Topic
Feedback: after 1st 1 1/2 hours of play
my first experience feedback:
I got my invite near the end of last weekend's test (12/12/10) but only had time to do the tutorial bit at the beginning.
Thoughts on that: I thought it was cute, although maybe the music + the cute language from the rock was maybe a little too sugar laden. My partner's first thought was 'is this a kids game? why are you playing it?'
Level 1-3 (lunchtime, 21/12/2010)
My first real game time. I've had a look at the forums over the past week and followed advice I read there to just explore the world. Which I did.
Thoughts:
Map/Navigation/getting around:
What works for me: the map works, signposts work -including the tiny versions you can see in the minimized map while in the game. They really help. And by 'work' I mean I found them intuitive to use, and they function the way I expect them to.
What I had trouble with: actually visualising the map/landscape in my mind. Even after an hour (and I was almost exclusively exploring Groddle Forest) I was still having to open the map each time I came across a new signpost to see whether that would take me right (err, East?), left, up or down... and whether I'd been to that area before. As game play in each place can only be right to left or vice versa, and the glitch world rotates around that, I lost all sense of direction each time I entered a new place. As someone who is a map lover in real life, I am used to going to a new place (city, country, whatever) and looking at a map for a bit, consulting it maybe a couple more times as I explore to get my bearings, and then packing the thing away in my bag as I've sort of 'memorized it'. With the glitch map, I just couldn't get my bearings, so I've given it some thought:
I'm not sure how I navigate IRL, exactly, but I'm very good at it, so I must use all sorts of clues without really noticing. Is it that the landscape/ appearance of Groddle forest is too homogenous and I'm missing those clues? When you're in the game you can't get a sense of the bigger picture, like direction of light, maybe? (shadows on the right of the trees would indicate.. something?) Mountain peaks in the background? If you've ever lived in Vancouver you know that 'Mountain' means 'North'. Send a Vancouverite to Richmond and they get totally lost 'cause I couldn't see the mountains'. If you've ever done any back country exploring in the North West, you know that moss grows noticeably thicker on one side of the trees than the other, indication prevailing winds and compass direction. What if the terrain sloped gently, so if you were going 'East' you were going very slightly uphill? Or if the middle of the forest was more meadow, with flowers, which become more sparse as you head away from centre into the darker forest? As you see more flowers, you know you're heading towards the middle? Or the same could be done more simply with shades of colour.
One more thing about navigating: there seem to be two kinds of people re navigation: some carry a 'mental map' image which they consult like a road map (three roads over then turn left then 5 roads further turn right) while others navigate by landmarks (turn left by the yellow house then drive until you get to the McDonalds and turn right). I'm the 'mental map' kind.
Getting around in each place was great and very clear, I liked climbing trees and rock faces, etc. I suck at jumping to get things, but that's okay.
Skills/Learning- I really liked this idea when I came across it in the forums and saw the skill tree. Those skills sounded so cool!
So I was pretty disappointed to find that it's a load of rubbish. You click on a button, the rock holds a book for a while and a status bar displays in another tab? What's the point of that? I thought I'd learn things. Like a tutorial about some fun made up thing or other, and some pig petting practice with advice, and that could all take the indicated 9 minutes after which I could return to game play with my newly learned pig petting skill and start fondling all the piggie striatics. Learning benefits the world, and the self and should take some time. It's time well spent.
Instead, learning feels like a semi-aborted initial Very Good Idea that has eroded so there's not much left of it. Instead, quests now seem to have taken the place of 'learning'- a nominal task where you're given sketchy information on how to complete it and you have to go out and work it out and learn in the process. Also fun, but his should be the second step in the learning.
Other thoughts- there were a couple of times in that 1 1/2 hours where I started thinking 'what else is there to do'? Again, I think this may be to do with the homogenous feel of Groddle Forest. Each 'new' place felt a lot like the 'old' place I'd just been to. More pigs, more chickens, more butterflies and trees... all very nice but it did make me want to look for 'the rest' which surely must be on one of these streets. (sidenote: as a Vancouverite, I laughed a lot at 'Burnabee'. Genius.)
Items and Vendors
having read in the forums about how confused many people were about the use of items and what they did, etc, I liked all the info I could get in game (I assume this is new?). The balance between available info and 'mysterious glimpses into the unknown' seemed good to me. I felt I knew enough about certain things so when I was told I couldn't plant my beans cause I hadn't seasoned them I thought 'Ooooh, okay, something to find out about then' instead of 'what?!! Season my BEANS??!! what the hell is going ON in this bloody forest??!!!111'.
Other players/ multi player gameness
Considering how friendly every other thing in the game is (some animals/trees are outright flirtatious) I didn't have any interaction with other players. Mostly they seemed to be running past or doing something I couldn't see or follow. Maybe avatars should automatically wave at each other (or some other more glitchian greeting default) when meeting in game. Maybe it's just me. I was petting and kanoodling everything in sight, but when another player was around I felt a bit shy. Most of them were running past anyway.
That's all for now.
That's probably more than enough.
Replies
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I loved reading all your thoughts but I was curious.... Did you ever explore the other areas? i.e. Groddle Meadow, Ilmesnkie Caverns, down the Great Hole to lx (Uralia), or Shimla Mirch (aka Firebog). They all have a very different feel than the forest and if you didn't you might enjoy the change of scenery.
My other thought was on other players and the social interaction, or lack there of. From experience I've found people rarely use the local chat. Comments tend to get lost in a sea of action related test. I've found that there a lot of very nice and social people playing, and I found them by using the Help Channel. (You have to un-minimize it, in the middle of the chat area.) While it is not meant to be used as a global chat, it does allow you to interact and seek help from many different people. Then you can friend the people you connect with. You can also join different groups, for instance New Streets, and chat with other members in that group.
I hope that as you play, you enjoy Glitch as much as I have :-). -
@ Jade- haven't explored those areas yet, but will next time. I know that the whole world doesn't look the same : )
Also, I know this is early days. More variety = more man hours making it.
Re Help Channel- I did see some chat, and will join in more in the future.
Mostly, you don't need to say something to everyone you meet, though- IRL, too. Most places just have a gesture that means 'I acknowledge you as I walk past'. Where I live it's eye contact and (usually) a smile. Other cities I've lived it's more like 'studious mutual avoidance'. In Glitch I felt I needed a default 'oh, I recognise you as another player' keyboard shortcut gesture. - Gotcha :-). I've had such a great experience with the Game and the people in it, I really hope you do as well. I think I'm so used to people not making eye contact that I didn't even notice other players just flying by, but I know what you mean. I think an automatic wave could be kinda fun, and it expands on what keys 1,2 and 3 do with facial features.
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The automatic wave would be fun, but if you went to where there was a progect or something you would be waving almost constantly.
@ Jade, the maps are a bit crazy and I do have some trouble, it took me a couple of days to get the hang of it. I bought a house and memorized that area, then to places I needed to be. It is confusing but I barely have to look for things except for new streets.
Try the facial features, they are fun. -
I don't have much to add except that it helps to think of learning as passive learning and the quests as active learning, since it is in completing quests that you actually are exposed to and can add to a repertoire of recipes/crafting.
I do think one weakness in this area is that there is not much clear incentive (right now) to spend lot of time learning many recipes and stockpiling the results, and the "why should I do more than the quest requires" part of that is not really clear until you start participating in street building, which frequently requires a variety of items that come out of intermediate/advanced recipes/crafting.
Also, while other people might disagree, in my experience, you get rewarded more for broad learning over specializing--it really pays to be a dilettante in Glitch, and I think that throws off anyone who has played any games with specific character classes.
I hope you play some more and explore some more too--there's quite a lot to take in. -
feedback on the feedback:
good points all around, the game really does feel like people playing in parallel, whizzing by one another. at least until you get into a collaborative activity, but right now that's only street building projects. i like the idea of an "acknowledgement signal" that isn't necessarily saying "hello" or asking for prolonged communication. the suggestion reminded me of how bus drivers will often raise a hand to each other as they cross paths while driving.
regarding sense of place, certain areas already do this well. IX is a good example and fire bog is okay too, but mostly because it is small. Groddle Heights is better than Groddle Meadow and Groddle Forest, but not by much. i don't think that the direction of shadows or changing backgrounds would help much, but i do think that clustering the "cavey" areas of Groddle Forest in one place, clustering the "platformey" areas someplace else, the "dark forestey" areas and "light forestey" areas apart from each other. right now it is a not totally random grab bag .. but could use some better definition of regions within regions. interestingly, "old groddle" was a lot better in these respects than the current incarnation of groddle is.
skills/learning .. earlier on, before the timer system, i suggested a more organic learning curve .. where cooking lots would give you cooking points to spend on your next cooking skill. so the more you cooked, the more cooking you'd learn. the game has elements like this at the higher levels, where you need cooking achievements to learn certain recipes. anyway .. despite that being my initial suggestion, i actually quite like the timer system. it lets me feel like i'm making progress in the game even when i'm not playing, and that the game will be a fresh experience the next time i log in.
what i'd like for skills is more achievement unlock-able recipes, unlock-able in a different way. so .. like, you learn a skill, and you are able to use a few recipes immediately. you can *see* all the locked recipes and what you need to do to unlock them. then you go about unlocking them. some of the achievements should be better than "make x number of sauces". there could be a little story/narrative driven quest, where in the process of completing the quest you learn the recipe.
not all skills have recipes. for those, the more you practice the skill in the field, the lower the amount of time and energy to complete an operation. there could be a progress bar to show to what degree you have "mastered" a particular skill. this could also apply to recipes. like, at first it might take 15 cherries and 10 seconds to make a certain drink, because although you have the "book learnin" you are practically inexperienced. so you can make the drink but you're always checking the recipe book and and putting in too many or too few cherries and you have to toss a batch of drinks and start over now and then. so things get done, but take more time and more materials. eventually you practice, become a virtuoso and everything is 99% efficient. now it only takes 10 cherries and 5 seconds .. but you had to make 100 drinks to learn to do it so well.
so a timer system to "set up" a skill, but then a "practice makes perfect" learning system to perfect it. -
I've walked the dog and thought on it some more.
These are all very much first impressions, but in a way those are maybe the most important, as most people will decide whether or not they like this game within the first 20-30 mins, I imagine. Once you get to the higher levels, you're pretty much committed, and are more likely to accept that things just are the way they are, as you're enjoying the game.
I imagine Groddle Forest is everyone's first experience of the glitch world (it's where I entered, so I imagine everyone else does, too), so I would suggest that this needs to be the clearest in terms of setting players up for the mood or enjoyment of the place. Other areas further away could be harder to navigate or whatever, because players will have some sense of what's what. Groddle Forest really is an extension of the tutorial.
Regarding sense of place/ sence of direction: 'clustering' terrain types in certain areas (and maybe indicating those on the map with tiny hillocks or whatever) would help. It also helps with remembering where certain things are 'oh that whatever vendor was in a hilly area, so it must be over here...'
Regarding Skills/ Learning: In my experience 'learning' from books is not passive. It takes some concentration, and a bit of dedication and it takes time and 'active' attention.
Learning while doing something feels more passive, information is absorbed while you're having fun doing the thing. So I would describe quests as more passive learning, although you're actively doing something, it's fun and you're in game. On the other hand, I would love to step out of game play and into the skills 'classroom' where I could learn about butterfly milking, make a milker machine (rather than buy it) then step back into game play, having spent 7 mins improving myself and then finding a quest that ask me to do something with my newly aquired skills and further them.
It sort of feels like that's maybe the point, but because the timer just counts down in another tab and doesn't involve me whatsoever, it feels kinda like cheating. The rock spends his time reading, and then 'bing!' you get a badge or something for animal kinship.
Really? I'm not sure I earned it.
Also: what striatic said about the cherries. -
"having spent 7 mins"
remember that most skills take hours or days to complete. it doesn't feel like "cheating" when you have to choose between one skill that takes 2 days to learn and another that takes 2 days to learn. in each case you need to make a hard decision about which skill you want to learn first. out of alpha, in "the real game", i imagine the time scales will be even longer.
unless there is a passive way to learn, people would be in the game 24 hours a day, 7 days a week trying to grind out as much learning as possible, exhausting all of the in-game content as quickly as possible. the timers space out the content and let people spend time outside of the game without feeling like they've lost momentum and that it isn't worth logging in again.
another way for it to feel feel less like cheating, just imagine that the pet rock is learning the information for you and then talking you through the various tasks after it has studied enough. -
Very nice discussion going on here. I agree with Wrendolin's observation that navigating can be a bit of a curve. I wish the map will show a teeny bit of terrain info (maybe as a slight background mask) so that I can remember "Oh, the Fire bog is that darkish area and Limenski is that cavey area...". It's pretty difficult associating the sense of the place to the map in its current plain vanilla form.
Totally agree with striatic's suggestions on the skills learning. I hope the devs are reading. -
"unless there is a passive way to learn, people would be in the game 24 hours a day, 7 days a week trying to grind out as much learning as possible, exhausting all of the in-game content as quickly as possible. the timers space out the content and let people spend time outside of the game without feeling like they've lost momentum and that it isn't worth logging in again." - striatic
Good point. I didn't realise the learning timer was exactly that- a spacing-out mechanism.
Of course!
So, as you suggested, the bookish skills learning (if it were to involve more than a timer in a second tab) would need to provide plenty of benefits so that it is in fact 'in game', too. A shortcut, if you like, to faster task completion- you could either try to 'grind out' as much learning from the game as possible, or you could spend time learning it in condensed form.
I'm not sure I know enough about the game yet to go any further on this.
I'm just thinking out loud.
And of course I wouldn't step out of game for 2 hours or 2 days to learn something.
"another way for it to feel feel less like cheating, just imagine that the pet rock is learning the information for you "
- I like that, but he needs a bit less of an omnipotent/omniscient role in that case.
If he needs to learn the stuff so that he can advise me, I'd like him to be more like my glitchian 'familiar' who was thought up at the same time as I and is there to assist me and grow with me as I develop.
Currently I think of him more as an omniscient/all-seeing god-like helper who floats above everyone, giving advice now and again. Reading up on basic animal kinship just to tell me about it seems a bit beneath him, know what I mean? -
"A shortcut, if you like, to faster task completion"
this already exists. to speed up learning a skill, you can spend favor points you have accrued with a giant by donating to its shrine. the rock starts learning faster. there's a cap on how many favor points you can spend this way on any one skill, so you can't just learn things instantly.
by the way, the timer isn't just in the other tab. the timer can be seen at any time by clicking on the rock.
"Currently I think of him more as an omniscient/all-seeing god-like helper who floats above everyone, giving advice now and again."
when i first encountered him, there seemed to be more emphasis on him being a "Pet Rock".. which is more familiar like. that is never really reinforced as the game goes on, and the subservient "pet-like" nature of the relationship is somewhat lost.
i'd like it if the rock was more humble. also if you could customize your rock's appearance, that's be swell. currently everyone's rock looks like a chunk of dullite. i might prefer mine to be a chunk of sparkly instead.