Graal Is dead - Here is how to fix it
 

Graal has been the most dead/boring it has even been for a long time now, with under 1k players on daily. There are a lot of problems and flaws that the game has at the moment. I will share my thoughts of the game and potential solutions that can be considered to be put into place. I speak for myself and a lot of players who may agree.

Sparring

Sparring is one of those activities on graal that makes the game Graal to a lot of the playerbase. Its one of the most popular activities and the most competitive. I can say from experience I have had a massive amount of my losses due to laggers that teleport and hit me out of nowhere with no way to counter it, vpners that delay, or people that you simply cannot hit for no reason, the hits do not register. I feel like the games rewards laggers and cheaters over people who are actually good at the game. I think a good fix for this would to have ping specific rooms, or a ping limit that you need to join a queue. This way there will be no connectivity issues and more of a fair experience. I did love the spar reward addition to the game, but I feel like it can still be improved on to give players the best experience possible.

Towering

Another big part of the game is towering. I feel like towering is at the worst part it has ever been in. I feel that it is highly unfair that 2+ guilds are allowed to place in the same season. Also I see lot of people complain about the hats every season. To combat these things, I feel like having 2 guild types (Social/Family, allowing the 50 player limit) and (Towering, allowing only 25) in addition to this, I feel like bringing back old towers or completely new ones would spice things up. I feel like the 25 limit would making towering more competitive alongside the new towers. Also People who have the "Towering" guild types will be allowed forts, or have it so some forts are for pk and some specifically for tower. Also, bringing back player-made rewards would help with the constant complaints about the hats each season. I dont see why not since we have player-made content at xmas and halloween. Or at the very least, have a request on what the gfx staff makes, like style details etc, seems fair for the player to pick what the player earned

Events

As a frequent eventer myself, I feel like events are also in a really bad stage. First of all: update the carnival tent man. Auto events are fun and is a fun stat to have on the profile, but If there is no new content there, there is less of an incentive to play them. Admin events: While events have been way more frequent as of lately (Shout out Neo, Star, Lubo, Boba, and so on) I feel like EU timezones miss out on 80% of all events. It would be awesome if there was a designated event team for events. That way events can be hosted at all different timezones instead of just US timezones, as well as a bit more frequent events as they do not have normal GP duties. Also a few new gamemodes would be nice, playing the same set few games gets repetitive.

Content Updates

I feel like I cant be the only one who is sick of these little content updates. We need something big, something like a Co-Op cave, new quests, or a new town *cough* babord. Seeing all that out of bounds is quite a tease I must say, maybe even new ways to earn gralats like mining. We are bored we need something new to do thats not the same generic hats in updates. Speaking of content updates Nexus.. nexus used to be something special. The past 2 years have been horrible, one using a re-theme and the other being lackluster, no quest barely any hats no 2Pmount etc etc. I feel like they are just bigger onnet shops at this point. Xmas: Dont get me started. The hat drop rate was horrible. I dont understand how 400,000gralats = less than a hat page (personal experience) Its just unfair to players to spend so much to get so little. Also content cutbacks are bugging me. Phasing out gif hats, removing towers, stuff like that. I and many others are sick of it.

At the moment I cannot think of much else, Im sure I will in the future, but let me know your thoughts on this or anything you would add. This is by no means an attack to any of the Staff, GP, devs, or anyone, just a few thoughts I have had as a player who loves the game as much as the next guy. <3

Yes please,

I once pitched a Rock Paper Scissors style jousting thing to showcase mounts
Got told it maybe existed before on player worlds

Game has some sweet components now, but the roadmap is blank, I don’t think any of us has a clue as to what is in the works truly

Can’t you just give us one of those nasty Elderscrolls style teasers with a knock-off Patrick Stewart narrating?

sorry guys but Graal and it's staff have never done anything to improve the quality of their own game.

*laughs in furniture and hats*

Had 1086 players on a Saturday at a peak time, has 850 players on a Sunday as I'm about to post this.

its easy, go release graal online classic with HUGE updates on steam or any platform like that.

It sure feels like they killed the fun in this game intentionally. In my opinion, it all started when the deleted Yorktown tower. Then announced the end of 1k guild rewards. Then started slowly deleting other towers. Then deleting the all-time scoreboard. Then nerfing farming into the ground, and as a byproduct destroying the way houses have been used since conception (codeshops, mazes, ect).

It's like every update was thought up by someone who has no idea how to come up with good ideas. I'm fairly convinced that these changes were intentionally meant to kill the towering community. Someone thought it would be more profitable to force players to roleplay and buy cosmetics rather than pursue towering and chase after prestige (and free) 1k hats instead.

Farming changes
Furniture resale nerfs
Upload tokens
Bug price slash
Loot spawn nerf
...

Stage 1: Players come spend money on gralats and enjoy socializing with friends
Stage 2: Players begin to get bored with current content but still play
Stage 3: Players begin to vocally express their dissatisfaction with the games direction on a dead online forum
Stage 4: Players leave after realizing nothing will ever change and that they just outgrew the game.
Stage 5: New players in Stage One simply replace the older players and the cycle begins anew.

A game built primarily by people volunteering their time and getting no monetary compensation will never grow, it’s that simple. Take Graal for what it is and if you want a game with some depth then you’re probably better off finding a new game to play.

A Development road map
A change log

You know it would shut a lot of us up, come on, you know you wanna

That'll only disappoint people lol *cough* NGS *cough*

You act as if Graal staff legitimately care if they run this game into the ground, it’s been on a downfall for 5 years. But don’t worry there’s plenty of hats and furniture coming out for Easter soon. Good job admins you only cared for customizations and allowed the game to die. Who are you geniuses going to sell too? The only 12 people who actively play anymore?

5 years? the game has been in a decline since 2001.

Just let it die

lmao

You know, I've seen the graal community flailing for 15+ years in the weirdest of ways. You have the ancient folks such as myself who want to see the game go back to its Graal2000 glory, you have some who think the current PC clients need to be open source, The archivists who hoarded everything all the way back to 1999 (but conveniently refuse to share anything), and the mobile/facebook gamers who look back at 2015 as "the good ol' days". None ever willing to work together to revive this godforsaken thing. I have no idea of the current owners' intentions. I was just a humble LAT who loved making custom player worlds.

I applaud the new beta, but it's still at its core a mobile-focused game, and the grognard at me hisses and swats at such a thing. And I can see where people are coming from on the PC version - they don't wanna pay money for servers with maybe 9 players max. It's just not the same.

Part of me wonders if it was just an accident that Graal got as huge as it did, but I hate seeing this game deader than dead.

over the past 20 years, this game failed to meet its full potential at every single opportunity

it's a cash cow. it'll be milked til the udders give in and then the servers will be turned off

Weirdly enough, and I suppose this is what happens when the PVP aspect isn't up to its potential, I've started to play this game almost primarily for the single player aspect. I play to fight baddies, make gralats, and put those gralats to my house. I can't take the rest of the game seriously because the dev team hasn't ever improved it. Towering, sparring, etc etc. Plus, I'm getting older. I'm becoming more out of touch with the rest of the playerbase. I don't play this game to socialize with 6-19 year old kids, and it's not like they're knowledgeable about what this game could have ever been. A lot of kids that play today no doubt probably started playing in the last few years and don't know much about the history of this game. Oh well.

Yes, same for me.

i dunno what people really expected from a game thats essentially a watered down diet coke ALttP but if anything i gotta say: it was fun to socialize on classic, and it probably was its strongest aspect to me. sure, PKing was fun and sparring looked cool ig... idk. its probably messed up saying it but if graal keeps going nowhere (yes im saying this even with playerworlds existing) then its probably time to move on.

look all im saying is: add a competitive bug catching leaderboard, then we'll discuss business ;)

Bring back Graal from 20 years ago (with a few small tweaks) and Graal will live on forever.

I really can't speak for GraalOnline but I can indeed speak on my behalf, someone that has been involved in much of the development. You may think we don't here you, but we really do and maybe that's a issue we need to address. Keeping the players more informed on what's going on and definitely develop some road map and try our hardest to follow it.

I really want to thank you Rilo, for being so passionate about the game with such positive and obvious feedback.

The idea of ping allowed sparring arenas should be a no brainer. It something that can easily be accomplished with no time at all. This brings a peace of mind when it comes to players that care for there spar ratings and enjoy the benefits of being that great of sparrer. Rewards for people that are good at sparring also seems like a great addition. Competitive Sparrers love to see some form of ranking/rewards system to know where they stand in the community and how good they really are.

I don't know much about iClassics guild system, but I do know the current guild system has been a issue for years, including towering. Removing/Adding Towers to raise activity within some towers doesn't seem like it yielded the intended results. That's why your feed back is much appreciated, because as Developers we need to know where we failed and what we can do to improve it. I do believe that Classic iphone is addressing this issue.

I also agree with Auto Events, I don't know much about the carnival event. But just recently I suggested some events (New Events) that can be thrown into the auto event pool. Indeed Classic iPhone is working hard to finishing there remaining projects, so I'm not sure if or when events will be addressed. I do think Auto Events are important. It's content, and content that players enjoy. It also takes a huge burden off Staff that have to host manually.

I don't want to get into content updates as I'm personally working on some content for Classic iPhone, but discussing this would need prior approval. However I always felt Classic iPhone lacked any PVE concept, minus the socialization aspect. I'm referring to doing content with players, and enjoying some PVE Adventures (That can be done in groups).

Thank you again and it was worth sitting down for a moment to reply to you and address some of your concerns.

Regarding everyone else, I know most of you are passionate about Graal that's why your so vocal about your opinion on the direction the game is heading, and I don't think this is a bad thing. But we certainly do here you and we are not some "Cash Cow". Most money goes right back into the game for development purposes. But I think are biggest priority is modernizing the game engine. Every day Merlin updates and releases new unity beta clients that fixes huge amounts of issues reported by people testing these clients.

Not only does modernizing the game engine help with stability and resource usage, but it also brings arsenal of some cool new features. Here is a sneak peak of somethings that was done using the new client.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...74/unknown.png

Short Video-
https://imgur.com/CxU0fvK

So we certainly are not sitting here doing nothing, but we are focused and working non stop to improve graal as a whole. Sorry for this long ranting post, if you're to lazy to read it I don't blame you.

Graal Unity Documentation:
https://graalonline.net/index.php?ti...ripting_Manual

Please Note:
I have no control over changes that involve iClassic, however I can bring these values to the table, and despite there pipeline... The players need to be heard.

The problem isn't entirely a lack of content per say, but the type of content. It seems the team have begun pushing out a lot of things associated with customization and smaller QoL features over the last few years, but have left the other issues like towering, sparring, or overall server health behind. I'm still seeing lots of customization news updates every week or two, but the things that really kept players engaged were the competitive aspects of towering and sparring. Working together to capture and keep a tower or competing with dozens or hundreds of other players for the top ten positions or even just Guild sparring is what gave players that feeling of fun.

They wanted that rush with their friends and they also wanted to look cool doing it, but these last few years seem to have only focused entirely on customization and furniture and the players that have asked for better things with the competitive aspects have now mostly moved on from Graal. The only players that tend to play now are young kids who probably have little knowledge or no desire for the competitive aspects of towering or sparring. The downward cascade of towering began with the removal of York Tower, and then Swamp, and then Snow Town. Big time tower guilds like Maphasy, UFO, or Ninjas disappeared because their home towers were removed from the game.

With there still being general server issues it's still annoying and cumbersome to spar. No hate to Brasilians, but I just don't want to see them in the arenas, or any person outside the U.S for that matter until something drastic changes.With the ping issue never formerly being addressed, the best sparrers eventually left. Alumni is gone, but that's mostly because they're all adults, now, but even others said that there are too many ping issues that they no longer want to compete with.

The sad truth is it's too late to fix any of the problems we asked to be addressed. The older generations of competitive Graal players are mostly gone, and I doubt any of the kids who get on to socialize and role play all day would care to tower or spar if things were better. Quests and bigger events and things still happen every year or two, which brings 500ish players back, but we're still looking at about 400-500 players on daily when nothing is going on.

We were at 4500 active players from the time I started playing. That was only eight and a half years ago. Now we sit at 400-500.

Key features were removed or features became limited. Removing towers was a big mistake. Not doing something about pingy sparrers sooner was a big mistake. Focusing more on useless cosmetics as opposed to improving the mechanics of the core gameplay was a big mistake. 90% of the population no longer actively plays the game, because the features that made this game fun for a lot of people have not been refined or remedied over the last decade. The players that play today are fractions of the last generation. The rest are kids that probably only play this game for the cosmetics, because that's all they know this game to be if they've joined in the last 2-3 years.

Firstly, lets not exaggerate a bit and keep this a 100% honest conversation... The game sits at about 800-1000 players, which is indeed horrible to where it was standing prior. I 110% agree with you. The content that has been worked on seems like its cosmetics, cosmetics and some more darn cosmetics. However Classic has massive amounts of projects that are so close to completion and they just lack the help of developers of all types. If your interested in really helping classic, then do something about it. Apply for a position, I'm pretty sure there hiring for all types of positions. You can check out the discord discord.gg/graalians and help make those changes and make a difference in general.

New client in development? I'll stay tuned.

We're sitting at 800-1000 only because of the frog event, which happens every year and is usually advertised on social media.

Give people time to complete the event and get their cosmetics, then they'll leave again for a while until something opens or another event happens. When nothing is going on, it'll drop back down to around 500. This has happened every time an event happens, even when we still had 4500 players on a normal day an event would bring it up to 5000-5500.

So, I shouldn't have to, as a consumer, be forced to participate in the development of a game if I want something to change. At this point that's entirely the manager's fault for not being able to retain employees/volunteers, further showcases the disjunction at that level, and is the reason nothing gets done on time/ever.

I don't have the time, skills, or experience in graphical or technical development, and to ask a consumer to spend their time trying to learn the skills necessary to make the game better is comical.

The forum and discord is there for us to relay our feedback and share the problems we face. I shouldn't have to be forced to help make a difference if I find something wrong. If I were to play CoD and said I didn't like something I would hope never to be asked to help make a difference by physically becoming a part of the development.

My point is the development team is the problem with their lack of transparency, and I don't want to be a part of a team that only tends to focus on things that don't matter.

We would like to know what these projects actually are so we can look forward to something. Hopefully giveaway and event streams aren't the only streams
you want to do in the future.

Perfect timing actually.

Snow town has just been introduced with a brand new tower and it looks pretty neat. The first floor is small and neat and the flag room is fine. Smaller tower but for the first tower in a long, long time, this is great.

Doon't stop belieeevin'....Hold on to that feeeelingg!

All the wait will be worth it in the end, I just know it. The tower update was a great refresher but I still have not been able to access the secret room in sards. The only thing keeping me going is bking. Maybe Babord will finally be released on Jan 1st. But that is a stretch although we can only dream...

What happened with Graal Classic previously is the conversion of everything to a new system ended up in development hell until content got wiped and/or everyone left. Development basically had me and a couple other unpaid people do all scripting with a requirement for serverside hit-detection and a custom movement system which Master Storm initially made and I replaced with something slightly more modular. Me and other unpaid people also built out the map to be huge, and unfortunately sparse, because level building was something that was easier to roll out than scripts, which was used around iPhone/FB launch. Specifically the mechanism for implementing baddies serverside as I'm told they're implemented now didn't even exist which held up so so so much quest content.

It's been so long since I've played this game. Ik this topic seems dead (Whole game and forum is dead holy), But no content adds or revamps of anything can save the game at this point.

Not that graal can't be interesting, It's just that the game isn't what people find entertaining anymore.

It has a very unique appeal. Graal could have went in a similar direction that Roblox did, giving players control to make their own content and easily make it available to other players.

People seem to mostly want to play what the streamers and letsplayers are doing. Add features specific to streaming, ... audience interaction mechanics, streaming platform integration, and social engagement benefits.

Have there been any announcements/updates on the new client?

You can have it so players can make their own game for sure, but top down pixel games sort of have a cage to it with what you can do ATLEAST in an effective worthwhile standpoint, It's very difficult to make a game like for example, Skill based combat games such as Elden Ring, Horror games, Racing games, (Cringe addition but also just to make a point, Those silly dating sims)

There's reasons why such formula works for Roblox games, but fails for something like graal, Whoever would make the Graal games would have to be REALLY creative to make it stand out.

Graal has always survived on its strong community. A good majority of the content was created by volunteers who were passionate about the game. It is not sustainable though, talented contributors will eventually move on and the game suffers until someone else steps up to fill the gap.

There are good points in this thread on how to revive the game, but they all require a lot of time and resources that I just don’t see happening with the current momentum. I would love to see graal thriving again, but it needs a good team of passionate players or hired help.

@Furryamigo I agree. The misconception was that the team was lazy/uninspired but the truth is the team is primarily a volunteer force, and a small one at that. This is prompting me to step in and help in some way, despite my previous posts about doing so not needing to be forced.

At this point, it would bring me joy to see more changes. The team is becoming more and more transparent and heeding the advice of the game's players in regards to the NGS. I'm going to be willing to help in some way. I'll try and apply for a GP spot, and maybe I'll find a way to learn about the technical world-based aspects that the game needs more assistance with.