Topic
general kitchen tool conceptual fustercluck
First of all, the new visible kitchen tool wear and predictable breakage behavior is a welcome change. I've been devoting my Glitch life to breaking kitchen tools for the past couple of weeks, because there is that stoopid badge.
Now, clearly it's my fault that I'm insane and therefore need the badge, but there's some logic involved in that those friggin' kitchen tool toughening cards have been glutting up my queue. If I want to pursue that aspect of the game, I have to deal with this grind issue first.
Anyway, I just wanted to call attention to the general design issue involved. I'm pretty sure it's been mentioned before, but I was asking questions about how the new mechanics work in the Help channel, and they suggested I post.
More broadly, I suppose, it's worth noting that no matter how ridiculous a badge is, there is some loon out there who will dedicate their play to getting it. I'm pretty sure you guys made a number of those badges as sadistic (but friendly) jokes, or maybe just out of curiosity to see if anyone was actually nuts enough to bother. Well, we are that nuts.
I don't make excuses, but would make the general plea to take that kinda thing into account, so things which are meant to be benefits don't turn out to be hindrances for the insane.
As a concrete example of what you're motivating the players to do, I've listened to hours and hours of podcasts, cooking one rice at a time, trying to break my kitchenware. Again, totally my fault for choosing to spend my time this way, but won't you please think of the poor mentally ill and consider what new changes are incentivizing? Sadly, there are more of us out here than are immediately apparent.
A positive example is the choice to increase the quoin values in the new jumpy tree lands. This encourages people to visit and to jump, so hopefully fewer people will spam the space bar in the Cebarkul log for hours.
Well, maybe not, but at least there's a "productive" outlet for the compulsive collector in that case.
Replies
- hahah I just logged on and all my kitchen tools had broken.....hadnt used them in a week too
- I'm confused about the badges now - do we have to resist any urge to repair them, so they actually break completely? It's nice to see the status but it's hard to remember which ones not to repair if we want to be eligible for the badging; I liked it when we couldn't screw up by repairing them before they actually needed it. Or am I misunderstanding? or are the badges no longer attainable?
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As of yesterday, the consensus on the Help channel was that you have to let them completely break, and then repair them all the way up to 100% to get another tick mark.
However, there was some discussion that they might change it to repairing any kitchen tool currently at less than 50%, but there were no explicit details as to how this might work, since at the time it was still up for consideration.
The claim was made that they'll tell us if/when they make such a change. -
Biff, I enjoyed your post but am confused.
What are you asking about, really? Are you upset that (for some reason) you think it is now harder to break your tools? If anything, the new counter will help with that. Are you concerned that repairing tools that you did not break won't count (not true BTW)? Are you just unhappy that something, anything, changed?
Sorry if I am being dense but after multiple re-readings I don't get your point, unless it was just a rant. -
Upon re-reading, I agree that my point isn't entirely clear.
What I was trying to say is that changes which are meant to be benefits, or even just new fun stuff, should not induce dramatically unfun behavior in the insane among us.
The specific example was the unintended consequence of adding the anti-breakage cards which made us compulsively try to break all our kitchenware nownownow just so we could get past the card glut. Things are now significantly better (even if you accidentally purchased the cards) with the new breakage meters, which I consider to be a huge improvement.
Just being able to do things in batch mode was enough for me to get that miserable badge today and put that angry pooping baby to bed. It's much less stressful to be the rat who gets the treat in a predictable fashion.
I mean, "do some repetitive and initially boring task X times" is sort of inherently unfun anyway, but for some reasons our brains make us do these things...and for about 30 seconds, there's a sense of accomplishment and then it's on to the next hateful thing that we have no rational explanation or excuse for doing.
But that's why we play games, right? I guess...? Anyone?
Best not to think too much about it.
So, which unreasonable waste of time shall I work on next? -
Heh.
Now I get it :) -
Mart Lume said
cooking tools will need to be repaired from 50% (or less) to 100% in one go for them to count towards the "Kitchen Division" achievements. -
There is a glitch-y urban myth that the best way to break a cooking tool is to cook one thing at a time, over and over. I don't believe that's true. I went through a spell of cooking mild sauce (for XP) and broke my saucepan every day cooking max-sized badges. I've broken many utensils cooking max batches, never single ones.
When you get a strange piece of advice, ask for second and third opinions first. - Or test it yourself. Empiricism isn't all bad.
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It was clear that making one thing at a time was productive in the past, given that tools would occasionally break after just a few uses. At the very least, it saved on resources.
That behavior seemed to change a few days before the addition of wear bars. Things behaved pretty much as they do now, just without feedback.
Now it's obvious that making things one at a time would be a waste of time. -
Well, I tested it myself, and it's not working as described by Mart Lume in the thread referenced above. I had the assistant badge (23 repairs), and I made over 116 batches of flour, 51 or 52 at a time (I haven't upgraded my knife and board, so each of those took me down to either 48% or 49%). 116 repairs, and I still haven't got the badge.
I'm going to have to gather a lot more grain to try it again going down to 0% each time. :( :( :(
--Me - They were still working out what the new rules were going to be as I finished, so I just went and full-on broke every tool. That worked (although it doesn't resurrect your truckloads of grain!).