a new start

[Rufus]

Originally Posted by Tyhm

REDO = LATER.
DO = NOW.

Jesus, it's not that complicated.

This is what has got Classic in the mess that it is currently in. Rush to fill in the content void, blame the fact that it's Classic for the lack of quality, and worry about the stigma attached to that content later. It is such a poor and amateur way of developing, and that is not what Classic needs at all.

After a long stretch of zero updates the fishing rod was released and it was was well received for a day. An entire day because the players were starved of content for so long, whoopty doo. The rod was badly scripted, completely pointless, and provided very little incentive for use with the massive amounts of gelat people have. A couple of days later not one single person was using the NPC, and while it might have entertained a very small playerbase for a very small amount of time, you are pretty limited to the amount of times you can do something like that. Next came the release of the Minigame System, which was a little more functional and served an actual purpose, but had was terribly executed. I must admit it was fun again for a while, and the return of Com's Game Tower re-enhanced the competitive playing at the time. Three of the old games were released, but there was no attempt to improve any of them. Graal Invaders had powerups that didn't even work and the reasoning behind not fixing them was that the bugs also existed in Graal The Adventure, which is a pretty pathetic excuse. Needless to say, once the initial buzz had died down the NPC was rarely used, and there has been no attempt to rehash the activity by releasing new games, which should be pretty easy to make.

As you know, Bowling was the latest big release and there was no attempt to hype it at all. Big releases on dead servers depend on hype, yet nothing was posted on the forums, nothing was posted in the login news, and it received a silent release save for an NPC Server message. Bowling itself received no additional features of use, the fancifuls were nothing out of the ordinary and the core of it was solo play. Why would you play an online game to play alone? You don't, but that point seemed to escape the developers who re-released this. I don't care if it was like that in Graal The Adventure, it doesn't mean it has to be like that now. Players wanted to play together and not have to grind their way through it, so after a week it wasn't touched again by most. There was no attempt to encourage the Game Coordinator team to hype it up either, and although I know some of them tried, nothing was provided for real competitive play so it was fruitless.

So, to return to the point I'm trying to make here; In a server revival quality is paramount, especially if the content is not particularly unique. Content shouldn't be released for the sake of having content. Release content for the sake of being a better server. Classic is up to the point now where most of the game mechanics and game lore is offered elsewhere, and at a greater quality to boot, so if they're going to add a similar feature to Classic they need to go all the way with it or not put it in at all. First impressions are everything, and as this current playerbase isn't all too familiar with the old content, most of the re-releases are new releases. Players are not going to feel the same sense of joy, hype, gratitude, fondness (and all those other positive feelings you get when you play on a decent game you've been waiting for) to a "better" re-release of a re-release further down the line, so these initial releases need to be of quality. More importantly we need longevity in content, so a delay in a release is totally worth it as long as the product has a more professional finish to it when it finally does release. Apparently the staff thought that Bowling was acceptable, so maybe they should just take the third option and STOP = NOW.

Originally Posted by Tyhm

Add to all this Classic's Constant Handicap, it has to stick to the old style, old tiles, old graphics, or become Just Another Server...

This was also a pretty stupid statement to make. Classic isn't handicapped by these things at all, it is made unique by them. The levels have a Classic styled look to them, it's not really dated, it's a style. The graphics used on the server can be fixed up to a greater standard and still look Classic. It's the people who believe that in updating content you need to drastically change it who are adding the handicap, because this is completely untrue and down to creative limitations. Konidias' graphical updates of various Classic graphics are a prime example of how a progression can be made. Classic isn't about looking crap, it's about looking and feeling classic.

[Oni]

Ok here's an opinon comming from a player that started in 2007.

Really, classic is a piece of trash now. Theres no reason whatsoever for me to play that server anymore, but it was the first server I played and I liked it a lot at the time. I dont believe that Thor and Master Storm understand the needs of the newer players such as me. The little content that Classic has is ****ty. The little content that they release is ****ty. I dont think its fair at all that the newer players such as myself to have this team of staff running the place. All I hear about is Graal the Adventure blablabla.. and all I wanna know is why they are settling for outdated content from 1998/2000, when people have the capabilities to do 2009 content? I don't want to see more outdated graphics from GTA and I don't want to see more in-things that you would only understand if you played back then. In fact, I just don't want to see more content from GTA because from what I have seen it is all garbage and none of what I've experienced is actually fun.

I think Classic settles for too little. Why are we stuck in this 1998/2000 GTA mindset, when all other successful modern day servers (UN, Zodiac, Era) are free to do and expand all they like? I don't think its fair for the newer players such as me to have Thor as the Developement Admin and Master Storm as the Manager. Both of these people have proved that they in no way can relate to me, their little content cannot relate to me, and they have no real idea of what a player like me wants in a server.

As well as not putting thought into the current wave of players, the staff on Classic don't think competitively at all. They act like they are in their own little world, have a huge community to work with, and no competition and it is really stupid. Yes it would be nice if that was the case, but it isn't. There are other servers on the same list as Classic and they all offer what Classic has and much much more. Classic needs to focus on competing with the servers that take in new age ideas, instead of sticking to the horrible old content and re-releasing old junk that doesn't actually entertain the players.

[-Ramirez-]

Originally Posted by Oni

[rather selfish view]

If you had experienced what Classic had in the past, you wouldn't be saying all of what you just did, and would understand why people want it back. Despite being generally limited due to all being designed for use without the benefits that an NPC Server provides, it was a lot of great content. It doesn't need to have completely updated functionality and appearance to be comparable to other servers.

[salesman]

If you're developing to make people "in the past" happy, at most you will regain a few lost players...if you start looking for what new players might like, you could attract fresh ones.

I know that's not what you guys want though, and it would really defeat the purpose of it being "Classic"

[-Ramirez-]

Originally Posted by salesman

If you're developing to make people "in the past" happy, at most you will regain a few lost players...if you start looking for what new players might like, you could attract fresh ones.

You're assuming that the old stuff won't be the slightest bit appealing to people who didn't get to experience it in its pristine state, which just isn't true. The only problem is that the vast majority of it has yet to be rebuilt so that the newcomers CAN see what it was like. There's absolutely nothing wrong with wanting what was on the server back, and nothing wrong with striving to restore it, it's just that it's not happening.

I honestly don't have a clue what the current developers' goals are, what they're working on, or all of what's currently done. From what I do know, however, what's been getting released lately is not what focus should be on if the intent is to get back the old content.

[Evil_Trunks]

Who killed Classic? In short, Master Storm did. By deciding on a full redo instead of adapting the current content, the server was lost forever and is now dead. The long explanation is that Stefan killed it by appointing Master Storm as manager instead of the next-in-line, Ramirez.

[MysticX2X]

Originally Posted by -Ramirez-

If you had experienced what Classic had in the past, you wouldn't be saying all of what you just did, and would understand why people want it back. Despite being generally limited due to all being designed for use without the benefits that an NPC Server provides, it was a lot of great content. It doesn't need to have completely updated functionality and appearance to be comparable to other servers.

Graal in general was back then and everyone would love to see Graal to back to the way it was years ago and beyond. Every server has lost a tremendous amount of activity in the recent years, and there's only the management of graal to blame. But that isn't necessarily the debate here.

With that aside, I actually think It's better to make changes to attract new players tbh instead of the old players who won't accept the server anymore and will only live in their nostalgia. The content won't bring back the server to it's famous glory it had before (mind you i never payed attention to Classic in the past years but going off the opinions) ago since the community is really what makes any server very enjoyable. The recent updates Classic made was to attract old players and it failed, terribly.

[-Ramirez-]

Originally Posted by MysticX2X

I actually think It's better to make changes to attract new players

Nobody is suggesting that changes shouldn't be made, but you have to realize that restoring old content, at the moment, is just as much of a change as adding anything new. Perhaps you should be more clear on what you're trying to communicate.

old players who won't accept the server anymore

It's not about acceptance, it's about what's appealing, and the old data was certainly that. The current isn't, to the majority of people who comment on it.

and will only live in their nostalgia

It's not as if people are "stuck" in the past, it's that the past was better than anything implemented since then, so why not use it?

The content won't bring back the server to it's famous glory it had before since the community is really what makes any server very enjoyable.

Among other things that've been permanently changed, this is absolutely true. However, since people are still playing and still developing, decisions still need to be made.

The recent updates Classic made was to attract old players and it failed, terribly.

I find it interesting that you realize this, yet you suggest that wanting the old content is somehow a negative thing.

[Tyhm]

Where I stand is, if you want a server that doesn't have the stupid "I can see all 4 walls" overhead view, if you want a server that has guns and lighting effects, if you want a server with better graphics than a MSPaint dragon and V shaped spaceship, go play Era. If Classic bows to such pressures, it becomes a horrid little compromise server.

And yes Rufus, it would be nice if everything worked 100% when it was released. It would be nice if Bowling was perfect and had a good multiplayer theme to it. It would be nice if fishing was more involved when it was released. These aren't subject to debate - Good is good, it's an argument from definition. What the debate is, is what should Classic's limited staff focus on? Making more stuff, or constantly rehashing the same old stuff? Would you rather they make the big announcement next month "Hey guys, we fixed Bowling balls so they can hit other players and baddies, we fixed baddies so they take the right ammount of hits again, and the fishing rod's a lot better in our opinions, have fun!", or "The pyramid quest's open, it ain't perfect but it's something to do"? Perhaps we're permanently in opposite camps; perhaps we must simply agree to disagree.

There's also the possibility they should dedicate their time to hiring and firing staffers; that's one of those RTS "Upgrade or buy another unit?" questions. Hiring, in theory, always works out to be a long-term gain; some developers lose some time now, but increase the developers' total output. Unfortunately too much of that has a diminishing return; While Com013 doubled the amount of work we were doing on GtA, Zero33 actually slowed us down uploading his house while he didn't really draw anything.

In any case, having read this last page of arguments, I still see no reason why Classic going Backwards right now would be Actually Progress. If all ye classic-lovers want to help make it awesome you should be allowed, sure, but why destroy Anything in the process?

PS - oh duh, here's a better analogy, Painting. Yeah, we missed a spot. Let's finish THIS coat and THEN we'll go back for it. I know it looks horrible, give it a bit, we're gonna have to put several coats down anyway and I wanna see what it's gonna look like with this color first anyway. Yes, I know it's not Really That Color because this coat's thin and patchy, whatever, I can get an idea.

[MiniOne]

xD with a bit of work and help by posting bulletins on the login page we could possibly bring Classic back alive I miss that server

[DarkCloud_PK]

Eh. I could write an essay on the failure of classic and why.
Classic has been going down a very long downward spiral for awhile now since the NPC server era started what 4-5 years back.

The decision to rebuild classic for the NPC server era from the ground up was an awful idea in itself. Especially the serverside HD decision, so classic would be some sort of pinnacle of serverside hoopla, some pinnacle now.

By not relying on default HD, nearly nothing default could be used to develop, i.e. baddies, chests, etc. You also made it impossible to easily recycle all the old NPCs from pre NPC server into a usable form, all had to be rescripted to work with the custom HD and movement systems. Trust me, from experience, trying to bring back things from old classic is a pain in the ass. Why? Because it all has to be rehauled for the custom systems, if you can even do that, sometimes it has to be rebuilt from scratch.

So with that decision to make all those damn custom systems as well as rebuild the OW from nearly scratch, you've set yourself behind the other PWs(competition for players) by getting rid of content deemed old and inferior, needing a rehaul, BUT you've also made it so it is HARDER to develop for the server than other servers. So, now we've got classic working from behind, and at slower pace than everyone else, who gets to use those default systems, such as UN.

Throw in all the other problems that came about all the years, which further crippled classics comeback. The constant switching of LAT Admins for one. Each new LAT/Dev Admin that came in deemed the previous one inferior, and sought out to redo or destroy all the progress the previous admin achieved. That included redoing the custom HD and movement systems multiple times. I think I coined the phrase long ago that we had more movement system and HD system redos than quests released. Each system redo caused problems with all the content built around the former system, which required development resources to fix.

So now you have a lack of content, a difficulty to make content, and the content being released usually being a rehash of something already made. Limited resources being used to repave the same road instead of making new roads. A bit silly, no?

So that went on for years, forming this downward spiral. UN and Zodiac and pretty much a bunch of other servers made it to the top while classic lagged behind. That's how its been going, and how its continuing to go.

Where was the management to sever the spiral you ask? Nowhere. Storm, while good on the PR front, has close to no ability to manage a server. Simply put, he lets the developers and admins walk all over him. He is also one of the most indecisive admins I've seen, in order to get him to make a decision, if you're lucky, you would have to back him into a corner, for days. No decisions got made by the management, so classic was allowed to coast, the horrible and inactive admins left to do whatever they wanted.

Here we are today, years later, the effects of spiraling ever downward are now apparent to everyone. As the spiral continues, classic gets ever more hopeless to get a chance for a rebound. Why?

Community builds community, higher player count servers are going to get more newbies, noone wants to log onto an online game like graal to play with the same 2 people and 3 idling RCs.

Developers dont want to develop for someones dead server unless it's their own private PW that will never make it to hosted or classic tab, developers either go to high profile servers, or they start their own project. It isnt fun to develop unless
A)People are going to use what you make and enjoy it.
or
B)You get to develop things in your own vision.

Deving for classic offers neither.

So its kind of a catch 22, the deeper you go, the harder it is to get out.
All the odds are against Classic right now in every department.
It would take some sort of ridiculous combination of hype and change(think of it in terms of obama hype after bush, guess who bush is in classic's case), addicting content, and the failure on some part of the dominat servers now, only with that sort of combo in rapid succession, could classic see the top.

[WhiteDragon]

I figure an response from an administrator is due at this point, so I'll interject some official opinions on here to hopefully clear things up.

Classic has, as previous noted, been losing players at an even faster rate than all the other playerworlds because of its lack of new content that the player can interact with (e.x., new quests, new weapons) and lack of replayable content. The server has also not been getting new players because of lack of quality content and highly undeveloped storyline.

There is a extrinsic balance we have to aim for when developing on the server to create new content and make sure all the content on the server is high-quality. This is because we can lose players if they aren't attracted in the first place because of low-quality content, and we can lose current players if there is no new content released.

After a good amount of content is released, a sort of safety net is formed where we have more time to improve on quality since there is more content already out there for the newer players to go through.

This safety net gives a false sense of security though because the general opinion is not as negative and the development team ends up doing something like rewriting the movement and ruining half of the content on the server.

The rest of the development team and I hope to reach the balance between quality and content and always keep in mind exactly where we are and not do anything to throw off that balance. This is at least what I have learned from the previous development teams and where they have broken down, and also from the success of certain other development teams before the NPC server.

Most of the storyline on Classic has already been thought out, and we are just attempting to strategically release the quests and still keep the quality up, while also trying to create replayable content such as bowling for the current players to entertain themselves with all with a very limited development team.


What I would really like everyone to do is let go of the grudges against the development team or any specific members of it, and instead try to guide us to hit this balance right on through opinion.
Thor and I have both been reading this thread and most of the posts have been helpful in doing so.

I would also like to remind everyone that we are always looking for potential new developers to help us out whether you specifically agree with our opinions or not: http://classicgraal.net/applications/development/

[-Ramirez-]

The single largest problem about trying to convert the built-in systems to a custom system was the fact that the built-in ones allowed a single player in a level to control where all NPCs moved and what variables they held. This player-controlled environment allowed NPCs to have data sent in 0.05 second intervals, rather than 0.1, and the movement was, for whatever reason, more fluid than what the NPC Server produces. Move() is a joke for NPCs that frequently change direction. It produces horrible results in comparison to what existed before.

Hit detection being done clientside before is also what contributed to the difficulty of trying to reproduce what we had. Everyone always tried to make it serverside, which just can't come close to what everyone played with before. I see that there's been a reversion back to clientside detection at the moment, but I don't know if this applies to both NPCs and players.

If any of this was unknown to those currently doing the script work, maybe this will give an insight into what needs to be done to allow reproduction of old-style quests. I wouldn't mind discussing various aspects further, if anyone is interested. Hopefully these things were already known though, as it was all pretty obvious if you ever scripted before the NPC Server.

Of course, all of what I've talked about is dealing with the core scripts of the server, as is usually the focus. I'm just assuming that these scripts are still a problem right now, if there's lacking content.



Btw, Tyhm, you should know that it isn't always possible to halfass things when scripting is involved. There are some things you just MUST HAVE in order to proceed, if you want something that's the slightest bit interesting, at least. For example, when I was actively rebuilding for the NPC Server, we could have made quests with no baddies, but given how integral they were to so many quests, it would have essentially been "walk through these areas and get a reward, then never come back because there's no reason to". That's a pure waste.

[Tyhm]

We can kvetch about how the movement of baddies ought to be one way or another until the cows come home; personally I think the very best way is to use move() serverside and very clever showani clientside, but that's me, and I can't even figure out destroy(); anymore, so. Plus they'd have to revise arrows and whatnot so it hits where the baddy Seems to be, bollocks to where its serverside self is.
But say they take our advice, redo everything clientside and clever, it takes 'em a month of no-new-content, and then something breaks and it's all gotta go back. So they take a month setting it back the way it was, and it kinda works, but whatever, it beats nothing. Then some old admin storms in, fires everyone and puts it back to the clientside way, takes a month again. Then he realizes it's still broken and sets it back, another month. Enough already, it's madness, I just wanna play the pyramid and the gravity tower (my version), oi. And birdshot around everywhere, that was fun. Never did get it working right in the gravity tower, but it's not a platformer server anyway...

[-Ramirez-]

Originally Posted by Tyhm

personally I think the very best way is to use move() serverside and very clever showani clientside

You wouldn't say that if you had actually seen it done. This is regarding attempts to mirror old baddy movement, however.

But say they take our advice, redo everything clientside and clever, it takes 'em a month of no-new-content, and then something breaks and it's all gotta go back. So they take a month setting it back the way it was, and it kinda works, but whatever, it beats nothing. Then some old admin storms in, fires everyone and puts it back to the clientside way, takes a month again. Then he realizes it's still broken and sets it back, another month.

I don't think that's ever even happened in the past, and it seems like a stupid thing to consider when trying to get things done. It's already evident that Storm does nothing anyway, so there's definitely no risk in this case.