Rewards?
 

So here is a problem. People want content, but content implies rewarding the player for completing said content. Now what? What can players be rewarded with, and what should rewards be for various levels of challenge?

In Zelda most challenges that weren't a full-fledged dungeon were rewarded with a piece of heart. This was a very rewarding experience because taking part in doing the various challenges scattered around the overworld essentially powered up the player, making dungeons easier. But in Graal we have no system currently in place for expanding health.

What can players be rewarded with that would make it worth, say, completing a mini-dungeon or finding a very remotely hidden cave and solving a puzzle or two? Gralats sounds boring, and the suggestion of a hat will probably invoke rage. What else is there to do here? Adding new weapons is a dead-end. There needs to be a lot of stuff factored into the decision to add a new weapon: Balancing it, designing it and so on... and it's a finite direction. Eventually we won't have ideas for new weapons.

So what can you guys propose? If you were to complete a mini-dungeon, what would you like to find in a chest at the end?

If not weapons, would better defenses be an option?

As in?

The problem currently is iClassic is designed as an equal playing experience. Everyone has the same hearts, same shield, sword and so on. Graal itself is capable of upgrading many of the players items, but it's currently not being used on iClassic. When, and if any of these things will ever be introduced I don't know; but they change the core gameplay considerably. I'm not in the position to decide, or even know if these things will come about. But they're not here now, so we need to think of other things to put in their place.

Giving the player who completed a percentage on their shield to block. Say 5% of hits will do no damage. It could be upgraded for every "dungeon". It would need a limit though so it doesnt get over powered.

Also we could add horse speed, by one bush ;)

Another thing that could be added is equipable armor like in your inventory. You would have 3 different pieces, head body and legs. Each would either increase health, or add more percentage to block. These items would make your player slower, and easier to hit, because of that i think it should add health.

Another thing would be similar to the shield idea, but with sword, so it has a percentage to hit 1 full damage. To make this able to add, the swords percentage is to do 1, and shield block .5, so that if both abilities happen at same time, they will cancel eachother out, and still do the .5 damage.

Finally, if you were to add diffuculty, i think the last, final and hardest should give you a .5 health bonus. But make it extremly difficult, to make you need to buy red potions, the extra buffs above, and maybe needing to keep retrying.
All would be disabled in spar.

Im not sure what we could get really. I dont like the idea of giving the player items that will make the game unbalanced, such as more health or weapons that do more damage. But gralats and hats aren't a great alternative either.

I was thinking about changeable shields. Like actual shields, versus a shield code. No one really makes actual "shield" shield codes that much anymore anyway. You can keep the shield codes then just call them something else. Shields however, would be entirely something new. They will all be equivilant, but serve different purpose. You start out with a spar shield. Your basic noob shield that can block one sword hit (then has to recharge) and can block a certain amount of arrows if being consistently fired upon. The sword icon can have a tiny health bar that slowly dwindles if you get bombarded with arrows or completely goes down if you use it for a block a melee. A mirror shield has a little more arrow resistance than the spar shield, but it also reflects any arrows back at the shooter too. However, if you are meleed the shield bar will completely vanish and have to recharge. The bomb shield is only able to use one block before recharge, which is either the sword or a bomb blast/fire breath. Any projectiles will imediately pierce the shield. Tower shield, 5 sword blocks. Gives slow movements and can be defected by an arrow or bomb. You are limited to one shield at a time in your inventory. If you wish to change it you must visit wherever you obtained it and you can simply swap out. That way someone can't just use another shield whenever their old one needs to recharge.

Edit: Forgot to mention, you may not spar with any other shield. The secretary at the front desk of the battle arena would be able to swap your shield for a spar shield in order to participate. Afterwards, you are free to pick it up or continue using it.

What do you mean what else ? what other thing is there? hats, gani items, furniture...? honestly that's the fair way to go about it.
What if you received tokens, and have a store of items and you were able to gather as many as you want for whichever item it is you want. New items of course, we dont want to ruin the rarity of old items/hats.
because the idea of gathering enough to have your own gfx uploaded would ruin towers(hats/morph). So I guess a better way would be to gather and save up your tokens to use like the old holiday token shop whether you wanted to use them or not and wait for the next round ( 1-3 item month change?)
a fun little reward for the easy quests can be gathering pieces of a puzzle and slowly completing your portrait image that can be placed in your guild house.
be able to use those tokens in a mini-game house room, like opening the circus by adding events rooms ( like ice race, chance, survivor - all the original events in there) it would give a chance for those who are not capable of getting into the warps and then losing to the already expert events winner since they can find them all the time. ( a normal group of 30-50 depends which event would be able to go inside and every time you would have to wait your turn or decide which one you want to participate on )

*have to go right now but if more ideas pop-up i'll come and write them down as well

What's wrong with good ol gralats as a reward? Giving people gralats for these things allows them to make their own choice as to what to spend it on. A new custom, a new item, more furniture, etc.

I think everyone is tired of hats, considering the fact that they want better updates than new hats in the shops.And mounts aren't going to be a good reward since they function the same as the first cheap mounts at horse stables.
When following a equal rule or benefit to all players, it makes rewards people gain useless. From what Eldon said, if that was implemented classic would be a lot more exciting.

Keep in mind Graal is not a traditional RPG. Complex armor and damage values and random blocking values and such are never going to happen.

-Mini Boat Tool: When next to water you can hop on a mini boat that allows slight faster speed when traveling by water. In addition to this mini boat there could be two small attached cross bows on each side of your Graalians that would allow you to fire in water. The crossbows would deplete ammo from your arrow inventory. There could also be a wait time to prevent players from spamming arrows at baddies/players in water for easy kills.

-Grand Chest Key: You know how there's a large amount of chests on Graal that are there for decoration rather than opening? All (or large majority) of them should be locked and openable for players with this key. They would be located in various parts of Graal for the player to search and unlock. Ranging from easy to hard locations carrying 10-100 Gralats.

-Minion: Have a little henchman follow you around Graal. You could collect different kinds in different dungeons. Even making them customizable would be cool. Each with their own special ability. Increases health by .5 every 10-15 seconds, gives small shield that breaks when hit, but saves .5 of your life, increases bomb capacity, etc.

-Pickaxe: Mine in caves for Graals one of a kind jewels in which you can sell to your local blacksmith, create furniture items with (Example: Red-Ragnarok chair), disguises being able to hide under your own rock, etc.

-Magic Ability: Each dungeon could give the player an ability that allows them to do certain things. One ability could be to slightly increase running speed for 10 seconds while another can be to create a barrier around ones self for 5. The cool down would vary for each ability depending on it's power. One would only be able to be equipped at a time.

Well, I took a little bit to think about this...
Maybe a few rewards could be ways to get to new minigames that will entertain the player for a good while.

And maybe some of the rewards for completing sidequests and that sort of thing could be, like, abilities. Just things like.... things that enable you to get into certain areas or take shortcuts, or maybe (somehow balanced) ones for combat.

Does that mean that the ability to block things will never happen?

Shields block arrows. Originally shields would block projectiles that hit you from the front even if you were walking. However a long time ago Graal was updated that broke that functionality, and it was never fixed. Now they only block if you're standing still. Upgraded shields would block stronger versions of projectiles(fireballs, fireblasts, nukes), but that's a useless addition to iClassic.

That's about as much blocking as you're going to get. This isn't a JPRG. You're not going to get individual armor slots and you're not going to have hitrate and block rates and all that elaborate stuff. Graal has a simple combat design and it's going to stay that way.

Like I said, I'd rather not go the direction of items. It's a path with a dead-end. Eventually ideas will run out, then what? Does that mean mini-dungeons can't have item rewards? No. But the purpose of this thread is to explore the idea of a renewable reward. Zelda had pieces of hearts. Graal currently does not have an equivalent. Ideas would need to work with the current design of iClassic.

The idea of earning gralats everytime you complete a randomly generated dungeon actually sounds fun. I suppose gralats is the fairest way about it as well, giving people the choice of what to spend their gralats on.