Paying to Develop?
 

Can anyone explain to me the thinking behind the whole 'You have to pay us to develop our game' crap?

I've been thinking about and it really confuses me.
Why do developers have to pay Graal Online for the 'privelege' of working on servers?
We're creating new content, which in turn attracts new players and encourages old players to continue subscribing to Graal.

We're making Graal Online more money, so why are they charging us to do so?
I really don't see a point to it.
Graal, in my opinion, loses it's fun after the first month. I only 'play' Graal for the scripting aspects, and I can't even continue to do that to my fullest extent unless I give them more of my money.

Thoughts on this/reasons for making us pay to develop?

Why do you develop in the first place? Because you enjoy it, right? The ability to make your own content/world on graal is just another piece of appeal that's in the game.

If you enjoy scripting with GS2 enough, you'll pay. *shrug*

Also, when you think about it, you're not really developing for their game unless you're working on an official server... Playerworld owners have quite a bit of leway when it comes to how they want to make their server.

You're paying for services such as a game which is simple to modify, advance scripting which makes development easy for you, and fairly good hosting.

And you're not really bringing new players into Graal - you're just spreading the current populat out.

Yen, I love you. :)

Now might be a good time to point out that not everyone with a private development server is actually making money for Graal just by developing content. I'm sure if you look around a bit you'll find some examples.

i miss my server if i didnt have to pay for it it still would be filled with corrupted staff and hackers!

Heck, you'd probably find 146 examples.

You pay for the space that you use. And if you happen to be successful at using the space given to you, and you make it to the classic list, a spot where you might help bring players to graal, then your subscription is frozen. Seems fair to me.

It's the concept that is going to kill Graal. Wait until the scripters start leaving. As long as they try to make money off GS2 by not including it in an offline, usable fashion, there will be no new scripters of any great note. A year or two down the road and there will probably be few-to-none left.

Agreed, no offline scripting is not something I would have expected, and I still dont understand the reasoning behind it. It also makes need for Dev servers for most high population servers, if your testing a script online and mess it up a few times you've more than likely screwed your flags / stats up and your going to have to fix them several times, blah these are all obvious problems... >_<

You don't pay to develop; You pay to have a server that works with Graal, that processes codes, and that outputs them via a spcific client. Whether you use it to enhance Graal or not is ENTIRELY up to you. Like #gscript doesn't use the Graal Servers as a development; they use it for their own community.

If you do have good content that enhances Graal, your subscription is frozen, meaning you don't have to pay anymore. That said, I hope that you look at this in a more objective way.

I think you should be atleast be able to run a stand-alone server which only a 127.0.0.1 can access or maybe others, just so you can develop without overpaying for a server that can barely handle graal.. The lag is slowly increasing and is slowly becoming vexing

So what if you have are given room to develope and a chance to script online? The point is that you're basically paying to work for Graal. Sure sometimes we enjoy working but PAYING to WORK HARD is stupid.

Whatever.

I agree. There needs to be offline scripting available for practice. REALLY badly.

They did that in the past... However, everytime they released the GServer to public, there'd be 10-20 unoffical servers with the source files. It wasn't very secure, for one, as people could learn how to hack on their server, and then bring that over to the real servers.

We pay for whatever we want to do with it. I don't care if you work on it or not; it is ENTIRELY your decision. You just chose to work. Nobody is forcing you.

Well, now we can just have hackers get hired on servers since the servers are like "OMG PLZ WE NEED STAFFS", which comprises a more dramatic security problem.

Would something like an offline NPC-Server simulator pose the same problem?

Revealing source code? And it would make Stefan go much into development of unneeded things -- He's already too busy to make that.

What that guy said and plus you don't have to pay to work on any classic server. With a classic membership you can be staff on any classic server for free.

If you pay to develop a private world thats your own problem. I haven't seen a single new playerworld come out onto the classic tab since renting came. Just classic servers like SL, Babylon, Val, Cynical and a few others rotating in and out. I expect all 126 rented playerworlds to never come out onto the list. If they do, hoorah. If not just another server that went dead like the rest because they couldn't produce more than hype.

Dude, most people go play a WoW server or something if they feel like emulating a game server. Back in the day, Graal and one other MMORPG were the only two out. Now Blizzard and NCSoft are in on the game.

No...:/

Graal, 1998 (It was Java before).
Blizzard Entertainment, Diablo I, 1995.

1995 < 1998.

Diablo was 4 players only per server/game, thefore it was a multiplayer online game.(Not massive, nor is Graal a MMORPG in my opinon.)

You pay because hosting your server costs Graal money and isn't guaranteed to attract new players.

But yeah, not being able to test GS2 offline or test online scripting offline sucks.

Yeah it would save time to be able to have gs2 functions loaded into the debugger on the offline mode i usually just edited some scripts to the point they can in gs1 but now since i'm learning gs2 i can't edit them in the graal editor program i have to do it all on the GServer.

We plan something with enabling hosting your own local server, but I cannot say much about it yet. What it is important right now is to have some better monitoring tools. The new scripting compiler prints syntax errors and it tells you about non-existing functions, but there needs to be something to watch clientside and serverside script variables, detect which script is modifying a variable or calling a special function, being able to pause a script (breakpoints/debugging). On some servers with tons of scripts its getting harder to find out why some variable is set, why some weapon is removed, which script is doing some annoying sendtonc message, why the player is unfrozen etc.

Above average news.

You're not making Graal any money, nobody has registered a VIP account explicitly to play your dev server. Work on it, maybe.

It sounds intruiging.

Local hosting. Wow. I...can't...wait...

Although it probably won't be for at least a year.

There are very few returns on high-quality playermade Graal servers. If we could do it for free, there'd be a ton of useless worlds, and probably nothing all that good. Using a fee (and if you move to Classic, its free) is a good way to weed out those who are not serious about developing a true playerworld.

A better angle on this is that Graal gets the money that people are paying to enjoy other people's work.

Correct me if I'm wrong, I may have a misunderstanding, but I don't believe anyone who works on Unholy Nation staff gets a single cent. They have created the most successful Graal server out there. Correct me if I'm wrong again, but I don't think that anybody in development of the Classic servers actually gets anything, just a "frozen" account, and Classic and Hosted servers are a lot more popular than the Gold ones.

A large majority of players get accounts only to play on Classic or Hosted servers, myself included. But the people who are making these servers that are most successful aren't getting anything. Just the "satisfaction" of being on the official Classic list and being in charge. Well, if that's good enough motivation for you to spend hours of work on a server, then go for it, but I really don't see anything attractive about the idea.

But then you're talking about classic servers, and not one of those servers were ever paid for.

When v4 is fully released, it won't even really be 'frozen,' because we'll be denied access to certain features.

Really? Like what?

I know, and that's a bit better, but it doesn't change the fact that the people who own those servers are the main reasons why Graal has any success, and they don't really get anything for it.

Except the developers ;)

I was to lazy to read all the replies but here's mine:

You pay to basically rent a server. People do NOT play the game for the non-public servers. Thus you do NOT make Stefan anything. Once the server becomes public, the server hosting also becomes free...therefore you are no longer, "paying to develop" as you say. So if you develop everything offline (levels mostly) you can buy your server ($60) and then get your scripts up ASAP, (month?) and then BAM it only cost you a 1 time fee...GG?

Looks like your time machine script only worked clientside.

Hi Yen. :)