I'd like to chime in that I'm fairly convinced this feat is not particularly good for several different reasons, including ridiculous gamability, problems with making certain resources (names) permanently unavailable in the pursuit of this feat, and a feeling that "I wouldn't want this done to me, so why should I do it to my friends?"
Tiny Speck (as a whole): Please don't do things like this. They hurt the trust you've built with the community, when we see what feels like (at least to me) a quick grab to inflate user/subscriber numbers. This feat penalizes your most militant fans, who've already tried (maybe multiple times) to get their friends to play this cute, quirky game and at the same time encourages (ab)use of alts. Those fans are upset by this. But they're upset because they care deeply about this game.
We're your most loyal supporters Tiny Speck. We want you to succeed. Please, tell us that you understand our concerns; make us feel heard. Tell us what you're going to do to learn from this; make us feel understood. Tell us what you hope to achieve, and why; let us help you as much as we can, to find another way to implement the goals of this feat, and foster greater communication between developers and their fans. To repeat: we want you to succeed.
To everyone who hates this feat: Sorry! Take a break for the next 22h55m and it'll pass right by. And, think of this: groups that go through horrible/challenging/harrowing experiences together come out stronger and more cohesive for it. Just think how strong the community will be after! (Since I am already very late for a family dinner, a longer and more thoughtful reply will have to wait until later …) Posted 2 hr ago by stoot barfield | Permalink
so TS created a feat most people would hate to bring us closer together? Seriously, looking for the silver lining in this just makes this even worse.
So, yes I agree it's a sucky feat. I was hanging out for a feast, and not of spam.
I do think you made a mistake here Tiny Speck. BUT I want this game to succeed, I assume most other players do too, so I am giving you benefit of the doubt. I actually had people I had been considering inviting but never did, and now I have.
Mistakes are one thing-learning from them is another. Let's hope TS staff learns from their mistake and NEVER does this again. We all have a steady supply of invites on our doorstep (in our account). If we know someone who would like this game and isn't already playing then we will invite. Not everyone has 640+ "friends" on FB or otherwise.
I agree with most people that this wasn't the greatest idea in the world for a feat... I feel like a feat should be something that we accomplish in game and has us do things we wouldn't necessarily do while playing the usual ways we do.
However - isn't it possible that Glitch needs an influx new players to keep moving forward as a social free-to-play game and having players engage in socially sharing invitations (a la zynga some would say) is a proven way to generate this traffic? It's a way to reward players for bringing in referrals which is very common practice.
And before you vehemently disagree with my statement, I'm not saying that this was the correct way to go about doing this - the execution for referral incentive could have been handled much differently - I'm simply making an observation (which is just an idea I had based purely on speculation) to offer up a different perspective then most other comments on this same topic.
I'm not having a problem so much with the "hey everybody, try to get your friends to play Glitch" part of the feat. After some thought, what I particularly dislike about this feat - as a feat - is that it is structured in such a way that it will reward cheaters. All you need is a dozen unused email addresses somewhere, invite them all, accept them all and play them out through gentle island, and bang, you're a contender. In the meantime, someone who plays according to the spirit of the feat and sends out 12 invitations to distant facebook friends with a preference for casual flash games runs the risk that few or none will be accepted, and they get nowhere, feat-wise. You couldn't cheat at quoins, and you couldn't cheat at mourning, but this 'feat' practically screams "hey - cheating is the way to get this one done." THAT is what is really wrong with this feat.
I will say, before this gets locked for being OT, that I want TS to succeed and I understand some people were on the fence about inviting. but offering incentives, like credits or discounts on subscriptions, would've been much better than this.
I will now shut up and wait to see how they try to further justify their decision.
... I don't think taking a break for the next next 22h55m is going to change the fact that a lot of us feel very negatively about this feat. Even if thousands of alt-accounts are being created right now I doubt anyone's gaming experience for the next day is being affected.
People are not unhappy that they have to "put up" with this for a day, people are unhappy that the game is rewarding people for turning into spammers (since, as many people have already pointed out, those of us who wanted to invite friends have done so already).
It's a good thing that TS had built up a huge store of goodwill with me, because this move is seriously lame and has curdled some of it pretty thoroughly.
This Feat makes me very sad because I have no friends. The only people I have emailed in the past 6 months are my mom (doesn't have internet at home, only on her phone), my grandma (can't quite figure out iTunes or how her eReader works), and my "boss" at a volunteer position (that would be grossly inappropriate).
I hope we get some lovely new players from this, but I'm unconvinced that that will be the case.
– tl;dr: I am obsessed with Glitch because it's NOT those other games, it DOESN'T benefit from quantity over quality, and until now it really seemed to understand game strategy and gaming business models. Anyone I would have invited and want to play, I have done. If I haven't invited anyone to play, it's either because they're completely unsuitable for our unique and lovely culture and would make the game utterly horrible, or because they have no interest in playing here, or both.
You can make light and say that we can choose to ignore this feat, but I have to interpret this as some kind of ookie and awful investor pressure on the "bottom line" which is both ham-handed and ill-advised. Eyes on the horizon. Slow and steady. Don't piss off your loyal-bordering-on-obsessed base for the sake of a couple hundred gratuitous alt/level 5 accounts that will boost numbers but ultimately damage your brand.
I am really disappointed in TS today.This feat is something Zynga might do- encouraging us to spam our friends for in game rewards. I never, ever would have expected TS to something like this- I would think they'd be scornful of it. I hope they've learned from this mistake. It's a good thing for them they've built up so much trust with the players... This is making me a little sad.
Agreeing with everything that's been said above. This isn't the direction I want the Feats or Glitch to go in. Most of my gaming friends aren't interested in this type of game (they like to shoot and kill virtual beings of various types) and I'm certainly not going to spam them about it when I know it isn't their thing. I'll be sitting out this Feat and hoping we don't see any similar ones in the future. Keep the activities in game, don't make us spam our real-world friends for game rewards.
So we have a certain number of invites (lets say 3). We send 3 invites and we then have none. Per stoot's reply here, once those invites we have sent are accepted, we will get more invites. Given that the current top performers have between 9 and 20 successfully completed invites, that means that they sent invites, had them accepted, got new ones, sent them, had them accepted, got new ones, etc etc--repeat that cycle up to 4 or 5 times and you get the numbers we're seeing right now.
Either people miraculously had 10 or 20 people waiting eagerly by their inboxes to accept invites, or there's some MAJOR alt action going on.
Alts are all fine and dandy, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't the point of this feat. Such a shame.
*ETA*-Even if unaccepted invites count towards feat, looks like they still have to be accepted for you to get more invites. Of course, I could be wrong. It's happened once or twice before :D
"To everyone who hates this feat: Sorry! Take a break for the next 22h55m and it'll pass right by."
What thoughtless "advice". You have totally misunderstood what people hate about this tack feat. The fact that you held such a feat will not pass by in the next day
Many of us who like, (maybe past tense 'liked' now) Glitch did so partly because of the apparent ethos that we thought Glitch lived by. We wanted Glitch to succeed so have already invited anyone we thought might be interested
I am saddened by this tacky, tacky move. That will not pass tomorrow just because the feat is over
.
I'm sensing a lot of negativity and outrage. I don't like this feat myself, as i stated earlier, but I'm hoping we can stay civil. Remember that TS listens to us, which I hear is rare for most MMOs, if we disagree with the style of this feat they will listen and hopefully not do something like this again. Here's hoping.
@Momo McGlitch: Momo, that's my point. It won't be gone in a day. The feat will be over and done with but the disappointment I now have about TS, the nasty taste this leaves in my mouth, they will not be gone. They are there forever.
People are disappointed in this feat for a number of reasons -
- We missed street projects but appreciated the difficulties they caused for some players and that TS would be unable to scale them once Ur was open to all. Feats seemed to replace projects by giving us an in-game goal that we could work towards without the disadvantages of the projects. This feat provides no in-game goal.
- Many people enjoyed the backstory that the feats were providing. This gives no backstory.
- This feat is likely to most highly reward behaviour that many players feel goes against the spirit of Glitch. Trash-alts were created, invites to players' alternate email addresses are sent and spam invites are being sent out. Most players have already sent out genuine invitations before this feat.
Added to our disappointment in the feat is disappointment in how our reactions have been responded to. I appreciate that the family dinner comes first but while stoot is the bossman he is not the only staff-member who could respond to our concerns. One of the TS's strengths has been the way it responds thoughtfully to our feedback. Telling us that it will all be gone in a day is rather dismissive and, in this community, a little unexpected.
I would give TS some slack by acknowledging that "3-5 invites" hardly classify as "spamming".
I still agree with all the wonderful and detailed reasons given here, though: Invitations should not be about ingame rewards. They should be about "Hey, check out this great game!!". I invited a handful of people in the past, some of them stayed, some didn't. I was thinking of reinviting the ones who left, now that Beta seems almost over, but I won't invite them during the feat period, simply because they are my friends and I don't want them to think I just lured them here for some private benefit.
I don't think it's fair to compare this to Zynga. Other games will prevent you from levelling up or building significant stuff (think towers) unless you invite friends or spend real money. Our personal game progress is not blocked in the same way by sitting out the feat.
I don't like this move much and I will not participate in the feat. But I'm happy it is just a feat and I'm confident it is not a sign of a major policy change in the area from TS.
I must admit, stoot was right in one regard, though: I am quite amazed at the strong reaction AGAINST this feat from the community, which just emphasizes the fact of how great the community is, and how "the spirit of Glitch" is not just an empty phrase of words: There seem to be quite a lot of (very active) people who feel similar about WHY they like this game.
I don't actually feel any particular way about this feat. I think I will just sit it out and wait for the next one.
It just occurs to me that there may be some very strange people invited during the next day or so. Friends that would normally be overlooked due to strong body odor/ funny accents/ annoying comic book references.
And now, whenever anyone does something weird or slightly against the Glitchy norm, we can look at these people and say, "Aah, you must have been a Feat People".
Vic, are you aware that as of earlier today, Pieces of Artifacts were selling for ~ 3 million currants?
Top contributors seem to get 3 or 4 pieces. Sure, everyone else's progress isn't "blocked", but their progress will sure as heck get a hefty boost! Especially if they play it "smart" and invite themselves and make alts each time, allowing them to gain even more invitations to send. Those who are legitimately inviting people who might genuinely be interested in this game will have little to no chance of competing with people who are, in some way or another, gaming the system.
The quoins feat accidentally encouraged people to make one Alt. This is encouraging them to make dozens.
I've never posted anything negative in the forums IIRC, but this time I have to echo all the sentiments expressed above. I fear TS did not take their demographic into account with this feat. As I recall the players of Glitch are more 'mature', meaning that a lot of players are 30+. I recognise that the recent opening of Glitch to players without an invite has made the demographic a bit younger, but still.
I am 37 years old. Most of my friends don't even play computer games. I do not feel comfortable inviting them to one. I do not feel comfortable spamming my friends with anything relating to products or services as it is not something that 'we' use social media for. There is a reason why there are legal limits in most countries on direct marketing and invasion of people's privacy (I'm a lawyer, can you tell?) I think that younger generations (damn you TS, you make me sound like an old person!) see and feel this differently. I am not saying that everything you do needs to cater to all ages and tastes. I don't even think that is possible. But when it comes to a feat - a community effort - you should try and please do not dismiss our concerns so easily.
*puts on sunglasses*
Now everyone please look into the red light and remember that Tricky Woo is a young fit lass of only 21. Gravity has had no impact on her whatsoever and all her lady bits are still firm and perky and definitely not going south.
*flash*
@biohazard Yes, I can see how missing out on a chance of "winning" a feat is a "loss" but I still don't think it's comparative to Zynga's way of holding players' friends for ransome.
The abiliy to "cheat" using alts is problematic, but I don't think that is the thing that upset people about the feat.
I believe that if someone literally creates dozens of alts just to send invites, TS would notice and ban them from the feat or take or away the winnings. But it would be more fun for the rest of us if TS spent time on creting new content rather than policing feats, so let's hope we don't have too many alt-encouraging feats in the future.
Not a forum poster by any means but adding my voice to the others.
I think this is a HUGE HUGE HUGE blunder and one that is going to be very hard to undo.
It is not, I think, going to bring in many new "real" new players.
It makes me wonder if TS needs to show "figures" to investors or something - investors who, they hope, will not realise that the big new influx is mainly made up of throwaway addresses.
"It seemed like a good idea at the time." I have certainly had to say that a few times in my life after humongous blunders.
I don't like the feat either, but it doesn't mean that TS is now evil or is wearing Zynga's old underpants.
Part of the disappointment, I think, is that earlier feats encouraged new kinds of gameplay inside Ur. Part of the disappointment, I think, is that the new rare items are so rare and we old rich glitches are so rich, that randomly getting a feat prize would be an incredibibly windfall. I think it would be better to give out a lot more prizes each worth a lot less than millions of currants.
Feats have not been kind to me. For the first two I was in the wrong timezone. The third I could only contribute a max of 5 QQs per game day. Yesterday's lag was so bad that after a few hours of fruitless attempts to mourn I had to call it quits with nothing achieved. But this is the first feat - or in-game thing ever, I think - that's actually made me annoyed enough to not want to play the game at all. Ick. :(
About the 3-5 invites: You get more if you use them. Top contributors are way above 5 now.
About dozens of alts: It's not really practical because each one needs to complete the conch quest to enter the feat.
About the community: It looks like we are "voting with our feet" and showing our disapproval by letting the feat fall way short of the goal. Seems appropriate given the sentiment in this thread.
I've read everything here (as well as other threads, and most of the global chat backlog), as have many other people at Tiny Speck. We definitely hear you and understand that many people are unhappy.
This is how it looks from here: we definitely never intended for any Glitch player to "spam" anyone — no one likes spam (we definitely don't). We intended people to consider who among their friends & acquaintances might enjoy (and, ideally, contribute to) Glitch and send them an invitation, thus expanding the world and enriching the game.
(We are sometimes naïve.)
When we were batting around ideas for feats, the idea of a feat where players invited a few thousand new people to the game and therefore, collectively (and in a literal sense) grew the world, seemed like a good one, and perfectly fitting to the theme.
Of course, we knew that many people had already invited those who they thought would like Glitch, and that meant they were less able to participate in this feat, but that's going to be an aspect of most feats —there will be some that cater very strongly to a particular skill, resource or other aspect of that game, but there will be many feats so everyone will have their moment; the QQ feat was obviously harder for those who had already explored every street in the world.)
But — again with the naïveté, perhaps — we didn't think "well, those people will have no other choice but to either send invite emails to strangers, pester friends who weren't interested, etc. or waste their time creating dummy email addresses and then signing in with them in order to get a higher ranking". We figured they … wouldn't invite anyone.
(We're not so naîve that we thought no-one would send dummy invites, but that seems like a pretty small and easy-to-handle issue.)
As we gear up for re-launching, Glitch does need more people to thrive. But, more than the sheer numbers, it needs people who really get into the game: we can very clearly see that the single factor which overwhelmingly determines whether someone will enjoy Glitch is whether or not they have a friend playing — nothing else even comes close.
So, having more new players come in by way of invitations from existing players is far preferable to having new players come in by way of ads. This feat seemed like a good way to make that happen: we figured that, at least for some players, it would actually be fun.
We deliberately set the target high — if achieved, it'd be about 1.5 invites sent for each person we estimated would log into the game while the feat was active. But, 10,243 seemed like both a nice round number and a worthily ambitious target.
One thing that I didn't consider was that people would feel that their invite was "cheap" if it was part of a feat. I can see that perspective now, and it definitely wasn't the intent. I have to admit, I can't quite understand why people think incentives for inviting (credits, iMG, etc.) outside the context of a feat is a good idea while it's a terrible idea in the context of a feat, but that point is taken too. (Incentives for invites is something we also plan to do.)
I probably missed some other concerns/issues in this response; if so, my apologies. But we will always keep listening. (FWIW, alts, from a server consumption perspective, are a rounding error — they don't really cost us anything or use up system capacity.) So, I will conclude with one last thought.
"… this question and response underscores a difference in attitude that I see between TS and their most avid players. TS believes you should just play the game and occasionally nice things will happen to you - you might get something from a feat, or a badge will come up. Hardcore players want the badges as soon as possible and will do the craziest things in order to get them. When TS says "you don't have to do anything," it completely discounts the way many players feel about the game, which at the moment is a zombie-like "MUST WIN ALL FEATS." "
I think we do underestimate the extent to which people will strive to advance their points at all costs, and we tend to design for people who are playing more "casually" than the most hardcore players (partly because we think that's healthier for the long term, partly because it's just how we think of the game, and partly because there are a significant number of players who do play more casually — while they like it when the points go up, they play more for the socializing, exploration/discovery and the spontaneous bits of fun).
But the other big difference in attitude, I think, is that we see ourselves as in the same boat as the players, like we are all on the same team, like we are all in this together. Glitch sinks or swims for the players who enjoy it and the people who work to make it happen both.
Of course, I've been through enough nerf discussions to know that there will be many players who believe we are their adversaries and there is some kind of zero-sum conflict between Glitch players and Tiny Speck employees. But, I still get up every day with the motivation to make something that is as good as I can make it because there are players out there doing awesome things for each other, building community and generally doing their best to make Glitch a special place as well.
And I think that same thing is true of everyone who works here (though I am not speaking for anyone else on a personal level here — it's very late at night and most everyone else is sleeping): we want to make it great with you.
That means the degree of indignation will always be a little hard to understand. From our perspective, maybe this'll be a failed experiment but it's not done any great harm to anyone. (Sure, a groan or a rolled-eye or a tut-tut or a head-shake-and-pffft-sound — all those would seem perfectly reasonable.)
I know some people will feel that my saying that is "dismissing their concerns". And so, I am sorry. I'm not trying to dismiss anything and I do take all concerns very seriously. But, we also try to keep a little perspective. And … that was mine. It is clear from the variety of different voices that this Feat didn't really work. But, I will still wake up tomorrow with the motivation to make Glitch better. And I hope that you will too.
better the lamer feat than this (unless it'll just be the same untill it succeed)
the problem i find with what walruz said is that
if the aim was to casually reward players for their normal attitude, then an highly publicized feat isn't the right place to do that,
feats were publicized as in-game events, this isn't an ingame event, you're selling different things from what your advertising suggested, that can make people feel tricked/betrayed, like from a misleading advertising
And, just for the record, I am against incentives for invites. Although I can see that they might be good from a perspective where you need new players to the game for the game to develop and, well... survive.
Stoot stated: As we gear up for re-launching, Glitch does need more people to thrive. But, more than the sheer numbers, it needs people who really get into the game: we can very clearly see that the single factor which overwhelmingly determines whether someone will enjoy Glitch is whether or not they have a friend playing — nothing else even comes close.
So, having more new players come in by way of invitations from existing players is far preferable to having new players come in by way of ads. This feat seemed like a good way to make that happen: we figured that, at least for some players, it would actually be fun.
In light of this, perhaps this would have gone over better if the feat had been announced in conjunction with a definite re-launch date, rather than seeming to be a random grab at numbers?
stoot barfield wrote: maybe this'll be a failed experiment but it's not done any great harm to anyone.
Actually the harm is to you. I can't speak for others but I had trusted TS to do the right thing. That trust is gone. I have even said this to others in other arguments, Herb Wars etc. That trust is now gone. I will now view everything that is done, new things, nerfs, tweaks with supicion.
I didn't see you as adversaries before but part of the great Glitch Community, I do now though
I dont like the feat. Wont participate. I dont like getting facebook involved or twitter.
I dont see why you cant do it the old fashion way to get the fungame of Glitch out there. Advertising , going to MMO websites. You know where my friend who invited me heard it from ( the game Glitch) on the news. The news guy said well if your looking for something fun to do and pass the time. She played and told me about it. See. Good luck. I still play and still love the game. :) Hope it doesn't get over run by trolls.
IrenicRhonda, I don't think the actions of TS in this are so nefarious. I agree that it was executed badly, and I don't actually agree in any incentives for invites, but I can see the perspective of wanting to use the momentum of the feats to try and promote current players to invite friends. We have had a number of new players recently who might have enjoyed the QQ feat, and subsequently the invite feat plays into this momentum.
Thanks for that response stoot - knowing the intentions behind the feat helps, as does your acknowledgement that this feat (whether it nominally succeeds or not) was probably not a success.
I'm going to make a weird comparison, and people are going to point and laugh, but I think it makes sense.
Let's look at Yelp. On Yelp there is problem where a very few over-excited business owners read "How To Market Your Business Online" stuff and when it says, "Get your business on Yelp" they take that to mean a variety of things, many of which are against the TOS of Yelp. (Well, to be fair to these owners, some of the "How To"s suggest the illicit ideas.) When they get into trouble for it, the Business Owner sometimes then blows a gasket about how Yelp is discriminating against free business and blah blah blah.
THE POINT IS: Sometimes the Business Owner blows this gasket publicly on Yelp, and the general populace of Yelp tells the Owner the same thing over and over again: Your business will grow on it's own. Let word of mouth work. If you do a good business, if people like it, they will tell their friends just by habit. The word will get out, but if you try to push it too hard, you will just offend people, and that will just make things worse.
When I started, I loved the game so much I offered invites to my friends. Three accepted. One played for a day and didn't like it. One played for a few months and got bored with it. One is on more often than me and is a higher level than me, dammit!!
I have lots of good friends. If I were to tell them, "Hey, I need to sign up 200 people by Monday night to get a special achievement on this game I love" I could easily get 200 of them to sign up. But I pretty much guarantee that at least 199 of them would never log in after they set up the account, because they're not signing up because they want to play a game. And all that does is clog the databases.
about good nicks being taken from inactives, or alts, a prune was never suggested?
at least for those level 1 who only signed in 1 time and never again
I don't mind this feat, but I've been probing my friends for interest in Glitch since I started. Each time I came up empty. Mostly they're caught up on context or progress and rarely play games just for fun, although some said they were unlikely to have the time for another game. I'm afraid I probably won't be able to contribute much to this feat.