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Posting this for the FOURTH time.. without anything to do with 2k2 staff or any other reason I can see it would be deleted because of unreleased 2k2 information
Graal is falling apart more and more each day. This is purely my opinion, and I'm nothing I'm saying is FACT or anything.. but please keep in mind what I say, as I'm sure some of you will agree with me.
Back in the days before P2P, playing on Graal was fun. The occasional hacker killing everyone was the only bad part. Besides that, guilds actually had a meaning, instead of just having a tag at the end of your name, you would actually be part of the guild, maybe have a guild area on the map, etc. Sparring was great, now it's nothing.. I used to do nothing but spar back before P2P, and I enjoyed every match. It was fun when you could just go to a spar arena somewhere, and line up with others to fight one on one in unofficial matches. Nowadays no one cares to spar, they just care about money, and if there is a spar event, it's for money, and it's always ruined by people shooting fireballs, etc.
Graal2001 was okay at first, but it has seemed to get worse every day, even though so many new things are added. The changing of bomy pets from their original version actually made them worse then before. Right about when golf came out, the minigame revolution began and we ended up with go-kart racing and football, which barely anyone plays anymore. (whatever happened to racing teams and football teams?) The events team has gotten terrible, they say the reason they hold cs and survivor is because that's what everyone asks for.. well no crap, if they haven't played the other events in so long, they wouldn't remember how fun they were.
The staff got worse, and so did the players, the forums turned into a battlefield (and still are) and are no longer enjoyable to me anymore. When hats were released in limited quantities, that started the money era. Now nearly everyone are greedy backstabbers, and no one cares to do anything but make more money and get more items. When objects and gralat became so desirable, "corruption" started to occur more.. most of it just being accusations of others being corrupt.. sometimes players would call other players corrupt just because the other player had a lot of money.
Now I get on each day, and find nothing at all to do. Everyone is too busy making money and scamming/finding ways to cheat to actually RP or just sit around and talk. Mass messages are a joke, they are nothing but filth, arguements, advertisements, and annoying "support my guild" messages. Toalls are just another form of communicating with others for the sheer point of arguing and fighting, and telling everyone else how much of a loser someone else is.
Nearly all of P2P players do nothing but argue and hate others now. No matter what you post on the forums someone tells you to shut up and die. It's ridiculous and definitely not what I thought my money was paying for.
Not to mention G2k2.. oh boy.. I'm sure a lot of you will say I'm wrong here, but I envisioned something a lot different for the next generation of Graal.. it's seriously disappointing in every single aspect. Stefan doesn't seem to really know what he is doing in the game development area. The graphics in 2k2 are good, I admit, but they do not fit well at all with the characters or terrain. Why doesn't Stefan improve Graal as a whole? He might have made the new 3d terrain stuff, but when the hell is he going to make a better way of layering? Why can't he make tiles that lay over the player sprite? It would decrease the need to use npc images, and the environment would be so much more realistic (walking behind trees and buildings without needing npcs for everything)
Then there is server scripting.. I find it nearly impossible to work with, there are so many little things that would improve the system overall. Why not have variables that save to the npc on the level, and can be read clientside AND serverside? Instead of being able to do simple things like having lights come on outside of a house when you turn lights on inside, it takes using workarounds and npc save variables which are troublesome and not documented well.
He still hasn't improved the playerlist by adding new features such as making your own user groups like the buddies group. I admit I like the new features on the level editor, they help a lot, but the new version of graal has a lot of editor glitches and I get headaches when I load my level and it turns into nothing but the left grass tile. Some of these things just really aggravate me as to why Stefan doesn't see these things and fix them. Even the player profile could be made to look so much better with more options and things, and when will Stefan ever make it so we can put php code or something on a webpage and have our stats show up there?
Then there is the level generator.. wouldn't a level generator program be SO MUCH BETTER then drawing your level in a paint program? Just take a look a this example. Why not have it so players can pick a tile (such as tree, dirt, water, grass) and when they use their mouse on the level, it draws the map out dynamically? It would make the worlds much more realistic and have much more detail with less glitches and people wouldn't think level generated worlds are bad anymore.
There are so many things that could be improved it just boggles my mind.. the more I research and learn about game development, the more things I see about Graal I don't like. Whenever I get skilled enough with programming I will be able to put my visions of a good game into light. In my opinion Stefan has bad taste in graphics and style. You think with all the money they pull in, they could hire a good team of people to work for them doing art and levels and things, and stop hiring kids to work for free, making not so great stuff yet Stefan adds it anyway because he doesn't feel like paying people to do better?
Why doesn't Stefan expand the tileset? Why must we use the same tiles for everything? What if we don't want to "addtiledef"? I want new houses, new trees, new bushes and things.. without having to replace other tiles that people also like. If Cyberjouer is such a professional game company, why doesn't Stefan hire more programmers for the actual game? (not npc scripters I mean delphi/c++ programmers)
{edited out because I can't voice my opinion on 2k2 staff}
I just wish Cyberjouer would become better as a company, and actually care about it's customers needs instead of making what THEY think is best.
I think I will be taking a time off from Graal as a player and as staff unless it shapes up and becomes the game that it should be, which is fun and exciting, not the same thing and boring, with jackass players and corrupt staff.
I know some of you could care less about my opinions and that is fine, who am I to talk about game development? I just want to make a career out of it, but I guess since I didn't make Graal, then I'm not as good as Stefan. I feel so limited working for Graal, in level making, in graphics, in scripting.. it's all limiting.
Oh and for the people that reply to this without reading it all.. please continue going to school, as your mind obviously can't handle reading a page of text. |
01-03-2002, 11:53 PM
What has Graal become?
Linear Mode
