Not saing they wouldn't. Of course free would have a much larger playercount. Just saying active players on a server havent seemed to go up as much as everyone say with the "suposive" removal of OBS mode even if it kinda-sorta-sometimes still throws u in OBS..

Yeah I looked at CBK's statistics.. The "unique" players went from 7k to 24k, to 36k... But who cares how many "unique" players logged onto a server? I am refering to active players, actively "playing".. I have watched the playerlist. I have seen it go from 25-45 average, to the 60-80+ average over the last 2-4 years.

Wish this would show further back then just 12 months,
http://statistics.graal.us/server/show/36

the reason for the increase in unique logins but decrease in overall activity is people on the iPhone servers find out "OMG GRAAL IS ACTUALLY A PC GAME?" and proceed to try it, then find out how annoying it is playing as a trial and having to pay and stop playing. Hopefully f2p will fix this.

We've spent hours discussing on skype (in chat and calls), the various plans and attitudes to hold about Valikorlia's future and the thing that cripples our positive outlook each time is the account situation. It stops development from moving forward, it turns newbies away, and that factors into our community spending most of its time away from Graal.

Our server hasn't any quests or dungeons, it's all a community theater bit. If we have events, the numbers spike up, and that's essentially all we do these days. Systems and long-running storylines are stuck at the gate for a lot of reasons and this whole trial business is one of them.

I think Graal on Steam would be good if for no other reason than exposure. I could wait around for the PC client to be fixed on its own but Stefan seems to wait for big events like these before acting.

Are you ****ing serious?

Can Stefan please just hand down PC Graal to someone with a brain that actually gives a **** about his loyal community of over 10 ****ing years?

Not that I'm usually the defender of Stefan but he was referring to the fact that so many people are against v6 and that Steam integration would be an arguement in favor of v6.

You guys are still using v6? Should upgrade to the beta v7, so much nicer.

lol, there is no v7. I use v6 only. I dislike v5.. but then again i was eagerly awaiting external scripted windows :)

It was a joke, not sure if you remember the "hacker" who claimed to be releasing a preview of v7 in order to phish passwords.

You have to pay Valve 100$ fee to post a game to Greenlight.

Well thats never going to happen :pluffy:

It's a one-time fee that goes towards charity. The only reason they even have it is to weed out people who aren't even submitting serious games(spam, trolls). You'd have to be fairly well-off just to pay $100 to troll Greenlight. $100 when you're talking about game development(especially with a game that's been around as long as Graal has) is nothing. In fact, you have to pay much more for iOS I believe.

$100 for iOS as well but that's a different sort of process. You pay $100/year for a developer subscription. Submitting apps doesn't cost anything (they take a cut of your profits, though).

Ah... well either way it's still comparable in costs so I don't see why people would jump to say $100 is too much for Stefan to bother with.

Indeed. A donation to charity as a barrier to prevent spam is an interesting idea, though. Obviously it only works in some very specific circumstances, but interesting nonetheless.

That was my favorite part!

Graal wouldn't make it on Steam. It's not ready for that kind of thing.

I'm shocked no one has even heard of Desura, because it'd do much better on that market than one as anal as Gabe Newell's burger machine. The community is less hardcore cawadooty gamersbrah, and is much more open to modders and indie development. I'm not sure why this wasn't already done, but it should have a long time ago. Just because Steam announces you can pay $100.00 to gamble at getting your game hosted does not mean it's a great idea.

Consider this:

It takes 1000 votes to get 1% of an upvote rating. I can only assume this amount scales even larger based on increments. So far, very few games have gone even above 10%, and even then they seem to fluctuate drastically. These are real, legit, and innovative titles that are meant as serious standalone projects, most with lots of funding and positive representation on the gaming market well before they were on Steam Greenlight. Steam Greenlight is NOT for indie titles that haven't been properly updated to meet current standards since 2006, and show it. Steam Greenlight is NOT like the iOS market, where everyone and their mother can submit an app that is literally just a button that makes a noise for $0.99 USD. Steam Greenlight is probably the most anal community of gamers and critics that only want the cream of the crop to make it, and whatever will put more money into Gaben's wallet.

I will tell you exactly what will happen the moment it gets uploaded.

First, people are immediately going to report it for being a Zelda clone. Let's forget the fact it started out this way and has changed. We're entering a new market. People are going to automatically make the connection, especially the diehard fanboys. Already that's going to potentially kick us out of the race.
The next thing that will happen is the game will most likely result in very few positive ratings, which is based off if people will buy the game or not. People already do not want to buy Graal for what it's currently selling for. I can guarantee you that over 100,000 people will not want to buy Graal on steam when it has a maximum playercount of 3,000 on a good day, most of which are on the iOS version idling anyways. Already, this is a waste of money keeping it hosted there. You've already lost the gamble.

But the list goes on.

Graal is going to have to provide videos and content of what is already available. People are going to assume it's unfinished based on what is currently public and has been for over ten years. In reality, Graal really does play like some kind of obscure beta project. It has some seriously strange glitches and lots of bugs that are unexplained, like the weird behavior of GS2 or the odd lag spikes that shouldn't be happening anymore. This is sad, but true. They're going to expect a whole new product that they will never likely receive.

What else, they're going to expect a level of quality Graal will not deliver, such as a professional PR system and hosted server management/administration. Players are going to log onto servers and realize most of them are ran by people not even out of high school. As much as the PWAs work hard, they are not at all fit to handle a massive influx of players, should it ever happen, as they are right now. If Graal were to be released on Steam, I guarantee it would be booted just as fast for potential complaints it would bolster based off the fact it's a very poorly managed game, from a professional standpoint. That's another waste of money trying to host it on there, which is not free. With the new networks of gaming hubs and forums with the 'steambook' upgrade, it's very easy to look up a game and see the community and how much is broken about it. Based on the kind of people who play on Steam, Graal would be one of those games that has thread after thread of complaints, no question. This would destroy its representation very quickly.

One other thing.
Graal has way too much Intellectual Property violations scattered randomly throughout its servers to really be introduced to a market as anal as the 'ultimate PC platforming application'. It's not going to be able to claim parody either, and the game making money would only make it worse. People are going to see heads of //.hack characters, super mario bros., Zelda, etc. etc. and probably complain about that. Not to mention, there's always that one guy who uploads a sprite ripped right out of Chrono Trigger and manages to get it uploaded. Seen this crap too much. I don't know why it happens, but it does. Probably because majority of staff have no idea what a copyright law is.
There would have to be a major purging of the servers again, just like the early 2000's, of possible illegal content to prevent any potential lawsuits or claims. The more attention Graal receives, the more likely this will happen. A lot would have to be changed to fix it, such as the submission process of personal graphics. Honestly, it may have to go back to doing it on the actual Graal website again, with a dedicated team going over them with a fine-toothed comb. It's going to be a lot of trouble, and a ton of work. Work that, as history shows us, is not going to get done because of the effort put forth by certain people in charge of those processes already.

I could go on for days, I think. You get the point, I hope. This is a bad idea, and a waste of money.

If you want Graal to be hosted in some kind of gaming network, go research Desura. It would have a much higher chance, albeit not 100%, of being hosted there than on Steam.


Look.
http://www.desura.com/development
There's a link.
Have at it.

Ya, what an absolute waste of $100. I also like that you open up by saying it's Gabe's Burger Machine... ya your opinion is not biased or skewed at all.

Thank you for saying exactly what was on my mind sir, +rep. (minus the burger factory bit, that just seems a bit unfair to greenlight)

This guy has said extremely important things to the matter of this idea.

But to actually add to the conversation myself, It's not a TOTAL waste, but for it to work would require a completely new, simplistic, disconnected form of Graal to be placed into Greenlight, nothing more could possibly get through with our resources without just making our own game.

how u gonna hate on valve w/ that signature??

Not seeing the forest for the trees, bro.
Graal being hosted on Steam would wind up costing a lot more than $100.00. Only submitting to Greenlight costs $100.00 to have the game looked at, and possibly even denied that much. Why waste time and money when there are clearly other options available with more promise? In the long run, that's money Graal could have put elsewhere towards something that isn't as impulsive as this idea.The website itself explains there are numerous other fees involved that they do not make public. In the long run, I can easily foresee Graal paying more than what it's making. If you think Steam hosting is free, you're in dreamland. Think of that $100.00 fee as a ticket into a theme park, like Six-Flags; you paid the entry fee, but is everything in the park free to you? Hell no. You're still going to have to pay for all of those nice little additions to your experience there once you get inside. Ill-thought ideas like this nearly once killed Cyberjouers/Eurocenter and drove them into debt. If you value this game so much, you'd encourage more rationally thought out choices than joining a blind bandwagon.

Read up on Greenlight and you'll find people recommend Desura over it for this sort of thing. That is the better alternative. I am not sure why there is opposition towards it, when it's a community that Graal would fit in with much more than Steam's.

hey guys have you heard about DESURA

This has nothing to do with the better medium, but the fact that Steam is the most popular/successful market on PC and Greenlight is currently getting a lot of attention. That means more potential players... on the other hand I have never even heard of Desura, and I doubt many others here have either.

Desura is rather big as it is now, and is getting more popular. Still, Steam would be a way better choice.

Why would Steam be a better choice? What makes you think Graal would survive on Steam at all? Look at the games that actually make it on Steam and Steam Greenlight, and then tell me how Graal fits in with them. Not that you're obligated to do this at all, but I'd sure like to be convinced that Graal would have a chance.

Desura was made for indie games and indie developers to get their name out. Steam is obviously for much larger companies and already established games that have had their names out there for years. Indie games and mods that have made it on steam usually started elsewhere and became cult hits before even being considered, and there are plenty that made their debuts on Desura. There are lots of great games that they deny already. I don't see Graal fitting these qualifications at all, looking over its statistics in history.

The only thing that would be positive with Steam is getting the game looked at by a handful of people for a limited window of time, when we could already do that on Desura and keep it there for a lot cheaper. There are lots of games arguably on Steam Greenlight that look alpha as all hell, but they fall into two categories; no one is voting for them, or they already were widely successful elsewhere. People are literally trying to push most these games out of their queues if they look any less then then a game made by a major publisher. The worst part is that these are games that look much more fine-tuned than Graal, and most of them were made by a team of one or two people under the course of a few months. Looking at how much progress Graal has made over the last half of a decade, I'm pretty positive we don't have the manpower to compete. We need to find a better market that is suited to helping indie developers. That is not Steam.


Going back to Desura, the community is made for independent games. We'd probably have a higher chance of finding aspiring indie developers there too. The people there are usually very interested in projects like Graal, and honestly, this game needs a new source of inspiration other than the stagnant pool we've had since they closed down Classic accounts. Graal entering a community made for modders and indie games, with people who are usually willing to offer themselves to help projects be successful, would do it wonders. Maybe after that we could go on Steam and look presentable.


But seriously.
I really want someone to show me I'm wrong. So far, no one has made any real points against me beyond "whats desura" and "steam is popular".

Just because something is popular doesn't mean it's the right place to put Graal. I don't think you're getting the point. Millions of people know what Desura is. These people are the kind of people that have a higher chance of helping Graal become something better than it is now, besides the casual Steam user that only wants to play games rather than develop for them. If a small community of one hundred people or so haven't heard of something, it doesn't make it any less of a better option. Have you even researched it? I'm curious.

Your posts are too long, I'm not going to read through all of that. Popularity.

Edit: Screw that, read some of it. Your Steam arguments are mostly invalid. There are a lot of indie games that have made their debut on Steam without being popular before.

Also:
That is a good point already. Oh, and maybe you should make a few good points that show you're right, on the contrary.

linkrulz4 is posting some pretty valid concerns really, you guys need to stop getting your panties in a bundle.

In a humble indy bundle?

^^

I agree.

I wouldn't mind seeing graal (pc) more Facebook friendly before jumping to something such as Steam. Facebook is a valuable tool and I don't quite think graal is taking full advantage of it quite yet. I personally wouldn't mind seeing statistics for how many players use facebook to login to the iPhone servers.

The classic servers are starting to get better and better. Era looks great, Classic has some nice quality. Not really big on Zodiac (im a classic type slash and quest player).. But we now have a decent selection of servers. Hopefully (pc) can get a few other servers and we can start drawing in more players.

Don't worry people, Crow had a stroke and didn't know what he was typing, he'll be back to normal soon enough.

$100 is nothing, don't see what Stefan would have to lose, doesn't hurt to try.

Also I do a lot of pc gaming, and I've never heard of Desura.

yay for internets

http://i.chzbgr.com/completestore/12...Jad__ZqDw2.jpg

On other note, I still think facebook <-> pc would be better to start with, then proceed to other gaming companies to help drive traffic.

Does anyone else have any other places in mind besides Steam and Desura? We, the players, can start helping graal advertise maybe. Arn't there still top 100 sites around? Forums? Graal can be fun at times xD

I must've missed something in this conversation :oo:

Let me make a short point: Why not Steam? You know how games can coexist on Steam and Desura, right? I never spoke negatively of Desura. I know the platform and I do like it, but there is no point not going for Steam.

Desura (nobody cares about indie games) and Steam (people only like it because of Minecraft) are complete garbage, Graal should be on Origin.

not sure if trolling...

we both know origin is the superior platform, why else would EA put BF3 on it?

still not sure if trolling....