Future improvement ideas.
 

a.) Get rid of Graal###### accounts. They are highly unwanted and I've seen Graal lose a few hundred over trials saying "nu, buyin n acct aint wort it cuz ill b a graalnumber acct" despite knowing they can have community names. The Graal###### accounts make it harder on players, staff, servers, and is forcing them to find ways to adapt. I talked with global staff about why these accounts exist, and they said not even they were given a real reason :/

b.) Perhaps create Global GAT, Global LAT, etc teams along with the GST to aid Developing servers. I theorize that if there were global teams lending hands to developed servers, these servers in question would have better content and wouldn't die over reasons such as "OMFG I CANT FIND A GOOD GFX ARTIST" or having lack of workers.

If someone like Bell or Houdini went on a server and said "Hey this guys have potential, we'll get someone to lend them a hand", then sure, a Global member of one of those teams could be assigned to help.

I'm sure people will find reasons to disagree with this, though.

This has been discussed sooo much already. Search the forums. The explanation has been given by staff enough already. Perhaps community names could be explained a bit better but I found it was pretty damn simple and perhaps they should just read into it a bit more before throwing money at things.

Players themselves make these teams but they never really get recognition. Also, GST isn't there to develop for servers: they're there to provide assistance with problems and help servers over the bridge between UC and Hosted. They have not the time nor manpower to develop entire servers for young kids with lots of money and no clue.

People pay for the hosting of the server, not for dedicated staff workers. They will help resolve your problems but will not hold your hand throughout the process. When people purchase a server, they should make sure they have the people available to help there. If not, they just wasted $90USD. Globals are stretched thin enough.

Basically, these aren't new and shiny ideas. All these have been presented and discussed in many different forms over time and you should really search through the forums first.

I see.

still doesn't change the fact that it'd be nice if there were some members of the Graal Community that could be assigned to work on some of the servers that have sat on the hosted tab for the past 4 years

I dislike the Graal###### accounts simply because of the fact that they aren't fully supported in the RC or other things.

They should just let you change your account when you upgrade, community names are just a pain.

Well, theres still the argument that they will use whatever they gained before upgrading. But it shouldnt be a problem to automatically transfer all the data to the new account, seriously.

Changing accounts would be a bad idea considering a script would have to go through every server and rename the account files, thats not even including scripted systems.

Why can't we have both custom account name and community name?

Give them a choice, keep Graal#### and keep stuff, or get custom account and lose stuff. I know what I'd choose.

That doesn't solve the problem of community name and new account format being unsupported by almost everything.

Allowing them to change account names is a bad idea. Community names are only a problem with RC which is being faded out anyways.

Well, they should better merge accounts and community names in scripts. I don't know how, but it should be much easier in findPlayer, etc.

There is a findplayerbycommunityname() function.

Someone who is very wealthy needs to throw their money at stefan, NOW!

It's not really about that.

True, but its ultimately shorter than the script neeeded if you don't wish to use it.

I know that, I said that it needs to be better integrated, it shouldn't be up to the scripters to change all their code to fit this, Stefan/unix should not do it if it will cause so many problems, or they should better integrate it.

Yes, I know that sentence is messed up, too lazy to fix it.

Uhm, it isn't hard using the find function the script windows have integrated. You first copy 'findplayerbycommunityname', then you use the find feature and search for 'findplayer('. Now paste over it. Isn't that hard you know ^^

And I've started to use findplayerbycommunityname() instead of findplayer() because findplayerbycommunityname() will first search for account names (woohoo, same as findplayer()), but if an account wasn't found, it will look for a community name!

Well, to the point. There isn't an problem unless you think findplayer + 13 (+2 for bracets) is to hard to write.

I'm just annoyed with all of those who moans about the Graal###### accounts, Yes, I don't like it myself, but it's good for the new players. They can play as a guest/observer, pay for an account, nad keep the items they made on the guest/observer account! And, you can say making your systems working with community and account names can be some extra training.

:)

^^

Actually, I think findPlayerByCommunityName() rather looks for the community names first. Would make no sense otherwise, and old accounts have their account as the community name.
Also, just replacing findPlayer() with findPlayerByCommunityName() can cause soooooo many problems. It depends where its used, seriously. If you only change it in one script, and a string with an account inside is used somewhere else and its not changed there yet...kapoof, broken stuff, enjoy.

http://forums.graalonline.com/forums...0&postcount=11


Won't cause any problems though.. It checks for the exact same thing as findplayer() but is also checking for community names..

Quite interesting :o

Hehe :p

You only need findplayerbycommunityname() for scripts involving input/output of the account name to/from the player.

MUD data and all that should still use findplayer().

I know, I'm saying Stefan should better integrate it, it shouldn't be up to the developers to go back and rescript everything (some systems would require some major rescripting).

Not really

*some* would.

Mind, only if you design your scripts poorly, but still, they should better integrate it.