Topic
Thoughts about street building as a community activity
Yesterday I had my first opportunity to participate in street building projects. There were two going on at the same time, one called I think The Landing? that seemed very popular and often spoken about in the help chat, and one more quiet project right off little Elysian Slope, where my house is. The latter did not, at first, work right, contributions were not acknowledged, but it was soon put right. I visited both to see what might be needed, and hustled off to pick up some supplies to contribute, finding that once I'd returned to The Landing most of the things I'd picked up were no longer necessary. So I buzzed back to Elysian and made some contributions, even planning my next skill to be learned based on what these two projects were calling for in the future.
I'd had it in my mind, though, that street building was somehow a community activity, which I understood to mean that somehow we had to work together to complete it. In a sense, this was true, in that no one player had all the "ingredients" and skills to be able to complete it solo. Occasionally someone who seemed to take the role of cheerleader or manager would put out a call for a particular missing part or skill, or someone who was grinding away on something would ask those nearby to provide food for energy so they could continue cranking out whatevers; both of these required interaction with others. But in some sense, it was all very much a solitary activity. Other than someone saying, "I need an egg," and four people in the area handing over an egg simultaneously, I didn't see all that much interaction with others in a way that meant "community" to me. It felt to me as if there were a dozen drive-by contributors who tossed some plants or beans into the sprite's pot and then there was nothing more they could do except stand and watch others who had advanced meditation skills or could make dozens of hard bubbles. No need to talk to other players or interact other than to provide raw materials for someone higher on the experience chain (whose contribution would then be registered as more "significant" and who would reap further bonuses from their input). Maybe that's enough interaction for most people; I'm not sure what I expected, but it wasn't quite this.
The current street creation projects are a great step beyond individual quests towards community activities, but for me somehow there still seems to be some interaction quality missing. I know this topic has been discussed in other threads, but I'd welcome thoughts about whether players are satisfied with this level of interaction or if it's worth suggesting other ideas to make some projects more social.
Replies
- Thinking out loud -- One thought I had was that rather than asking for "hard bubbles", for instance, perhaps the street sprite could have a pantry where the raw ingredients would need to be contributed, then "checked out" by players who could operate on those, replacing the finished goods into the pantry. Even foodstuffs for energy could be provided by contributors. Some way to require many players to provide (and be credited for their) inputs, take some of them to transform into something else (with the inherent possibility that some thief might yank some of the inputs and run away with them: this isn't just an all-happy all-pretty yippy-skippy world after all), and put back the intermediate products. Along with a limit on how much an individual player could participate (thereby assuring that the higher-skilled players would more likely wait to participate until after newer players had provided the inputs, and requiring some measure of coordination to maybe "sign up for" a later skill-need and be notified when it was time for that), something like this might be more equitable and provide more interaction between players.
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Eleanor, I think I've said most of what I have to say about the process in this thread... alpha.glitch.com/forum/gene...
In general I think that the level of interactivity, effort, and SCOPE of the current projects would fit small projects with low impact on the world, For one of the projects in the last test I was the 15th rank contributor -- and though a low, low % of the contribution that means at least 14 others had their hand in it directly, and whoever else helped gathering resources or food.
But I think that for things like new streets and other high world impact projects 15 players working together and banging it out in 15minutes just isn't the proper scale. When the game launches and has thousands of players running around the contributions will just have to scale up in some way.
I think that in that scaling up we'll see new ways to make things collaborative and interactive. More need for skill trees to mix, more need for supporting food/radiation, etc.
But for small projects around the world, I wouldn't stress too much over the scale or interaction needed. -
It might make more sense if the final section of each street upgrade was a cycle of high level and low level items such as advanced meditation x 25 then beans x 50 then butterfly egg x 1 repeated 5 times. That way everyone is involved in the finish. One of the projects last night I turned up and contributed 240/250 of the final push while other players could only stand and watch. That made it a bit less fun for me and I'm sure a bit of an anti-climax for others.
On the whole though, I loved the street creation interface. Once it started up, it was easy to use. One slight niggle is that it hides the street view. When doing multiple actions (meditating x 50 etc) perhaps it should shrink so we can see the game? -
the street creation interface shouldn't be rigid and overly prescriptive.
players can self-organize, and "reserving" work sounds like it could have all kinds of unintended complications.
when would the "reservations" expire? who sets the duration? would a fixed time limit be appropriate for all projects? how is having the first person seeing the project reserving tasks necessarily better than the first person seeing the project completing tasks?
reserving work is important and inevitable, don't get me wrong. but it is already happening and i think it is something groups of players can work out over time, creating their own systems using chat, boards, API derived tools and so forth. maybe official glitch based work activity trackers and project sign ins .. but an official system for locking in your 'piece of the pie' seems too inflexible.
in terms of ensuring more public involvement on the large scale, super-public projects?
just have *a lot* more low level hoe-type-work involved. look at the amount of energy required, and make sure enough hoe-type-work is required so that it is absolutely impossible for a small group to get it done in a short period of time due to per-day energy limits. it's pretty simple, really. would also maximize the usefulness of tinkertoolers and radiators and food droppers, compared to the current general emphasis on resource collection and high level skills, which should probably be more like critical 'keys' that 'unlock' the major group effort.
just increase the hoe-type-work as little as ten-fold and everyone will always have *some* way to get involved. - yeah giving something to someone who could use it gave no benefit whatsoever. not good. if i gave a normal bubble to someone who could make a hard bubble for the street, they got all the benefits.
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"if i gave a normal bubble to someone who could make a hard bubble for the street, they got all the benefits."
you could have agreed to give him the bubbles, have him convert them into hard bubbles, have him give you back half the hard bubbles so you could each donate half.
i mean, trying to track secondary donation layers sounds more difficult than just doing a little donation arrangement, if you care about that kind of thing.