Graal Free To Play on Facebook and Android

[Crono]

Originally Posted by ffcmike

I must have misunderstood this part then.

Originally Posted by NicoX

Same....

Do we get this list of requirements now or what? Why is it that complicated? If you can't do everything on your own I would suggest hiring more Developers to help you Stefan/unixmad.

There is no list of requirements because it doesn't exist yet. I think they're still trying to figure out how they want their P2P model to work on existing servers. It's reasonable that their focus is on the iOS community because that's where the money is right now. I just don't get what's so hard about updating the v6 client to have a nicer playerlist, fix the funny way the font looks, and then make all of Graal F2P where you only pay for aesthetics (additional character colors, Zodiac's stuff, Era's stuff, etc).

There's no harm in making a bad server like UN completely free until they figure their crap out either, it benefits the players and only encourages playercount. This increase in playercount will eventually explore Era or Zodiac and spend some gralats there anyway.

Originally Posted by NicoX

You should be gratefull that so many Developers working for free, atleast give us (the Community) something back... I don't appreciate this arrogance.

Heh, welcome to Graal bro. I rarely do work anymore but when I do, it's small stuff for iClassic. I'm always reminded by a friend that we're not doing things for Stefan or unixmad, we're doing things for the community and the thousands of players who will be experiencing our content. That's slightly motivating.

[cbk1994]

Originally Posted by Crono

fix the funny way the font looks

What's wrong with the font? I thought the issue with nickname bolding was fixed?

[Darklux]

I thought it might be an idea to put into words what has bothered me for some time now:

Graal was beyond it's time then. Back then, few MMORPG games exited, requiring expensive costs for credit cards - more or less cutting the european market off like this.
In the beginning, it was free to play and attracted many people, especially fans of old games like 2D Zelda.

What happened?

Slowly, the Market for Free to Play MMORPG's exploded, limiting the playerbase nearly completely to folks interested in development. Furthermore to a point of time, the official interest seemed to slowly vanish, distracting and annoying many more players.
Some examples:

- A Graal3D that never fitted the expectations of the playerbase, "only" leading to torque integration and v3/v4.
- Announced features that have never seen their release, like flying engine.
- More or less complete halt on official development of socalled "Gold Worlds" like GK or Zone, without adapting subscribtion costs to the limited quality.
- Although being kind of a MMORPG SDK, bad treatment of development staff, few updates on staff tools, no possibility to offer free to play content, although you already have to pay for the content being hosted.

I can imagine easily that PC Graal is no Cash Cow at the moment, but if you took the decision to slowly let it die of thirst years ago, it would've been atleast fair to tell us.

But I think I am talking for most people:
Why don't you even attempt bringing bit atleast a bit of attractivity to PC Graal?
A full Free to Play concept, connected with mandatory Mikro Transactions could work wonders, but it seems the time invested on these topics by Eurocenter seems to be insignificant.


It seems that the remains of PC Graal only exist to serve as a mere source of potential cheap designers for IPhone games that sell quite well - I highly doubt that developers who actually created the content get a fair share of the profits.

[Admins]

Darklux all we were doing is making Graal successful, now we have each day 3000 players online at the same time when three years ago it was only 300-400. The PC Graal version is currently lagging a little bit behind the developments in the mobile space, but it's not we are standing still. Many people on the forums don't understand that we will not get tons of players just because we reduce the price a little bit. The observer mode is needed right now to justify the playerworld gold subscription since we cannot check each day if the servers are correctly scripted or so and prices are fair. So there needs to be a "hard" limit somewhere (level cap on Zodiac) or observer mode. At some point we can transform all servers to free-to-play mode but we don't have the tools in-place right now (built-in customization shop and such stuff).

[ffcmike]

Originally Posted by Stefan

Darklux all we were doing is making Graal successful, now we have each day 3000 players online at the same time when three years ago it was only 300-400. The PC Graal version is currently lagging a little bit behind the developments in the mobile space, but it's not we are standing still. Many people on the forums don't understand that we will not get tons of players just because we reduce the price a little bit. The observer mode is needed right now to justify the playerworld gold subscription since we cannot check each day if the servers are correctly scripted or so and prices are fair. So there needs to be a "hard" limit somewhere (level cap on Zodiac) or observer mode. At some point we can transform all servers to free-to-play mode but we don't have the tools in-place right now (built-in customization shop and such stuff).

Thank you for at least addressing the issue. Though I still stand by the argument that observer mode is much more than a restriction, and is indirectly having a highly detrimental affect on the ability for trial's to properly experience the game and therefore want to upgrade. As for the issue of pricing and security it would be good to know exactly what is expected, I would assume Classic already has a high level of scripted security and that planned prices are already very conservative.

[xXziroXx]

Originally Posted by Stefan

Darklux all we were doing is making Graal successful, now we have each day 3000 players online at the same time when three years ago it was only 300-400. The PC Graal version is currently lagging a little bit behind the developments in the mobile space, but it's not we are standing still. Many people on the forums don't understand that we will not get tons of players just because we reduce the price a little bit.

It's really great of you to finally hold a dialogue with us. The lack of communication between Eurocenter and us players/developers is what's been fueling our anger the most. I still think we've been ignored a little too much though, especially on important matters such as:

http://forums.graalonline.com/forums...hp?t=134266660

Originally Posted by Stefan

The observer mode is needed right now to justify the playerworld gold subscription since we cannot check each day if the servers are correctly scripted or so and prices are fair. So there needs to be a "hard" limit somewhere (level cap on Zodiac) or observer mode. At some point we can transform all servers to free-to-play mode but we don't have the tools in-place right now (built-in customization shop and such stuff).

When Maloria became Classic around a year ago, I tried for the longest time to get you to remove observer mode for us, which you flat out denied. We had trial limitations on events, level cap, joining nations, item limits and several minor things. Unholy Nation have been trying to please you in order to have it removed as well, and they've seemingly been largely ignored too.


You also seem to take months to reply to PM's and emails about things that ONLY you are able to be of assistance of, which is just too long.

[ffcmike]

Originally Posted by xXziroXx

Unholy Nation have been trying to please you in order to have it removed as well, and they've seemingly been largely ignored too.

To put things into perspective, Zone happens to have observer mode removed, and yet the argument can be made that as a result of its essentially dead state, UN, Val, and even a UC Classic are contributing more to Graal.

[Starfire2001]

Originally Posted by Stefan

Darklux all we were doing is making Graal successful, now we have each day 3000 players online at the same time when three years ago it was only 300-400. The PC Graal version is currently lagging a little bit behind the developments in the mobile space, but it's not we are standing still. Many people on the forums don't understand that we will not get tons of players just because we reduce the price a little bit. The observer mode is needed right now to justify the playerworld gold subscription since we cannot check each day if the servers are correctly scripted or so and prices are fair. So there needs to be a "hard" limit somewhere (level cap on Zodiac) or observer mode. At some point we can transform all servers to free-to-play mode but we don't have the tools in-place right now (built-in customization shop and such stuff).

Disagree with the business model here, but guessing probably pretty pointless to argue. Thanks for responding to this though, at least I now have a post to link people to when they ask me 100x a day on UN when I'm going to make a gelat shop so we have observer mode removed.

[Crono]

Originally Posted by Stefan

Many people on the forums don't understand that we will not get tons of players just because we reduce the price a little bit. The observer mode is needed right now to justify the playerworld gold subscription since we cannot check each day if the servers are correctly scripted or so and prices are fair.

That's kind of the point though, they shouldn't cost anything and there is nothing to justify buying a gold subscription to begin with right now. In the past we had free servers and then exclusive "gold" or "p2p" servers like G2k1. Even after Graal went full p2p we still had lifetime Classic accounts being offered if you bought Graal once, which is a much more fair and correct model than what's being offered today.

Graal used to be very special in the past, but today it's losing its charm. iClassic and iEra work well both because they're on a fresh platform and because it's very cheap (or even free) to play. Ever since you released Graal v5 we were going downhill, and a lot of us were saying that Graal would die if nothing were to happen. Releasing iClassic is the best thing that's happened to Graal since 2006 and we now have players. Use this new momentum to propel the "real" PC Graal forward as well. Many players on iClassic have some interest in playing what we call "PC Graal" or developing for it but don't know where to begin nor do they want to shell out money just to develop for you.

Nowadays many multiplayer games are either going for a "pay once and play forever" model or completely F2P with various levels of microtransaction. On games like League of Legends (a very successful and popular F2P game) microtransactions effect balance, while games like Dota 2 (currently in closed beta but extremely popular, especially in e-sports) will be F2P and only have aesthetic microtransactions. My point is that both the modern and future of gaming relies on either of these models, no longer does it rely on buying limited subscriptions and renewing them.

Originally Posted by ffcmike

To put things into perspective, Zone happens to have observer mode removed, and yet the argument can be made that as a result of its essentially dead state, UN, Val, and even a UC Classic are contributing more to Graal.

Zone is actually an interesting example of what limiting the player does. Originally trial accounts weren't saved but could still partake in guild activities and had 100HP. Displeased with this, they later changed it so trials started with 80HP and could no longer join guilds. Zone began to lose some playercount over this and much of its guild activity died off. The moment v5 came out, I declared Zone "RIP" and was quickly proven correct. Zone is such a good server, but it is ruined by imbalances caused by the cash shop and the restrictive limitations that were stacked onto players over the years. I hope iZone revives interest in the server.

[Imperialistic]

I'm astonished Stefan. I can at least say that we appreciate the much needed response that we have been waiting on for ~6 years. All of us are not against GraalOnline as it may seem, we are here to help you. I don't see why you can't discuss with us what you would like to see within the 'cash shops'. Because if there is anything we can do to speed up the process, most developers will take it into their own hands with your approval of course.

[Tricxta]

Originally Posted by Darklux

It seems that the remains of PC Graal only exist to serve as a mere source of potential cheap designers for IPhone games that sell quite well - I highly doubt that developers who actually created the content get a fair share of the profits.

I can say being a developer for iEra that we don't get any kind of share of the profits. We're meant to be paid 300 gelats a month as some kind of "thank you" for our contribution of time but not even that happens...
So overall, we don't get any kind of share of the profits nor "thank you". At least we don't have to pay to develop, erhmm yayy!
Being honest, I was never really in it for some kind of reward, I feel my reward is being able to contribute to a game with a semi decent player base but that's where it stops.

[NicoX]

Stefan, please tell us a list what you need for removing Observer Mode and we will just do it ? That horrible thing has to go. Valikorlia for example would work great when its moved to F2P because ALOT of people are RPing on the Internet, but at the same time they wouldnt pay for Graal when they can pay for other Games which has more to offer.
So please, give us the requirements and we will work on them. unixmad/you basically have nothing to lose.

[ajf10209]

Can Val maybe have access to the dev server that was paid for too?

[NicoX]

Originally Posted by ajf10209

Can Val maybe have access to the dev server that was paid for too?

Oh yes I forgot, we paid for a Dev Server and still waiting for 2 months now for enabling it to Classic Status. I mean we lost 2 months of Development time.

If you finally find time for some Graal PC issues, please enable the Server dev_ZazenP2P ...

[Imperialistic]

Originally Posted by NicoX

Oh yes I forgot, we paid for a Dev Server and still waiting for 2 months now for enabling it to Classic Status. I mean we lost 2 months of Development time.

If you finally find time for some Graal PC issues, please enable the Server dev_ZazenP2P ...

I think this is something that should be emailed to him, this is totally off-topic.