A Serious Proposal
 

I must admit to be playing a lot of other online multiplayer games recently besides Graal. Something I have found from playing these games is that many of them rely on the social connection between players to work properly and keep the online economy high. Being an ex-Graal player developer, I thought back to my Graalian roots and thought of a way to further bring this social community to Graal. What instantly came to my mind was the commonly proposed idea of a centralized Graal Hub.

Don't get me wrong. Graal has a great connection between players through the forums and somewhat online. But I think that we can take that connection even further through the introduction of a Hub World. Not only would the Hub be a great way to connect people socially, but because of Graal's unique aspect to completely customize and develop the world around you, it could greatly increase the amount of creative thinking and collaboration between players.

Playerworlds recently have been very competitive things. What the Hub can do is funnel every player into a common world before they break off to their preferred servers and worlds. This gathering of players will help mix players together from all of the servers, creating an easier way to meet new people and assemble in a world with no pressure to be the highest leveled, the richest or the strongest player. The Hub will bring everyone to the same level, so we can interact more as people than elites and newbies.


What are some of the Hub's features?

• Each player will be able to own their very own home in the Hub World. This will be a give the Hub more of a reason to exist in the first place. Players can move freely in and out of their house and allow friends to enter if they wish. You will be able to customize the furniture and other features in the house to fit your personal style.
• The Hub will not have a health or experience system of any kind, so you don't have to worry about being beaten down or intimidated by other players. The Hub is meant to connect people through a sense of a secure environment and controlled equality.
• You will be able to connect to your favorite servers via way points in the world. In addition, each server will have a "Global Vendor" where you can collect special items offered by participating servers to decorate your home with.

So what will this Hub World have to offer?

One of the most obvious and main reasons for the Hub World is to connect all of the players and servers to one centralized root, before branching off into their separate servers. The purposed of this is to not only connect people, but help create common goals between players across every server. An example of how this could happen is this: If a server is hosting a special event or tournament, that server can offer trophies or special objects to be collected in the Hub World. Any server can participate in the distribution of trophies or objects such as furniture, wall paper or other home design features as well as other unique and strictly cosmetic designs for your character.This system will give players the opportunity to expand on their server exploration to try and obtain new items in the Hub. These things will hopefully give the Hub a strong playability factor, while encouraging people to leave the Hub to explore the far corners of Graal and interact with new people.

I'm going to include a list of some more of the features that the Hub will be offering in a simplified list form for easy reference:

• Full character customization
• Simple, vibrant custom tileset
• Free, player owned residences for every player
  1. Customized furniture, art and room design
  2. Display cases showing off trophies
• A place to show off your graphic skills in galleries and possibly even a theater to show off videos made in Graal
• A vast overworld, ready to be explored

If you have any more ideas, or would like to expand to this idea, please leave constructive and positive feedback so we can try and make this idea a reality!

Very nicely set up.

A few thoughts thoughts:

-Who in there right mind would spend 100$ for a server that could be completed in about a week?

-The server would probably die fast because of the lack of new players, who would hang out on a server where there is nothing to do?

-You would need events or something to keep at least some players stuck on the server, houses won't do it.

(By the way, Hello Talon, long time.)

I guess what I forgot to mention was that this world would have to be a special kind of server. It's not really your typical playerworld, although it would be made by players. The Graal staff would probably have to make a patch to impliment the Hub as a server you automatically enter after you login. And the point of the Hib isn't to get a large player count. It's to get people together into one common place before they go off to their seperate severs. Also, the time people would be spending on The Hub would be to customize their homes or hang out with friends.

Perhaps also a tile editor to allow people to customize their homes (as it'd be crazy for staff to look through files sent in).

Yeah, problem is, no one wants to finish making one :rolleyes:

And yes, as I've said in the other 10 threads about this, this should be implemented in the next big Graal update.

Not to be off topic... but haven't you noticed that graal releases tiny updates after a long period of time? :P


I actually think the Hub wouldn't be a bad idea, except for he fact that who wants to pay 100 dollars for a house when you can easy bribe someone for a house with 100 gralats on an easy server such as Unholy Nation.

Nice idea! :)

Not major updates, which this idea would be.

Um, perhaps the server could be used to de-noobify people through a tutorial that doesn't suck, so they can learn the fundamental basics about Graal; basics that could help them on any server.

I agree :)

So basically it would be like the login server..

Yeah, except you can actually move around and communicate on it.


-I really like this idea, I wouldn't mind walking a little to log in. ^^
It's just, I think the login server should still be there since it's useful for the laggy players (Me). Since we can just talk through PMs instead of connecting to one server and getting disconnected a few minutes later. If it was to happen, there should be a "connect" button that you click when you're ready to log on to the Hub server.

I remember something about, I think Rufus, wanting to do a "Graal Tournament" for all of the servers to participate and compete in. Maybe this could be implemented (with the permission of Rufus) and players can do events to earn points for their 'home' server, which they will choose or it could be based on how many hours they spent on each server. That way there is something to compete for, but it doesn't go directly to the player so they can't act like they're superior for it.

Those are both great ideas! As for the login part you mentioned in the first paragraph, the login screen can contain global news along with the ability to access your buddly list. It can also have buttons to connect to the Hub and go directly to your home or login to where you last left off. Connecting to home would be great for anyone who has lag, as they would most likely be the only one in their home on log in if you keep the door locked. :P
Also, when you mentioned the global events, what could happen is that servers can have primary games on their servers to determine who is their best in each event or they can sponsor any player who decided to compete in the games!