Is this not happening anymore? The Revamp I mean, if not cant we just temporarily bring back the old one before towering legit dies off.  

Well buddy ol' pal theres pretty much more in classic that is already dead-ish:

- Towering is dead
- Pk is dead
- Spar is dead
- Baddy is boring
- 90% Friendlist is Inactive/Quit
- Graal Communnity is beyond toxic and hollow (except some few good remaining people)

But don't worry those tower rewards will eventually be qdded to the game but it might take another 1-3 years to make it happen.

(- And I'll be going on a hiatus by late 2020 or soon when I move to US)  

There needs to be more things to do  

But auctions ��  

Posted by Zorma Knight

Well buddy ol' pal theres pretty much more in classic that is already dead-ish:

- Towering is dead
- Pk is dead
- Spar is dead
- Baddy is boring
- 90% Friendlist is Inactive/Quit
- Graal Communnity is beyond toxic and hollow (except some few good remaining people)

But don't worry those tower rewards will eventually be qdded to the game but it might take another 1-3 years to make it happen.

(- And I'll be going on a hiatus by late 2020 or soon when I move to US)

You're right that towering rewards have taken too long, I think we can all agree that we would have liked to have something there sooner, but I can assure you that it is still being worked on. The first phase of the NGS from last year was a start, and hopefully the next phase comes soon.

Why is pking dead? Pking has its own reward system in the form of the seasonal leaderboard, and I can see that a fair amount of people enjoy competing for it. Since you consider yourself a retired pker, I am especially interested in what kind of feedback you would have for this area. For starters, what would make you come out of retirement?

Spar recently had spar tokens added and has seen increased activity since then (that might depend at the time when you are online, though). What are you looking for in a spar community that is alive?

If your friends list is inactive, you could make some new ones. That'll be hard to do with the assumption everyone in the community is now toxic/hollow though. I think you're wrong there, the community at large is about the same as in the past - most of the people on this forum have just gotten older. It's all in the people you surround yourself with.  

Spoiler

Posted by Jarace

Why is pking dead? Pking has its own reward system in the form of the seasonal leaderboard, and I can see that a fair amount of people enjoy competing for it. Since you consider yourself a retired pker, I am especially interested in what kind of feedback you would have for this area. For starters, what would make you come out of retirement?

I think that pking is dead because there is just no interest for it, retired pkers probably already have their fair share of seasonal plaques and enough kills to show for it.

I'm not retired but I think to keep new players pking adding another reward system to the mix wouldn't be such a bad idea. A milestone system where when you hit a certain amount of kills you get something to keep you going (Maybe a hat maybe gralats maybe both)
This has been brought up before by others but since there's a chance for feedback I'm going to say it again.

I'm going to be totally honest I don't think that old retired pkers are just going to come back if something was changed about pk. They most likely quit because they got bored of running around swinging their sword around. It's not the most eventful thing to do in classic.
Sorry I completely diverted this post from its title which is tower rewards, my bad :)  

Making Friends
Language barrier prevents making friends of a similar interest, and it's a serious problem with the over-take of so many non-English speakers, in a primarily English-focused social game. So many non-English speaking players near the starting area is alienating a more targeted, appropriate audience. You can see the effects of this already in the game, and it's only bound to get worse until something is done about it. Good luck to those trying to replace their decreasing buddy list without picking up Portuguese/Spanish/Filipino.

Towering
Towering used to have a mild incentive with it's "1k hats" as a prize for holding down towers for 1,000 in game hours. But, with the long-since removal of it; there is little incentive for players to hold down forts. I've personally been able to over take a tower and basically just go AFK only needing to hit the flags decreasing health off-and-on for over half an hour at a time. Towering is dead, and I think the removal of towers is hurting the game more. I understand the logic of "If not many people are towering, removing some of these towers will increase population/activity of those areas", but I think it's sending the wrong message to players. I think it's sending more of a message of "this is a relic, and these are going to be phased out." with the constant removal of these competitive, PKing areas.

Player Killing
PKing has never really had any incentive for it, until the seasonal rewards were added. The brief rewards of PK specific mounts weren't a lot in my opinion and barely a driving force for keeping players interested. PKing doesn't get the same treatment as sparring does within the game. You're not getting currency to purchase new cosmetics, furniture, mounts, etc. In-fact, I think it's generally seen as just a mild annoyance rather than anything fun or *skillful. (in terms of general playerbase/support for the activity.) Towering is closely related to PKing so it, at the time, probably didn't make a lot of sense to add rewards for the activity when it was just a natural byproduct of keeping a tower.

Sparring
Sparring has been going down hill for years now, and although the specific currency did make a mild resurgence in the activity, it was clear to me that this wouldn't hold attention for long. Sure, we have things like the seasonal Guild Sparring Tournament, but this is only interesting for players who haven't won multiple times already. It's nothing more than exclusive hats and bragging rights for the season. But if there is nobody to brag to, who cares? That isn't to say that the competition is flawed necessarily, but it does present a problem. The bragging heavy aspect of GST/Sparring is also a great issue. It can be a driving force behind someone wanting to spar more to become better at it, or it could be a complete turn off to those who wish to do it more casually. I personally find it a huge turn-off when I go into the spar room and see hardly anyone that speaks English, or the ones that do just gossiping/trash talking each-other more than sparring. Sparring in-general also heavily relied on known-players who did the activity. Sparring was seen as a cool activity because that's generally where the cooler players hung out. Typically the sparring crowd consisted of people who've been around for a long time, and that had an appeal to new-comers and other oldies alike.



There really isn't a magical fix all solution to any of these problems, it's difficult. We all know the NGS is coming, but it's tough for me to say at this point whether it will have anywhere near as heavy an impact as people and staff alike are hoping for. I personally know it'll at bare minimum create a resurgence in active players, but will it be as special as everyone is hoping for? Well, we'll just have to wait and see I guess. It's going to have to bring a lot of "firsts" to iClassic.  

Posted by Yami

Making Friends
Language barrier prevents making friends of a similar interest, and it's a serious problem with the over-take of so many non-English speakers, in a primarily English-focused social game. So many non-English speaking players near the starting area is alienating a more targeted, appropriate audience. You can see the effects of this already in the game, and it's only bound to get worse until something is done about it. Good luck to those trying to replace their decreasing buddy list without picking up Portuguese/Spanish/Filipino.

Towering
Towering used to have a mild incentive with it's "1k hats" as a prize for holding down towers for 1,000 in game hours. But, with the long-since removal of it; there is little incentive for players to hold down forts. I've personally been able to over take a tower and basically just go AFK only needing to hit the flags decreasing health off-and-on for over half an hour at a time. Towering is dead, and I think the removal of towers is hurting the game more. I understand the logic of "If not many people are towering, removing some of these towers will increase population/activity of those areas", but I think it's sending the wrong message to players. I think it's sending more of a message of "this is a relic, and these are going to be phased out." with the constant removal of these competitive, PKing areas.

Player Killing
PKing has never really had any incentive for it, until the seasonal rewards were added. The brief rewards of PK specific mounts weren't a lot in my opinion and barely a driving force for keeping players interested. PKing doesn't get the same treatment as sparring does within the game. You're not getting currency to purchase new cosmetics, furniture, mounts, etc. In-fact, I think it's generally seen as just a mild annoyance rather than anything fun or *skillful. (in terms of general playerbase/support for the activity.) Towering is closely related to PKing so it, at the time, probably didn't make a lot of sense to add rewards for the activity when it was just a natural byproduct of keeping a tower.

Sparring
Sparring has been going down hill for years now, and although the specific currency did make a mild resurgence in the activity, it was clear to me that this wouldn't hold attention for long. Sure, we have things like the seasonal Guild Sparring Tournament, but this is only interesting for players who haven't won multiple times already. It's nothing more than exclusive hats and bragging rights for the season. But if there is nobody to brag to, who cares? That isn't to say that the competition is flawed necessarily, but it does present a problem. The bragging heavy aspect of GST/Sparring is also a great issue. It can be a driving force behind someone wanting to spar more to become better at it, or it could be a complete turn off to those who wish to do it more casually. I personally find it a huge turn-off when I go into the spar room and see hardly anyone that speaks English, or the ones that do just gossiping/trash talking each-other more than sparring. Sparring in-general also heavily relied on known-players who did the activity. Sparring was seen as a cool activity because that's generally where the cooler players hung out. Typically the sparring crowd consisted of people who've been around for a long time, and that had an appeal to new-comers and other oldies alike.



There really isn't a magical fix all solution to any of these problems, it's difficult. We all know the NGS is coming, but it's tough for me to say at this point whether it will have anywhere near as heavy an impact as people and staff alike are hoping for. I personally know it'll at bare minimum create a resurgence in active players, but will it be as special as everyone is hoping for? Well, we'll just have to wait and see I guess. It's going to have to bring a lot of "firsts" to iClassic.

This, a million times this. Spar is beyond what it used to be. Its no where near fun, the incentives get boring overtime. Hats hats hats hats hats, we want challenges, fun, not just items. Graal got too interested in keeping players with hats over the actual content. Temporarily readding 1k's wouldve been wiser rather than letting us tower for nothing at all the entire time. If it was gonna take this long it shouldve been done behind the scenes and released as soon as it was finalized.  

That’s such a negative view on everything about Graal (referring to Zorma). There are so many events that are being broadcast. Graal brought back CTF, there’s Chance, Basketball, Soccer, Bush race etc. I think there’s plenty of events, over abundance of activities and plenty to do. There’s plenty that Graal has changed and improved. It’s a growing game with all kinds of an audience and it will continue to change. Events and changes may not be to everyone’s liking. Towering is just part of all that change. It’s a part of Graal too, so it will change along with it.  

Towering is dead because there is nothing to tower for. I agree with the decision of not giving rewards for 1k hours anymore. I don't agree with removing the 5k and 10k rewards. Towering rewards were meant to promote guild loyalty (something that most players lack). I think that the 5k and 10k rewards returning, maybe adding a custom accessory as a 7.5k reward, is a good way to make towering active and maintain guild loyalty. However, adding these back may conflict with the long-awaited NGS.

PKing and Sparring are dying because there is no reason to do these activities (ignore how insufferable the sparring community is now). I think the best way to help revive them while we wait on the NGS is to add milestone rewards again, and in a much greater number. Milestone rewards are a better incentive than spar coins. Rewards like the 40K PKs Shop(Video) and 6k spar wins hat were great ideas. Milestone rewards show prestige, and inspire other players to work towards the same goals.

Thallen did a good job talking about milestone rewards here (internal screaming): https://www.graalians.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23696

Spoiler

Posted by Thallen

3.) To promote sparring long term, I still think you guys should re-release the old milestone hats (and/or add more). These should be a thing all the way up to 100k, maybe at the intervals of 1k, 5k, 10k, 25k, 50k, and 100k. Players were never told that those hats would be exclusive, and I think they should be brought back so that there are long-term goals. This has received overwhelming support: https://www.graalians.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23696

At bare minimum, bring back the hats from old at the same milestones as old. Doing this would create incentivize for a very long time with very little work required.

TL;DR if we can't have NGS as fast as it's needed, get the top end of the graphics team give us milestone rewards for playing the game.  

2v2 tag team spar would be fun  

Posted by Crono

2v2 tag team spar would be fun

This, please, theres so many spar ideas they could have.

Blind spar (only have a field of view on your character)
2v2 tag team spar
Around the world (unholy nation style)  

Nvm team dungeons or Co op puzzles. There's tons that could be done, pvp or otherwise...  

Posted by Crono

2v2 tag team spar would be fun

Now this is something we need, that sounds like a lot of fun.  

How about NGS before anything else. Or any reason to play the game beyond idling and buying hats.