Topic
Maybe I'm just missing the point?
Is there a time when the game becomes more like what I expect out of a game?
I guess I kind of had a sort of 'multi-player super mario' kind of expectation going in but so far - not that I've played it for terribly long mind you - all I've seen is:
walk up to weird thing
do something weird to weird thing
get something weird
take that weird thing to another weird thing and do something else that's weird.
And I'm totally not trying to troll anyone with this by the way. This wouldn't be the first popular game that simply didn't catch my interest.
I ask because this seems so minimalist that I almost can't believe that there isn't something I'm missing. If nothing else I think I should let the devs know that I thought the trailer was a bit misleading. Again - not trying to make a nuisance of myself. I was interested in trying it and I do think that there's a high level of professionalism exhibited here. Just disappointed cause I thought it might be something that it appears not to be after all.
Replies
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Playing style HAS changed since we opened, and it's not just the new players.
I'm still busy getting skills up to easy survival levels, so most of the time I used to have for socializing is now used earning donations for favor. As people level up in their skill trees, you'll likely see a return toward the easy sociability of beta. -
"or my personal favorite "nobody here but us trees". (nanookie knows what i'm talking about)"
yes I do! For those that don't, at one point, all the trees, rocks and animals would talk to you and offer up amusing bits of backstory (that feature is currently turned off).
CBC and me and a few others, Helium Penguin, caley dunn, Arthur Mo, noticed that when you stand behind a tree and talk, your chat bubble makes it look like the tree is talking to you--meaning the large foreground wooden trees in Bortola, Muufo and those areas, btw. So we all spent a very awesome evening playing at Trees Talking Sh**. The goal was to get passers-by to stop when they saw the tree talk. If you got the player to come behind the tree with you, that was extra points. If they stayed and played with you, like CBC and Helium Penguin did with me, you got some new compadres. Ah...good times. Good times. -
@glumpot i feel you, but i think what we're looking for will come when the game is more established. we're still in the very first week of open play, after all.
my biggest problem with Glitch right now is feeling useful (for lack of a better term). sure, i can mine and grow herbs and raise my animals...but so can anyone else. i can sell to the vendors for money, but then the game doesn't feel social. i can sell at auction, but i'm left with the feeling that anyone could produce for themselves what i can provide to them. i hoped there'd be some system of class, where you could choose certain abilities & skills to specialize in, but apparently that feature was implemented and then removed during testing. my boyfriend and i both play, so we've divided up what skills we'll each learn so we can at least be helpful towards each other, but the game as a whole isn't very cooperative, as far as i can tell. -
Glitch is a game about grinding. you've got to look at real life versions of grinding in order to understand why people enjoy Glitch.
which doesn't mean that the point of the game is to grind, but all the activity in Glitch swirls around The Grind in one way or another.
some people like grinding. they like to do simple, repetitive tasks with positive feedback. the grinding involves random drops that have a Casino Gambling like flair.
i think Glitch compares better to Casino Gambling than it compares to to any video game, MMO or not.
Ajaya Bliss is a good example of this. look at the randomness and celebration when getting a particularly juicy random mining bonus. JACKPOT! or a particularly juicy drop when harvesting. notice the downright pavlovian response when people hear the Rube Music and hope they've been the one randomly chosen. random Cubimals. random amount of un-mined sparkly when you enter a street. look at The Auctions, where you gamble currants that your price isn't too high. even when things aren't random, it's usually some kind of repetitive tasks requiring no skill, in exchange for a reward.
look at that, then look at people pulling levers on slot machines over and over again in a Casino. heck, Glitch Cherries look just like Slot Machine Cherries and the process of acquiring either type is very similar.
which is not to say that that's all there is to Glitch. have you ever worked a Charity Bingo? or been in a Casino? there's a community of sorts in those places. how the staff interacts with "the regulars" and how they interact with one another. so goes the social component of Glitch.
the 'good thing' about Glitch is that while it uses all the same tools and play mechanics as a Casino, Tiny Speck isn't taking a huge chunk of your income, just a huge chunk of your time, and presumably you will enjoy yourself in that time for the much the same reason enjoy going to Casinos.
so what is the OP missing? well, i look at a Casino and think "how the hell can anyone enjoy that? it's a scam and the tables are always rigged to benefit the house. it is nothing more than an elaborate way to throw away money with nothing tangible in return"
what i never groked, and what should have been incredibly obvious to me .. is that people LIKE elaborate ways to throw away money with nothing tangible in return! it is the entire reason Casino "Gaming" activities are so popular. replace money with time, and you've got Glitch. -
All I can say is that you see and play the game in a very different way to me, Striatic.
I realise that probably means to you that I don't have enough self-awareness to understand that I'm taking part in the grind, but all I can say is that I really don't identify with the excitement of getting a juicy mining bonus or any of those other things you mention. I am not interested in trying to beat the house, or understand the mechanics of the game to maximise returns. I know those things are motivations for you and others (you only have to look at threads where people talk about the math to see there are plenty of player who like this) but it couldn't feel more different from what I get out of playing Glitch.
Most of my time is spent wandering around different areas of the map, looking at stuff, trying new things, talking to people, watching people do creative things inside the game. It amuses me to do that. I like letting it wash over me.
I think, ultimately, the question you're trying to answer is why play *any* game? And I think once you get to that point, you're basically boiling it down to the elaborate ways that humans try to make their lives more enjoyable or meaningful or memorable to others before they die.
Which I suspect is not really what the OP was looking for. :) -
"Most of my time is spent wandering around different areas of the map, looking at stuff, trying new things, talking to people, watching people do creative things inside the game. It amuses me to do that. I like letting it wash over me."
you're in Vegas for the shows. that's cool. lots of people are. -
"walk up to weird thing
do something weird to weird thing
get something weird
take that weird thing to another weird thing and do something else that's weird."
Ok, I got this Vegas metaphor....So Glitch is actually just a kind of INTERACTIVE CIRQUE DU SOLEIL!
ETA: I just don't agree with the Vegas metaphor..I think Glitch is a house of mirrors, where the doors and passages shift randomly. -
Dude, that response couldn't have been more obvious. Continue to stretch your metaphor and it will eventually snap.
It's all very well to say "hey! it's a casino! and people are dumb, feckless creatures who like to push buttons and get rewards! and some people like to watch! We are creatures of habit and happy to be exploited!"... but that doesn't really address the point of why somebody is motivated by *this* game or not. It doesn't address the OP, or any of the other points in the thread. It's just a form of grandstanding.
To my point: while it's true enough that many of us like to work out how to get rewards, you are clearly more motivated by trying to maximise those rewards than others.
More importantly, however, you are obviously motivated even more by being able to display your knowledge of how to maximise those rewards to others. That's clearly a niche (as is my own voyeuristic/ambling gameplay). All human motivations are similar, but they do not manifest themselves in the same way. -
To get back to
@Illinest
Those hints were pretty vague. Are you talking about a coherent story development? Or is it that you feel the emergent play has no long-term goal? I'm really fascinated in what it is people are looking for (or think they're looking for). -
the thread took another strange turn. well for what it's worth I think there's a lot of merit to the Vegas analogy. on the other hand I don't think there's any reason to denigrate the style of anyone's entertainment.
I think I should stick with glitch though - and try to form suggestions of what i'd like to see in this particular game.
which ill be thinking about before I post. get back to you later tonight. - Illinest, I'd like to see you hang around for a bit, at least till you get leveled up to 15 or so. Then see what you can do to make Glitch what you want it to be. I've seen players come up with some amazing things: a casino, a drug operation, player-originated quests, performance art, etc. You may find that building the sort of game that you want to play is not impossible here.
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Well I played about 3 hours worth tonight rather than dwell on things that I don't get yet.
I think I kind of over-specialized on my skills. I've been focusing on 'gnome-like' skills like tinkering and I'm working on engineering overnight. problem being i think it's going to be tough for me to repair something for 15 seconds straight. Eventually I suppose.
I didn't really understand hell. I went there after I used the drugs. grape squishing?
so can i eventually build a rocket? That's what I want to know. -
ooh... a rocket would be nice. Maybe we can go to the moon of Ur and see if there are moon-piggies around... or if the moon is made of butterfly-milk cheese...
sorry, I have nothing intelligent to add to this conversation. Glitch's primary appeal to me is in the whimsy and the curious. I love walking up to something weird and doing something weird to something weird. -
There is a Moon, or so I have heard. I have not been there. Well, maybe once. No, actually that was a dream. A waking dream? Anyway...
"so can i eventually build a rocket? That's what I want to know."
You really ARE the Illinest! :P
Hell One, we are all hoping, is just the first in a line of progressively more complicated Hellz. Hoping that eventually I will land in a Hell that makes me wish that all I had to do was some grape squishing. -
@Illinest
I totally agree with you about the trailer. To me, it looked like Oddworld meets The Sims, which would have been cool too, but wasn't what I was looking for.
I am only level 11, but so far, the game has been what I was hoping for. I look forward to see what future weirdness I can get up to. -
Now I want to know what striatic is in Vegas for. =D
I'm here for the roller coaster! -
hey I know I'm not really getting to a point with any of this but I honestly don't know enough about the game to say that any of the following isn't already in the game. but I will provide a list of things id like to see.
- similar to the facial expressions, id like to see some full body animations. for example if you could press a key to make your guy throw his hands up and lean forward as if to scare you. BOO! with enough expressions and body animations you could stage theater shows. glitch as a conduit for acting - that is to say.
- now for my second suggestion - it might be something that is already in the game. it might not even be feasible in a flash game. just gonna throw it out there anyways. I think it would be cool if you could collect colors one by one and then compose drawings using whatever colors you've collected. similarly I think it would be mega- awesome if you could collect musical notes and chords one by one and compose short songs with them. on a related note - guess what school I'm in right now? yeah I'm in art school.
- day and night cycles. it would make the world look different and I think that would be cool. even better if you make some items only available during night - like fireflies.
- special holiday events and items. I have to guess that this is already planned? even fake holidays would be okay. extra credit if you adopt some foreign holidays.
- animation for your character to show that youre sloshed. just some gin blossoms and some bubbles rising up from your head would be sufficient but extra extra credit for a swaying animation. if this is implemented then I will become a drunk engineer.
- the ability to make a rocket and use it to go to the moon and a space station and an alien planet. please.