Well just found the Graal kingdoms page on Facebook and it reminded me of this, future development, I read earlier having old players come back but new players would make the server more filled and the server being empty is what made people leave in the first place I believe.
Because with the few players that did play, kingdoms were empty, empty kingdoms have less motivation to hold kingdom events so the kingdoms became just a place to have a house to hold your items.
So to improve the server you need to have the new not the old come back.
Shops
Shops should be redone to be more static as opposed to how they are now, the randomization means traveling to them all in hopes to find something you want.
There should be a clear distinction so you can see what you want, and work towards getting the item instead of hoping you’re lucky enough to see the item and chances are someone else who already had it buys it and sells it for more.
Such as one of the shops that sells amulets, if there was a constant amulet of sustenance there people could see the price and work towards getting the money to buy it instead of new players not even knowing it exists.
Money
Money is worthless; when I was playing diamonds were the currency because you didn't really need money for anything unless you were going to AFK in shops for the re-spawn of items and hope something popped up.
There needs to be more diversity in what you can pay for worth money to make it worth something, and take away the weight, the weight is what kills money the most as its damn heavy and why carry 10,000 plat when you can have 20 diamonds, say it's worth the same and use that instead.
- Armor
- weapons
- boots
- gloves
- bracers
- helmets
- shields
These don't get sold you have to make everything, but they could be sold and add to the economy, if the statistics were sorted out for each armor to make it worth it.
You could say in alchemy<- (or a system more accessible to new players) that allow for these items to be improved. with recipes from dungeons as a reward.
Dungeons
I think more dungeons would help this, even if it was just recolours, thought that's hoping the recolours would get changed eventually.
The only real dungeons are the haunted houses and they are for low levels, though not too low a level, there needs to be more and they should be interesting, maybe a back-story to each one, with puzzles as opposed to just killing to mix it up as it stands after beating Bomy's till you can go in the haunted houses and beating the haunted house so that it isn't a challenge, there's nowhere.
At that point lords and the crypt are too strong for you when you struggle like hell that lords aren't a challenge, then you have nothing, level 90 and I can’t solo the crypt even if it let me.
You could have different areas in the dungeons that rely on 1 or more people with puzzles every few rooms to reflect this with every room.
This could lead to dungeons having more re playability and encouraging community.
Since dungeons should get harder as you go through, you should try to add an engaging storyline to each one so even if they can’t progress they want to level enough so they can and get to the end of the story so they can have closure on it.
Even better would be having people who are over leveled for the dungeon going in just for the story in it.
so you’d have so much of the story going through yourself then it would end implying that you need to go deeper into the dungeon for the rest, as I said would encourage community, this ends up making people stay as otherwise they leave their friends.
This should be tested with different leveled accounts with at least dungeons for
- 1 - 5 <- something specific for new players to get to grips with the combat system
- 5 - 10 <- improve the haunted houses
- 10 - 20
- 20 - 30
- 30 - 40
- 40 - 50
You would have progress to work towards and the dungeons should end with a pay-off in money, and as I mentioned above recipes for improving armor and weapons,
E.g. iron armor could be added with a boss item from a previous dungeon to make it, Iron armor of (Last bosses name) giving +2 ac.
If it was an ice dungeon with the added coldness, you get fire resist, and the next dungeon could be fire that could help you out. Adding progression.
bosses
Graal was originally inspired by Zelda so why isn't there any hard Zelda style bosses, at the end of dungeons there should be a boss that has patterns and needs some amount of strategy to beat, a conclusion to the story you went through in the dungeon.
Item statistics
Taking away EA's and IWD's is fine, but the armor that you can get already needs to show improvement, and more armor should be readily available.
3 types of armor I can remember you can get and they're all the same except maybe a +1 AC difference? Armor should scale be brought or be harder to make and be something you can work towards getting. (Having no set goal in an MMO you need to enable people to set their own)
Same with weapon, thing the broadsword you make is like 9 DMG, and that's the highest, with everything else being next to the same even daggers are like 5 DMG making it not even double, (this is if I remember the stats correct)
But there is next to no difference, and now with IWD's being rare you're going to be screwed against anyone who has a 9/9 IWD'd weapon.
So items should have a scale getting harder to make/more to buy and stronger as you progress to help you progress.
quests
As someone said before the quests need to be better, they are generally not at the MMT just annoying to do and there needs to be a better questing system, though if there were more dungeons as I'm suggesting then it isn't going to be the biggest need as people will have something to do.
Being skimpy on this one because, as they are they get you to explore and seek out all over the maps so they're not bad, just they need something more to stop them from getting stale.
kingdoms
The kingdom islands have nothing going for them, build your house store your items and **** off...
Stefan I believe didn't want too much there to detract from main I feel it was a bad choice on his part as they are boring and no one cares about them, they need themed monsters it they could hold dungeons, mines for specific materials, something to get people wanting to travel and diverse to more the bomb trade.
Zeppelins can be built on them to help you travel, but any form of weight makes them useless, so the weight should be removed and you have a form of transport never being used, being used and amazing new players, with each zeppelin looking different like ship sails.
Reset
IT IS NOT NEEDED!
Having the people who are already strong gives people a challenge to work up to, you what's needed is to make it plausible for them to get there, back in the day there were more people the grind wasn't so bad, it is now.
A reset as it is, will eventually lead to the same situation AT BEST. More likely the older players still playing will be pissed and leave and no-one would play. So you need to stop thinking of it as the magical quick fix that will solve everything as it won’t it would very likely be the death of kingdoms.
classes
There is no difference, there should be some structure to how they work there is the old triad system (Mage beats fighter who beats archer who beats mage)
We don't have that we have (fighter beats mage fighter beats fighter who beats archer)
something that would help is a spell that could be cast instantly blows fighters away giving the mage time to cast, not affecting archers as they are out of its range and arrows not giving knock-back so fighters can beat them,(this is also moving the ranged weapons ability over to agility instead of physical to separate them)
This is a simple thing that would add some diversity to how people would play.
Having max stats for the different classes would diverse those as well, fighter can get a max of 20 strength whereas a mage can only get a max of 14, even with potions
taming
You can level personality and tame monsters though there is no system in place to make it worth it. Have horses wild and need this to tame and ride, have other monsters that are findable be able to ride, some maybe fly like a zeppelin when rode.
Some could do a digging animation and if you have a shovel dig and get a bit more money.
Have a leveling system for them so even if you don't personally fight you can level your pet to fight in your stead.
end note
My ideas and opinions, take it how you will
. If there's anything I've said that has already been said I couldn't be asked to read through all the pages <3