From what I can gather from the results in the poll thread, (
http://forums.graalonline.com/forums...ad.php?t=62769) these are the arguements I wish to make. I have written this as both an analysis, and to call attention to the things needing it the most.
The vast majority of votes casted by users of these forums were centraliazed in the categories of Kingdom Mechanics, Monsters, and Major Bugs to be fixed. I will be focusing on the former two for the sake of arguement. This is primarily aimed toward the few who can make a difference on this server, so please, hear me out on this.
Fear is a very powerful thing. It can keep people in line, and it can keep them from doing things. Fear has built on Graal Kingdoms, and it has crippled the capacity of users to play and enjoy the game as they probably should. What does this fear stem from? The best way I could summarize it is to say that it comes from the players themselves.
As has been discussed many a time, there is a severe imbalance of power on Kingdoms. It has grown over the years, and, as Schlurfy has said to me before, we cannot go back to change the past. This is very true. There have been dozens of suggestions as to what should be fixed to make the server much better, including things such as resetting, but a good question to ask is whether or not it will really solve anything. The easy answer to face would simply be "yes," but it's really not that simple. Things tend to work in cycles, as some may notice, and Kingdoms will get right back to where it is now, should a reset ever occur. That is why a few things must be fixed in order for the server's populace to undo its limitations. The things to be fixed are not bugs, but abominations that must be dealt with, come hell or high water.
The first course of action should be to fix the curve of experience, and the experience gained from enemies. After leaving kingdoms, I played on Maloria for a while. And while not the finest server out there, things have been done right as far as levels go. In Kingdoms, the experience required to gain a level goes up exponentially (Roughly speaking.) while the experience given by enemies goes down each time a new level is gained. This would be fine if there were a whole lot of enemies, but quite frankly, there aren't. However, there doesn't need to be, either. If the experience from enemies is fixed to be more static up until certain levels, it will help to even out the curve a little bit. Players should have to fight certain sets of enemies before they can gain the strength to move on to tougher ones. But, however, this is not the way things are, and a player can move onto the hardest enemies in the game if they have a mediocre weapon that has been either blessed or prepared to a decent extent. The enemies that a person fights should always be hard up until they are at a level substantially higher than that enemy is. Gods such as bile mess this up with the death effect, which can obliterate most enemies in no time. But that is another story. If enemies had their stats changed, the way they would have to be fought would make a lot more sense. Being able to take out Bomy Lords and Bigworms within about a minute or so is kind of ridiculous, considering that they are supposed to be the hardest things out there, aside from holiday monsters. If monsters were set up to be difficult, then the levels for each would look kind of like this:
Monster Name: Level (Player Equivalent)
Rabbit: 3
Battle Mushroom: 5
Battle Potato: 10
Glok: 15
Evil Bomy: 20
Heavil: 25
Skeleton: 30
Wolf: 35
T-Rex: 40
Rabbit Lord: 45
Mushroom Lord: 50
Glok Lord: 55
Evil Bomy Lord: 60
EvilHeavil: 65
Demon: 70
Cyclops: 75
Sabre-Tooth Tiger: 80
Panther: 85
Bigworm: 90
I just did those mostly in intervals of 5 to show how the experience would need to be spread out. Now, using that example, let's say that you go out to fight one of these things. If you are just starting out, you would be fighting rabbits. Eventually, you would need to start fighting battle mushrooms. The experience you're gaining from rabbits does not need to go down until you get to level 5, which is when you should be fighting battle mushrooms. This will make the enemies a whole lot tougher to fight, and you would gain a lot more experience from it. People at level 10 would have no chance of fighting things like Bomy Lords, etc. but that's just a matter of difficulty. However, a small team of level 40 - 50's probably could if they teamed up, which would encourace partying.
Now, as for experience distribution... Experience would need to be thought about very carefully. Using the table I presented, let us look at the high end of the spectrum. Let's say that the experience 'til level 90 goes like this:
Level: Required Experience
86: 100,000,000
87: 200,000,000
88: 400,000,000
89: 800,000,000
90: 1,600,000,000
Let's say you're fighting off panthers to get to level 90. Should the experience go down every level, or stay fixed 'til you're around their level? Let's imagine that panthers give about 100,000k each. You would have to kill 1000 of those to get to level 86. If the experience goes down (Like it does right now on GK.) by about, say, 20%, (80,000k each) you would have to kill 2500 to get to level 87. Doesn't sound bad? Let's look at the next level. Take it down another 20% (60,000k each) and it will take 6667 to get to level 88. And so on and so forth. Now, if the experience were to be fixed, it would take 1000 to get to 86, 2000 for 87, and 4000 for 88. That's a whole lot easier for a person to do. Now, if the person decided to take on a harder battle and fight bigworms for, say, 500,000k apiece, they would only need to kill 800 to get there. These are huge numbers, but it's just to show how difficult things can be when you have experience given going down and experience required going up.
Now, as for Kingdom Mechanics. Namely, bmode. Bmode is something very fun that can also be very hard to deal with. Since most people that are at high levels right now possess
weapons of mass destruction (ones that have been blessed and prepped.) and have ungodly armor, it's no wonder why there are no more wars. Real wars and real fighting can only take place when people are actually able to fight each other. (And I don't mean with ships.) However, who really wants to when you can be killed in one hit by someone, and have very little opportunity to be at their standing?
When a weapon or a person can be more powerful than another kingdom's entire member population put together, something is wrong. Most of the leveling done nowadays that conrtibutes to this is not done by legal means, and changing it to where people can get to higher levels without having to glitch or whatnot will permanently break the tremendous barrier that there seems to be between low levels and high levels. Unless you are a person devoted to leveling, the sad truth of things is that people are high levels only because they have found a cheap or illegitimate way of gaining experience. That is why seeing people at around level 50-80 is somewhat uncommon. Typically, when a person finds a cheap way to level, they use it as much as they can until the maximum level is reached. (Such as DoPV, Partying glitches, etc.) Those who don't and level legitimately usually take a long time to get there. It is a shame that this is the way things are, but it's happened already. There is not as much work involved in getting kingdoms to be more innovative as one might think. It's simply a matter of getting people more engaged in the activities their kingdom has going on, and this is a good way to go towards that. kingdom members won't even fight each other outside of dueling arenas, even if they are currently enemies, and what reason would they have? To get creamed? If a person is able to get stronger and face up to their enemies, chances are that they will. But, if there is something standing in the way, it's a lot harder for them to. If the leveling / monster system is ever fixed, the one proposal I wish to make is that when people are on tag, they are automatically forced into bmode. (kmode) If the experience has been fixed, this shouldn't be too big of an issue for people. If weapons aren't preppable and armor is not enchantable, and everyone has to stick with the basic stats of items, kingdoms will move forward while simultaneously moving back to the way it used to be - when being in a kingdom actually used to matter, and when things were a lot more fun.
I'm going to conclude here by saying only this - Stefan, and whomever else has jurisdiction of this, please take the time to actually play on the server you created and to see these issues as clearly as you can. They're there, and we wouldn't be talking about them if they weren't. The solution does not lie in crazy things such as creating new systems or resetting or whatever. I lies on merely messing with a few things that were suitable for users a few years ago, but not now. Times have changed, and so should we.
12-20-2005, 08:58 PM
Golden Pluffy Winner in Poetry 
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