Topic
Getting us back on the streets and making community
As a new player, I spent much time wandering around collecting resources from map zone streets. I, very slowly, met other glitchers but, sadly, genuinely thought that there was only a tiny number of players here because I'd met so few. After a short time, I learn't that it was far more efficient to gather from peoples gardens and my time on map streets radically reduced. Rather than walking, and therefore potentially meeting people, I'd 'insta zap' my way to people's gardens and have probably missed out on meeting a lot of new people. Talking with other glitchers I realise everyone seems to do this. I've met several people who haven't been able to do that 'help 5 low level players quest' because they simply can't find any. In short, it wasn't until the recent 'hang around and blow conches at each other festival,' that I just happened to bump into, that I realised how large a community there is. I'm still a new player but my friends list already includes a few people that don't play/test because they didn't get into a community.
This is a little sad as I think you'll agree it's 'becoming a part of the community' that makes a massively multi-player game good and therefore subscription worthy. Ok, I realise rushing past someone on a street doesn't make you part of the community but if you rushed past someone who gave you something, was doing something odd or looked funny etc you might stop to ask a question. I was thinking, if perhaps your house was linked to a particular street on the map by say a that little door eg like that one in Grimsea Bottom for the wood forest, then to get to another players house you'd have to walk to their street rather than 'insta zap'. Your neighbours pole could then be your chosen few 'literal' neighbours.
You wouldn't necessarily need a door for each glitch, just a couple per street, so you could access any of the glitches living on that street. This would give you an address like, Louise Pasture the tree knot (the tree knot being an access door) Upgrade cards or beaucracy skills could open up different map zones for you.
TLDR - Help build community by tying player houses to map zone streets, therefore, making players become more visable to the general community whilst journeying.
Replies
-
I'm not sure how long you've been playing for, The Mighty Plunger, but Glitch use to have groups of individual homes per street in blocks found on a lot of streets around Ur. Normal streets that you walk along now in Ur would have a Housing Block sign that allowed you to access them. The housing system was changed to what it is now to make things easier for TS to expand housing with the growth of the game. Due to this, I highly doubt TS will swap back.
If you're looking for the community aspect of Glitch check out the Announcements section of the forums, the Groups page of the site, and have a look at Global chat to see if any gatherings/parties are happening :)
Happy Glitching! -
It didn't actually create community. Those who were around before the game went live had communities they wanted to "live" with, those who were not had a small chance to get lucky and find a social community, but more than likely ended up living near strangers that weren't interested in saying hi and went inactive in a month or two. By the time the game went back to beta, I was the only active player on my block.
Sounds good on the surface, doesn't scale to population, and would require a mechanic that kicked players out of houses, which every time it was proposed was vehemently opposed by the community.
I imagine now that there are more game activities that it's harder to meet people naturally. But the communities in this game are hiding in groups: in the chats and sometimes in a group's forums. Groups will get the ability to build locations someday, and we've been told that members of groups will eventually be able to link their houses to those locations.
But the game does need more activities that encourage strangers to linger in similar areas or to talk about cooperative goals. - Plunger; something like what you're suggesting already exists in-game. Its called a "visiting stone" and you will find them spread around Ur. It allows people to visit a random street that other glitches have opted to "add" into a pool to allow visitors. I don't think they're used very often, but the concept has already been implemented. They just need to find a way for people to use them more.
-
I've only been playing a few weeks so I've no idea of previous incarnations of Glitch but as a new player was slightly put off by the 'apparent' lack of visible presence of community. Despite this, I personally love the 'sandbox' feel and am enjoying the game immensely but would imagine a lot of 'new players' wouldn't stay long enough to overcome/understand that hurdle. Incidently, I have found a group of friends, so this isn't a plea for buddies.
Community problem
New players can look for community on forums, but as with all mmo's, the vast majority will not.
Global chat has a tendency to degenerate in quality very rapidly with only one or two over vocal players so doesn't often attract a inquisitive new player to dive in.
Lots of the 'more experienced' players, as with all mmo's, tend to 'clique' as 'Saucela' suggested hence isolating themselves from new players/strangers. This isn't a critism, we all tend to group with players you know or are of similar ability
The visiting stone does provide a means to find random gardens but certainly doesn't introduce you to owner.
Solution?
All I'm saying is that as a new player, as it stands, you have to 'hunt/barge' your way into the community, it just isn't visible unless you do. If removing the 'insta zap' method of travelling between gardens is impractical, though I can't actually see why this would be, perhaps some 'perpetual' social/gaming event that a new player can take part in, rather than waiting for party invites. - I think sharding in Madhur Hathur is that "perpetual social/gaming event" you suggested. Every time I've been there, at least 5 other Glitchen were there already. Cebarkul is another on-going social hub (although much more commerce/achievement driven). Admittedly, a new(er) player might not find those locations quickly enough to satisfy, but they're there.
-
The long promised Group halls may be the answer
Housing Streets weren't the answer for sure. I only ever met one other of my neighbours, even though the houses in my street, I believe, were occupied by active players. A more serious problem occurs if a player becomes inactive, and you have an occupied, but unused house -
I liked having neighbors in theory, but as others have stated, I never interacted with any of my neighbors at any of the homes I owned, even in passing.
I specifically went out of my way to friend them and leave notes or whatever, but only once did I ever see ANY person from my street online at all. -
I think it would be keen if you could see nearby glitchen on the map. Two people could be scouring the same region and never run into each other at it stands currently, but if I knew someone was mining through behind me I might wait for them to get to the street I was on. If showing each glitch is too overwhelming, perhaps an indication of roughly how many are on each street would show me where the happening places are.
And I know I'll sound like a party pooper for this, but we're allowed to put way too many resources in our yards and on our home streets, which leaves few concrete reasons to go out (coins, shrines, snails, fibers and shopping/selling are what remain). Mining, gardening, harvesting and herding are all more efficient at home.
Maybe part of the solution is to have visiting stones have a higher chance of taking you to a street that already has someone on it? - I think I am out in the world more now then before. I don't want to be "made" to do anything. It is a players choice to go out or stay in. Perhaps those not finding many people to visit should look into joining active groups.
- Please see my update here: http://www.glitch.com/status/PHVLQ8CSCB52UUB/24470-20544125
- I guess I've always found it easy to make friends online, I made a rule that I was going to friend every single glitch I saw or spoke with for any length of time. A lot of those have led me in really good directions while sadly a bunch have moved on to other pursuits. Global is a wonderful place to meet people as are some of the larger more active groups :)
-
I understand why they changed the system and probably there was not much else to choose. I actually think it was a very good solution, due to the ascending number of players it would be impossible the previous one.
But, I have to say that the game changed a lot with the new home street and house system. This one promotes more individual game due to isolation of players, while the other more random contacts between players and more circulation of people on the streets. Groups(1) have been the solution for that, and people have been organizing things and meeting through them.
Visiting stones have been created and now players can more often visit and receive visits but, those leave us in a random street and many times empty. It's nice to visit other player's roads but that isn't effective when it's about to meet new people.
An alternative good solution would be maybe to create some kind of "center", "shopping center" or whatever, where people could gather, something similar to what happens in Cebarkul during Zilloween (could even be there).
(1) Groups have also a problem. Beside the chat boxes being still a bit messy (and thank you very much TS devs, btw, for this last improvement, which was great and really important), those group pages are everything less effective. I already spoke about this <here>. - I agree with the need for more available connection to community and the world, and think that the Community Hubs Idea is the best solution.
-
Ongoing issue is ongoing. Needs Ur projects to upgrade streets to improve resources to bring the traffic. Simple and sweet.
Cold hard truth? Home streets are better than Ur.