The main argument with adding new towns has always been then they're hyped about and enjoyed few a few days, then die out after a few weeks. This is highly supported as Graal city remains the most inhabited town by far, whereas other towns only contain maybe 10-20 people at a time. The reasoning for this is Graal city is a popular location for advertising things like your status and is fully no pk as well as near unstick. The other no pk zones are poorly marked and take time to walk to as well as have unclear boundries; belle,snowtown, and I believe a couple other locations have on and off pk levels and it is quite confusing, whereas Graal city has gates and small pathways where it because a pk zone- it is well enclosed.


Any town that remains pk may seem dead because players do not stand around and talk as they will just get killed-but players still go to their destinations a lot, it's just the fact that you just see people for a split second passing by on a horse that it feels empty. As for snowtown, you have to go really far out of your way to get their(wait a few minutes on draisine or spent 1-2 minutes on your horse getting their then light your lantern. Deadwood has annoying dark lighting that lags and is irritating and the overall mood just doesn't fit for a place to go without reason. If you take a look at Onnet, it is moderately populated, ideally how a town should look, and it has clear boundaries and is enclosed. Belle is a mess of both pk and no pk zones. It should be either all pk or no pk. based on its design I think it would be more optimal as a no pk zone since it only has 1 entrance but that is just my opinion. Deadwood and snowtown are better fitted as pure pk zones. With the pyrats, fort, and lack of clear enterance/exit york is best suited as a pk zone. North graal city at the moment can be suited as either because it has no real purpose at the moment, but also is easy to access, convenient, and well designed for casual players.


It would be nice to add some kind of town warping system. Right now people abuse unstick as a way of mobility far more often than actually freeing themself, so why not allow them to warp to more locations in a more polished and official way? Add set warps to onnet, belle, swamptown, etc. warping can have a 5 second "channeling" period in which you must wait and cannot be hit or it will cancel it- to stop people from running from fights.

I highly appreciate the new timer in Graal city that moves you when you're afk in the crowded portions of Graal city, it really helps a lot when running through Graal city. I don't know the exact time but it seems to be about 5 minutes. I hope this stays, but it would be nice to lower it to 2 or 3 minutes so Graal city can be more for traveling through and not for spamming. High enough so you can stop and type a guild message or go brb for a second without getting kicked out, but low enough to attempt to spread players out more and make the whole map seem more community oriented-it's nice seeing lots of players across the overworld. There are plenty of no pk locations that are near abandoned. Burger Refuge and other buildings may remain crowded as they are not needed to travel through.

As more players spread out adding new towns with forts, shops, and some form of fun events will further add to the feel of a community oriented game. New locations are the most hyped things by most players as long as they have some form of content, and I've noticed a direct pattern between new towns being added and playercount increasing. The playercount rapidly increased the first two months of Graal from ~100 to ~600 when it was continually expanding. It then slowly increased from that to a steady 1000-1500 within the first year as snowtown, deadwood, and more areas were added. The playercount then seemed to very slowly decline as other updates came out but weren't new towns. Then when York came out the amount of players playing seemed to increase back to the old amount.
As more towns are added, more people will come, and they will stay active and the feeling of exploring a large world will start to feel even better. People who come back after quitting for a while that see a lot of new places will have a fresh feeling.

I'm not saying to throw out a lot of "half assed" new towns with no purpose, but rather to put an emphasis on the size of the map and not just new features. It may not have worked on PC servers back in the day with huge gmaps with abandoned towns, but that was because the game was p2p and the playercount of a server never really exceeded a couple hundred. With thousands of players on at a time, free to play, and an ever growing community with limitless potential, Graal will grow over time allowing for far larger maps. Getting lost and not knowing your way around is actually half the fun of the game.


tl;dr:
1:Graal will get more players as more towns are added-there has been a very clear direct correlation between playercount and new towns.
2:add more areas as it adds to the exploring aspect and feeling of content
3:pking may make a town seem dead as players do not use it to talk but rather tun there to go where they want then leave and not idle outside
4:laggy effects, dark lighting, lack of accessibility, as well as unclear safe zones make towns undesirable. Snowtown and Deadwood are evidence of this.
5: idling warp timer in Graal city could possibly be lowered from 5 to 3 minutes.  

Making areas need items and making other areas really seasonal also can cause it to be dead.  

Posted by Seeker99

Making areas need items and making other areas really seasonal also can cause it to be dead.

Yeah seasonal/holiday based towns don't really seem to work out. However, snowtown was pretty awesome last Christmas with the sledding hill and the visiting santa thing. The main problem I've seen with Classic and Era is the seasonal based events. The gifting system was amazing but now it can't be accessed, and some other things were interesting.

I still don't think that's why deadwood and snowtown failed though, it is most likely because they both require a lantern or draisine, and deadwood contains dark lighting as well as annoying effects that cause bad framerates.  

Posted by Skill

Yeah seasonal/holiday based towns don't really seem to work out. However, snowtown was pretty awesome last Christmas with the sledding hill and the visiting santa thing. The main problem I've seen with Classic and Era is the seasonal based events. The gifting system was amazing but now it can't be accessed, and some other things were interesting.

Yeah I agree with that. Maybe each town should have some sort of seasonal event. Maybe the key is to make towns that fit for each season. York Bay could host a bunch of summer events like a beach party and a volleyball tournament. North Graal could have some sort of Fall events (not sure what they could do for events) too. I totally agree that Snowtown was full of players during the Winter months and that was great, but in the summer who wants to play events in the snow. Maybe for a summer surprise they could open a market for people to sell and trade stuff and put it in North Graal. Also if they added jobs that were specific to certain locations that would make areas way more popular!  

Fun facts:

• Onnet Town is a no-pk zone and it does not have anywhere close to the traffic that Graal City has.
• The playercount has been higher than ever lately, breaking the record for the most players online. No new towns have been released.

 

Posted by Rufus

Fun facts:

• Onnet Town is a no-pk zone and it does not have anywhere close to the traffic that Graal City has.
• The playercount has been higher than ever lately, breaking the record for the most players online. No new towns have been released.

New record? Are you sure?
The lantern is useless I can see fine without it.  

Posted by Rufus

Fun facts:

• Onnet Town is a no-pk zone and it does not have anywhere close to the traffic that Graal City has.
• The playercount has been higher than ever lately, breaking the record for the most players online. No new towns have been released.

York town was recently released, also keep in mind a lot of players are out for summer
Onnet town isn't as populated as Graal city, but that's because graal city is where unstick is and thats the "place to be". My point was that Onnet town has a decent amount of players hanging out and active, enough for it not to be a "ghost town" like the old pc servers, but not so many like Graal city where you can't even get through it without crashing repeatedly.

Additionally the long standing record of 1775 players online is yet to be broken for over a year. It could have been broken several times during the gst, but to ensure service stability stefan ran a check and disabled afk players to make sure the server ran properly during the gst(which is good)
I'm not saying new exciting content like the archery challenge and the amazing new aesthetics aren't helping, those are amazing and have led me to play more. I'm just pointing out that new towns if down right are highly appreciated by the community and break the feel of having the same old map. Changing the map up with teasing things have really made exploring fun again.

Posted by Seeker99

Yeah I agree with that. Maybe each town should have some sort of seasonal event. Maybe the key is to make towns that fit for each season. York Bay could host a bunch of summer events like a beach party and a volleyball tournament. North Graal could have some sort of Fall events (not sure what they could do for events) too. I totally agree that Snowtown was full of players during the Winter months and that was great, but in the summer who wants to play events in the snow. Maybe for a summer surprise they could open a market for people to sell and trade stuff and put it in North Graal. Also if they added jobs that were specific to certain locations that would make areas way more popular!

You just said that seasonal towns are bad and now that they're great? Anyways a town should be useful at all times of the year and not a ghosttown when it isn't that time of year. Snowtown is in the mountains as well as north and that's what justifies its snow, not just the fact that its considered a winter town.  

*reads first 2 sentences of thread* *scrolls**scrolls**scrolls**scrolls*....
*reads rufus' post* *thinks: hm common sense*

you type way too much kid. calm down. rufus has already said that a couple big projects are being worked on. and all people will congregate in graal city forever. no changin it. its the center of the map. the only way graal city wouldnt be most populated area is if it was moved clear out north of snowtown and the big gaping hole was left there  

Posted by twilit

*reads first 2 sentences of thread* *scrolls**scrolls**scrolls**scrolls*....
*reads rufus' post* *thinks: hm common sense*

you type way too much kid. calm down. rufus has already said that a couple big projects are being worked on. and all people will congregate in graal city forever. no changin it. its the center of the map. the only way graal city wouldnt be most populated area is if it was moved clear out north of snowtown and the big gaping hole was left there

*facepalm* You didn't even read either of my posts, and you automatically assume I'm wrong? it's people like you that make me wish neg rep still existed...  

Posted by Skill

York town was recently released, also keep in mind a lot of players are out for summer
Onnet town isn't as populated as Graal city, but that's because graal city is where unstick is and thats the "place to be". My point was that Onnet town has a decent amount of players hanging out and active, enough for it not to be a "ghost town" like the old pc servers, but not so many like Graal city where you can't even get through it without crashing repeatedly.

Additionally the long standing record of 1775 players online is yet to be broken for over a year. It could have been broken several times during the gst, but to ensure service stability stefan ran a check and disabled afk players to make sure the server ran properly during the gst(which is good)
I'm not saying new exciting content like the archery challenge and the amazing new aesthetics aren't helping, those are amazing and have led me to play more. I'm just pointing out that new towns if down right are highly appreciated by the community and break the feel of having the same old map. Changing the map up with teasing things have really made exploring fun again.



You just said that seasonal towns are bad and now that they're great? Anyways a town should be useful at all times of the year and not a ghosttown when it isn't that time of year. Snowtown is in the mountains as well as north and that's what justifies its snow, not just the fact that its considered a winter town.

I took into consideration of how awesome Snowtown was at Christmas time. If they made seasonal towns I think they should just decorate that for a season. For instance if deadwood wasn't always 'EmoVille' people might go in it more often. I was just kind of pointing out that a dead town can get at least some attraction pointed towards it if they had special events during season. I just don't like towns where it is dark all year like what you said.  

I like the warp idea. They should make a warp in every town and maybe charge 10 gralats to use it and a central warp station somewhere like north GRAAL city.  

Posted by iHawk

I like the warp idea. They should make a warp in every town and maybe charge 10 gralats to use it and a central warp station somewhere like north GRAAL city.

It should be free or no one would use it and just abuse unstick/unstuck me, gamecenter, marriage warping, two person mount in house, and other things to get places.  

the reason warps arent done is because of hide and seek and events and such, it would lag the server down.  

Posted by Higbey

the reason warps arent done is because of hide and seek and events and such, it would lag the server down.

It wouldn't lag the server down, using setlevel2 hardly uses any cpu usage on the server's part. However I suppose it could pose an unfair advantage in hide and seek.  

Posted by Skill

*facepalm* You didn't even read either of my posts, and you automatically assume I'm wrong? it's people like you that make me wish neg rep still existed...

so sorry. i dont have that large of an attention/patience span. what i read sounded much like the stuff we always here so i wasnt about to read the rest of the novel. if you want ideas heard make it shorter or hide nonimportant details/rambblings in spoilers or do something.

but really. posts like this that drive me insane. i mostly like what maikeru highey and talon have to say but sometimes they type too much so i dont read it. :x