Questions and Concerns
 

As you all know, Konidias' Bomy Island project is going to entail serious revision of the Graal 2001. While all the loyal players of this server have voiced various concerns about the scope of these changes, we'd like to take this time to establish this thread as a permanent repository for any questions or concerns you may have regarding the development and direction of Bomy Island. We can’t promise any quick or detailed answers (some things are intended as surprises, and pleasant ones at that!), your worries and ideas will all be discussed and considered in order to improve Bomy Island. After all, a server is nothing without players and the players of Graal 2001 have been some of the most patient and loyal Graal has ever seen.

npc kings sux0rs! I want my friend to be a king so that we can have absolute power over noobs. why are npc kings better?! :( :( :(

Koni, seriously, don't go poking the kodiac in the eye with a stick. It's just not smart.

I have been faithful to 2001 for a long time :). I have faith in you guys to make it good. Either way. The only reason I am here today is because of Bomy Lands/2001. I'll still be here when its done :).

My concern is... We are starting back at nubs again. Are the things gonna still be same price, and the collectables. are they gonna be released over time, or some right away

The entire economy is different. Gralats have a different value than any other version of 2k1. In order to add more flexibility in prices, each gralat will start off at roughly the equivalent of 10 cents US currency. So it's like 5 gralats for a piece of bread. But also all jobs and things have different profits, so no need to worry about that.

Collectable items... well there are tons of things to collect. But if you're talking about rare items... There will be rare items when the server is released... But it's unlikely that many people will get any rare items the first couple of days or even week that the server is released. You won't be able to just buy them in a store or auction.

You might get a rare item from a long quest that requires the completion of many little quests. You might get one from accomplishing some sort of goal or record or something. But it wouldn't be immediate.

As for event items... I believe we'll be using a token/ticket thing. So that you won't be able to just win a rare item in one single event.

I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that everyone has a fair chance at getting limited edition items and rare items. I definitely did not like the fact that bomy pets and such were being auctioned off within a week of the last server release. Nobody really had enough money to buy those items for a decent value. A couple of day's worth of work should not let you be able to afford a bomy pet. >_<

My concern is...

that you will try to appease the "oldbies" too much. In all honesty, who cares what they want? Yes, they want G2K1 back, but what made it what it was, was the community, which will never be back.

Please tell me that you are not keeping too many things the same, because we have to have a fun server to play.

Well it's hard to explain what bomy island is going to be like... It's kind of like the "new super mario bros" game. Fresh new graphics, new areas, new content, but the same feel. I'm definitely not leaving everything the same. If that were the case, we wouldn't be spending so much time working on this. It could be released today.

But things will be familiar... to an extent... There is still bomboria with mostly the same buildings... still Harmonia and Bogenera, but with changed/new buildings... All the old jobs will be there, but they have been updated and vary in how much they have been changed.

But pretty much every single level will get updated with either new npcs, graphics, or change in tiles.

I like the whole event coin idea (make sure they are logged ;) ) I hated when i was working all hard to earn money then people wanted a event... had to use my own money..which i didnt mind pleasing people but i remmeber we took donations, like items and what not haha

The (Lance) 2001 i was events team, and it was hard with just 20 players.. i so tried to keep em on.. =P

Hi,

How will questing come into play? Will there be more group orienteded quests? Jumping quests? I hope the quests will be elaborate and take a while to complete. Maybe days to complete. Will there be a "quest log" with hints and descriptions or will each player have to adventure for quests?

How will monsters and AI come into play? Do you gain experience, money or rare item drops from them after they're slain? Perhaps quest items?

Last but not least I would like to know what means of transportation the new Graal2001 will feature. Thank you!

There will be many group oriented quests. The first quest we have planned requires I think 4 people to complete... There will be a jumping quest or two, I'm sure. Some quests will be short some will be long... there will definitely be quests that take more than a day to complete. There will be quests INSIDE of quests sometimes. There will probably be a quest log to show what you've completed, but it won't list any hints or quests you haven't discovered yet.

I don't think monsters will drop anything really... maybe a gralat or two. (remember gralat value has changed, so 1-2 gralats aren't really that much) I'm keeping this 2k1 style so that there is no experience gaining or leveling or stat boosting or anything like that... Monsters won't drop rare items either. They will just be there for quests and probably kingdom events just like on classic where the baddies were pretty much just there as part of a quest.

Bomy island transportation... haha... well... there's the train, bomy pets, walking/dashing/swimming, bird pets, horses, elephants, draisine, boats, the chair lifts, cliff lifts, and even... lillypads. ^^

Is there going to be a bank or some place you can store your money?

On a similar note, how common are playerhouses going to be?

Can store things in your playerhouse...

and that's a surprise... :P

Thanks for answering my questions so quickly. lol@the myriad of transporations!!!

Will there be timed quests which provide only a certain amount of time to complete. only so many people can be inside of the quest level at a time? That may or may not have made sense to you.

Will there be Beauty Parlors? Choose haircuts, skin color, eye color (contact lens?), hair dye, plastic surgery, etc. Maybe you could have normal tickets which are random and then VIP tickets which let you choose the style manually. (This whole paragraph is basically what a game I play has incorporated into their gameplay)

I hope the new playerhouses will have furniture and other neat stuff like FF11.

Apparantly everyone gets a house

There will be timed quests like that yes.

There will be hair salon type places similar to GK. You'll be able to change your skin and eye color through different means. If the game you're referring to rhymes with StapleGlory, then I already know what you're talking about. =P

Oh yeah, I completely forgot about how you were going to ruin RPing for us.

How am I going to ruin RPing exactly?

I don't know if this has been addressed, but what about Events? I was really really fond of Survivor back in the day and I consider it to be one of the highlights of Graal2001. Will that make a comeback?

I'm not going to answer to an NPC. What the heck is that?

I find it funny how you can find it acceptable to make an entire fantasy story about a character in a game that is run by NPCs, but the fact that you would have to accept an NPC as a king just seems ridiculous.

Yep. Pretty much all of the old events should make a comeback... Excluding a few that I think were just generally not fit for 2k1... Like the laser arena for example...

You've never enjoyed playing a single player RPG before? I find that hard to believe. Just because the king positions were once filled by human players, doesn't mean that npc kings would be worse or any less fun. If the kings would have been npcs from the start, you would probably be arguing that they shouldn't be made into player kings.

You're simply arguing about change. The change could be for the better but you're not taking that into consideration simply because it's not what you know. It's not as though people can't fall in love with made up characters... There's no difference between liking an npc king and following orders from him, than following a storyline in a singleplayer RPG, or liking characters in a singleplayer RPG story because you find them interesting or something.

My comment was an exaggeration, but the point is that there's no sense of respect. Having an NPC king is the same as having someone you don't respect as king. If I get an order from an NPC it's like getting an order from Moon Goddess. I'm probably going to flout the order and just do whatever I want. Maybe I'd get around to doing it if I was bored enough.

Sure, you can enforce orders with punishment or by offering economic rewards, but having to do that just proves that you can't make RPing fun enough in and of itself and have to force/bribe players into doing it.

That's completely different. I don't play a linear console RPG and expect a sense of community.

I admit that it might be hypothetically possible to create NPC kings that are superior to player kings. I don't, however, believe that you, any member of your development team, or any Graalian past or present has the scripting ability to actually accomplish this.

I highly doubt your NPC Kings are going to have fully-functioning AI capable of political strategy. I suspect that they will be highly staff-controlled. I find it interesting that you're willing to outsource kingdom leadership to NPCs but you opposed outsourcing simple police tasks to them (in the form of rock owner tags).

There are too many reasons why an NPC king is the better choice. If you need me to explain them, I will. But I'd rather not have to. The meat of it is... human kings are far more disorganized and susceptible to corruption.

But Graal AI doesnt know ****.

Obviously there's no reason to believe you unless you explain them.

Kingdom corruption has never been as big a problem as staff corruption. My suspicion is that you view player kings as a threat to your absolute power and therefore want to have NPC kings that act as your puppets (which is, in reality, just another form of having a human king).

Puppets don't count as 'AI'.

I'll ignore your complete lack of respect for me and your opinions that I am in this for power, and explain why npc kings are better for everyone.

1. npc kings don't have mood swings and family issues and personal dilemmas which cause them to be corrupt or completely absent from the game.

2. npc kings do not show favoritism

3. npc kings are always online. if you live in a different timezone than a player king, you'll probably rarely see them online at the same time you are.

4. other important roles are played by npcs. from shopkeepers to quest npcs... you have no problem following their rules. why should an npc king be different?

5. npc kings do not have to discuss going to war with other kings or rp admins or staff. they can instantly start a war, host an event, ally with another kingdom, etc, etc, etc.

6. through the use of a large database of phrases, plots, moods, events, etc... kings can appear more realistic and less robotic.

I have no idea why people are saying a semi-realistic npc can't be created on Graal. All you'd need to do are factor in several variables for a personality. Here's a rundown of what that would look like:

- First the king is given some static personality traits. like maybe they are lighthearted, maybe they are evil, maybe they are noble, who knows.

- next you give them a mood variable. they could be happy/sad/angry/tired/sick/energetic whatever at any given time

- then give them large databases of phrases to use for these moods

- then give them a large database of mini-events to go through... such as maybe they are going to rest, eat, check on the castle, do something else... etc this is where you can even include "go to war with some other kingdom". it would just be a very slim chance of it happening compared to "take an afternoon nap". >_<

- then of course, connect them to other databases such as the players private roleplaying "scores", a database of the history of events that have already taken place, etc

- give the king reactions to in-game events such as if you try to hit the king or grab him or smile at him or whatever

This is just scratching the surface, but I think you can see if you piece all of that together, you'd have a pretty realistic NPC. Of course, things such as having a conversation with the king would be limited to multiple choice answer type responses. But it would still allow you to choose an answer and have him react to it.

I didn't say that you were in it for power. I said that you're reluctant to divest your power to others.

Anyways, the rest of your post suggests you're actually going to try and create an AI NPC King, which I already acknowledged can be better than a player king. It's just that I don't think there's anyone on Graal capable of actually making a good one. If you think it's something easy to do, then try having a conversation with an AIM Bot.

Graal isn't a single player RPG now is it?

I'll just say this:

Just as NPC kings can not be corrupt or arrogant, they also can not be creative, flexible, or understanding. To try and reduce RPing, which is at it's most simple level interaction between people, to a catagorical system is not only of great dificulty, it's also more than a little insulting. That NPC may not be able to favor one person over another and that NPC may not have a life that gets in its way, but it also can't adjust for unforseeable circumstances or tell someone deserving of promotion and what little simulated power will be given from someone who isn't.

By your system, Etien could theoretically become a high ranking noble or general of a kingdom. He did roleplay. Numerical systems would be forced to recognize that. But did he roleplay well? Did he follow Graal's canon? Did he deserve ANY prestigue or power?

...

You realize how Koni is going to make this backfire for you, right?

:rolleyes:


Are you saying that wars against kingdoms will be completely random, and have no base whatsoever?

There's a difference between giving them moods that the DEVELOPERS and myself can predict, and actual human emotion.

The wars will have base. They will either happen because of user actions over a period of time, or they will happen using a random scenario. All wars happen because of some random scenario, so I don't really see your debate here.

Googi, I'm creating a semi-realistic npc king... not complete and total artificial intelligence. Like I said, it can have emotion and personality, but you can't have complicated conversations with it. All aimbots are, are simply phrase generators that use keywords as their trigger action. You say "cheese" or something and it picks a phrase based on that keyword and spits it back at you. If you put something in the form of a question, it will try to use the keywords to answer.

I don't want people just talking with the king all the time. I'm pretty sure that's not allowed in real world scenarios anyway... You can't just walk up and privately talk to the king whenever you feel like it.

If the king was hip you could! :mad:

First off... since when have the majority of past kings been creative, flexible, and understanding?

Secondly... you have an extremely radical definition of RPing. That is where you and I differ so much. You have this preconceived notion of what roleplaying is, and I have the right answer. Roleplaying has nothing to do with interaction between other people. It has everything to do with playing a specific role. That is all. Anything else is just stuff you have tacked on to the definition and not true in the least bit.

NPC Kings however, will create COUNTLESS situations for you to interact with other real people. I don't see how that is so much different from a player king, aside from the fact that you are minus 4 whole people to interact with. God forbid.

No an NPC king cannot adjust to unforseeable circumstances, but the people scripting it and developing it can.

I guarantee that the npc king, given database information on the players in its kingdom, will be able to tell the difference between a normal roleplayer and a great roleplayer. The only possible way anyone could abuse the system is if they were to know the script and how the script works. Otherwise, it should work fine. Even if they were to somehow obtain the script and abuse it, it would be far too obvious and it would be taken care of.

Like I said, there will be real live people watching over who is roleplaying well and decently and badly. This will be a factor in what your ranking in your kingdom is.

I don't even know this Etien but I can imagine you don't like him very much and think he didn't roleplay the way you wanted him to... or whatever. But you speak of the scripting as a "numerical system" like it's just going to work like getting a high score in a game, when in fact it's totally different. The large decisions will rest heavily on the shoulders of the RP admin team.

will everyone have the same HP etc? or can you up it by questing like in old G2K1?

Everyone starts with 3 whole hearts and there are 4 half heart quests, for a total of 5 hearts.

Can script the NPC kings to take in to account what his subjects want him to do? For instance if 90% of whatever kingdom wants to go to war, he'll give in to pressure instead of robotically denying war or whatever.

I think robotically declaring war after 90% of his kingdom wants it wouldn't fix anything.

Maybe there can be a guy in each kingdom who handles the well being of the kingdom's people, and he can ask you what you think about things like other kingdoms or the kingdom you're in, or whatever... and your answer would be a factor in decisions made by the king. That's totally possible. That way it's more like a vote... and if... say... some players from another kingdom piss off a few players from a different kingdom... those few players can't all just vote to go to war and then it happens. But those votes would at least make a war with the other kingdom more likely to happen.

Am I the only person who doesn't want player kings/queens/royalty?