Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyhm
REDO = LATER.
DO = NOW.
Jesus, it's not that complicated.
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This is what has got Classic in the mess that it is currently in. Rush to fill in the content void, blame the fact that it's Classic for the lack of quality, and worry about the stigma attached to that content later. It is such a poor and amateur way of developing, and that is not what Classic needs at all.
After a long stretch of zero updates the fishing rod was released and it was was well received for a day. An entire day because the players were starved of content for so long, whoopty doo. The rod was badly scripted, completely pointless, and provided very little incentive for use with the massive amounts of gelat people have. A couple of days later not one single person was using the NPC, and while it might have entertained a very small playerbase for a very small amount of time, you are pretty limited to the amount of times you can do something like that. Next came the release of the Minigame System, which was a little more functional and served an actual purpose, but had was terribly executed. I must admit it was fun again for a while, and the return of Com's Game Tower re-enhanced the competitive playing at the time. Three of the old games were released, but there was no attempt to improve any of them. Graal Invaders had powerups that didn't even work and the reasoning behind not fixing them was that the bugs also existed in Graal The Adventure, which is a pretty pathetic excuse. Needless to say, once the initial buzz had died down the NPC was rarely used, and there has been no attempt to rehash the activity by releasing new games, which should be pretty easy to make.
As you know, Bowling was the latest big release and there was no attempt to hype it at all. Big releases on dead servers depend on hype, yet nothing was posted on the forums, nothing was posted in the login news, and it received a silent release save for an NPC Server message. Bowling itself received no additional features of use, the fancifuls were nothing out of the ordinary and the core of it was solo play. Why would you play an online game to play alone? You don't, but that point seemed to escape the developers who re-released this. I don't care if it was like that in Graal The Adventure, it doesn't mean it has to be like that now. Players wanted to play together and not have to grind their way through it, so after a week it wasn't touched again by most. There was no attempt to encourage the Game Coordinator team to hype it up either, and although I know some of them tried, nothing was provided for real competitive play so it was fruitless.
So, to return to the point I'm trying to make here; In a server revival quality is paramount, especially if the content is not particularly unique. Content shouldn't be released for the sake of having content. Release content for the sake of being a better server. Classic is up to the point now where most of the game mechanics and game lore is offered elsewhere, and at a greater quality to boot, so if they're going to add a similar feature to Classic they need to go all the way with it or not put it in at all. First impressions are everything, and as this current playerbase isn't all too familiar with the old content, most of the re-releases are new releases. Players are not going to feel the same sense of joy, hype, gratitude, fondness (and all those other positive feelings you get when you play on a decent game you've been waiting for) to a "better" re-release of a re-release further down the line, so these initial releases need to be of quality. More importantly we need longevity in content, so a delay in a release is totally worth it as long as the product has a more professional finish to it when it finally does release. Apparently the staff thought that Bowling was acceptable, so maybe they should just take the third option and STOP = NOW.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyhm
Add to all this Classic's Constant Handicap, it has to stick to the old style, old tiles, old graphics, or become Just Another Server...
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This was also a pretty stupid statement to make. Classic isn't handicapped by these things at all, it is made unique by them. The levels have a Classic styled look to them, it's not really dated, it's a style. The graphics used on the server can be fixed up to a greater standard and still look Classic. It's the people who believe that in updating content you need to drastically change it who are adding the handicap, because this is completely untrue and down to creative limitations. Konidias' graphical updates of various Classic graphics are a prime example of how a progression can be made. Classic isn't about looking crap, it's about looking and feeling classic.
02-03-2009, 09:44 PM
I miss that server
Linear Mode
