Topic
The Magic of Glitch
I had been looking forward to a weekend-long test since i began playing glitch and holy groddle pig crap was it amazing. From day 1, i knew that Glitch would be an amazing game. I realized its possibilities and potential. This weekend we witnessed and experienced what makes Glitch shine and why this game will be HUGE.
Community collaboration and contribution. I have never played a game that brought together the community as well as Glitch does. Street creation is the first big feature that allows this. A huge project where all glitchizens come together to create and even vote on a new street. The leaderboard even allows for some competition but for those who only care about the output and making groddle a better place, street creation is a really fun feature.
I woke up on saturday morning to find dozens of people crowded around hechy track and leftmost graze. We came together to make it happen! Here is a screen of the moments before leftmost graze was created:
i53.tinypic.com/5m0dw4.png
You can see hoe-ers, tinkerers fixing peoples broken hoes and people radiating to keep energy up. There were others who shared food and simply words of encouragement. It didnt end there. We worked together through the upgrade as well. BBQ and blending seemed to be the biggest obstacle and i was one of the only ones who had the skills to do it. I ended up with about 30% on the project leaderboard but i could not have done it without the help of everyone there. It wasnt me. It was all of us. It did not end with me powering through it by myself. Everyone offered their assistance and helped any way they could. We split up the tasks and everyone did their job. We had people on meat, people grinding spices, people making grocery runs. I ate a lot of cabbage.
Not only that, but i made tons of new friends! My friend list nearly quadrupled this test as i met so many awesome people. Despite the fact that someone robbed my house and kidnapped my chicks, everyone in glitch is amazing.
Here we are in awe of our creation, moments after we finished the upgrade. i51.tinypic.com/a3jdk8.png
Of course we ran into problems. With all that awesome collaboration, our chat totally bogged up the help channel. We were kicked out but we made a New Streets group to talk in (which i encourage everyone to join). The global help channel will eventually be killed so a possible solution could be hub chats. Meaning public chats for the current hub(neighborhood/area) that you are in. The global chat definitely helps in communicating with others on different streets. We found this useful in getting ingredients and stuff for projects.
Unlike other MMO's, we are not grinding away in dungeons to become stronger to defeat everyone. We do things together, we socialize, communicate, and contribute to make Glitch a better place.
Street creation is a wonderful feature. I'm sure Tiny Speck will create more features that bring together the community and encourage social interaction and collaboration. That is the magic of glitch. We're all looking forward to more of these.
Party at my house (31 middle valley clearing quarter east) on the next weekend test! Free beer for everyone. Bring music.
Anyways, lets hear all your stories from this awesome weekend test.
Replies
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...I think I'm talking in circles. :P I'll stop now because I probably haven't said anything new since my first post. Sorry, guys, I'm a long time internet forum person and all this is addictive.
See you at the next test! -
I can't speak for how any one else felt ignored, but I felt this way on Sunday, and it wasn't pleasant, especially after the very positive experiences I had with projects earlier in the weekend. And how I felt ignored is that I wanted to participate, didn't have the right stuff to directly contribute to the street spirit but did have all the right stuff to contribute to someone else who could perform a task (blending, cooking, creating, what have you) but who couldn't seem to get anyone's attention in any chat to donate to them the stuff I had.
This was very different from the experience I had with the earlier projects, where there was communication on the Help and later the New Streets channel. By Sunday, the New Streets channel wasn't being used, the local chat and help channels seemed like calling out with no response and I felt shut out. It wasn't that I felt deprived of the proceeds - I, too, was happy to donate to projects for the sake of community and street creation and not for profit - but I did feel shut out of the chance to participate, which can happen if a few people stayed tuned into each other and tune out the requests from anyone else.
I didn't at all care whether I received a reward from the game because it was just so cool to feel needed and to contribute, which is likely the set-up for how I felt on Sunday when my contributions weren't needed or accepted or acknowledged. So, that was an interesting psychological revelation (and cheaper than psychotherapy).
So, I'm surprised and relieved that this is even being discussed, since I felt isolated by the end of the day on Sunday. Contrast this to how totally energized I felt on the first few projects! Wow, it was the most awesome in-game experience I've had yet and really showed me how awesome Glitch could be as a social game. It was enervating to participate with a group of strangers and to give so much simply for the excitement that creating a street provided. I died once from lack of energy, had a ton of quests pile up on me, neglected my crops and house and whatever, but also received energy from others (food, meditation), built a street, and made a few friends. That was more awesome than currants.
But I think it's naive to think that such community spirit can either last or be universal (sadly, more of a reflection of how I view the human condition). I don't think people will always want to build for the sake of building, but will ask, "How can this profit me?" It's not even clear to me that the game's creators think that players will give selflessly, but more that an exchange-based economy will get projects done (else why have the auction system?).
After the Sunday experience, I also can see how projects could also easily be co-opted by a clique of players to the exclusion of others (not saying that this was intended on Sunday, but it shows that it is possible).
Perhaps rather than the mandated lower-level involvement, there could be far, far more items requested by the street spirits. If it takes 100 meats and 100 juices or 500 whatevers to create the Recipe that is the 'final step', maybe instead of relying on the kindness of strangers to donate those items to certain players (and that relies on those players accepting those items from either that person or this person), the spirit asks for the items directly and then 'holds' them for the advanced players who have the skill set to combine them into the final product ("use awesome pot to create X now that we have all the ingredients"). Then, instead of me having 100 of this thing to donate to the player who has that skill, I just give it to the spirit, if the spirit still needs it.
Or, I do like the idea of a dedicated project channel to communicate what is needed and who will get it. I still think that this could easily be monopolized by a group of players to the exclusion of others (and want to emphasize that I don't think this was consciously happening on Sunday, but we tend to communicate with those we either know or want to communicate with if they are at hand, which sets up the social clique thing).
Oh my, I have rambled. I'm also hanging onto that this is all in alpha, it's all just for fun for us players and that the game will continue notching up and being more awesome as time goes on and tests go by (because I have liked what I've seen so far!). -
first let me quote the last thing I said in my last post, because though I think the discussion by everyone is helpful, It sounds like we all could get a bit less confrontational in our tone...
"sounds whiney as it sits there in the textbox here, but I think the overall mechanic was great to see!"
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"street building should inevitably slow down. the speed this weekend was unsustainable" - striatic
I think the thing I liked most here was the general group mechanic. But I too don't think street building can be the task at this scale going forward or else it'll just be out of hand. Smaller, less consequential projects in the world should be completable in this time, but map changes that can be completed by 5 people in a world of thousands just doesn't seem to me to make game sense. I don't doubt that'll be though through multiple times before launch, so most of my post above was helping flush out my observations on that front.
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As to the issue of people ignored or left out or working for nothing, I think that was just a case of so many of these small projects in the few days that by the end of the weekend players (a) had the hang of the mechanic and (b) had a pile of resources waiting. I went out to mine rock when we were short, but so did 5 other people, same thing with bubble making or this or whatever.
Once you had 5 or 10 people standing around at the spirit who can do all but 1 task and there just wasn't any need to round up the troops or speak to anyone - you got the notice it was happening, showed up, and worked as fast as you can to be able to contribute before the requirement was filled.
When the mechanic was getting flushed out and people didn't know what requirements were and had to go searching for enough rock because they crushed all theirs, or looking for planks or cooks, it was more necessary to rally the troops and use all the possible chat channels.
I don't think it was a result of the players intentionally ignoring anyone or keeping anything to themselves, so I don't think I'd read much into that isolated feeling coming *from* the player base.
Though I do think it's a great benefit to the game designers to see and hear that this was felt by players at the end of a long test weekend. -
As someone who searched their best and worked hard to get into the Street Building activities, I'll admit it was hard to be included (especially when a group of people have already have done the easy stuff and you don't have the skills to contribute yet). Although, I think there can be many ways to lower the traffic on a street, in the help chat, and include users of all levels. If I were planning this, I'd make the street building a part of the quests. For instance, you finally learned blending 2, and are sent to a project that has only needs the blending done. It would be great to add to the existing quests, but give another dimension to it.
I'll admit to playing for myself and by myself at the beginning and it took until late Friday evening to even discover the help chat as a way of working on larger projects with people. I like the community that works together and tries its best to include people. If anyone ever feels left out, I'm very sorry and I'll personally hold back on working in the street building projects until the last hard part comes up so that others can have the chance to participate! -
The bigger the map, the more simultaneous street building projects there can be, the less people will be shut out.
A strong sense of global community is only ever around in early days. People join like crazy and the small town feel goes away. -
"If I were planning this, I'd make the street building a part of the quests. For instance, you finally learned blending 2, and are sent to a project that has only needs the blending done. It would be great to add to the existing quests, but give another dimension to it."
that's trying to make street building just another quest withno social component.
the rock tells you what to do, you thoughtlessly do it and get an XP cookie. mission accomplished.
no planning, no interaction, just more doing what the rock tells you to.
see, i'm starting to notice a difference between people who got into the street making and those who didn't.
those who didn't? complained about "all the easy tasks being done".
guess what, lots of people encountered "all the easy tasks being done", and reacted *very* differently than demanding a forced share of some mythical prize pie.
instead, they started doing things without an XP cookie to motivate them! shocking!
that's exactly what you see in the screen capture up top. people who only had skills for jobs that had already been done, not taking their ball and going home because the game didn't give them an official task they didn't have to talk with anyone to get, but instead radiating and tinkertooling and food dropping in order to complete a task outside of the rock/XP cookie dynamic. -
and yeah, the small town feeling will inevitably go away.
I think the idea is to have multiple, self instigating small towns within the game.. some of them literally virtual small towns.
"literally virtual", wow. - you should have the ability to build your own town with friends and to collaborate together with a group of friends only in a small town. The more you work the more the town grows. you start of with about 5 streets and every 5 joint levels (everybody's levels combined) you unlock a new street. This would go on and maybe at 50 you unlock a new section like IX. You can do projects and work for the greater good of your town... this would work better when there are many people playing. The group limit would expand as the town grew. And if you do not have a friend to play with you would join a kind of matchmaking group where you can form a random town.
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i really like that idea. street building leading to town building.
one tweak tho, instead of each town spawning it's own Ix, maybe just a version of Ix built from Ix like elements?
just to keep individual towns from having cookie cutter neighbourhoods. - oh yeah.. you can maybe decide what to call the street, what vendor (this should be limited) to have on the street, and whatnot. this would lead to customizable cities and towns for specific things or abundant streets. Later on you might be able to teleport to other peoples towns or make your own town a visiting spot.
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like a teleporting stone in the center of town with different settings depending on how "sleepy" you want the town to be.
but this really demands its own ideas topic.. -
wait... there was pie?
I loved the build together options. I'd love for there to be a skill tree for communicating with street spirits in the first place to unlock their project potentials. (this might help the dev's too, if they don't need to manually set up the projects, leading to more organic explosion based on street whisperers involvements)
I participated in several streets and upgrades and did notice there was a good deal of variety of things being asked for, objects and more complex skill related things.
I don't think there should be level only quotas for things, as each person picks their skills in different orders, so someone might be really good at something at a lower level.
However, I do think that some projects in the world should be only for lower skill levels or only for experienced skilled levels.
ie. users with higher level cooking skills won't be making flour for a basic project. some project requirements might exclude those who are overqualified (complex projects already exclude those who are underqualified)
it didn't feel all that unbalanced to me, I found it very exciting, and if I couldn't participate for some of the parts, I was totally looking at the skill tree to see if I could be ready for the next one.