Topic

Is home street traffic required -or- is Glitch the Farmville MMO?

I've been using resources.grelca.com/route to help me with various deeds like harvesting one of each kind of tree and filling up my bags with cherries and allspice. The routes are very useful for thia purpose and I've really appreciated having it there.

The question this generates in my mind are this:

At some point, I expect Tiny Speck is hoping that Glitch will be successful. At that point, what happens to grelca.com? My suspicion is that it is likely to become overwhelmed with people spamming their routes to try and drive traffic to their street. I'm wondering if Tiny Speck is planning on having some kind of street finder tool to help? This also makes me wonder if Glitch is intended primarily as a Facebook game like Farmville, where most of the traffic you'd expect on your home street is from Facebook Friends.

The tool I'm thinking of is something like being able to search for resources and being given, say, 11 choices of random people's streets that have whatever resource you want available. Does that even make sense in Glitch?

Posted 4 months ago by Bone Tired Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • Glitch Routes does what you described in the last paragraph, but it's still a work-in-progress: http://glitchroutes.com/build/
    Posted 4 months ago by TomC Subscriber! | Permalink
  • And the other question is:  do sites like grelca and glitchroutes drive people to mono-cropping? or min/maxing?
    Posted 4 months ago by Bone Tired Subscriber! | Permalink
  • TS isn't responsible for grelca.com or any other 3rd party fan site, anymore than Blizzard is responsible for Wowhead and thottbot. Those sites will have to deal with what happens to them post relaunch when that stuff, whatever it is, happens. And, I suspect, much like Blizzard, TS will integrate those elements of fan sites they think the majority of their players would like to have available within glitch.com. I doubt TS will implement elements that "drive" glitchen to activity they think is counterproductive. If those fan sites are driving an activity TS doesn't like, that becomes a very complicated situation because, again, TS has no responsibility for those sites and their activities. The most they can do is revoke api access.

    To answer the thread title question: home street activity is not "required", just like you aren't required to squeeze chickens, or use the auction house, or build a tower.
    Posted 4 months ago by Faranae Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I really like the community in Glitch at this point and my question is about how it will change as more people join. glithroutes and grelca are awesome. But what about if there are ten thousand players or a hundred thousand? The fundamental design intent seems to be aimed toward encouraging players to do things like visit each other's streets. I'm sure some players will try and exploit that as the game grows. What mechanisms are built into the game to discourage exploitation?
    Posted 4 months ago by Bone Tired Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Not sure what TS has planned, but I suppose they will address "exploitation" as it comes up. The only thing I can imagine is that traffic gets so high on the resource routes that the resources are completely depleted all the time, but we have a ways to go before that.

    In the mean time, I really like the fact that the resource routes are player-organized and the sites which manage them are player-built. Think of it as more developer resources available for the total game than just the ones that work at TS.
    Posted 4 months ago by Janitch Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Unlike some other games this is an open-ended game. There is no set way to play.There are many ways to gather img, we do get some because people use the resources on our street, but we can get it from quoins, gathering, harvesting, cooking, mining, and many other ways. The home street routes were formed by the players and managed by players as well. Mostly to make getting resources easier than just in Ur. They didn't exist until the housing reset, so its a somewhat new aspect of the game. Also its a  3rd party with permission to use the API if theres an issue permission can be taken away. Aside from that i don't see exploitation as much of an issue here, unlike some other games. We dont have equips or a cash shop that gives advantages if you pay, things like that, just supplies. and a subscription here is just for appearance type items, no in-game advantages. Glitchen also are generally a giving bunch overall. If it does become an issue im sure TS has a plan in place.
    Posted 4 months ago by Lyrical DejaVu Subscriber! | Permalink