Question.

[DarkCloud_PK]

I haven't heard or seen much in this regard, but I feel it is an important part of the server and should be addressed.

What are the plans for GC? I know it shouldn't be a main focus of the server and shouldn't have anywhere near the content dominance and importance on the server that it had before. However, it still is and always should be of great importance to the server.

My questions:

Who is going to take the helm of GC, will they be in control of development and concept of GC or will that be relegated to management? It will be hard to run in the shadow of the very long and (overly) successful tenure of Night, and I hope whoever runs it will stick to a game-plan similar to him.

How many events are going to be scrapped? Classic has one of the largest caches of different events and I've personally seen a ton of work go into them. I know there are events and concepts that failed and need to be removed, but I am hoping that successful staples will be retained as well as classic ones. Examples of content I would like to see retained, rescripted or not: CTF, Studio A(had a ton of event potential), some of the main sparring stuff along with the waiting room and so forth. There is a vast amount of GC content though and that isn't nearly all of what was fun, I suggest a thread devoted to what things people would personally like to see return. Leads me to my next question.

How much content of staple events is going to be retained? I would hate to see things like CTF have its core gameplay drastically altered. I'm not saying improvements can't be made but I would personally like to see the core of successful events remain.

Lastly,

Which problems with GC are the main priority and what is the plan to correct them? Problems such as the balance of the ticket economy need to be addressed...


What other questions do the players have about where the events portion of Classic is going?

[xmann]

Originally Posted by DarkCloud_PK

However, it still is and always should be of great importance to the server.

Agreed. When Classic's GC's were active, the server usually was. When you had less GC's doing Less Events, the server was just..... Less exciting. When you have to beg GC's to get on, going on AIM.... That's sad. I think the GC's as well as the Events are a Staple to Classic..... But then again, My opinion.

Originally Posted by DarkCloud_PK

Who is going to take the helm of GC, will they be in control of development and concept of GC or will that be relegated to management? It will be hard to run in the shadow of the very long and (overly) successful tenure of Night, and I hope whoever runs it will stick to a game-plan similar to him.

agreed as well.

[Rufus]

Maybe I'm crazy, but I don't think that the Game Coordinator team (as it existed previously) should ever return. I think the age of GAMES GALORE! should be dropped, and replaced with self-sustaining areas for entertainment. The rate of events on Unholy Nation is high, but nobody could care less who wins or losses an event. They don't count for anything, they just entertain a minor selection of people for a few minutes, and they flood the servers' economy with event coins. This isn't durable entertainment, and at the end of the day you're just going to end up with the same problems when people become addicted to quick fixes again.

These modern-day events teams are a heavy deviation of what they were originally intended for, and I think they need to readdress what really is entertaining, what would keep the players entertained on a larger scale. I would personally prefer a team that only hosts tournaments and gets together to organise server-wide events on a regular basis. This would probably be more a lot more entertaining than a team that hosts the same old events, every single day, for no real reason.

[DustyPorViva]

I think Graal as a whole needs to step back from this over-reliance on events. Classic was a huge offender of this. Classic pre-shutdown had nothing to offer players other than events. If you didn't play in the events, you had nothing to do. All it is is a cheap and easy substitute for actual content. Now I'm not saying events aren't without their place, as events can help entertain players and give them something different to do, but you can't use events as a necessity to keep players entertained. If a server can't function without events, then I think something is wrong with the server.

[Imperialistic]

Originally Posted by Rufus

Maybe I'm crazy, but I don't think that the Game Coordinator team (as it existed previously) should ever return. I think the age of GAMES GALORE! should be dropped, and replaced with self-sustaining areas for entertainment. The rate of events on Unholy Nation is high, but nobody could care less who wins or losses an event. They don't count for anything, they just entertain a minor selection of people for a few minutes, and they flood the servers' economy with event coins. This isn't durable entertainment, and at the end of the day you're just going to end up with the same problems when people become addicted to quick fixes again.

These modern-day events teams are a heavy deviation of what they were originally intended for, and I think they need to readdress what really is entertaining, what would keep the players entertained on a larger scale. I would personally prefer a team that only hosts tournaments and gets together to organise server-wide events on a regular basis. This would probably be more a lot more entertaining than a team that hosts the same old events, every single day, for no real reason.

There is a first time for everything (towards my next statement)

I agree with Rufus.

[DarkCloud_PK]

I should make it clear that I meant to say I think that events should not be a main focal point for the server and should be a compliment to the server. I have been through it all, and I agree that events have been made meaningless, and that's one of the problems I want to be addressed by the management when restructuring the events system.

I do agree they should be a rarer occasion and that meaning to events to those participating should be striven for, and ideas can be brainstormed with the players on how to make events more meaningful for them. I do not agree they should be done away with outright, they do add a long term source of entertainment for a server, as long as it isn't abused.

We saw GC over the years evolve into having dominant content and entertainment control of the server and essentially burn its value away to nothing. That is the direct result of Classic overusing and abusing events. They were used to hold up the server instead of complimenting content and Night was interestingly enough able to lead a development effort more reliably and with better results, causing an increasing amount of content being GC content. This is a main problem to GC that I feel needs to be addressed when considering how Classic will approach events, there needs to be a limit of its usage no matter the short term success that events brings, we learned our lesson on that already hopefully.

[BlackSolider]

Perhaps that events shouldn't give out a prize anymore, other than the satisfaction of competition and/or winning. That could help solve the ticket economy problem pretty easily.

As for the overdose of events, Classic really had nothing else to offer so we were kind of stuck in a vicious cycle of dependency. If the server gave people things to do in between events, then a GC team could be successful. But if we return to the "if a GC's not on, lets log off" approach, then Classic will suck once again.

[Rufus]

I highly doubt that even with "things to do" people's attitudes towards events are going to change. I don't think there's enough creativity on the server anymore, probably hasn't been for a while now, and this is something that the events system has caused. When was the last time you seen someone getting married on Classic? Getting divorced? A birthday party? Someone sparring? Having a guild war? Visiting a chick and taking her to a prom?!

All of those activities died, and it's not as though we couldn't have done them. I can imagine people might say that they weren't catered for in content, and while that's true to an extent, we had as much as Graal The Adventure did for this kind of stuff. People just use events as a safety blanket for entertainment, and are too above themselves to get involved in anything else. A few of us have done several of these things on Unholy Nation, and the younger/newer generation adore participating in them. If anyone tried that on Classic no one would give a crap, and they'll just sit there waiting for the next event. That's why I believe that content is not going to bring community values back that we need by itself, and the events that previously existed are only going to hinder it more.

Edit: Just to clarify a little. I know that the old events system is probably going to exist again, and what I proposed was just an idealistic approach. The old events are fun, and I can't say I didn't enjoy playing in them. However, the existing habits of the players are not going to change unless there's a massive revision in how the events are done, and limits are easily broken as we've seen in the past. Nothing will change unless those habits are broken, and that is not going to be done through new content alone, therefore I think Game Coordinators should be hosting large server-wide events as opposed to the common types we've seen in the past.

[Remonq]

Originally Posted by Imperialistic

There is a first time for everything (towards my next statement)

I agree with Rufus.

this isn't the first time i've said it but...yeah i agree too.

[ffcmike]

There are alot of things which need to be ironed out, but the intention is certainly to create something different as opposed to just remaking everything how it was, alot of the issues raised already within this thread have already been considered previously, I can agree that events should not be the primary focus of the server or be relied upon too heavily, but they are still an important part of building up and maintaining a community,
the server isn't going to be rushed back onto the Classic tab, not until there's enough progress on the Questing side of things, the transition from not having any playercount to having a reliable playercount isn't going to happen over night and so events among other community based types of gameplay are really the key to generating some interest in the server while the main content is still under construction.

Even before the wipe there were ideas floating around as to how prizes could be improved and made worthwhile, one of the most straight forward ideas being for prizes to offer some type of advantage to players but only be of limited use,
but going from scratch does make other possiblities a viable option, obtaining prizes doesn't necessarily have to be a matter of buying an item with a special currency, for instance there could be a special auction system over a time period to award prizes to whoever bid the most tickets, or an automated system which makes you eligible to obtain prizes as your event statistics improve.

Regarding the dynamics of events, there's little reason for them to change visually, but it's important that they are re-scripted in a way which isn't problematic for when you want to alter a system affecting all events, alot of scripts within GC levels were just copied and pasted + slightly altered which made it a tedious process to fix stuff and also wasn't very time-efficient, it would be much better to create a set of re-useable classes for the construction of event levels, the same is also intended for remaking Team Events, in the past each team event had their controls scripted from scratch each time which meant they took longer and it would have been annoying to add something to all of them (like statistics), making a re-useable team event system would both speed up the development of team events and make it easy to apply improvements to them.

As for what events should remain, there were alot of pointless studio levels and extra spar arenas which would just be a waste of time to restore, the plan is for there to be a single studio event level where the entrance would warp you to a destination depending on what event is set to be hosted, there are some events I personally feel should be scrapped such as Musical chairs or anything largely based on luck but it can be argued that such events did give newer players a chance of winning, Studio A is definately a must keep in my opinion, Drunken Stupor depended on luck somewhat but there was atleast some strategy to it and that level is what i'd call versatile in terms of the possible events that can be hosted within it such as Bazillion Questions,
the studios will also be redesigned with important levels such as the prize room being accessable from the front.

I also definately agree that there should be a greater variety of what events are hosted, and that there should be more limits as to how often a particular event can be hosted,
which again could perhaps be a part of an automated system.
It wouldn't necessarily be a problem if CTF were to be hosted twice in a row, sometimes one game isn't enough to satisfy the participants, a game can be ruined for whatever reason, or maybe a game could last long enough for several other players to have logged on and waited for the chance to participate unsuccessfully, but after 2 or 3 times in quick succession it would be removing the prestige of the event while perhaps unfair to others who would want to play a different event.

Suggestions are welcome.