Questions, comments, complaints and concerns.
 

I would like to perform a poll regarding our beloved server. As the players, what features, bugs, updates, etc. do you personally find to be highest priority and/or longest over-due?

Please feel free to offer any suggestion that you think is valid, and give a rating, on a scale of 1 to 10, how high of a priority that you find it to be.

Hopefully, this will give us all, administration included, some insight into the concerns of the players as a whole. This insight should, I think, push the server towards some tangible improvements.

Thank you for your participation.

Teacher90's Suggestions
 

3/10 Feature: Wild Life: Cows, mounts, real sheep!
Bugs work to!

10/10 DUNGEON gear!
10/10 Better Monster Loot!
2/10 Map updates
7/10 Revamp Treasure Maps


Idea recently submitted to Tashkin: Link Tigbot inventory to xmas dungeon chests and monsters.

Do it right f**king now (game play requirements):
-Stop changing our font on log-in.
-Stop changing our GUI window preferences whenever we use internal windows.
-Make players '/save' automatically at specific points (changing respawn, logging off, changing islands?). Nobody should have to deal with this feature on their own.
-Put speed back; randomly capping it when people already have past that cap is pure retardation. This is a huge negative; especially when every item has Speed+ and the map is ****ing huge. You want people to leave trade not promote standing still.
-Have players always on Kingdom Tag as default... guilds/staff/stuff would override this for RP purposes, but if you want Kingdoms to mean something then a player shouldn't be a member of the Zormite kingdom and not be recognizable/representing whenever they're online. Outlaws should be easily recognized to be recruited and whatnot.

Do it soon (simple improvements):
-Make Kingdoms/unique guilds have recognizable AP colors. There is no more trial/notrial/vip difference... use this simple system for something constructive. ETs should be easily differentiated from Samurai and Forest alike (especially when they're not bmode).
-Add a day/night/creature spawn timer of some sort... could be as simple as a changing sun/moon icon so players know the difference between bomys and reapers without having to kill them and wait.
-Overhead HP display needs numerical values and/or incremental dashes of some sort.
-Elemental/attack-type effects need to be visible on players in some way when applied and for the duration. Could be as simple as an over-head icon. 'Poisoned!' when they get hit, tint them green for the duration. This is all up for debate but it is simple as pie to do and since PvM/PvP is supposed to be the entire goal of the server, having zero distinction actually makes me feel disgusted. Overall PvM/P clarity with these ideas.
-Message Log needs to be traverse-able with mouse scroll or contained in its own window with a scroll-bar. Seriously; it's 2015... we're getting spammed with messages every-time we touch something or someone logs on/dies/respawns/sends a message/prays from 2003... let us filter and view this.

All the above should be doable within 24-48 hours honestly. Most of it is pre-existing points of reference that are just not clarified/visible to players.

Long Term Do-Age (stuff to work on):
-Kingdom competition. Give rewards for the most RP every month; make some more events for kingdoms (kingdom spar; make a water level with boat spawners, etc.) give kingdoms a reason to promote/add players and war each-other... add objectives (Samurais have captured a golden Dustarian chicken, will they go to war to reclaim the sacred egg-layer?? +5000rp if dusty gets it back (but goes to war!), -5000rp if they refuse). I don't know... just do something, get a Kingdom Admin.
-Dungeons/Monsters.. obviously. Make more HH's with different creatures/rewards. Add caves with different level creatures, I'm sure you could randomize some of the regular dungeon/labyrinth monsters to be less boring. Any monkey can make levels, and having messed with the creatures b4, there's no reason someone can't make a new dungeon in a matter of a couple work-hours (a few days of graal-time). Not everything needs to be super special effects and scripted up like the Crypt (which in-itself isn't even that complex).
-Gear/Items... this is kinda simple and most people do this first; I mean it takes from 2-30 mins to make a item depending if you need on-player animations for it or not. But it's not all just newplz.. someone could go make 40 different recolored ring/scroll icons in an hour and make this stuff more recognizable and professional.
-Scores/Points/Collectables... really add some systems or competition that people can work on after experience. Right now, once a player reaches level 110 (and 107 in like 2/6 categories) they've effectively completed the game. There needs to be a reason for players to keep logging on and to compete against each other; besides just collecting items.

I'll probably post more later if any progress actually gets made, this is tl;dr.

Cuckos? ;)

I agree that "loot" is a good priority, although I think this should primarily be focused on lower-end loot to bridge the gap for new players. IE. adding things like, unenchanted basic equipment, "sabre" or "silver pawn helmet" but with the common suffixes allowed, so you could potentially find things like "sabre of woe (cursed)" or "silver pawn helmet +1" etc. All of these types of item archtypes and suffixes already exist, I believe, they just haven't been added to any currently existing monster's loot tables.

Of course, this would probably make more sense if we expanded our monster variety. We currently have "orcs", "demons" and "cyclops" but they are all casters, which doesn't make a lot of sense. It probably wouldn't be to hard, using the same system in place for Vampires to make an array of different monsters of each archtype. IE. "Orc Grunt", "Orc Shaman", "Orc Heavy" etc, and allowing them to each carry different equipment, and have different loot tables, corresponding with the sorts of things that they might be carrying.

On another note, it might be good to see some creatures start dropping consumable items like potions, or scrolls. For instance, "Potion of Healing" or "Scroll of Small Snowstorm (lvl 3)" etc.

I'm afraid that a lot of new players don't actually carry or use any of the types of beneficial potions available, due to their prohibitively high costs in shops, and the amount of time it takes to gather a useful stack of them. Likewise with scrolls. I don't even think many new players are aware of how useful they are.

Could you be more specific about what types of map updates and treasure map updates you would like to see?

Many, many good points made here. I'd just like to touch on this last one.

Even something as simple as quests for "reputation" could be done here, or "achievements". As you stated before, this is 2015...

Honestly, quests shouldn't be that hard of a thing to implement, yet would add replay value to the game. For instance, "daily" quests, or "kingdom" quests, in which players were asked to complete a task, IE. "Kill 25 Smokys", or "Collect 10 cyclops arms" in exchange for some sort of reward, kingdom RP, or NC/EC/Plats/Diamonds etc.

The problem I see with the current "quest" system is that the only actual reward involved is, ultimately, gold keys. Players who are level 110 with max stats don't need gold keys, and the keys don't carry any real value currently, as there aren't enough "new" players to even make them significantly trade-able.

(*Funeedude15218)Master Sailor Van Dascar (Dustari) (Mon Jan 12 02:01:08 2015):
theres no wonder left in this place. even if you are new, how do you ever begin to live up to some of the items people have had for 10+ years.

It's actually not. That's part of the problem.

I believe a good solution is to allow the combining of weapons/gear to create a next tier up weapon/gear etc.
e.g. Combining 3x http://grab.by/DJja = 1x http://grab.by/DJje

This is a complaint that I have had for a while now, and I think it needs to be addressed.

I just want to say, for those older, higher level players. Please stop taking new players to the Ice Cavern and "power-leveling" them.

It's not teaching them anything about how to play the game and only encourages them to stand around begging to be power-leveled. Then we become left with new players, still barely knowing how to get around the world, who are level 70+ and have no equipment.

We need more direction for new players, and dungeons that are more balanced for different stages of the leveling process. It might even be worth putting a minimum level requirement on the "hard" Ice Cavern and the Crypt, to discourage this sort of behavior.

Where can I craft the flaming sword for it?

Flaming Swords can't be crafted, and can only be generated via west Haunted House treasure spawns. Though I am assuming that you already knew that, and were simply making a point.

The idea of combining existing items in order to turn them into, again, existing items is sort of a pointless one. What would make more sense is to focus on the items that already exist within the source, but simply don't exist yet within the game.

The reality is that the only thing monsters currently drop is body parts, apart from very few exceptions. Of the items currently "lootable" (skulls swords), they are being allowed to accept suffixes, but the only ones typically found are;

of Mass
of Great Mass
of Woe
of Ilrya

3 of these are cursed, and virtually useless to own, and the latter of the four is a positive enchantment, but does absolutely nothing except for slightly reduce the weight of the weapon, and prevents it from being enchanted any further, due to the removal of "double suffix". Which again, makes it a virtually useless item to own.

The lack of a wider item base should be an embarrassment to GK, considering that the source game it was modeled after has a huge item library, and a large pool of possible suffixes and enchantments, allowing for players to actually have a purpose to go through dungeons, IE. searching for that rare artifact or item/enchantment combination of their dreams.

Thanks for the specific details

Move kingdoms to main island and allow them to be captured. Would add content to main and keep the kingdom islands from being useless.

Personally, I would like to see all the islands combined onto one gmap. I don't know if that's possible however.

nah, playerbase has never been big enough to even make kingdom islands worth it. I'd rather see main slammed to hell with buildings and stuff to do. The reason nobody really messes with kingdoms is because its such a hassle to go there. Leave the islands for RP purposes but GK is probably one of the biggest servers with nowhere near a high player count. Hell, I'd even be willing to take the take to migrate some of it from kingdom islands to main and code together a capture system if needed. I may be a little biased but here are some of the reasons in this old unrelated post.

http://forums.graalonline.com/forums...hp?t=134259219

i take that back i don't volunteer for anything but i still think my idea is #1 best of all time

It's so good that almost every server/game utilizes a similar philosophy!

Really though, you don't even have to touch kingdom islands; there's nothing important there. Just add small forts (similar to Kingdom Core) at each respective Port City. Put a flag in each one (you don't even need a inside level) and a gate intertwined with whoever owns that flag.

The flags could give some small bonuses respective to which kingdom they represent (not who owns them).
Like:
-Pirates, ++Loot Drops?? Ships go faster/don't require cannonballs or something.
-Forest, No-cost healing spells; or maybe Grace Regen (as-if you were praying).
-Dustari, % Damage Reduction
-Samurai, +Melee Damage
-Zormite, Swim really fast!

Then you could easily have an EM take the flag and put a warper to host events all around the world; each fort could be designed differently to keep it fun (Pirate could be on a peninsula with ships around; Dustari could have cannons/allow fortifications; Forest could be covered in trees/obstacles.. maybe magic only?; Samurai could be melee only on the premise; Zormite could be on an island with water everywhere)

Are these demands or suggestions? I hear a lot of STOPS!

However your not even clear on your objectives enough.

-Is the font always changed every time you log in? Even after you change it? (or is it annoy because it changes your default graal font until you reconnect?
-"Stop changing our GUI window preference..?" What preferences are being changed, what GUIs are even you even speaking about.
-Players data is saved automatically, the /save function is just a extra precaution for you in-case the DB is somehow corrupted. Maybe we can possible change it so when a player is logged out its automatically saved, oppose to forcing the /save command on them.
-Put speed back; Uhm nah, although that most of you disagree I think a speed cap is for the overall betterment of the server. How it was before was like the entire server had staff boots. By balancing/capping the speed it brings other interesting objects forced into play, mounts etc.
-"Have players always on Kingdom Tag as default...". This isn't Era... Wearing a Kingdom tag should be that players preference. I don't think forcing the tag on the player will achieve us anything.
-"Make Kingdoms/unique guilds have recognizable AP colors". This is heading into a better direction then your previous "demands". Although i feel manipulating AP colors is sooo graal1992. Maybe we should start adding Unique kingdom icons above or below the player representing there kingdoms. This also allows them to be recognized 24/7 plus have the ability to not be bonded by a tag 24/7.
No comment on the long term goals as there to far ahead.

My suggestion
-work on gear Organization
-Try to create different tier types of gear.
-try to make gear purchasable from vendors, with certain marks rewarded from dungeons in that area.
-Add Item Levels to all Items, So that way you would be required to reach a certain item level before you can purchase the next tier.

~Kingdoms~
We just need to do something with kingdoms.. With a server named Kingdoms, we don't involve the kingdoms that much. I feel this needs to change. Maybe add weekly auto events that allow kingdoms to enter each lands and vandalize burn them to possible set war with another kingdom, gaining kingdom honor points that can be used to enchant your gear weapons.

Instead of moving Kingdoms to the main island, why not have assets in the main island that the kingdoms can capture. And maybe thier whole Kingdoms can reap from those rewards.

Game play requirements (or more in this case, requirements for me to be willing to play the game) are often not quite... suggestions.

My font is changed every time I manually log into the server. Changing it then reconnecting will not change it back; logging off (or onto another server) then back onto GK changes it again. (Nico did this)

Internal windows are changed from default to vplusblue when using the Kingdoms button or Shop on GK. (This is fairly old; only really matters if you're leading a Kingdom).

Both of these are player settings and shouldn't be changed; which is why these were requirements.

There was an entire thread on this and it sparked my interest as to why players should ever be held responsible for such a feature; thus the suggestion. Ya, do it auto.

You have effectively provided a single example. An example which presents more issues than it solves; since you can't take mounts through all the dungeons, you have to actually forcibly glitch them to get them across the seas (usually involving staff powers), and they are incredibly slow through water which forces you to go around. This also requires carrying a set of 'special items' for mounts... slowing you further (saddles are fkin heavy, peg, food) and requiring their application every-time you want to use (probably 30s every-time you want to grab your peg and mount up.).

When you provide multiple 'simple and effective' methods for increasing speed then perhaps I would reconsider the cap as an effective policy. As of now; nothing of the sort has been provided and our item statistics are simply being disregarded to make travel more difficult... when one glaring issue of the server is that players aren't moving/active enough.

This is not an Erian practice.
Having our personal Graal settings changed should be a players preference. :p
Joining a kingdom is their preference; but as-long as they have pledged their self to that kingdom they should be recognized as such. You said it yourself; the server is named Kingdoms... represent it.

Have you even played this server; logged on maybe? I'm actually laughing with this reply, you've effectively shown zero knowledge of the game.

Players already have kingdom icons... they represent players who are in Battle Mode. You wouldn't simply double this icon or dismantle this preexisting and functioning system; my suggestion was a workaround using another preexisting system that currently has no function. :asleep:

Still skipped a half-dozen 'soon' points. But after your single reply to this section I can see why.

Gear organizaton?
Tier types of gear?
Purchasable okay maybe.. but marks from dungeons in the area?
However your not even clear on your objectives enough right?

I somewhat agree with item levels; but it doesn't answer any problems until the levels themselves have a value. Players overall level should actually be an overall level, and based on the average of all their skill levels. 140m and 700m experience should not both be level 110.

I know right?
All following statements were generic; had to tl;dr something.

I think my horse died, can it get restored?

Literally my entire previous post.

Apologize for my ignorance regarding the kingdom icons, i don't play often enough. But enough to know the basic game play. The font issue isn't really Kingdoms, its graal really. Changing the font, ends up being a global change thing especially when its changed for chat. This is done on almost every IOS server. Ask the servers you play on to set a default font for those on logins. Servers shouldn't have to be restricted on how they choose to make there server "unique" depending on how its effected across all servers. I could easily probably update this on most classic servers so that the issue doesn't occur.

Regarding Mounts, You answered it your self. Seems like the mounts need to be fixed over the speed. Which we will be adding to our to-do list.

Mines is a little different and the reply wasn't to you. Capturing flags like zodiac isn't what I'm suggesting.

There's so much unused content on kingdom islands that could be used to fill main. main is full of useless stuff and grass and trees.

The only way mounts will become viable as a transportation is if they are differentiated from pets. They should be summonable/dismissable, and not require food, etc. I can't tell you how many horses I have lost due to glitches. When horses are on follow, and you swim across water, it's a risk of having your horse become permanently stuck in the water. This is a known bug, and losing a 5th generation black horse in this manner is extremely frustrating.

If you want to cap speed, fine, but let's address some of the other issues with mobility. The terrain system can reduce even the fastest player to a crawl. Older players have developed an odd way of moving around the map, zig-zagging over and around these known "hill" areas, and it's fairly dumb that they have to do so. Part of the reason people are so interested in having the highest possible speed is to compensate for having a very strange and poorly designed terrain system.

"Scaling" or "Mountaineering" is a skill in the game, it does nothing. Can we find a way to utilize this skill to make players less affected by the lumpy bizarre terrain?

I think he means when you connect to GK it changes the font to GKs font or Tempus Sans if you have the option selected.

I don't think the Tempus font is the Graal default.

need kleenex gani

I would be more than happy to move some content if you want to contact me in-game or on skype. I agree that main is lacking and there is a lot of content on these islands that nobody uses unless they go to their houses.

We have plans on fixing the mounts. The speed cap right now is currently disabled because of not being able to adjust how much the stats give such as Dex and Speed. Once we are able to adjust both of these though we will be adding the speed cap back.

Running around at 6-7 speed is ridiculous and it makes these PK battles last up to around 30 minutes. It's complete flawed and imo aggravating. We have done testing and speed of about 5 seems to be a solid number. Which is what everyone had when they were at 1.5 speed(we changed how the numbers displayed.)

It shouldn't be changing when you connect anymore. I disabled that a few days ago. Players can set the font they want to use through F3 and can find available fonts in their graal/levels folder.

Accepted.

The ideas seemed similar in response to Cubes; so I was just elaborating.
But then what are you suggesting?

I'm not sure there's exactly that much playable content outside of the main island. A majority of the towns have the same buildings and functions as the main island towns. There's but a few small disparities like the Alchemist quests (which should stay in their relevant locations) and maybe a couple hairstyles in the CP barber along with the rare occasion someone wants to craft a hook or ninjatu; but that all adds up to maybe just half a town worth of content.
-Babershop
-Exotic Blacksmith (zormite blade, hook, ninjatu, some wands I know)
-Exotic crafts place (rum, fishing rod I think, fortifications)
-Tavern for GK quest
-Maybe an embassy of all the kingdoms

Drawing a blank; maybe it'll be a small town.


Yes x3.
terrain is a key word I forgot to mention; good call.

We really need multiple ways to travel before you go just capping off speed.

We could have those carriages (sitting in west bomb for 11+ years) function along the pathways between towns; pay a ferry npc some plat and he'll rush you down the path.
Zeppelins could be changed to be viable. Right now they require a ton of materials and you can't fly unless you're super-duper low weight (regardless of strength/dex). All these requirements make them pretty unusable (especially when any 'troll' can destroy it in 5 punches) but they're one of the funnest things on the server (can ignore terrain/traverse seas).

Combine these functions with better ship mechanics (turning needs a improvement, speed could be adjusted, maintenance could be made simpler) and actual Mounts (not pets, as stated) and we could have a realm of possibilities for transportation that alleviate the need for speed.

I use Arial now solely because GK modified my font and I'm unaware of what the Graal default was. But yeah; I believe this was fixed as Tashkin stated.. I just haven't had motivation to login in awhile.

Yes, it does not change anymore.

Also the /save function isn't needed anymore, your account backs up when you log out.

I never see you on skype anymore.

Edit: another suggestion is to revamp physical, magic and wisdom skills to 5 skills each excluding god skills which would stack on top of wisdom.

As far as I know that would require mudlib access... which I don't think Unixmad would allow access to that.

Nah, just modify the current code or recode skills entirely. Similar to how attack types are modified you can modify skills.

I've recommended many times that a lot of systems get rescripted. The more control the staff have to change the server the more changed that can be made and more updates.

I really wish we had a real menu UI for GK, with a "quest journal", so that you could go back and "restart" on quests that you've already done, etc.

Also, so you could check the journal if you forgot what part you were on of a quest. Especially with the gizmo quests and item turn in quests. I hate that you have to check a bulletin board to see what's available, instead of being able to just pull that up via interface from anywhere that you are.

I'd like to be able to restart the tutorial mission as well, as once it is cancelled, there seems to be no way to back back through it. This is a problem for new players who hastily "ignored" it, and now I am trying to show them how to do things, and I can't simply advise them to "redo the tutorial".

Many other things come to mind, a "hotkey bar" would be nice, as the current weapon/skill/spell drop downs are really poorly designed in my opinion, and completely lack the ability to hotkey potions, scrolls, food, or mana gems.

A scale-able "Q" interface would be nice, but I think I have mentioned that before. When you have a bag with 200 different items in it, it becomes a chore to scroll down and find anything quickly. Even making an optional "list" interface would be great. Instead of showing a grid of "mud icons" a lift of item names that can be scrolled through would be far more compact.

Very good points. I agree with pretty much everything you said. Yeah having a access anywhere quest book instead of the mmt would probably speed it pup for people power questing tho. But the tutorials yeah or people who forget because they haven't played in a while. The hotkeys tho I mean I kinda like the way clicking the gui looks but the absence of those mentioned items you said thats been the only drawback :( Sizable would be pretty cool actually min dimensions.. maybe make it lockable so u don't accidentally mess it up too.

While I can see why you might think of this negatively, I don't think it will actually happen. Many new players are specifically not staying around because the quest system currently isn't even explained anywhere on the server. Most new players have to find out about "stat potions" from other players, and would be even more frustrated by having to constantly return to the MMT to check on quests status, because of their low movement speed, due to being under-geared.

"Power questing", isn't really a thing, I don't think. Most "older" players don't bother to leave trade room, unless it's for something like a "Lucky Altars" pop-up, much less "power" anything.

Not only would a "remote" quest journal make current quests more available to "younger" players, it would also add an easy interface for introducing NEW quests, without bloating an already ridiculously tiny bulletin board in the MMT.

Honestly, why are all these UI so small?

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp

Using anything less than 1366x768 and you should be ashamed of yourselves.

that was when i attempted a GUI overhaul, 2 is just a test, can go even bigger

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/.../gk/uitest.jpg

I like those gui's. :)