Why has the playercount dropped so dramatically?

[Bell]

Originally Posted by Pimmeh

But how will you guys be addressing the lack of development being done right now? The problem is indeed outdated content, but also the lack of new content being created. I am making slow progress trying to make my server, most primarily because I dont really trust anyone else to make the plans that me and my team (consisting of Codein and Steve) come into reality.

We can't force developers to sit at their computers every waking hour and develop. If they have the interest and the drive, they will do it themselves. By setting the standards a little higher maybe it will motivate them to do more than just "get by with whats acceptable and stop working."

We will be taking into consideration how many people are actually working on a server and not be penalizing those that have two people vs 10. That would be entirely unfair and I don't want anyone asking for help from people they don't trust. That just leads to problems along the way. There will be no exact rules regarding how much needs to be done between reviews due to the fact that some things develop quickly while others take much more time to not only make but be sure that it works properly.

The thing is, attention fades when its content being made by gamers, and it sometimes disturbs me, and I think I can be honest if I say that I speak for a majority of the graal players, that the people who spearhead all of Graal, the PWA team and Stefan, haven't taken credit or shown any of the work that is being done.

If you're referring to doing the playerworld reviews on the forums again, I agree. Those with promise need to be given some hype to generate interest. There are some minor issues with that though in that many of them don't want any form of formal reviews for fear that someone else will steal their idea before they have their server done. Houdini had decided to start doing them again shortly before he left and I'm sure its something we'll do in the future again but not without the owners permission first. For now they are free to showcase their own servers when they feel they are ready for public comment.

Instead of clearing outdated content, we should rather replace if with new stuff.

Nothing was said about clearing it, we are encouraging updating it and adding new ideas to it.

The PWA's often develop, right? Tig, TSA, and although your field of expertise is unknown to me, Bell, I believe that every single PWA team member can do a lot to help out the graal community with stuff.

The role of a PWA is not to develop servers, something I'm sure is often misunderstood. We are the mediators of Graal basically. We have other duties of course, such as stepping in temporarily if a manager decides to have a mental breakdown or inspecting servers for stolen content.

My past expertise has been in the GP field even though I have done some very minor development work. I compare my stuff to being GS1 compared to the capabilities of GS2 though so obviously don't lay claim to being godly in any way. I do not script at all even though I can often spot abusive scripts, if that makes any sense. Tig and TSA of course can script so often help out servers with issues they are having. This is not something they have to do but they want to do in order to help out where they can. They are but 2 people though so we can't expect them to go script someones server idea just because someone thinks their idea is a good one but is unable to find their own staff.

This has to be my smartest post ever.

I agree, you're actually asking good questions instead of just complaining

I am not trying to diss you guys, because I have seen a lot of stuff that has been progressing in the past two months, on all kinds of projects, and I hope that this creativity will soar still as it does. (Puppetmaster, Maloria, N-Pulse) But right now I am wandering what you will doing to push development, rather then pull it.

I, at least take nothing personally and I home that my fellow PWA's are the same so no diss percieved. I also have noticed a large influx of development thats coming close to its completion point and am looking forward to being asked to inspect it from my expert noobish viewpoint. Trust me, I am the ultimate noob when it comes to server play. Ask anyone thats ever followed me around during an inspection and they'll tell you I ask even the most basic questions regarding gameplay If its good stuff then I'm sure you'll all hear the words of encouragement for them to continue.

[Rufus]

Originally Posted by Bell

We can't force developers to sit at their computers every waking hour and develop. If they have the interest and the drive, they will do it themselves. By setting the standards a little higher maybe it will motivate them to do more than just "get by with whats acceptable and stop working."

There are ways.

[Bell]

Originally Posted by Rufus

There are ways.

They should be doing this because they want to. Not because anyone is forcing them to though. Quality will drop the moment you tell them they have to do something.

[Rufus]

Originally Posted by Bell

They should be doing this because they want to. Not because anyone is forcing them to though. Quality will drop the moment you tell them they have to do something.

I didn't mention any forceful activities going on (though sometimes it is needed ) just that there are ways of encouraging developers that haven't been done yet. I'll make a thread about it or something when I can be bothered to write paragraphs again.

[DuBsTeRmAn]

... Just get rid of peopel buying their own server. Yes i do understand, it gives you money stefan. But you could better focus on the hosted servers (Then i mean, Zodiac, Era, UN, Zone, GK, Ol West, etc etc)

[Switch]

Originally Posted by DuBsTeRmAn

... Just get rid of peopel buying their own server. Yes i do understand, it gives you money stefan. But you could better focus on the hosted servers (Then i mean, Zodiac, Era, UN, Zone, GK, Ol West, etc etc)

You don't realize that that brings in a hell of a lot of money?

[Darugo]

The people who have played, aka the vets, have been screwed over.
The trials are being given more special treatment :/

[Rave_J]

So Bell let me ask you this you want to start erasing servers. Ok
player paid 100 dollars and promise there year 365 days
or 50 dollars for 6 months worth
that was the agreement i have a feeling if you start erasing servers then stefan
will end up with a law suit due to scaming cause you cant just start erasing or more will leave what stefan needs to do make it where if u run out of server time then u can't renew it also i think stefan need to make a program where u can script offline cuz honestly if u did that it could be free just have to send it in to Stefan or PWA to look at it when its done and set it up on classic but taking out more developments people will actually quit then play cause a lot of people stay and play due to Development

[Rave_J]

also nothing will get done cause u got less developments to work on servers and there bored of playing it so they just leave graal and say this is ***

[Darklux]

Why has the playercount dropped?

The developers and managers, especially stefan and unixmad, just seem to have abandoned the game completely.
The question I ask to myself: Why should I pay for a game without official updates and where only players, who don't get paid for doing it - deliver all the content?

Don't tell me graal is a great game sdk - they stopped developing that - too.
The leveleditor is a bad joke, it's hard to get access to gfx and scripts - it's a bad sdk that had potential once. Now its a dying game without official support, without official updates - the interesting question IS why cyberjoueurs seems to want graals dead very badly. Thats a real sad part, as they had a great product once.

[Frankie]

Originally Posted by Liberated

everyone should just start helping out on AEON, that should increase playercountr drastically, once it's finished atleast.

I highly doubt it's going to bring in new players. All that's going to do is pull the player base from other servers to Aeon. Focus on bringing new players in, not existing players to new servers.

Also, we all can agree there are too many servers compared to the amount of developers Graal has, but playerworlds are a really good source of money for CJ so I don't think any restrictions will be put on it.

I skipped a few pages of reading before making this post so disregard anything I've said if it's been said already.

[Matt]

Originally Posted by Liberated

everyone should just start helping out on AEON, that should increase player count drastically, once it's finished atleast.

That will only help AEON's player count. No other servers, then we will be in the same situation where only a few select servers (1-4) have a high, or even decent player count.

[Nataxo]

Soala, finish Azure Skies!

and the player.count dropping I've seen is @ zone last week. (used to see around 25 and now I see around 10 :[)

[Bell]

Originally Posted by Rave_J

So Bell let me ask you this you want to start erasing servers. Ok
player paid 100 dollars and promise there year 365 days
or 50 dollars for 6 months worth
that was the agreement i have a feeling if you start erasing servers then stefan
will end up with a law suit due to scaming cause you cant just start erasing or more will leave what stefan needs to do make it where if u run out of server time then u can't renew it also i think stefan need to make a program where u can script offline cuz honestly if u did that it could be free just have to send it in to Stefan or PWA to look at it when its done and set it up on classic but taking out more developments people will actually quit then play cause a lot of people stay and play due to Development

Excuse me? I don't think you've read what I said. I never said a thing about erasing servers. We were discussing whether some of the current Classic/Hosted servers should go back to UC or not. A few other people joked about shutting down servers but thats not even an option. What the PWA decides is best for each server will in no way affect Graal's income. Whenever possible we prefer to find someone to work on and develop a Classic server.

[Angelu]

Would be interesting if you need a minimum of (something around 10) Developers and a concept
with (something around 1000 words) to buy a new or renew the Subscription of a Server...
I think if Graal has 10 UC Servers with 10 Developers the chance for sucess is
much bigger than if there are 150 UC Servers with 3 Devs