Thoughts on GCs?
 

Hey guys,

I know it's going to be a while before things get into full swing hopefully, and specifics about events/prizes/etc aren't finalized yet, but I would like to get some thoughts on GCs in general.

Based on your past experiences on Classic, what would you like to see different, remain the same, or possible new additions to GCs + events?

Any constructive feedback is appreciated.

remove all the GCs since they suck anyway and use automated hosting

Add Pit and GC island back please

Being a GC reminds me of George Jetson's button pushing job on the Jetsons.

GC masses should be limited to announcing/recapping an event. Things like wanting more people for an event would be suitable for a GUI.

I'd like to see more use of automated commands for collecting players and starting an event. The creativity of the GC tool should still remain but some studio events could be better scripted to make the hosting process more efficient. (i.e events like fortbuilder)

Return of the merit chart so people like Clel can't take advantage!

ya dude, whenever a GC hosted for the last 3-4 years it wasn't "oh man, x hosted a killer sumo by doing blah", it was "I can't remember who just said start and stop a few times and it was really boring"

Of course the tool and it's utilities should allow for some flexibility and creativity should the GC have an idea, but the main point behind automated events is that they are generally the preferred events and that automation speeds them up.

As an example it would often be frustrating when it took up to 10 minutes to actually begin playing a CTF, our current GUI based summoning setup should save a bit of time, as should GUI based options for the GC albeit more slight, perhaps an option for automatic team selection (shouldn't be forced) tied in with statistics would cut down potential delays further,

Get Glad on the GC team fo sho

this is something that called my attention a lot when I played classic. GCs used masses for everything.

I think it would be worth pointing out we already have a GUI for starting/joining events.

I like the concept of GC, it is an excellent system that brings a level of creativity, uniqueness, and variety into events(provided the GC didn't blow and/or barely used their GC tool to spice an event up), that a scripted automated event hosting system just can't provide. But with all concepts with anything, they have to be implemented and maintained properly to survive.

This wasn't done, who's to blame?


First, you have the LAT Admins that would dramatically change the direction of the server or needlessly redo the scripts of the previous admins(sup Hell Raven). I think you can quote me saying "we've had more movement systems than quests", whats sad is, what I said was true. This stagnated the speed of development of non event content dramatically, stagnating anything not related to events.

Then, you have Storm, who allowed every LAT Admin, and GC Dev dept.(I admit we really shouldn't have made the GC practically all the content of the server), to take full control of the overall developmental direction the server went Master Storm did barely any of his duties he should as a Manager, both from chronic inactivity and his indecisiveness.

I personally think the say regarding the servers direction should be equal parts of the LAT Admin, Manager, and players general opinions. But anyway.

I guess you have to blame some of it on Night somehow being stupid enough to work his admin position for 100 years or so and getting lucky and nabbing good devs plus getting help elsewhere every once and awhile. This allowed GC development to maintain a consistent direction and fairly frequent updates while the main development team lagged behind.

CTF sumo hosted today.

Outside of two players not being able to see the flag at one point (fixed by r/cing,) it went pretty well.

The GC bringing the ability to make unique events. I stress ability because though there was certainly ability, no one was willing to go out of their comfort zone and actually host a unique event. Eventually it degenerated to the point GCs hosted events with a strict structure in place and nothing else. Games like Bazillion Questions fell by the wayside for events like CTF. When the GC's hand was forced and they had to host one of the non structured events, they'd mess up, and they would use the event's poor showing to continue the event's hiatus. This cycle is what lead to the stagnation of the GC team, and was the final weight to break the server's back.

This is why I hope with the new Classic they use an automated system for events BUT allow GC events to be held as well. With this, there would be restrictions on how many times X event could be held. It would allow players to experience all different games. With this system I would ALSO like player hostable events, which would be as official as either event type mentioned above. The prizes for such events would come out of the player's pocket.

I wouldn't object to an automated system with the ability for staff to host events themselves when they feel like it. I guess the lack of a GC could enabled cheating to happen in off hours and such, which would add to frustration.

In the end though, GC seem to just be human poll takers who tally up who wants to play what and host it. Problem is, if it's an automated system implemented to force players out of their comfort zone, players just won't participate. The only people who benefit are those who do enjoy the less popular events... but they won't be able to enjoy it if the event is automatically canceled because of insufficient participation.

idk what this bull**** about skilled GC devs is considering the past 4 years saw nothing hosted besides Sumo, Allstar, CTF, or a spar tourney or some combination of the two like Sumo Allstar, Sumo CTF, bleh.

It's easy to say that the GCs never hosted any creative events, because they really didn't.

But let's be honest here. Whenever a GC did attempt to host something different/original (I made a few events, though none ever got hosted that often,) a lot of players wouldn't join. They'd idle in lvl 14 and wait until their favorite events came up, such as CTF or fortbuilder.

It wasn't just the GCs not hosting different events. It was also the players not joining events they didn't love/know. And don't respond with a message like "i always joined any event," because thats A) probably not true, and B) a few people would always join, but not enough to make a fun and competitive event. If you'd rather have a 3 player 'bazillion questions' instead of an 8 player CTF game, then by all means apply to be a GC and host it yourself when the time comes.

Gladius summed it up well. GC's did attempt all the 'underhosted' events you're talking about. The amount of players who join those events is extremely low that make the event not fun/cancelled.

I don't see how an event bot will be beneficial to this problem at all.

Edit: I think we all are forgetting the real problem was the dead value of a ticket.

it's easy for you to say they did that but as a direct observer I'm pretty sure that wasn't the case.

I don't even say use an event bot because GCs never hosted certain events, I say use one because all of the GCs were practically brain dead robots saying start/stop. There was literally no benefit to using a human being instead of a bot for the past 4 years for what you were getting.

Oh yes, nearly forgot. Host pictionary on a regular basis!!!!

P.S.: a bot wouldn't cry, either.

whats a gc

Exactly how I felt and why I hardly ever entered an event.

The "automated" CTF we had before felt completely different to when it had been hosted by someone, why is that?

B/c DC wasn't there to randomly add horses to people?

probably because it didn't feature mystic starting and stopping the event about 60 times while people cried about lag.

One suggestion is that the whole CTF Lobby should be bigger. When like 10 people are fit in that little room, so much spam comes up and you can't see what you are saying. Same goes for the BG lobby, but not many people like (resulting in not many people playing it) so that isn't as big of a concern. I also would like to see new event items added. Perhaps some Event Items that help in PK, but not to overpowered. Also some fun items added in, but refrain from the really pointless, like the jellybeans. Those were really lame and pointless.

The reason a lot of event items were "pointless" was that we were very limited initially by the management on what GC prizes could do. We weren't allowed to make items that gave advantages in gameplay, damage other players, or really affect other players in general. This is why a vast majority of the GC prizes were simply ones that made your character perform some animation or do something equally pointless.
I obviously ignored those rules when I directed GC development because I thought they were stupid(sup 9th heart as a GC prize to send the message to the main dev team to release something).

The good news though is that I got rid of that rule when I became Dev Admin and as far as I know, it isn't coming back. Hopefully this will allow for some more interesting prizes.

Edit: Plus Night ****ing loved to make ganis all the goddamn time.

Despite the amount of cheaters/idlers/insufficient amount of players.

I'm not sure what you mean by the gc's only "saying start/stop", but for how long I've played/hosted GC events, i have always seen unique events being attempted. It may not be very creative all the time, however, but still unique.

I guess nobody took my 'decimated value of the ticket' point into consideration at all.

edit: DC misses Night.

I don't think anyone is taking your decimated value of the ticket point into consideration because it is not a valid point. People keep throwing this out there as the reason why people won't play events when in reality, they are just really boring and feel robotic.

I'm 100% sure there are the same amount of prizes if not more than there were pre-NPC server and nobody whined about ticket inflation then. I already suggested bringing back the GC statue auction at least once on the forum if people really are paranoid enough to believe having a ton of tickets is an issue but nobody listened and instead came up with ideas like giving in game advantages for tickets, which would have severely thrown off the balance of the game for a considerable amount of time considering the amount of tickets some people had amassed.

I just wanted to say that I personally think GCs can suck it.

..

I really don't want to get in a back-and-forth argument, especially when this thread was about getting ideas to improve GC this time around, but I feel the need to say something.

The ticket economy, or lack thereof, did play a roll in the decline in events. The sheer massive number people had (Laura had 1k, I believe,) combined with the fact that either A) everyone had all the GC prizes, or B) no one wanted to buy any since they were useless, severely damaged competitiveness in some events. It is human nature (and dino nature,) to try a little bit harder when sometime desirable is on the line. Why else would men go to such extraordinary lengths to impress a female (usually.) Why else would kids tear through gift wrapping with such a frenzy on xmas morning?

The point is, if people want a specific GC prize or two, they might try harder in events to win the tickets necessary to buy it. When you have a hundred tickets and all the prizes already, you weren't really motivated in events. Sometimes you just went through the motions simply because there wasn't anything else to do on the server. Winning is a great motivator by itself, but that little extra was just missing, in part due to the ticket economy, or lackthereof.

I can attest to this, considering I was just learning about reward theory in my psych class this past week.

The problem with nobody caring about tickets years ago was because Graal was a better game in general due to the higher playercount. Now that the playercount of each server has more than halved, there has to be another incentive to play.

Why weren't players driven just to win events? Winning and proving you're better than others is a huge motivator for almost anyone. Ticket economy is just a scapegoat for the entire GC administration because they couldn't make the events themselves enjoyable.

Hard to make an event enjoyable when half the people don't try very hard, for a variety of reasons.

But w/e, believe what you want.

Just try to get this thread back on track.

it's plenty on track you idiot, if I have to spell it out for you, the point that several people are trying to make is they don't like the GCs and feel their ineptitude is the reason why events weren't enjoyable.

So is night planning on coming back as the GC admin or is he going to be replaced by a senior member of the GC team?

That's an intrinsic award. Most people desire extrinsic rewards. The overall graal playerbase is lower in count, so competition is lower. Not many people care about beating others these days since it's pretty meaningless to brag to an abysmal playercount. (If you don't believe me, feel free to study the theory of motivation.) However, for events such as CTF, it really isn't the case. The only times where I see people that just want to win events for bragging rights are the major spar tournies such as single belts or the monthly (although they provide an extrinsic reward themselves as well).

Night quit and I believe either Gladius or Clel (maybe both)would take his spot when the time comes that a GC admin is needed. I don't see Clel on graal much these days though.

Also Gladius, what we are talking about is very much on topic with GC improvement.

Simply making the comment that "the ineptitude of the GCs is the reason why events weren't enjoyable" doesn't solve the issue.

Perhaps suggesting some ways to solve this, get around this, overcome this, etc., would help solve the issue.

For instance, what do you want GCs to be doing during events? Would you want them watching like a hawk for people uber-lagging, idling, or otherwise cheating in certain events? Do you want them to be mostly hands-off and let things run their course?

If GCs are supposed to be "laizze fare" or w/e, then they don't have to be overly adept at anything. If GCs are supposed to be creative geniuses that use their ingenuity to create awesome, competitive events, then thats what they need to do. But I can state from experience that down the stretch, many players simply wanted a GC to host their favorite event so they wouldn't be completely bored on classic.

That would make sucks.

How so? Not dissing Night or anything, but GC sort of fell apart when he became less and less active. He was a great admin while he was active though.