Ideas for new content
 

So I'm at a point where the game is 99% fully playable. After watching developers sit on the server and do nothing for literally a decade, I never thought it would have been this easy to get the game working.

Using tools like OLNE, Gonstruct, and tile-editor allows me to get work done that used to take weeks to complete in a matter of hours.

Now I am considering where to take the server. I have enough unused graphics from the Bomy Island project to really sustain quite a few updates for stuff I can retool and add like Bomber Arena, new hat shops, new jobs like Bug Catching, and possible updates to the UI and existing items.

The big thing I'm brainstorming (and really my realm of experience), is in creating a string of new Quests. And I'm hoping for input from the community as to which avenue would please the largest amount of players.

On one hand, Graal2001 already has a few quests. From my testing they work pretty well, with some minor glitches to be expected of course. One thing I've noticed is that the style of quest isn't really uniform serverwide. You have Stefan's Quest being an experimental multiplayer Four-Swords like situation, which really is a great piece of Graal history. Then you have the Bomy Moon Quest which is kind of silly but had some good work put into the bosses. You have Zalactic Labs which is really experimental and cool, but the execution could be much better. For Zalactic Labs what I want to do is keep that idea of a 2D scrolling dungeon, but update the tileset to be more like Super Metroid (right now it looks hideous). There is the fish quest which sees the player transformed into a hilariously strange fish monster, but really this is actually the most well thought-out and well executed quest if I do say so.

All of these quests are unique and fun, and so I intend on keeping them. Lastly I want to mention a different kind of quest, the Pyramid quest. It can be found underground in the southwest part of Mt. Antora. This quest is actually quite good. I'd look at it as a Ultima-like quest where the challenge is to be able to defeat all of the baddies to collect keys and progress through the dungeon. It's really difficult, but going here and defeating these baddies allows the player to gain EXP for a small but fulfilling RPG-like upgrade system to Kung-Fu (which the player starts with) and the Bamboo Rod (which is what the weapons on Kingdoms are loosely based on). There used to be more dungeons like this but they used Kingdoms graphics so they are no longer available.

So really I have two very different options and I want your help to decide which will be better:

I can either make more grindy level-up "Ultima-like" or episodic dungeons where the main goal is to defeat hordes of difficult baddies, or..

I can make a new paradigm of dungeons that is much more Zelda-like and object-based, complete with puzzles, switches, minibosses that give you new weapons, etc.

The third option is that I could do both, but I would really like everything I create to be concise and practical from here on out. For instance if I go the Zelda-like route I personally know for a fact this will allow me to make adventuring more engaging for the player. On the other hand Graal2001 has always been more about grinding, but not exclusively.

Another idea to throw out there is that some of the quests can be Kingdom-related.

just follow your heart~

Well I'm a big fan of both Phantasy Star Online and of Zelda. Just kind of hard to find a way to mesh the gameplay of both. PSO does the Ultima-style thing where there is technically no endgame and dungeons are repeatable. Zelda style dungeons aren't repeatable, but maybe I can make them more like the dungeons in Zelda 1 where you can go back through to fight the enemies. One idea is that the dungeon would be puzzle-centric on the first playthrough, but outside of that there could be a mission system that requires the player to return to the dungeon for alternate objectives.

idk what you could do but whatever it is must be good because I sank way too many hours into that, which means it did something right


perhaps a "bounty board" concept that sees dungeons reused for different, semi random means. I think skyrim did something similar with the generic "endless" quests (ie, go back to this cave you cleared ages ago, some bandits are there, or go find a trinket). in a big game like skyrim that's stupid, but in something graal small I could see it working as a justification to return to old locations

Yeah I like it. Maybe I will make a straight-up Hunter's Guild. lol

slay bomies and keep their shells as trophies

I would like to see some quests where it takes two people to do. As an example, maybe there are two different platforms and each player needs to hit the correct switch at the same time to damage the boss. You can also make quests having two different paths. Each player affects parts of the quests on the different path. IE A door won’t open until the player from path A hits a switch or uses a key in an entirely different area.

Something like a besiege, or waves of enemies come at you could be fun. Possibly an entire server besiege like killing baddies and defending a castle. If the players win they could get some worldwide bonus like extra health or can buy certain items from a shop. If the baddies win maybe block off an area of the map or remove the NPC at a shop so it can't be used.

Repeatable dungeons where rare items could drop is always fun. Maybe a special hat, bomy skin, hammer, mount, rail cart, crafting materials, ect..

prozac? from sans?

Kingdom related? Elaborate. What kingdoms? Can the Headhunters be involved? (I... actually may reconsider that name btw... maybe the "Hit Crew" or something...)

The kingdoms we have planned are currently Dustari, Zormite, Samurai, and Pirate Crew.

I thought kingdoms were going to be an rp thing decided mostly by players? And why no Karakaze troupe?