Player Retention

[dos]

I don’t mean to beat a dead horse, because this has been a raging topic since halfway through the last decade. Era’s current state is lamentable and I’d like to outline my opinions as to why the condition is as current, and provide solutions based on those opinions.

I’ve been around for nearly a decade now, surprising to say, and there have been many periods at which I’ve stopped playing for weeks, months, and even years. The only reason that I can say it’s easy to come back is because of the very small group of players that I still like talking to. The guns, the many hundreds of holiday items, the lack of staff-to-player contact, the difference of graphics styling, and the (unfinished) projects having no contribution to the gmap (yes you, Italy). Problems such as these escalate and expand into larger problems, such as the retention of new players. All opinions are welcomed to being challenged.


Precedented Evaluations:

New or Current Weapons
The combat system itself in Era is exceptional and it always has been. The issue arose, as many people know, when the BAR was released to eventually destroy Era’s working currency. The BAR as I remember it had a price 5x more expensive than the M16 (15k) when first released. The price was moderately corrected but it still eventually held a price of 200k versus the M16’s 15k. With the possibility of micro transactions, hundreds of players were quickly able to purchase the BAR. It was clearly too late to devalue this weapon so many other weapons have been sold at staggering prices since.
Distributive issues have arose from weapon valuations such as weapons like the AK47 being nearly useless, the job efforts-to-earnings ratio, basing impossibilities, and lastly player retention levels. I could expand for paragraphs on end but summarizing I feel is enough. What are some possible solutions to this?
Seeing as weapon pricing has customarily been set in stone, I can forcefully see the three solutions as (1) to diminish the value of guns priced past 50k (hypothetically), (2) remove the guns from Era that are too over-valued for the job system, (3) reset Era and all accounts back to it’s release in 2010, or (4) let Era die it’s slow death in the next 5 years.

Graphics and Style
I have a strong and possibly a different opinion among others regarding this, but the graphics and styling of Era have just grown strange. I’ve shown friends this game and because that the graphics or styling of some weapons (mostly holiday), signs, furniture, etc are much different from the original game (tileset and original NPC’s), it has been very unsettling to them. The 30’s mobster style mixed with ion blasters, 2000’s gangster NPC’s, a modern mall, and just other NPC items in general do not match. It’s difficult to put into words the differences that I see, but Era graphics were created simple from the beginning and should have stayed consistent disregarding item diversity.
The distributive issues regarding the above include existing and new player retention. The possible solutions include (1) removing all subjective items that do not match the original game, (2) resetting Era and all accounts back to it’s release in 2010, or (4) let Era die it’s slow death in the next 5 years.

Activities: Basing and Others
The activities across Era have drastically changed across our 10 years. Basing has gone from a great activity into an impossibility for most. It is realistically improbable, even impossible for new players to now start a gang, recruit, and base without getting past the first door if (1) they all have spent 10+ hours on Era, and (2) if they don’t use micro-transactions to buy incredible weapons. Events have also lost their popularity and the time used to develop plasma, among other updates, could have been used to develop and exercise simple ways of keeping Era’s new players afloat through job buffs and such. Era had a simplicity at one point, and Plasma among other updates gave a Era a very modern, possibly futuristic style and they have simply been just bandaids to avoid the deeper issues and to keep Era from dying.
The distributive issues from updates to basing and others have caused Era’s new players to delete the game within just a few hours time. The possible solutions include (1) fix the economy, (2) wipe the game back to 2010, (3) let Era die it’s slow death.

Staff-to-Player Contact
There were days in which the Player Relations team had regular contact with the community in hosting not only events, but weddings (before the wedding system was developed), parties, item giveaways, contests, and just having regular contact with Era’s players for morale and recreation. Although the abuse of power was found in some (rare) cases, it was a lousy excuse to diminish player and staff communication or sight. This has made Era boring, even repetitive (through hosting only events or auctions, and the future of this game not very reassuring. I would be willing to bet that the entire Era staff team is disconnected in their communication.
Issues that have trickled from this include declining player retention from both new and old players. Possible solutions include (1) staff briefings, (2) let Era die it’s slow death.


These are the reasons that I feel Era will not survive more than 5 years more if changes, even if difficult, must be made. The game as a whole is unappealing to many, and it is clear that most of the players who are active have been around for over a year. In 2011, I remember Era at 500-750 players. In 2012, I remember at least double that. GraalOnline as a whole is a great platform for the mobile community, and in it’s roots it can last much longer than I evaluate it to in the current state. Why was player growth so significant when the game was first released, vice now? Understandably Era is very profitable and it’s micro-transactions have invested millions into the owner’s pockets, but the investment that could be made with a longer player retention is much larger than the current evaluation. I would argue not that the platform of Graal is aging, but that the individual servers or games have hurt themselves in their updates and lack of communication. I would strongly encourage staff of all levels to evaluate deeper problems to keep a game with so much history and so many caring players alive.

[Jstagner]

I 100% agree with you. I doubt we will see any changes tho and I feel this game will be a graveyard in like 2 years, 3 tops. The complex update is a good start but without any significant changes I don’t see this game lasting for much longer but then again this is just my opinion.

[dos]

I 100% agree with you. I doubt we will see any changes tho and I feel this game will be a graveyard in like 2 years, 3 tops. The complex update is a good start but without any significant changes I don’t see this game lasting for much longer but then again this is just my opinion.

I’d like to convey to upper-level management, more so Unixmad, that it will be significantly more investable to actually repair and revitalize Era in order to invite hundreds to thousands of more players, regardless of how many players the client/server can handle. The bandages that have been wrapped around this game for the past 5+ years can only hold for so long, except I think that Era in a prime condition could consistently be an incredible app store game that’s possible of reaching the top charts. Unfortunately the only people who may care are loyalists to the game, and Unixmad if he’d be willing.

[Vance]

Player retention on GraalOnline servers has always been a problem. While a bunch of the things you've mentioned are big factors, I feel like you missed one BIG one, and that is the release of GraalOnline Ol'West.

Prior to November 2014, Era was doing pretty well for itself. Graphics wise, the game looked beautiful. SNES-inspired graphics were a hot-topic on mobile at the time. Everything regarding how the game looked was consistent. The community was much less toxic, with moderators focusing their efforts on cleaning up the game's cruel players (even going as far as jailing players who'd curse in PMs.) Interaction between staff and players was much more prevalent beyond events, there'd always be an admin inside of Astro. All-in-all, a pretty decent game.

Then Ol'West announced, and with it went hundreds of GraalOnline players. With Ol'West being the newest and greatest addition to the franchise, it's no surprise that many Era players migrated to the game. This includes staff members, with a bunch of moderators, designers and such moving to the game in order to help out. I specifically remember—even months after the game's release—people selling their items on Era for items on Ol'West.

Ol'West became a dead project, however. Logging onto the game in its current state holds a large Spanish-and-Portuguese speaking audience. Many of the original Era players have quit and/or forgot of the game's existence.

With Era now in a tough spot in terms of management, new members of staff were recruited. And it's clear, at least to many loyalist and veteran players, that they had different visions for the game going forward. Their causes started out noble, with adding new items to the Event House, new bases and new quests for new players. Time went on however, and now we're stuck with items such as "the Rainbow Chemical Gun" and a broken community and basing system based around laundering as many rewards as possible.

What also doesn't help is how silent upper-level management is about GraalOnline's future (at least to casual players.) A lot of things aren't properly communicated to people who play on Graal servers. I try to stay out of drama regarding Graal players beyond the servers I play on, however it is very clear that many people aren't happy with the way their favorite game is being treated.

To add onto this as well, Unixmad is assumingly very old. I would not be surprised if his plan is to release GraalOnline Delteria and retire from the franchise living off of the millions of dollars he has already made. Era is an 11 year old game, and I don't think it's at the top of his priorities to fix within the near future. You gotta remember that he works on maintaining other servers and projects, some of which we don't even know about. If GraalOnline is about optimizing his pockets to prepare for retirement, I can't imagine there's anything incentivizing the risk it would take to revamp every single game from square one. Not to mention the amount of outrage he would get for doing something as bold as resetting the server data and giving everyone a fresh start.

I truly believe that Graal Era has the potential for success, but as it stands, it's going to take a lot more than just a few statistics based on player retention to convince any of the upper-level management to make a change. The game, as it stands, is still exciting enough to attract new players, keep loyalists around and does, in fact have a group of server staff willing to keep it around as long as possible.

Then again though, we'll just have to see. Maybe we'll finally get a sneak peak of GraalOnline 3D and all migrate over there. Who knows?

[Joeyaudi1]

I don't think a reset is a solution, you'd be dealing with thousands of angry people who committed their time for years of work only for it to be rolled back to 2010, that includes removing guns.
On the other hand, I'd like to add that the Facebook release of Era has made the player count increase, now that flashplayer is gone and the Facebook's bugs are intolerable the player count decreased.
A proper PC release to Era should be present, and I mean the kind from Graal PC and not any other client, it's the smoothest gameplay I've seen if you've ever tried playing Era PC. The only issues I think are the rights that the players receive when they first enter from PC and the vulnerably to hacks.

[Vance]

I don't think a reset is a solution, you'd be dealing with thousands of angry people who committed their time for years of work only for it to be rolled back to 2010, that includes removing guns.
On the other hand, I'd like to add that the Facebook release of Era has made the player count increase, now that flashplayer is gone and the Facebook's bugs are intolerable the player count decreased.
A proper PC release to Era should be present, and I mean the kind from Graal PC and not any other client, it's the smoothest gameplay I've seen if you've ever tried playing Era PC. The only issues I think are the rights that the players receive when they first enter from PC and the vulnerably to hacks.

I don't know if it's just a problem with the GraalOnline Engine as a whole, but hacking really only seems to be a problem on Era. Which is a shame, because from what I've seen people doing around the map, it doesn't seem like anything that should be as prominent as it is. Patches aren't really necessary, just an auto-ban feature would be nice.

[dos]

Player retention on GraalOnline servers has always been a problem. While a bunch of the things you've mentioned are big factors, I feel like you missed one BIG one, and that is the release of GraalOnline Ol'West.

Prior to November 2014, Era was doing pretty well for itself. Graphics wise, the game looked beautiful. SNES-inspired graphics were a hot-topic on mobile at the time. Everything regarding how the game looked was consistent. The community was much less toxic, with moderators focusing their efforts on cleaning up the game's cruel players (even going as far as jailing players who'd curse in PMs.) Interaction between staff and players was much more prevalent beyond events, there'd always be an admin inside of Astro. All-in-all, a pretty decent game.

Then Ol'West announced, and with it went hundreds of GraalOnline players. With Ol'West being the newest and greatest addition to the franchise, it's no surprise that many Era players migrated to the game. This includes staff members, with a bunch of moderators, designers and such moving to the game in order to help out. I specifically remember—even months after the game's release—people selling their items on Era for items on Ol'West.

Ol'West became a dead project, however. Logging onto the game in its current state holds a large Spanish-and-Portuguese speaking audience. Many of the original Era players have quit and/or forgot of the game's existence.

With Era now in a tough spot in terms of management, new members of staff were recruited. And it's clear, at least to many loyalist and veteran players, that they had different visions for the game going forward. Their causes started out noble, with adding new items to the Event House, new bases and new quests for new players. Time went on however, and now we're stuck with items such as "the Rainbow Chemical Gun" and a broken community and basing system based around laundering as many rewards as possible.

What also doesn't help is how silent upper-level management is about GraalOnline's future (at least to casual players.) A lot of things aren't properly communicated to people who play on Graal servers. I try to stay out of drama regarding Graal players beyond the servers I play on, however it is very clear that many people aren't happy with the way their favorite game is being treated.

To add onto this as well, Unixmad is assumingly very old. I would not be surprised if his plan is to release GraalOnline Delteria and retire from the franchise living off of the millions of dollars he has already made. Era is an 11 year old game, and I don't think it's at the top of his priorities to fix within the near future. You gotta remember that he works on maintaining other servers and projects, some of which we don't even know about. If GraalOnline is about optimizing his pockets to prepare for retirement, I can't imagine there's anything incentivizing the risk it would take to revamp every single game from square one. Not to mention the amount of outrage he would get for doing something as bold as resetting the server data and giving everyone a fresh start.

I truly believe that Graal Era has the potential for success, but as it stands, it's going to take a lot more than just a few statistics based on player retention to convince any of the upper-level management to make a change. The game, as it stands, is still exciting enough to attract new players, keep loyalists around and does, in fact have a group of server staff willing to keep it around as long as possible.

Then again though, we'll just have to see. Maybe we'll finally get a sneak peak of GraalOnline 3D and all migrate over there. Who knows?

I'm not sure that Ol' West created significant problems. Possibly? I remember that a lot of manpower was sent over there during the development of the game, and I believe that there might have been more competition for players to come to Era vice Ol' West, but I don't believe that it really could have declined Era's quality at the current level.

The main scheme to invite or keep players during Era's entire existence has been to develop new shops, weapons, events, and to redesign so much of the gmap that it skewed Era's theme. All of these updates that weren't thought about more than once because they were "cool" drove Era's basing system, currency, staff involvement, and most importantly our community out the door. I disagree when people state that most of us 10-year players left because of age or responsibilities (while that may be partially true), but a lot of us left because Era's theme, style, morale, and community took a dive. That statement alone comes from talking to a good few people that I've run into who have been around the block.

Yes, Unixmad is going on 60 or something of the likes. I don't expect much from him, just the same as the entire Graal community hasn't expected much from him across it's existence. I don't expect much to come from this thread either, but I would like something to come from it. I just don't believe that the game, on all levels of management, is in good hands to solve the tough problems. Updates can be released all year long for the next few years, but I don't think that's going to solve the issue of why Era, a game with so much more life for the app store, isn't (and hasn't for the last few years) reaching a consistent playercount of higher than 2,0000 anymore.

Graal3D has been an inconsistent project since 2006. Let's see if we can make it another 15 years and see if it's released.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't think a reset is a solution, you'd be dealing with thousands of angry people who committed their time for years of work only for it to be rolled back to 2010, that includes removing guns.
On the other hand, I'd like to add that the Facebook release of Era has made the player count increase, now that flashplayer is gone and the Facebook's bugs are intolerable the player count decreased.
A proper PC release to Era should be present, and I mean the kind from Graal PC and not any other client, it's the smoothest gameplay I've seen if you've ever tried playing Era PC. The only issues I think are the rights that the players receive when they first enter from PC and the vulnerably to hacks.

I wouldn't say that Era's current playercount derives from not enough cross-platform attention because I still see an ecstatic amount of new players lining up spawning in the East Hospital. I just believe that it's the game itself and community as I've stated aplenty above. Also I would agree with your first statement, and a rollback would likely be the final solution although I'm clearly not calling any shots.

[Vance]

I'm not sure that Ol' West created significant problems. Possibly? I remember that a lot of manpower was sent over there during the development of the game, and I believe that there might have been more competition for players to come to Era vice Ol' West, but I don't believe that it really could have declined Era's quality at the current level.

The main scheme to invite or keep players during Era's entire existence has been to develop new shops, weapons, events, and to redesign so much of the gmap that it skewed Era's theme. All of these updates that weren't thought about more than once because they were "cool" drove Era's basing system, currency, staff involvement, and most importantly our community out the door. I disagree when people state that most of us 10-year players left because of age or responsibilities (while that may be partially true), but a lot of us left because Era's theme, style, morale, and community took a dive. That statement alone comes from talking to a good few people that I've run into who have been around the block.

Yes, Unixmad is going on 60 or something of the likes. I don't expect much from him, just the same as the entire Graal community hasn't expected much from him across it's existence. I don't expect much to come from this thread either, but I would like something to come from it. I just don't believe that the game, on all levels of management, is in good hands to solve the tough problems. Updates can be released all year long for the next few years, but I don't think that's going to solve the issue of why Era, a game with so much more life for the app store, isn't (and hasn't for the last few years) reaching a consistent playercount of higher than 2,0000 anymore.

Graal3D has been an inconsistent project since 2006. Let's see if we can make it another 15 years and see if it's released.

Yeah the Graal3D thing was a joke. Chances are its been cancelled, considering games don't sit in development Hell for that long.

Era's theming is also one big joke. Some ideas are novel, and the designers are really talented. However, I seriously think that the game needs a new, broader sense of appeal to bring back new and old players. The map is one big mish-mash of ideas, what made the game so special to begin with was the creation tools given to the players. Seeing hyperdetailed, higher resolution items in my inventory next to items made with a bottle of piss and 3 colors is jarring, to say the least. It's lost its sense of self in favor of adding items that don't fit it's general theme.

Reconfigure the basing system so that the five main conglomerates can't abuse bases for rewards. Fix the broken trading economy by introducing items that aren't just reskins of another. Optimize the game for devices other than the iPhone and iPad lineup. Get rid of items that are unnecessarily overpowered … for the sake of being overpowered.

The game holds so much potential, but it's gonna take a lot of work. Work that, if I'm being honest, is too much for the team the game already has. This thread is going to do absolutely nothing, in reality. Many players have tried again and again to offer solutions to management on how to revive Graal's expansive community. Until then though, we'll just have to wait and see. The games are on a set-course to crash and burn during this decade; it's surprising how long they've lasted in this gaming landscape.

[dos]

Yeah the Graal3D thing was a joke. Chances are its been cancelled, considering games don't sit in development Hell for that long.

Era's theming is also one big joke. Some ideas are novel, and the designers are really talented. However, I seriously think that the game needs a new, broader sense of appeal to bring back new and old players. The map is one big mish-mash of ideas, what made the game so special to begin with was the creation tools given to the players. Seeing hyperdetailed, higher resolution items in my inventory next to items made with a bottle of piss and 3 colors is jarring, to say the least. It's lost its sense of self in favor of adding items that don't fit it's general theme.

Reconfigure the basing system so that the five main conglomerates can't abuse bases for rewards. Fix the broken trading economy by introducing items that aren't just reskins of another. Optimize the game for devices other than the iPhone and iPad lineup. Get rid of items that are unnecessarily overpowered … for the sake of being overpowered.

The game holds so much potential, but it's gonna take a lot of work. Work that, if I'm being honest, is too much for the team the game already has. This thread is going to do absolutely nothing, in reality. Many players have tried again and again to offer solutions to management on how to revive Graal's expansive community. Until then though, we'll just have to wait and see. The games are on a set-course to crash and burn during this decade; it's surprising how long they've lasted in this gaming landscape.

Yeah I thought as much with the 3D statement.

In all reality I don't think it'd take all too long to fix such issues, but hard decisions from higher administration need to be made; we could at least hope for any actual feedback from the team based on these issues. I think that the biggest issue of the ones I've listed is that it's extremely uninviting for a player to get mowed down within 5 minutes on Era and them learning that they can either immediately spend $50 or countless hours grinding on an app store game to even get started, let alone compete in PK, basing, or sparring - arguably Era's most significant attractions. That's extremely sad and it's been that way for years without any action, let alone attention towards it. The most done about it was to introduce Plasma Corp, or in other words another bandaid for a raging issue. All that's left for players to do is to get involved with the now non-existent community. These are the reasons why I believe that the entire staff team is either legally blind, they just ignore the issue hoping that they'll go away, or they've tried and just never relayed it to the community.

Era's theme is another issue on it's own, but I would place that behind the above statement. It drives me nuts nonetheless.

[Vance]

Yeah I thought as much with the 3D statement.

In all reality I don't think it'd take all too long to fix such issues, but hard decisions from higher administration need to be made; we could at least hope for any actual feedback from the team based on these issues. I think that the biggest issue of the ones I've listed is that it's extremely uninviting for a player to get mowed down within 5 minutes on Era and them learning that they can either immediately spend $50 or countless hours grinding on an app store game to even get started, let alone compete in PK, basing, or sparring - arguably Era's most significant attractions. That's extremely sad and it's been that way for years without any action, let alone attention towards it. The most done about it was to introduce Plasma Corp, or in other words another bandaid for a raging issue. All that's left for players to do is to get involved with the now non-existent community. These are the reasons why I believe that the entire staff team is either legally blind, they just ignore the issue hoping that they'll go away, or they've tried and just never relayed it to the community.

Era's theme is another issue on it's own, but I would place that behind the above statement. It drives me nuts nonetheless.

Judging from the way the game has been handled (and the type of sociopaths that play it), I think it's a mix of willful ignorance and hoping these problems go away. Every time a new update is implemented, the community rages for 48 hours and then the status quo is restored.

I think the staff's issue is that they apply this "everything will be okay, after all we manage the game" attitude to bigger issues, such as the ones you've stated. There are members of the development teams who want to fix the game, however I think they're just not in the position to bring them to Sir Unixmad's attention. A lot of the development team aren't even done with their primary studies yet, so chances are that they're not really in a position to fix an 11 year old game; they're hoping that these problems go away on their own.

Not an excuse by any means, certainly an explanation though.