| konidias |
10-03-2006 10:22 PM |
Okay I kind of just rushed when I posted that... here's a better post of my ideas after I collected my thoughts and really racked my brain trying to come up with at least a few decent things... I really hope Stefan and Unixmad read this, and I also hope that they don't take offense to what I've written. I wouldn't be in this community for 5+ years if I hated the game or the people who made it. I really just want Graal to get better and for people to have a reason to upgrade.... So anyway here goes:
1. Increase the number of quality gold servers. Watch them to make sure there are enough active staff and things happening to keep people's interest.
Benefit: More variety of servers for people to choose from. People will continue to upgrade if the servers and staff are active and new things get added all the time.
2. Continue providing unlimited classic access to anyone whose ever upgraded.
Benefit: I've always liked this and I'm glad it was implemented.
3. Provide unlimited forum access to anyone whose ever upgraded. Many sections of the forum have nothing to do with upgraded accounts. Only Gold server forums should be off limits to expired accounts.
Benefit: Allowing everyone whose ever upgraded to post will mean more forum traffic, a more active community, and a more inviting environment. Plus cutting off all ties to a player with an expired account is like saying you don't want their business anymore.
4. Get rid of VIP and give those benefits to Gold accounts. It's silly to have VIP. It's like an obvious tactic of trying to squeeze more money out of people. Gold doesn't have enough to offer to make it worth the money by itself, and VIP hasn't really held up it's end of the bargain since it was initiated. Why not offer those vip benefits to gold?
Benefit: You'd have more people re-upgrading that way.
5. Offer upgrade bonuses each time a person upgrades their account. Like giving them some "gralats" that could be used like discount money for items in the graal store, or another account upgrade... like for each upgrade you get $3 worth of "gralats" that you could put towards a graal t-shirt or something. :P
Benefit: Encourages upgrading or buying stuff from the graal store.
6. Hold events on gold servers or even the lobby games which reward players with "gralats" that could be used as money in the graal store, or reward them with something else like a week of extra gold time on their account.
Benefit: Again, encourages upgrading and gets people to participate in the publicized events.
7. Design a simpler and more inviting website that is designed to help people get into the game and explain what it's about... Plus have easy instructions on getting an account, using the forums once upgraded, and an easy to find link that explains the fun of developing for Graal and an explanation of graal script and playerworlds.
Benefit: Welcomes newcomers to the game a lot better and doesn't hide the fun of Graal behind a bunch of outdated screenshots and promises of things the player doesn't even know they will be getting.
8. More recognition for players of Graal. List account names of people who won events, contests, helped implement a new idea into the game, submitted screenshots, whatever... Just get people's names on the site.
Benefit: People enjoy seeing their name front in center in a community. Which is why most people try to get hired as staff so that they can get recognition. It was enjoyable back when 2k1 was thriving and you'd see account names of people who won events or submitted something or whatever.
9. The buying graal items for real money thing. (edit: an improvement on this idea would be to have a store on the site which has categories for each server, and items in those categories which the player could buy for real money. if a playerworld were to become gold then they could put items in that store and recieve a percentage of the profit themselves. this way you're letting these people who've worked so hard and helped Graal grow, get a little bit of money out of all their efforts)
Benefit: Well obviously this would bring more money to Graal. Just have to make sure the items don't give these people statistical advantages over other players.
10. Last but not least, I really think Graal needs some sort of weekly newsletter or even website update where users can submit drawings or poems or stories for weekly contests and this stuff would be posted in the newsletter or on the site.
Benefit: This would get people more involved with Graal as a whole. Not just the game, but just the general idea. Graal has become something all it's own. I'm surprised there aren't more fanstories or fanart or anything made for Graal. Most artwork is stuff made to use in the game. What I mean is like drawings of characters and scenes and stuff... paintings, CG art, whatever. Also if the submissions are only allowed by gold accounts, then it would give people another reason to upgrade. (in order to get their work shown and possibly win some contests) Plus it would cut back on random people submitting garbage to the site because only the people who have paid for gold could submit.
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To sum it up... most of this stuff requires little to no financial investment by Unixmad or Stefan. It would greatly increase the number of players and upgrades for Graal. The cost of the prizes and bonuses are so small compared to how many upgrades they would get, that it's only going to benefit them in the end. Graal is supposed to be made for the players right? But I mean, we aren't getting much of anything that we want. I've been with Graal since Classic and I feel that it's changed a lot but not in a good way. I really don't mind paying for Graal and I would gladly throw my money to stefan and unix if they would put in the extra effort to give us our money's worth.
You have to remember that Graal isn't some offline game that you pay $40 for and then after you get bored with it, you just stop playing. You're trying to market a game that you want people to pay more than once for. So you need to have servers that aren't just stagnant like they may as well be offline games.
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