Reading this tour my heart to pieces, I can remember those days
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yFKgAjDTgZA
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Reading this tour my heart to pieces, I can remember those days
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yFKgAjDTgZA
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Last edited by Javi Javilian; 02-01-2019 at 06:21 PM.
Javi's Production
I know this may come as a shock to you, drumroll please...
Admins have lives.
There's Jeff and Kroshallik, both are insanely talented at making ganis and do well at their jobs (not to mention Jeff is still producing ganis when he isn't required to, and BOTH of them have been working). There are 4 levels team staff members, levels don't require a lot of work which means not a lot of individuals are required per level so if only a few levels are produced chances are only one or two of the lats worked on it. The events (If you're referencing the grav3 and ssb events, oh thats 2 btw) weren't required to be made but Keir decided to when he didn't have to, sounds like a good act but to be shamed? Nice. Not to mention the fact that the VDay shop level has probably been being worked on (probably finished by now). Yes, iMask is always doing work, not to mention he as well goes over and beyond his duties which we should be appreciative of. Oh and I'm sorry but how is Bitzsam a joke for being off for a week? Does that mean he'd be awesome if he was on Era everyday? Oh, didn't notice. You want some rushed, bad quality and bad statistical weapon. The staff are being efficient but you're choosing to ignore it. As for the game "slowly dying" part, you say that but you're still here. Plus the fact that you are choosing to complain and beg for your exotic item on a "dying game". Goodluck to you with that mindset mate. Patience is a virtue.
Feel free to ask any question!
iZone Levels Admin
Lmao yeah but that's why we need to ask about their availability during the "no admin" period. In the application we need to ask. This period is often exploited by hackers. It can also be used to break other rules and get away with it. Bet you didn't know that one of the basing gangs has it's own personal hacker. I forgot which gang. Idk if he is still around but it's probably seeing how loyal he was.
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I personally see plenty of problems with the development that's been going on to some degree since 2011. Quality is not an antonym of quantity, at all. There's a correct type of quality, and a wrong type of quality; though it has to be distinguished with opinion, and style of the overall game. What was kept, were the opinions, just not Era's style. That's another issue that I see. We've been complaining about this for seven to eight years, and that isn't a joke. Naming the updates that came out in order...
Dolls of people? Alright, sure.
Candy land? No, definitely not.
BAR and the overabundant and expensive amount of guns following the release of the M16? No.
Are you seeing the concept of "pick and choose" here? The game truly did turn confusing because of a lack of leadership, or maybe the entire staff team had the same idea to break Era's history and original style. What's funny is that these problems have been looked at so much from the players who knew the game before, and nothing gets achieved from it. I'm not trying to turn this into some sort of nostalgia-fest, or go off-topic, but I wouldn't mind a reset. "Era is dying" is very in-depth. Most of the older players have left because of what I stated earlier, not directly because of age. I'll have some small talk with them every so often and that's always the response. That's what most will view Era dying as. Not that there's consistently 2,000 players on.
Another issue is the lack of leadership and communication. I can't see behind the scenes, but this is just from a straw man standpoint.
Last edited by Peter; 02-01-2019 at 07:09 PM.
This is actually a really interesting point that you bring up. Do players like the more social type of events, like weddings or the z-room? Is that something you'd like to see more of? Would it show more involvement in the community by staff members?
I remember thinking years ago that the PR position was just an attention grab. Everyone wanted to be an admin to play with those cool powers and show off some neat items, and do little events that bolstered their egos because they had more power than the players. Most of that opinion was formed based on events like that, so I rarely attended and focused more on playing the game. That's why I'm against the type of admin that's just in it for the status, it seems like they're just around to act like a celebrity and be all high and mighty.
However, I do see that it shows more staff members trying to be more active in the community. It shows that staff members are going more out of their way to talk to the community. There were also the little Q&A sessions when snk or someone would drag a player up for a small moment of fame and let them ask a question, graal related or not. There's also the subject of people being toxic and vulgar in large crowded situations like that, thinking that they won't get caught or doing it to show off how totally cool they are when they get dragged up by an admin. Things like that have definitely turned off a lot of people from doing events like these, but there is a way to make it manageable.
I think I have an idea of both sides of these arguments, so are these types of things at least partially what you guys would like to see return? If so, I can try and speak to the highers about allowing certain staff members to do this kind of stuff (would definitely have to be high staff hosting to prevent certain...past situations from reoccurring)
Yes, definitely. Everything seemed to be turned into a bot event. The bot events were meant to be very simple, and when there weren't any admins around to host. There is way too much reliance on the game itself these days.
I remember a lot of the community complaining about Kota, Mariah Nicole, etc. People still treat you guys like celebrities, but it's because there's hardly any of you guys compared to the huge community. Back then, it seemed like there was a good balance of time under the amount of times these events happened, and the management of it. It at least gave management more of a job.
I understand the frustrations with the other teams, but keep in mind that things like graphics and sounds can be made while offline and completely outside of Era. I believe there's an offline gani editor too, and I'll be honest when I say that I'm not 100% sure that there's a way to make levels offline, but I think there is. Keep in mind that for a lot of the more developmental positions, a lot of work can be done outside of the actual graal client, they don't have to be online throughout the entire process, which is why it might be harder to catch one of them online. Plus, answering pms isn't part of their job, and they may be too busy working to see and respond to a lot of pms.
That's an interesting perspective on it. I feel like a lot of the younger parts of the community, which would be the majority, really enjoy being noticed or talking to someone with a pretty gold tag. I'd always seen the other side, the attention-seeking staff celebrity side, but there is a reason the turnouts for those types of events were always high.
I just don't see any issue with the staff being communicative with their playerbase at all! The only communication that we ever get is a "sneak peek," which usually results in it either not coming out, or it being disappointing, or just an update. I haven't run into any in awhile. Dan used to hang inside of Era Fashion at Start for a good while, and I was able to talk to him for a bit. That's about it. I do remember once though, that there was an open chat room of some of you guys streaming like a podcast, with players in the comments of it. That was actually interesting. I wouldn't mind if that were a weekly thing. It wouldn't have to be with specific admins, just reliable ones.
Going in the course of communicative updates... There's nothing wrong with having progressive feedback while it's in production. Of course, the entire team is in charge, but if there's an expected product to keep players at their highest morality, it needs to be made clear what's going on. It needs to be up to our par to be effective for us. Now this is only relative because the game has been made so complex. If it were kept simple(IE: jobs), then I'd say take the considerations of the playerbase from the start, and run with it while being conservative in your decisions to make it great. When there's too much added of the wrong, it's unmotivating. I strongly believed that Era could've reached a playerbase of up to 4000 if the correct measures were taken from the start.
To lazy to quote but lets pretend I quoted failures post about dev staff working offline;
Yes, they can do levels and ganis offline
Feel free to ask any question!
iZone Levels Admin
Well presented perspectives. I really enjoyed reading this thread because of the constructive feedback that was occurring. I remember those days where I used to think anyone with a tag other than red, blue, or green would be glorified, at the top people. Up until 2018, I held that belief of wanting some kind of recognition of the assitance of players and wanting to have some sort of payment for doing so. During this year that I took to mature, I saw looking back that, it was really the social interactions of the game that kept a good portion of the players around. It was an interesting and the environment was frequently promoted by the staff. Although there were some particular individuals who were staff to exploit the system or just for the bragging rights, I believe a good portion really helped facilitate a safe environment. I don’t see as much of this as I did back then. If anything, the game lost a good portion of what it’s genre of gaming it used to be. This happens to be an MMORPG. In my opinion -please don’t take this as a universal application- there should be an aspect where there is better ways to minimalise the differences between the staff and players. How that can be achieved? That’s where we must collectively come up with a solution to do that. Bearing the diversity of the world. And then after taking that into account, the gaming aspect of it (which the staff does a good job in) but a decent game means nothing in a world where there are better oriented games to play for entertainment. Most of the working aspect of Graal feels like time consumption and believe it or not, “routine”. We most definitely had entertainment in the earlier stages of graal. But the playerbase will not last without creating a unique social experience that would create stronger bonds to the game itself. I only play the game for the wonderful people I get to meet.