maxed to compete. Once you reach 110 and your hp/stats are maxed, your experience doesn't matter as much and you will realize the pointlessness of continuing to grind. Overall this can be done in 2 days on a minimalist's budget, or maybe a week to get all the core-skills done. As I said before, 2-3 weeks to 107 them all.

-Agility is completely and utterly pointless since traps aren't used and you can't steal meaningful items. Ignore this.
-Magic can be stopped at 18-20 where you can learn every single skill. This can be done in quite literally 15 minutes. You could spend a hour and get level 50~ if you want your walls to last awhile without killing your mana costs.
-Personality is completely and utterly pointless since you can summon monsters. Ignore this.
-Mental is pointless unless you plan on writing scrolls or doing alchemy as a source of income, though you can just buy scrolls for cheap and platinum isn't needed for anything really. Should you want to, this is the easiest skill to max and can be done in a matter of a day (it took me about 7 hours after gathering/being given the materials). I'll say 2 days since you gather the materials.
-Physical is the only really required skill to compete in the game, and is the second easiest to level, cause once you hit the 50~ break-point you can do it yourself without needing a party to leech from you. All you need is a Messiah Bow of Bile, and it can be maxed in 2 sets of reaper spawn. So 2 days, or 1.5 if you offset the spawn times.
-Wisdom is iffy. You don't need it in any way, you can just pray to your god with grace gear, get your spells, and be done. But if you want to bless things (really has less value now than before.. since everyone has maxed with different gods, and they bless for basically free/1 tig) If you do want to max it, you only need to go to 88/96 depending on your god.. which either way ignores the toughest bit of leveling. By now you should have a few friends since you played for at-least 2 days maxing Phys... idle-farming can get this done in 15-20 hours depending on your god. Oh and holy-P I guess matters in PvP, do this.

Basically, it shouldn't take a month to reach 110 even if you did it the hard way and did a bit of each skill legitimately (without just partying). Hell this might actually be faster since your exp/hour wouldn't decrease as you hit the breakpoints. And 107 in all skills is completely irrelevant to the point of competing in the game where it matters. You only need to do 1.75 skills fully to be on the same level as Conq (who has 107 everything) in a PvP scenario.

Are you all forgetting, the one change that started this whole downward spiral. When GK was originally released, on players death, they lost a percentage of XP.

Why don't we just bring back XP loss on death, and let it sort out all these problems of max level players idling and complaining because they have nothing to do?

While you're at it, make all players above level 50 permanently battle mode, and increase the rates of items dropped on player death.

Because there idling in bomboria which is a safe zone. I never seen exp loss It must have been before 2003.

No thank you. I'm usually bmode nowadays for the xp bonus, but never being able to change out of it is ridiculous. For one thing, I'd be getting killed constantly. I'm not in a place to hold my own. Plus, having an xp loss on death will make this game a lot less enjoyable for weaker players, especially if they're getting preyed upon by one of these "bored idlers."

Agreed.. you would scare new players away.

see:
New players wouldn't be affected.

Since I'm on my phone I'm not going to try and quote the comments above stating in the first week your basically 110 because of leaching. But you certainly wouldn't have gear to protect you against the oncoming slaughter that will happen. I even see people that don't have enough hours to use the freebie system that helps noob whom are already 110. Unlike the past you can't say wow level 4 your not a noob.. you have to look at online time now too. And then assume they didn't idle most of it.

Lets us not do forced B mode, thanks. Level 50 isn't even anything, overall level means nothing, and frankly it's a terrible idea. Very few people even PK and you'd just make nobody ever leave trade because they'd be PKed constantly with such a small playercount.

My point exactly. Even level 50 phy isn't that great. I am in the 90 phy.. I have a 26 it'd sword that if I could equipt, lol, I would still struggle to not die every 5 seconds. The last bmode update was great. I think pk then run I to trade and still being bmode is a nice update.

I wouldn't say this has anything to do with GK's downward spiral at all.

As stated in my previous post, there was a simpler time where level 40 was legendary status. But bad things happened.

- The distribution of party experience in its first phase was flawed, as a member of the party could keep changing Gods and "losing" exp granting higher exp to the other members. Many people abused this and got physique levels to 70+.

- The infamous Jagen spawning brutals to his close friends.

- Using the stealing skill 10000x against a single Bomy Lord to level agility ultra fast (and then eventually leveling it even faster through magic runes)

And other game-breaking events that weren't the original intent of the servers creators. But they happened. Players complained because many of these things were fixed afterwards, and they couldn't reach the same status as some of these players who abused said tactics. So, the complaints were heard and exp was gradually made easier to obtain (at first through seasonal events, but now full-time access).

At some point in time, staff realized players were reaching end-game status far too quickly and would leave GK out of sheer boredom. Obviously the goal is to keep the players here as long as they can. So to prevent this, EA's and IWD's became incredibly hard to obtain (I don't agree with this method, but it happened) in hopes that future players might have a harder time reaching end-game status.

If all of the game-breaking events never happened in the past, I think we'd have a much healthier playercount today. As players would always have something to level-- as I doubt many players would have the tenacity to reach lvl 107 physique solely on Lords :p (well, maybe Marion Hunter).

Even if a reset was a "experience-only" reset, it could do so much good for the server if all of the easy 107 routes were fixed-- especially with the upcoming facebook release.

I already know however that this won't happen, so there's no need to pick apart this post. This is just me vocalizing my opinion (we all have one).

Over the past decade, many of us (myself included) have all made the same suggestions/arguments you're currently advocating (making EA's/IWD's commonplace again, mob drops, broader selection of items etc), but they always seem to get rejected. Mainly because of the amount of work versus the amount of workers I believe.

"There's no need to talk about how wrong most of my post is. Carry on."

The things you're talking about might have been exploited at one time, but they're not the cause of why many players have left over time.

Not the sole reason, no. But they played a part in the chain of events that lead us here. :)

EDIT: (Here as in the growing gap between new to experienced players mentioned in my previous post)

The gap is there by design -- if you think of it strategically, we simply cannot develop the content older players require. With or without this content they're trickling away and despite honest efforts to develop they never seem satisfied anyways. I'm totally invested in a new community of Facebook players.

The gap is there by design.. :oo:

Not very encouraging news for the community of tomorrow. You can't honestly believe that basing the future of this server off of the hopes that the old will retire is our best solution.

"Hello, welcome to Graal Kingdoms! Here's your free handicap! But don't worry, maybe one day the other 30-40 players will quit and level the playing-field"

Come on. Is that really what we're supposed to tell the new upcoming facebook population? How is this the plan for the new community; they're practically being set up for failure in a competitive environment.

If this really is the end all say all of GK's future plans, then for the sake of all future players-- at least make some sort of tiered PK structure where you can only fight against people in your tier (disabled in core/spar). Lvl 1-25, 26-50, 51-80, 80+. This would at least prevent them from being slaughtered, and they could decide to stop leveling to stay in their tier if they still felt like their gear was under-par. Maybe even assigning a "point value" to pieces of gear so people couldn't start over as a lvl 25 and wear end-game gear, cheating the system.

Would this anger the old community? Possibly, but obviously they're not being catered to anyways if the current plan revolves around their retirement.

Yeah the gap doesn't make it fair to new players but I'm pretty sure there pm ode to start. Even if we fixed the gap it doesn't solve the issue of the topic of the thread making these items be more used. The only way to get maps used is get players leveling outside of parties. GK would have a better future with a exp reset even if you don't reset items imo.

The assumption is that the community of tomorrow will rapidly grow beyond our currently community, which will dwindle as it has for years. Regardless, I feel comfortable assuming the next generation will greatly out number the current members.

The current members will hold very valuable gear, giving them a benefit in the new generation of players. It's not perfect but it's good enough in the interim.

But oldies won't dwindle as fast if the community flourishes. And it might even reverse decline of old players into an incline. It's something definately worth considering. I agree new players will probably out number old players tho its already been happening for years. Only a small fraction of players have been around since 2003.

There will be a subset of the new community which can make very convincing offers in order to purchase items from the existing community, regardless of their 'rate of decay'. This will allow the gear to trickle-down, as it normally has.

With the introduction of Nihil we should see fewer money based trades, so that has also been addressed.

Yeah the Nihil was a good thing for sure. There was way to much usd player to player before it and I haven't heard of it happening nearly as often now.

There's a big difference between not being capable of it and not knowing how to do it.
It really wouldn't. The server would have the same setup as before, and there would be little difference except a few players who have actually taken the time to earn things would have their earnings removed for no reason but to make players who haven't feel good for a day or two. History is bound to repeat itself.
If it's not supposed to be earnable, why have it to begin with?



And what's with this sudden shift in attitude glorifying newbies all of a sudden? I don't know when the last time was that you all were at a low level, but let me remind you that it sucks. A lot.

With a sudden wipe of everyone's progress and nerfing exp, you can say goodbye to all the conveniences you take for granted. That includes blessings, enchantments, weapon improvements, scroll writing, deadly maps, crypt runs, and so forth. If you want to be a newbie, there's a /reset command built into the game. Knock yourself out.

Thanks, that was insightful.

For the illusion of endless content. Many successful MMOs have similar models, where most people roughly end up "around" the same level because the leveling gets so repetitive that players tend to stop. But the option is always there for those select few who embrace the grind. (Maybe only resulting in a few levels more than the average population)

As Stephen's made clear, end-game content isn't the focus of future development. And with a dev team as small as theirs, I can't really blame them. I don't agree with their solution to the gap, but know that there's no easy viable solution to the problem given their current resources.