Posted by Eve

I've read the entire thread and I never once thought "this person is saying outrageous things and obviously has no programming experience." Your post is also ironically on the same page of the thread where the Ex Classic LAT admin makes one of the most insightful comments possible on the subject.

Meaningful updates take time.

No staff is going to sit down and work their ass off so players can get a kick out of it for 5 minutes...who then return to complaining about updates/content.  

I agree with this idea. :o This isn't hating, this is a revolutionary thought! Don't be afraid! Come on, Classic! We got to get this moving. After looking at what Unholy nation and Era have done on their games, Classic has the full potential to try new experiments. We can ask users to vote every week to help make this game better. We don't have to rush to merge all the idea and crush them together.  

Posted by Eve

Those are both very good things to point out.

I think it's important to note though that the draisine and house tracks came out very well in advance of the rail system. Everyone who was interested in using them for inside houses had already bought one by the time the rails came out. But when the rails were completed, the people who were not previously interested in the draisine bought it to travel around the overworld with. Those are the people who got screwed and stuck with an item that they had not wanted to buy for months prior to overworld functionality.

And yeah, they replaced the sprite on your draisine with a newer one (oh yay.) But just in case you might want the old one that you originally bought, the powers that be will allow you to repurchase it for only 4000 gralats again! Thank you based Graal!

Umm dwelling on the past a bit much aren't we?  

Posted by Eve

And yeah, they replaced the sprite on your draisine with a newer one (oh yay.) But just in case you might want the old one that you originally bought, the powers that be will allow you to repurchase it for only 4000 gralats again! Thank you based Graal!

-_-

I give up, it seems players will find the most trivial **** to complain about, just so they can whine about it.  

Posted by Dusty

-_-

I give up, it seems players will find the most trivial **** to complain about, just so they can whine about it.

Have hope! There are still a couple sensible people still here.  

Posted by Dusty

-_-

I give up, it seems players will find the most trivial **** to complain about, just so they can whine about it.

Hey, people don't know the reason behind work sometimes, even if you explain it. So sometimes you should just sit back and laugh at their ignorance, I appreciate the work you guys do although I'm not terribly active in iclassic or era.  

The life of a Graalian

"Oh boy, oh boy! new content!!"

*Five minutes later*

"We want new content now and we won't shut up until you do it!!"

Repeat x infinity  

Posted by Crono

Meaningful updates take time.

No staff is going to sit down and work their ass off so players can get a kick out of it for 5 minutes...who then return to complaining about updates/content.

why not? its a hobby. So why volunteer if thats the mentality?

Posted by Dusty

-_-

I give up, it seems players will find the most trivial **** to complain about, just so they can whine about it.

nothing like seeing someones spirit broken

Posted by Shadowfox

Hey, people don't know the reason behind work sometimes, even if you explain it. So sometimes you should just sit back and laugh at their ignorance, I appreciate the work you guys do

My thoughts exactly. I just want to note that graals community is fairly young, so some ignorance should be expected (maybe a lot of ignorance)  

Posted by Dusty

-_-

I give up, it seems players will find the most trivial **** to complain about, just so they can whine about it.

It's just one player's opinion.

I love the new railroad system. The old one was just a track around the map. There was really nothing special about it. I don't remember anyone complaining when it was removed.

I think this thread was heading in a very positive direction and then sort of got derailed (heh heh, pun). Let's get back to productive discussion. That was the original intent of this thread.

Posted by GOAT

My thoughts exactly. I just want to note that graals community is fairly young, so some ignorance should be expected (maybe a lot of ignorance)

The majority is, but there are still plenty of 18+ players as well.  

Posted by Narcosis

It's just one player's opinion.

I love the new railroad system. The old one was just a track around the map. There was really nothing special about it. I don't remember anyone complaining when it was removed.

I think this thread was heading in a very positive direction and then sort of got derailed (heh heh, pun). Let's get back to productive discussion. That was the original intent of this thread.

I have no issue with players who dislike content, or dislike how slow updates can be. I have expressed my opinion on this in the past: Stuff is being done as fast as it can possibly be done right now, if players aren't content with that then I feel that's fair for them.

However, it gets to me when I give said players an exclusive item no new players will ever get as compensation and someone finds a reason to bitch about that. Really? The complaint is that a player will have to buy back the old, non-exclusive draisine?

If you know of ANY players that are unhappy with their exclusive draisine and upset that they need to buy the old one again please direct them to me. I will gladly replace their exclusive draisine with the normal one, free of charge!  

Posted by Dusty

However, it gets to me when I give said players an exclusive item no new players will ever get as compensation and someone finds a reason to bitch about that. Really? The complaint is that a player will have to buy back the old, non-exclusive draisine?

That's the point where you just have to roll your eyes and let it go.  

I'd like to bring back a couple quotes (that I consider significant) to the forefront of this thread. Firstly:

Posted by Fire Surge

There isn't enough development for a game with 3,500 players on at a time. It isn't the developers' faults because I understand they're doing as much as they can. Maybe if management actually paid developers or made an application system so they could get more, there would be several big updates every year instead of one or two.

Do you know why era and zone have more developers? They have an application system to become a developer. Frankly, I don't know why classic doesn't have the same. Why should you have to be picked to volunteer develop their game?

I responded to this asking why such an application system doesn't exist for Classic, and that it seems like something that's desperately needed. No one really followed up on this.

Posted by Coco88

I semi agree and semi don't.. Classic might not pump out content after content but that's because we're a little more strict than other servers when it comes to what we release. When we do release something we want it to make sense and look nice and function properly. Sometimes depending on what we're working on, that can take a while. We're also preparing things for minor releases and updates at the same time that's we're working on bigger projects (i.e. new emotes)

Due to the massive increase of players, we also have less time for events and now have new ways of hosting said events. The GPs are always busy responding to reports and the gfx team is always busy keeping up with content. When we do get to host events we have to be very careful as well. The slightest mistake could cause immense lag for the players, and no one wants that.

Back when there was only 1800 or less players we could be a lot more lax about what we did, since there was a lot less to worry about.

I understand the majority of what we release is hat-based, and if that doesn't work for you, then what small releases would you like to see? the more feedback we can get from the players about what they want the better. Some things simply can't be done, but every now and again we get some really good ideas that we follow through with. SO if you have anything you'd like to see (preferable something small) then let me know :o

This opened up a dialogue and gave players a chance to chime in with some things they would personally like to see happen with Classic. This post kind of got buried so I'm bringing it back so more people can see it and respond.  

To be a developer, you should be able to bring your own ideas to the table. If you want to develop for iClassic, bring one of your ideas to life, script it, make the level and the graphics for it, because that to me personally demonstrates someone much more suitable to receive an invite to the team than someone who simply answers questions on an application.

I look forward to the day someone makes a thread about what they've made in terms of an idea, it's one thing to talk about it/make a list but if someone can showcase a potential new minigame/activity than more power to them.  

Posted by Reece

I look forward to the day someone makes a thread about what they've made in terms of an idea, it's one thing to talk about it/make a list but if someone can showcase a potential new minigame/activity than more power to them.

Sadly a lot of the development on Classic involves working within the systems of the server(and default client mechanics) and dealing with the many conflicts that can occur. Diving was a massive pain in the ass to get working correctly, for example. That's not even touching on how troublesome it becomes when the project is very large, and overlaps current live content. Despite the fact I had done the overworld portion of the railroads early on in the railroad content, I had to completely redo them again the week before the release because the levels on dev were so out of date by the time it was finished.

It's part of the reason why I enjoyed making Cliff Climber so much, and how I managed to get it created in just two days: things like events and extremely isolated chunks of content and I don't have to worry about all that other stuff and focus purely on the content.

Not to discourage anyone, things like Archery are also pretty isolated to a degree(except for the prize itself, a larger quiver). Side-games like that would be a perfect way to "prove" yourself if anyone feels so inclined.  

I wouldn't consider emotes a pressing issue.

I had implemented a custom movement system back in the day. Different modes:

* Regular Movement (i.e. the way you normally move, which includes pathfinding in narrow areas)

* Drunk Movement (i.e. directional controls change at random)

* Opposite Boots (i.e. item that lets you walk backwards)

* Gravity Boots (i.e. item that lets you walk slower)

* Horses (i.e. think of current horses)

* Gravity (i.e. platformer style levels)

* Whirlpools

* Fish movement

Most of those movement types were the same as movement types before the custom movement system, but eliminated bugs. The exceptions were fish movement (i.e. you'd get to play as a fish... which was a reimagining of the original fighting fish), and whirpool movement (i.e. you'd be getting sucked in circles into a whirlpool).

An additional feature was to prevent players from blocking off areas by considering them not-blocking if they were within 2-3 tiles (32-48px) of any other thing considered to cause blockage. It looks like that logic caught on.

The hammer, fishing rod and lifting gloves are the most obvious weapons to release. (I LOATHE the graphics for the gloves). Mostly, I'm a bit disappointed with the lack of dungeons, though the trade quest has been interesting. I wouldn't want to see the hammer or lifting gloves released outside of a dungeon quest. Ideally they'd need to be used strategically inside the quest where they're found, and hopefully quests thereafter.