Graal 2001, GDT, and You

[Loriel]

Originally Posted by Inverness

• I despise the custom bodies and want the normal ones. They have a great deal more content available for them and are more familiar to just about every graphics artist.

Meh. The old bodies are kind of crappy and do not really lend themselves to player customisation beyond hats. Not sure how great the custom bodies actually looked, but I could see some room for gimmicky kingdom-specific accessoires. I guess I would make this contingent on what you can do for graphics artists.

• It's ridiculous that bomys could only move in one of four directions at a time.

Is having playable bomies even worth it? The whole "no hands" thing makes most things really stretching it, and I am not sure if dividing content beween humans and bomies as well as possibly between the kingdoms is really worth it. To what extent did players choose to be a bomy, anyway, and how many of them were involved in kingdoms? Is playable bomies really a thing or can we just make the interesting parts work through pets/npcs/story?

• I believe it is important to focus on kingdoms, but I don't think it is a good idea to have all five available to players at the beginning as to not dilute players among the kingdoms if there isn't a decent server population. I believe it would be best to start out with 3 kingdoms, then increase to 5 depending on kingdom/server population and demand. I don't know how old G2k1 players would feel about this, so I'm interested in hearing opinions.

I figure just starting with dustari and santerrain would be sufficient. Even then I would hold off the whole "there is actually a player in charge of the entire kingdom" thing, mostly to avoid competing with GK for retarded power struggles and each new king tearing down all the stuff that happened before him, and also so there is more room for actual staff to flesh out the kingdoms with interesting content. Ideally you get some clever people on board to script out interesting politics and whatnot if people want a proper backdrop for their roleplaying, but just doing the GK thing and handing out ranks and hoping that some cool kingdom dynamics spontaneously evolve is probably not the way to go.

[Inverness]

Originally Posted by Loriel

I figure just starting with dustari and santerrain would be sufficient. Even then I would hold off the whole "there is actually a player in charge of the entire kingdom" thing, mostly to avoid competing with GK for retarded power struggles and each new king tearing down all the stuff that happened before him, and also so there is more room for actual staff to flesh out the kingdoms with interesting content. Ideally you get some clever people on board to script out interesting politics and whatnot if people want a proper backdrop for their roleplaying, but just doing the GK thing and handing out ranks and hoping that some cool kingdom dynamics spontaneously evolve is probably not the way to go.

I'm all for that. A few months ago I started working on a plan for Santerrain to revamp the town and improve it. I wanted to make more use of the space for future player housing or for other needs, and give it a more Japanese look.

I also think that one of the important things for kingdoms is to establish a color scheme for kingdom's flag, uniforms, and anything else related. I want to be able to tell what kingdom a person is a member of just by seeing their outfit, if they choose to wear their kingdom's uniform of course.

I've attached the first image I made to highlight how I wanted to divide the town. I actually added outlines to the levels I still have to show where buildings could go and where the main road and walls divide the town, don't have shots of that stuff.

Edit: I think we should keep playable bomy's but improve them and possibly make it possible to transform into one at will. Despite some of the previous disadvantages of playing as a bomy, I liked that you could do something not possible on other servers.

Edit 2: If not having hands is a significant disadvantage then we either need to come up with another advantage to balance it out or just go with the psychic powers thing.

[LoneAngelIbesu]

Originally Posted by Loriel

Meh. The old bodies are kind of crappy and do not really lend themselves to player customisation beyond hats. Not sure how great the custom bodies actually looked, but I could see some room for gimmicky kingdom-specific accessoires. I guess I would make this contingent on what you can do for graphics artists.

The normal bodies aren't too limited, if Valikorlia is used as an example. It just takes somebody with a little bit of pixel talent. Custom bodies, as I've experienced, are leagues more difficult to customize. You almost have to provide all customizations yourself, since most players aren't going to want to edit relatively complex graphics. I can see the benefit in have custom bodies, when it comes to providing accessories or other 'addons'. But I don't personally think it's worth it.

[Inverness]

Originally Posted by LoneAngelIbesu

The normal bodies aren't too limited, if Valikorlia is used as an example. It just takes somebody with a little bit of pixel talent. Custom bodies, as I've experienced, are leagues more difficult to customize. You almost have to provide all customizations yourself, since most players aren't going to want to edit relatively complex graphics. I can see the benefit in have custom bodies, when it comes to providing accessories or other 'addons'. But I don't personally think it's worth it.

I agree with this. Also it is simple enough to edit the default ganis to add a simple extra customization thing like a weapon or something strapped to the back of the player, which is something I'd like.

I think the diversity of the normal bodies outweighs the customization benefits of custom bodies.