Topic

Staff Topic

[Updated] Nerf: Quoins in "Ticket to _______" upgrade card locations count towards daily limit, with some exceptions

UPDATE: We are going to switch to a different way of limiting the rate at which iMG/currants/mood/energy/favor can be produced through the use of ticket cards: quoins in these locations will again be exempt from the daily quoin limit, but their use will limited to 11 times per game day.

In addition, (a) the price of activation will go up slightly for players with higher quoin multipliers (b) you will be able to 'eat' tickets to return most of their purchase cost.

We'll be releasing this change tomorrow [Weds, Sept 12] and will post here when we do. UPDATED: This is now launched.

So that the ensuring discussion makes sense, the original post is preserved below:

______
Until now, quoins you collected in the "Ticket" locations (listed here) did not count towards your daily quoin limit. (Actually, at first they did count, but we changed it because it was sucky to use one of the cards and then find that you couldn't actually collect any of the quoins.) 

Now, the quoins you collect there do count towards your limit, BUT: if you hit your limit in one of these locations you can keep collecting until you are done. (When you are at your limit, you will not be able to activate another card until the new day.)

The motivation for this change is pretty simple: for players with large multipliers, it was overwhelmingly more "profitable" to spend each moment using the tickets over and over. The tickets were meant to be fun, but if you do 150 of them in a row they cease being quite so fun :\

Also, now that we have sharding, being at your limit isn't as bad — you can still join in a sharding party and reap the quoinly benefits.

Posted 93 days ago by stoot barfield Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • I would like to argue strenuously against the idea that some people were "abusing" the cards, causing other players to be "punished" by this nerf. If people use a game mechanism in the way in which it is allowed to be used, then that can't be considered "abuse" in any way, shape or form.

    Perhaps the "Bounder, Untenured" badge should be eliminated, because a lot of people who have jumped a lot of times have "abused" the jumping mechanism in the game. Perhaps the croaking badges should be axed too, for the same reason. Perhaps anything at all that a player needs to do many, many times should be given the boot, because doing a lot of something isn't "quite so fun".

    I'm also very offended by being told what is or isn't fun for me. I've played Glitch for nearly a full year, so I'm pretty clear on how things work. There are no wrong ways to play (provided the ToS is not violated). That gets harped on over and over again. Was it all just talk?
    Posted 93 days ago by Flowerry Pott Subscriber! | Permalink
  • This needed to be addressed but I agree with other players that this isn't the way to do it. The 150 quoin limit already feels very restrictive in regions like Hoama and Kloro. I was typically going to Kloro, collecting my limit on about 5-7 streets, then playing whatever upgrade cards I was dealt in the days reshuffle. Now it's either/or, which makes the upgrade cards a lot less interesting.

    I'd like to see the upgrade cards made non-tradeable.  If you get them in your hand, you can play them no matter how many quoins you have collected.  You can't buy them at auction or get them from other players so there is no avenue for card-grinding. Then getting a long streak of cards feels great!
    Posted 93 days ago by Lucille Ball Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I think the quite so fun was referring to people feeling like the upgrade cards were so much better than anything else that it would have been horribly inefficient not to use them, and so used the cards over and over even though they weren't really having fun with it any more.

    I mean, obviously people have to decide what is most important to them and if they prioritized leveling over other things they enjoyed then that is on them.  But it's probably not good from a game balance perspective to have something that's so overpowered that it could seem like the only logical choice.
    Posted 93 days ago by diaveborn ♥ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I like the idea of limiting the number of cards a player can activate per game day.
    Posted 93 days ago by N2ZOrtolanaBlue Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Like a lot of others in this topic, I agree that some type of limit on card usage is a very good idea.  I definitely also agree that some limit on the cards themselves, instead of tying it in to normal quoin limits, is probably a better way to go.  Whether this is through a cool down, a hard limit on number of cards, a separate card quoin limit or something else, I think any of those would limit their use in a way that's perhaps less frustrating to a lot of players.
    Part of why I like exploring ur (definitely not the whole of it) is the fun in 'collecting' quoins. For me, it's not even about the value, but about the appearance, the sound, etc.  Same with a lot of the cards - sure, the img gain is nice, but I think they're fun to do for the background, the sound, the movement mechanics, whatever.  Having the cards limited by daily quoin limits means that if I've been running around ur a lot, I'm not going to then be able to get a little (emotional) boost by jumping in to slip 'n slide and just zooming around in there, without earlier planning about how to spend my 'day'.  That, to me, is rather sad (yes, I like going back and forth on that screen even after collecting all the quoins.  I'm a big fan of that card)
    Posted 93 days ago by LadyUtena Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Why not just raise the levels to 100 again if TS is so worried about people leveling too fast?

    ETA: Grindy jumping is no more grindy than many other aspects of game play.
    Posted 93 days ago by Mablem Tiipot Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I agree with what LadyUtena just said. I think the limit on the cards should be separate from the normal quoin gathering, but I do believe they needed a limit of some sort.
    Posted 93 days ago by Little Miss Giggles Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Best idea here is the no trade or giving them away idea. Make it so you can only use the ones you get. Would make it so I can't get thousands of easy exp, without making the 200 cards I have now useless. I've got a stockpile that will take me months to go through.
    Posted 93 days ago by Aefyn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I've played Glitch for nearly a full year, so I'm pretty clear on how things work. 

    So you'll know that sometimes decisions around game mechanics have unforeseen consequences that become apparent with lots of people testing the game.  And that these things need tweaking to make them harder or easier, in order to keep some sort of balance?

    SPLENDID! 

    (There's no advantage to dying. And it is already nerfed... you can only die so many times in a day.  )
    Posted 93 days ago by shhexy corin Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Well that sucks.
    I suspect I'll be spending a lot less time in-game from now on, they were my favourite bit.

    Unless the next thing you do is give up quoin-limit upgradeables, which would be pretty good.
    Posted 93 days ago by Loki Laufeyson Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I agree with the people who have suggested making the cards have their own scalable limit that's not connected to street quoins and here's why: Having them connected removes yet another reason to go to the streets. Aside from donating, making snails and getting fibers I can do pretty much everything else from the comfort of my house. Now I don't even have the impetus of collecting my daily quoin quotient to drive me to the streets because I can simply use a bunch of cards to do that.
    Posted 93 days ago by Anaquana Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I honestly think a cooldown period is the best way to handle this, NOT having them count toward your quoin limit.
    Posted 93 days ago by Pascale Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Anaquana - no, no, no, everyone else is saying there's no impetus to do the mini games now. 

    Hang on, does this mean there's no impetus to do anything anymore?!?!?

    :(
    Posted 93 days ago by shhexy corin Subscriber! | Permalink
  • shhexy corin: 

    I think what was meant there was something like this.

    I haven't gotten the badges for quoin collecting. I've been putting them off. I can do them now much more easily, by using the cards, as the coins are all in the same place relative to the streets.
    Posted 93 days ago by diaveborn ♥ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • While for the most part I do not really care about this from an iMG standpoint (I don't have much left to spend iMG on, except for energy bank and I'm not really concerned about leveling),  I don't like this from a "we're going to tell you what's fun" standpoint. I usually do my quoin-collecting early in the gameday so I don't forget, and I really liked the fact that if I got bored doing things around Ur I could zip off to play quoin-cards for awhile. And while it's true that I never sat at my computer to grind 150 cards in a row, if someone wants to do that, why not?  I have bags full of cards, and I've always been aware that it could be "profitable" to do nothing but cards, but to me, that's boring. To someone else, that might be the highlight of Glitch. 

    One of the things I've always loved about this game is the choices that players are allowed to make in how they play the game. Nerfing a function just so some players can't play the game in a certain way (and then saying that it is because doing it that way "is not fun") is to me, silly. Is TS next going to say that grinding sparkly for eight hours is not fun, so there will be a limit on that? Or that pumping out massive amounts of awesome stew is not fun, so there will be limits on that as well? 

    Quite frankly, I'm surprised you would even posit that doing many quoin-cards in a row "is not fun" considering that TS has created some amazing mini-worlds with some unique challenges that encourage repeat visits (like perfecting the technique for Radial Heights, or the timing for Slip n Slide, or the rhythm of Bippity Bop to grab all the quoins in one run).

    In short, I'm not so much upset about the loss of potential iMG as I am about TS specifically interrupting a style of game play in order to preserve a subjective definition of "fun".  
    Posted 93 days ago by Kross, the Empress Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I don't think anyone's suggested this yet--what about limiting the "won't affect your quoin limit" effect to once per card per game day? There are enough different cards to make a lot of people happy, but not so many that running through them will lead to a level-up landslide. 
    Posted 93 days ago by Sheepy Subscriber! | Permalink
  • It was such an over powered aspect of the game... it was fun while it lasted though! I wish I could get my daily limit over 200 though (with avarice.) I would pay a fortune in iMG for a 1000 limit! (500 maybe?)

    Also +1 Sheepy, that seems fair too. That's only 11 cards, at my peak I was doing upwards of 100 cards per game day! (I reduced my ticket intake almost completely after that!!!)
    Posted 93 days ago by La Mariposa Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @Stoot, the text on the intro to the card (where one has the choice to "Nevermind" or "activate") had the erroneous information when I wrote the response above. It's possible that I was seeing a cached version at the time (Cloud Rings and Sky Plunge tested at the time), since that text now no longer appears (after logging in/off several times since then).
    Posted 93 days ago by Tragus Subscriber! | Permalink
  • There are all sorts of reasons "why not" in this game.  Despite the fact that the original post mentions fun/not fun, it boils down to a gameplay balance.  Basically, if you want to think of it this way, having an imbalance like this is not fun for TS.
    Posted 93 days ago by diaveborn ♥ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Shhexy Corin, I really like playing the mini-games. If I have to choose between playing a mini-game and simply jumping around on a street to get quoins, I'll definitely choose the mini-games. Especially since there's basically nothing else on the streets to do that I can't do on my home street.
    Posted 93 days ago by Anaquana Subscriber! | Permalink
  • thank GOD I grinded to 60 with these things   hahah
    Posted 93 days ago by Jessenya Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I used to finish the day by knocking off a few cards after everything else was done, now either I'll just do cards till I hit the limit or ignore them completely. The compromise would be to pop in and just memorise and pick off the higher value Quoins that I can't easily get elsewhere in the game but that's just making the gameplay more of a joyless grind and surely not he intention?
    Posted 93 days ago by Benzyl Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I agree with Flowerry Pott

    So, now it makes the ticket areas more challenging - because now I'll avoid anything that's not an IMG quoin.
    Posted 93 days ago by Morgana The Great Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I haven't gotten the badges for quoin collecting. I've been putting them off. I can do them now much more easily, by using the cards, as the coins are all in the same place relative to the streets.

    Ooh, that's a good point, do they count towards the numismatizer badges now? 
    Posted 93 days ago by shhexy corin Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Anaquana,  sorry, I was being a bit facetious, because you're saying the opposite of what other people are saying... meaning, it just means we're going to have to choose what we want to do more, those tickets or other ways of getting quoins, or not doing either 
    :)
    Posted 93 days ago by shhexy corin Subscriber! | Permalink
  • As someone who has been abusing the HELL out of this, I am personally glad this has now been addressed. It really was just far too powerful, and now I can feel better about doing something more meaningful with my time.
    Posted 93 days ago by Toksyuryel Subscriber! | Permalink
  • To reiterate: we appreciate the feedback and suggestions. We're listening (and coming up with some of our own ideas) and are still mulling various different approaches to making it work better. So, I think many of you will be happier in the end.

    In the meantime though, a devil's advocate question, out of curiosity: how many of you who are upset about this change would be completely satisfied if we made it so that the tickets cost nothing, but you also didn't get any credit for the quoins collected there (no credit at all, regardless of quoin limits). Are they really fun enough to do over and over and over again just because of the art/music/physics settings/level design?
    Posted 93 days ago by stoot barfield Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I totally wouldn't do cards over and over because of the aesthetics. But, I think having things like party packs based on the cards, or an option on the card to spend nothing/gain nothing/just hang out in the area, would be super cool.  They're all really gorgeous.
    Posted 93 days ago by diaveborn ♥ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Umm. I think the ticket environments are cute, but I would not do them more than once or twice without a reward. 
    Posted 93 days ago by Faux Paws Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I like the idea of letting the tickets become donate-able to shrines. Otherwise, I feel sorry for players who have been piling up tickets imagining they were worth X each and now discover they will only be worth some much-lower x.
    Posted 93 days ago by Lil Frumious Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I'm still not sure why so many players are grinding so hard to reach Level 60.   I'll get there eventually, without especially grinding, and at that point all of those who reached 60 earlier will still be there.   What advantage, exactly, comes with being at Level 60 sooner?  (I'm at level 42, and have already bought almost all of the upgrade cards, and most everything else you can purchase with IMG.)
    Posted 93 days ago by Leites Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Partially not a fan of this, but it was kinda needed. I genuinely enjoy doing the Ticket cards. I would just buy and buy and use and use them. Then I wondered why I had emblems with 8/11 giants. But this will probably be good for us.
    Posted 93 days ago by Osiris χ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Would I play the cards if there was no payoff of any kind involved? No.

    Leites, for me, grinding to level 60 is something to do because there's nothing else *to do*. I have one quest left to do and I've gotten most of the achievements. There's no new content for higher level players and it sucks. I dunno, I guess I'm getting bored with the game and this just takes away one more thing for me to do.
    Posted 93 days ago by Anaquana Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @Leites I was grinding to max out my quoin multiplier and brain capacity, the level ups just kinda happened on their own. I'd rather *not* reach level 60 in all honesty, as I've heard that shrines stop giving you iMG when you get there.
    Posted 93 days ago by Toksyuryel Subscriber! | Permalink
  • wouldn't it have made more sense to make less upgrade cards available?
    Posted 93 days ago by Cat A. Tonic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I played piles of them because I did indeed enjoy the physics, you could get some of the party pack effects for way less cost than buying one. And I enjoy quoin collecting, the slightly different physics made it more fun and less lag than the hopping areas. My laptop is a 3 years old and can't quite keep up with a bunch of glitches in one area.
    Posted 93 days ago by JohnaMarie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Dear stoot barfield, this how I use upgrade cards:

    1.- Log in, reshuffle, get my cards.
    2.- HOARD.
    3.- Random game stuff depending on how much time I got to spend.
    4.- 5-10 minutes before I log out I check my hoard SBD´s and select some card or cards I got in excess. (hmmm... custom card bag, uh?)
    5.- I select 2 or 3 of them and go for a ride if I´m maxed out on my quoin limit, mostly seeking currants and IMG.

    Would I play the cards with no payoff? No.

    I was never aware of the behavior that kicked this change, never used it. And yes, some of the cards are things of beauty, I love them.
    Posted 93 days ago by Mikah Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I dislike the 'Ticket to...' cards and wish I could wrangle them (like the pesky SWF blocks) for about the same iMG they cost.  I only buy them to get them outta the way in my card deals.
    Posted 93 days ago by Feldspar Gravity Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I also hate this change, but I saw it coming. I still have a lot of leveling to do. I'll miss you, Sky Plunge!

    I agree that with this change and the new extremely coin-rich regions, maybe offering more quoin limit upgrade cards is a good idea. I earned all my icons through favor quoins, before the multiplier, even. Love them.
    Posted 93 days ago by Pii Subscriber! | Permalink
  • My opinion: while the nerf reasoning sounds reasonable, I don't think it is. 

    In fact, there are several ways to gain humungous resources: I can think of obsessive auction marketers (buy and resell, ad infinitum) or booooooooring grinding, but surely there are many more - and all they have in common is that they are damn repetitive. Players are trading having fun for amassing resources.
    In this view, I'd say that "carding" was not a worse offender than many other behaviors.

    Also, this sounds a lot like punishment for higher-level players, who grinded like mad to get there in the first place. Why denying them a little more reward than newbies? After all, the novelty of many aspects of the game has worn off for them, so it is just fair to give them another form of motivation/fulfillment.
    Players with lots of money/img are also sources of new items in the game economy and a help for lower-level players. As soon as I got my first cubis collection, in example, it was a pleasure for me to help people to complete theirs.

    Finally, as a fortysomething level player I am now getting quite a lot of cards... but this is just because I have already spent millions to get previous, more important cards. To a lower level player, getting a bonus card in his shuffle is a much bigger and rare event which should be celebrated, not castrated.

    Looking forward to the developments of this...
    Posted 93 days ago by Ayzad Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I'm still not sure why so many players are grinding so hard to reach Level 60.   I'll get there eventually, without especially grinding, and at that point all of those who reached 60 earlier will still be there.   What advantage, exactly, comes with being at Level 60 sooner?  (I'm at level 42, and have already bought almost all of the upgrade cards, and most everything else you can purchase with IMG.)

    -- This.   I just don't get why people are in such a hurry to get through the game, especially since a lot of the strategies I've heard for doing so sound deadly dull.  
    Posted 93 days ago by WalruZ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I really dislike this change. Really. I'm not kidding.

    And no, Stoot. I wouldnt do it over and over just for the music but I like the chance to use the bit of skill/timing which jumping/flying requires of me and I sure enjoy earning my img with the cards a lot more than I enjoy seasoning beans over and over and over and dumping them into a shrine for moar emblems (which does not take ANY skill or timing at all) or growing yellow to shuck and donate (ditto). It doesnt take but a few minutes of game play to gather 150 coins. Now what <i>engaging</i> activities can be a source of meaningful img? I can't think of any. I guess I can stay idle and chat with my friends until the new game day....

    I understand the need to do something to limit this img gathering, but this feels overboard. My .02.
    Posted 93 days ago by Koftun Subscriber! | Permalink
  • The wildly distorted iMG rewards for these cards really bothered me and I'm glad you changed it.  As I've said elsethread, I play Glitch very actively (constant moving, clicking, interacting, crafting, exploring) when I'm online, and 2-3 hours of that does not add up to even 2 or 3 runs through Radial Heights iMG-wise.  When those cards are the ONLY way to level fast, then something is wrong.

    I agree that the limit could be tweaked somehow, and I trust you to find a fair way to do it.  But a limit of some sort did need to be imposed IMO, and I'm sorry the team is getting so much flak for it.
    Posted 93 days ago by Pale Queen Subscriber! | Permalink
  • how many of you who are upset about this change would be completely satisfied if we made it so that the tickets cost nothing, but you also didn't get any credit for the quoins collected there (no credit at all, regardless of quoin limits). Are they really fun enough to do over and over and over again just because of the art/music/physics settings/level design?

    No.  They're fun and some of them are challenging (in an interesting way), but I'd be even more upset if there were no reward at all.

    The appeal to me does center around the reward, I've not made any secret of that.  But I'm not doing hundreds of these a day... my "worst" day was probably about 50... in general, I probably do 5-10.  I mostly use these to get to that next upgrade card I can't quite reach.  Quoin multipliers and brain upgrades get expensive FAST - and I've been ignoring brain upgrades lately anyway.  80k img for 1 brain upgrade isn't worth the minimal decrease in penalty when I have things that actually help me - such as multipliers and price adjustments, not to mention the upgrade cards that still get thrown at me.  That 80k will become even more obscene without the ability to do a little bit of card grinding on top of the regular daily quoin limit.

    (And unrelated - I'm seconding the earlier request to have the ability to mark cards as "ignore" or something similar.  I've done all of my skills in one area without the final learning speed increase card and it just won't go away.  I don't want to buy it because there are more helpful things to buy.)
    Posted 93 days ago by spacekadt Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I'm not happy-happy with this development, in some part because I know that some days, I've gotten more of these cards than I could (with the new change) possibly use.

    And then what do you do with them? They're already worth almost nothing compared to their actual value (100c to buy something that gets me 100-300 favor with all the giants? Inconceivable!) when you try to sell them. So you keep them, and then you get more the next day and possibly still don't have enough quoin room to use them all.

    The cards really are not useful to lower-level players, to everyone saying they are. It's hard to up your quoin multiplier, there are so few of them in the deck, and you get so much less for doing these cards than for doing anything else when you haven't had the chance to build up your multiplier yet. My alt is in level 20, and her multiplier is only 8. And that's with me actively trying to increase it.
    Posted 93 days ago by Biohazard Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Aw, shucks!

    That's basically the entirety of my criticism of this change.  It's very slightly disappointing.  But I get it.
    Posted 93 days ago by E D D I E Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @stoot, I'll sometimes use a ticket to one of my favourite locations just to hang out in there for a while, and I'd be very sad to lose that ability just because I'd hit my quoin limit. A no-quoin option would be nice.
    Posted 93 days ago by Xacau Feera Blin Subscriber! | Permalink
  • After finally reading through the thread, a point someone else made stuck out for me - even though I prefer using the cards over going to the streets, this is going to make some of the cards completely useless because when there's a limit on the number of quoins I can get, I only go for IMG, Favor, and Currant quoins.

    What about making the value of the card quoins decrease a certain % for every X number of quoins gathered instead of putting a hard and fast cap on the number that can be collected?
    Posted 93 days ago by Anaquana Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Would I play the cards if I didn't get any credit? Nope. That'd be boring. I'd be jumping around an empty area. Pretty, sure. But boring. Then again, I wouldn't play the game on art/music/physics setting/level design alone. It'd be just as boring running around and the only thing to do after a while is to talk to people.
    Posted 93 days ago by Gwyn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I think some people have misinterpreted the motivation here: it's not that we don't think the ticket locations are fun — indeed, we specifically designed them to be fun — it's that, if the reward for one particular activity is wildly out of balance with everything else in the game, it breaks the game. Replaying the ticket locations over and over and over is definitely more fun than mining rocks over and over — but, it also rewards you about 50x more than mining rocks.

    Think about it this way: in a few keystrokes I could make it so that mining dullite (but only dullite) gave you 500 currants and 500 iMG every time your pick struck down. A solid majority of all players would suddenly spend all of their time mining dullite. And those player's numbers would go up much, much faster than they do now. Would that make the game better? More fun? If so, would it be even better if we bumped it to 5,000 or 50,000 or 500,000 currants and iMG every time you mined a dullite?

    I think it's fair to say that this change went too far in the other direction (and we will be making further adjustments because of that) but it's just never going to make sense to have one activity in the game that is so completely out of whack with all the others.
    Posted 93 days ago by stoot barfield Subscriber! | Permalink