Some random thoughts

I only got into the world a couple of days before the last closure, so be warned that I am quite the noob. Nevertheless, some random thoughts:

- Yay! Glitch is a worthy successor to GNE and I've been pining for it ever since GNE closed. I'm especially glad that the sense of whimsy has survived, in the graphics, the skills, the objects and the actions.

- The introductory tutorial is great - the best I've seen. Did I miss it telling me about the map? I only learned about the map from reading the forums. (And, silly me, I only clicked on Help after that.)

- Being able to annotate my instance of the map would be great.

- Movement is generally quite easy, though I do find jumping to ascend through a bunch of platforms to be a real pain. I suppose it's a skill I'll master in time, but it just seems to easy to miss the next platform then have to start all over again from the ground.

- I haven't died (yet), but dying seems like a bad feature, especially when it can happen accidentally. If players need a way to die on purpose, how about a rubber knife or a black pill?

- In GNE, Karma was a great way to encourage simple social interactions: giving things to people and the like. Do such social interactions increase Mood in Glitch?

- In general, I agree with others that social interactions are not well baked into the game at the moment. Even being able to post an upcoming event globally would encourage people to get together. It might also be cool to give XP (or something) for various social interactions, e.g. leading someone to an interesting section of the map, making things for people, or creating a well-attended event.

- I've seen rumors that the devs want to incorporate politics and religion into Glitch. Ugh! These are two of the worst forms of social organization ever devised, and I go out of my way to avoid them in real life. I definitely don't want them to be part of my game life. Next thing you know, there'll be Glitch lawyers and annoying lawsuits.

- The communication protocol in GNE allowed players to "cheat" by (as I recall) forging URLs that were sent to the server. That made all of the work of building up skills seem worthless. I assume the devs have avoided these protocol holes in Glitch.

- Yep, the current version's a resource hog. And yep, it's OK to optimize later. I do assume that the clever devs have thought through the architectural issues though (what has to run on the client, what has to run on the server, how to avoid communication wherever possible) that will make optimization possible later. It's easy to paint oneself in a corner.

- I'm a Halo fanatic. The Halo worlds are pretty big, but I am able to remember where things are (pretty much) without any kind of map because the next place you go is thematically related to your current place. It's just around the corner in a building, or at the other end of a large valley, or whatever. The world has a sense of being unified. I don't have that same sense in Glitch. The regions you can go to seem completely unrelated to the current region, so I find myself unable to visualize the connections. I would be aided by a better sense of visual connection. e.g., rather than using street signs that behave like teleporters, enable players to walk off the right-had edge of one region and into the left-hand edge of another, and keep the regions graphically related. Reach more than two regions from your current region by climbing up a path that goes into the background, or descending in a hole to another region.

Anyhow, keep up the great work! Glitch is already very tantalizing.

-- Plurp

Posted 13 years ago by Plurp | Permalink