Topic

DEVs Refine the learning and use of Skills - MUST happen

As I've played Glitch and loved it. I can say that I've just about reached the limit of what's fun in the game as it stands currently. It has a great intro, and buildup, but very little end game fun. It will keep most players happily busy for about 30 hours of playtime. After that, there's just no motivation (other than the social aspect, which is good, but removes the layer of playing a game).

I think something that is missing from Glitch is a better challenge curve. Most games should be easy at the start, to draw players in, give them rewards, keep them interested in the growth and progress of their characters. As the game progresses the level of difficulty should rise and rate of character growth should drop. Most importantly, this change should be non-linear. The potential of Glitch is that when someone reaches a level of challenge and growth that they're comfortable with (that is fun for them) they can camp there for a while and keep playing, or take on further challenges and reach farther. Currently, Glitch is missing this dynamic.

I think where Tiny Speck has some low-hanging fruit that can most easily be harvested to make this happen is in the SKILLS area. The skill table (though designed to be lovely and engaging) is really only one layer deep. Yes, progression in a skill's area allows you to harvest more, use less energy, and occasionally do something unique - but it is fairly shallow. There should be more unique things you can do the further down a skill path you travel (more user generated items, harvesting/planting unique things, special minerals/gems, etc). The things in the world of Glitch (food, eggs, materials) could be more dependent upon user manufacturing/growing/harvesting. Truly making the skills necessary for the building and enhancement of the world of UR.

This can be done in many creative ways. Another methodology of keeping the game engaging for a longer period of time is to make the skills more exclusive. Instead of having a lvl 25 glitch who's mastered every skill - force some level of specialization. One, it makes the game more interesting and challenging. It also forces people to work together and rely more heavily on other players as opposed to being completely self-sufficient, or relying entirely on vendors. It increases player buy-in and gives them a sense of ownership and contribution in the world (Ur). It doesn't have to be exclusive either (as many players would complain). Once you start down a skill path, perhaps it would make an opposting skill path exponentially more difficult to learn. Or you could only specialize in one skill path at a time (having to go to a central place to change skill paths). Or alternately create  specializations allowing you to learn all of the skills on one path, but restricting you to only learn up to level 3 on other skills paths. Doing this increases the value and reward of the skills paths as well as creating some great sub-cultures of supply and demand.

For these things to work and flourish though, the worth of the individual skills must also deepen. In other words there must be more of a reward to learning a new skill. It must allow you to do more and have more unique benefits (whether they be unique user-created items, allowing you to harvest a necessary ore that was unavailable to harvest before, grow a plant that can only be planted by certainly level skill, etc) - and these skills should be challenging to learn!

These things will not only extend the life of the game, but make it more challenging, without alienating casual players. One of the greatest dangers of these types of games is giving the players too much too soon. It creates a big short-term win, but fails to provide long-term loyalty, buy-in, and extended playability. I understand that in beta testing everything must be accelerated to allow the test to really explore every part of the game, but I hope that these issues of depth, player contribution, and player development will be more balanced with a launch.

Why? Because I have greatly enjoyed playing Glitch. I want to see it thrive and create a really great gaming culture and community. However, as is, I have pretty much reached the limit of what serious content the game has to offer just in the last part of the Beta period. I will enjoy doing it again from scratch, but it will not hold attention for long if it doesn't gain depth.

Thank you Tiny Speck for giving me the opportunity to Beta test Glitch and to provide you with my thoughts and feedback.

Posted 15 months ago by Mortal Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • I agree with you Mortal - I think TS is attempting to engage those that need more in the game by doing the games in games although I really would like more challenging skills like you have outlined in your post.

    Pssss - are you from the land of the happy cows?
    Posted 15 months ago by MzMunchken Subscriber! | Permalink
  • One of the primary enjoyments I have had with glitch was the pursuit of the complete skill tree.  While I can understand your discussion, I tend to leave games that limit my abilities relatively quickly.

    I am not interested in "end game" content nor am I interested in competing with everyone in the game for anything.  I play the game to explore and to grow my glitch to the utmost.  I was 8 or so skills away from the full tree not including the unlearning skills, but the time investment alone for those eight was about the same as for all the previous skills.

    Rather than limiting a player's ability to constantly learn new things, a better choice in my opinion and one that I have admittedly never seen successfully completed, would be to increase the number of viable skills.  This is not a combat-oriented game so it may be successful here where it would not be in a standard MMO.  You have no stats, no combat, no weapons, no armour, nothing to min/max.  Thus any combination of skills would be viable.  I hope to never see web sites talking about the Rook Build or the Mining Build or the Egg Build in relation to Glitch.  All skills are equally valuable in terms of providing enjoyment to the end user at this point and any new skills should be based on that factor alone IMO.

    That is what is making me fork out the scratch to buy a Moly sub tonight, the freedom to "glitch all that I can glitch."

    That being said, in general the gaming industry is going "social." The Farmville people have more subscribers than WoW, EQ2, Eve, etc combined.  There is a reason based in the fact that many people are not what we who are beta-testers would consider gamers.  The audience/subscriptions-base for this game will likely not be overwhelmingly made up of people retreating from AION or Asheron's Call, or LotRO.  It will instead be made up of people like my mother who doesn't play games but thought (at 73) that what I was doing when I showed her glitch last July was cute.  She will be trying the game when it goes live.  My wife who is a hardcore end-game guildie on FFXI thought it was dumb.

    Frankly I liked what I saw thus far in the beta.  I am happy with the development direction and would not appreciate a sweeping sea-change in the game in any category.

    Increase the skills and the recipes to include new recipes for people with certain skills or combinations, maybe allow a bonus for certain skills in terms of extra product like the harvesting of trees and piggies, but don't take away the abilities of those glitches who enjoy the game as it stands.

    Complexity is not necessarily what the majority of the base is looking for in a game like Glitch.  They are looking for a low stress hop in for 15 minutes and be successful in something, then go to the gym, or change someone's diaper, or head back to the desk once lunch hour is over.

    Please understand that I am not disagreeing with your contentions in regard to a more standard MMO I just don't believe that this is the direction that Glitch should follow.  Your proposed changes and the economic revisions I see bandied about here every so often would substantially change the flavour of the Glitch world, and I don't think I'd like the new taste...

    ~~TJ Fuzzybutt
    Posted 15 months ago by Thaddeus J Fuzzybut Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Fuzzy, I don't think that it has to be one or the other. The problem with using something like Farmville is that statistically it draws in a really broad audience, but fails to hold them for the long term because it become repetitive and the rewards fail to keep up with the amount of time invested. Eventually the novelty wears off and people are off to another game that has something fresh and new.

    I'm not talking about redesigning the flavor or enjoyability of Glitch. I'm simply suggesting things that must happen in order to create a long-lasting community of people who continue to contribute to Glitch and love playing it.

    Unless complexity and reward is made non-linear, it will simply not have lasting appeal. I suggest the skills system, because that's both a major part of the reward system, as well as the character development system, as well as the framework for contributing to the world at large. No matter what type of gamer you are, you want to be challenged at a level you are comfortable with, and you want to have a sense of contributing to the world. Glitch allows for both of those things in outstanding ways - but only for a brief period. After that, it gets repetitious and loses a lot of it's zing because there's no significant path of progression.

    I love Glitch, but what I want to AVOID is the revolving door system that things like Farmville are. It's a great moneymaker, but not a lot of substance or depth. Glitch has the beginning of BOTH of those things. What a great social and gaming experiment it could be!
    Posted 15 months ago by Mortal Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +∞ to OP.

    I had actually planned to quit playing after the "great reset", but decided to go one more time until opening just to say I had built 3 Glitches up and gave it my best.

    Simply put, this game has no longevity right now and I know I'm not the only one who is bored already.

    To be quite frank, the skill tree runs out too fast, the achievements and goals, while entertaining, feel more like a hollow placebo after a while as you basically have "everything" already and it all ultimately leaves many feeling bored with the game in as short as 1 week of hard-core playing.

    Granted, this is supposed to be a casual experience and everyone has a different play style, but I personally feel society in general has moved well beyond playing an hour or two a week for such a game to last as long as it should. So, unless the game wants to corner itself into a "nitch" market, they need to do more to appeal to either a wider audience of gamer types or to increase the depth of one or two types such as those defined by Jon Radoff's Quadrant and the Bartle Test
    Posted 15 months ago by c0mad0r Subscriber! | Permalink
  • First, you need to unconfuse yourself.  Tiny Speck is a gaming company, Glitch is one of the games they have designed. 

    There is no necessity for a gaming company to design every one of its products to appeal to all types of gamers.  In fact, it makes a great deal of sense to design different games for different playing styles. 

    A game that appeals to a single quadrant is not necessarily a "nitch" (sic) market.  It may simply be the first step in a corporate strategy that will eventually have a balanced set of products that appeal to many different types of gamers. 
    Posted 15 months ago by WindBorn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I agree with the long-term playability issues. But, I can see a few built in solutions as well. For non-linear learning, as more skills are added, and probably added to the tail of existing high-level skills, learning takes progressively longer because of the 3% compound bump for each skill learned. If TS added another 10 skills (to the existing ~90) with base times of around 1 day, you're looking at between 7 and 10 days to learn each of these skills.

    Another potential solution is building upgrades to homes and streets which have been mentioned by the Devs (sorry, I don't have links to this). This, if done right, can create a set of long term goals for any player. You may need very high level skills, expensive items, or large amounts of energy similar to street building now. If you are the only Glitch who can do the work, you won't be able to throw a party and get everything instantly.

    I would like to see more repeatable quests. Since many of the current quests are related to having just learned a skill, as your skill progression slows, quests become few and far between. The race tickets are a good example of a repeatable quest, so is street building, but here area a few more ideas:  1) A NPC in (for example) Groddle Heights who wants you to fill a special jar with fireflys or gather some item only located in a special area (not bought on auction), 2) A NPC who sends you to drop/deliver an item to one of the hidden streets, 3) a  NPC who stays on one street buying a specific item for twice the going rate until he has a named amount, then moves to a new street asking for a new item.

    I will say that I would like to see more "conflict" available in the game. If there was an area we could go to fight rooks on their home ground (using a "portable altar" like a blockmaker which must be built), or go steal something back from a JuJu's treasure stockpile, or use random kindness/transcendental radiation on Deimaginators to increase their mood until they relax, etc...
    Posted 15 months ago by Rayana Subscriber! | Permalink
  • "The things in the world of Glitch (food, eggs, materials) could be more dependent upon user manufacturing/growing/harvesting. Truly making the skills necessary for the building and enhancement of the world of UR."  

    I like that idea a lot.
    Posted 15 months ago by Leites Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I wish skills were learned quest-style. It's lame that you just click a button and learn them.
    Posted 15 months ago by The Crepeist Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I think that questing for specialist type skills, or even for specific materials needed to make high-end items would add a lot to the game. They could even BE SOCIAL QUESTS (kind of like the kiss 5 people with Garlic, or get 10 people to give you something). These are only super-simplified examples, but they would enhance both the social interactivity, as well as the value of skills/player-made items. Let's be honest, there's not really a lot to the engineering skills yet. What an easy place to enhance these ideas.
    Posted 15 months ago by Mortal Subscriber! | Permalink
  • questing for skills? no thank you.

    the reason someone will pick up a new skill is because they want to do something different. to do more "work" in order to try something different and fun will turn people off the game.

    waiting to learn keeps new kinds of gameplay constantly around the corner. if you want to work to speed it up, you can, but if you are unsure if something is worth the effort you can always set the skill to learn and receive an email to call you back to the game.

    the skill acquisition system is *fine* .. the issue is what we are given to do with those skills, which isn't much.

    all the suggestions in the OP for altering the skill system merely kick the can down the road. skill acquisition should be a means to an end, not the purpose of play, and the suggestions presented double down on the idea of skill acquisition being the game in its entirety. more elaborate skill acquisition isn't proper "end game" anyway, as there will always be a finite number of skills.
    Posted 15 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • That's why I suggested that for "specialist type skills" or specific materials to make high-end items. Though I don't agree that that questing and social quest particularly are any more of what you would call "work" than any other basic activity of Glitch. I also think it's somewhat niche thinking to say that skill acquisition should be a means to an end, not the purpose of play. I agree that it doesn't HAVE to be that way, but statistically speaking, a large percentage of players who engage in character progression games, DO see skill acquisition as a significant purpose of play. Even some of the responses prior to yours indicate that dynamic as an appeal of Glitch gameplay.

    I don't think it can be either/or. I think for Glitch to appeal to many demographics over the long-term, it should be both/and. I'm NOT pushing for a major game style change. I'm pushing for deeper gameplay availability.
    Posted 15 months ago by Mortal Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Alternately, what do you really think is happening now? People DO have to quest for skills. That's why you can't train Mining 3 without spending your first emblem of Zille. The same holds true for several other skills. In reality is is just that, questing for skills. People just have some preconceived responses to certain words, like "Quest". The current quests for skills makes some logical sense, but is unfortunately kind of cookie-cutter. No real distinction, which is fine for such low-level skills. I imagine more specialized and complex skill interactions farther along in the skill ecology.
    Posted 15 months ago by Mortal Subscriber! | Permalink