Topic

about those barnacles....

I hate them.

They're off in the wilds, there's no story for why they're there, and you need a fucking lot of them -- let's call it a boat load -- for projects. Lots of standing around ensues.

They need to make more sense.

Actual barnacles live in water, of course. They don't grow in the air. Well okay, they can live in the air, but they're not going to complete their whole life cycle there. (And fine, we're not real; we're fanciful. But I'm not seeing the amusing fanciful thing here.)

Planks were pesky for a brief moment, until they fell from the skies and now more reasonably come from trees at an acceptable pace (and the spontaneous planks should go away now, thanks). With the planks, one can see that a plank economy could emerge, with people even farming them on purpose as needed, you know, if an actual economy emerges and there's supply and demand forces.

I'm imagining that aqueous Glitch worlds are in the works, and then maybe there will be something that makes more sense with the barnacles. But I do feel like it would be tons better if they were less random, and part of some cycle... and maybe in the future, possibly farmable.

Posted 24 months ago by clare Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • i have one complaint: they should be found on barns.
    Posted 24 months ago by Another Chris Subscriber! | Permalink
  • For me, barnacles turned out to be one of the more social aspects of the game. When people figured out that you could mass harvest them by teaming up (which takes a lot of communication), that really changed things for me - people had to work together to form the teleport chain between the project and the swamp (or whatever that place is), to find them and then to collect them (3-2-1 scrape!). There also wasn't much standing around since you could walk between the streets and then start again. You can recruit the individuals wandering around doing it solo. So, in a sense they are farmable in a community way.

    In fact, all of these things are farmable - I began to see more of an economy in this last test emerging, with some players making milk, meat, etc., and auctioning them off. Players are beginning to 'specialize' and to just throw things up on auction (or buy from auction) rather than trying to do everything themselves. Of course, you get currants, not XP or other rewards, and of all the pieces in this economy, I'm not seeing the point of hoarding currants (yet). During the pig fountain extravaganza, I auctioned some meat, but sold a lot more meat to re-invest in the pig farm (more pigs, more collectors, more feeders, etc.). DiB, on the other hand, used the meat to XP up at shrines... which in retrospect I wish I had done since it would have provided my character more benefit. All this to say that farming anything is possible already (even barnacles), and you can choose to coordinate barnacle harvesters or just set up your own gig with another product.

    It would be great if auctions were more visible in-game, though, without having to reply on spamming the help channel - although that really worked well for projects this time ("I need bubbles for this project, can anyone auction them off?" "I put some up!" then, boom, you buy something and the projects get completed faster. But there is still that tension between projects granting you XP and auctions just making you currant wealthy.
    Posted 24 months ago by zeeberk Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I hate collecting barnacles, as part of a chain or not, and even where teleporting stations have been set up. It is mind-numbingly dull. As is collecting paper, bat-shit or loam. Projects will soon lose all interest for many players if such high numbers of these items continue to be needed. It may seem like fun to some now but can anyone honestly see themselves collecting barnacles day after day, week after week?
    Posted 24 months ago by bluto Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I guess I'm assuming that such high numbers of items are there on projects to facilitate more people's involvement in them - who would want to collect 500 barnacle dust or guano or dirt or whatever, right? Because I agree, it was fun at first then I quickly stopped because it did get mind-numbingly dull.

    Then again, anything in the game in mind-numbingly dull if your goal is to collect or make 1000 or 10,000 of anything.

    But right now, I do see projects as too easily owned by small handfuls of people who are collecting large batches of stuff. Consider that - at first - the hang-up on projects was planks. Now, it's super easy to collect 200 planks as you wander about, so planks get donated to projects all too quickly now. Making the quest of ingot donation to a project is the same - the projects requesting ingots get filled immediately (and I don't like the idea of tying quests into projects for that reason).

    I think projects need some better balancing. Sometimes, I've arrived at projects too late with an item to be able to contribute. Other times, I've been the only player in the game on at that time with the skill needed to finish a project, so it was ridiculously easy for me to come along with my level 30 XP and then water 1000 times (or whatever that was - unreal!) and while that was the only thing I did for that project, I ended up with 20% of the rewards and the leader on that project (and got nowhere near close to dying). I almost think that a player should be capped out on projects, so that once you donate n% or n items you're done with that project. Yes, projects would take longer to build that way, but I'm not sure why it's so important to finish projects quickly, either, because the expense on that is participation.
    Posted 24 months ago by zeeberk Subscriber! | Permalink
  • It's fine if the goal is to promote a larger community involvement but only the players who have been socially active in the game know about the barnacle project conundrum. If Shimla Marsh was 2x as big and the Barnacles came about 2x as fast then harvesting then wouldn't be such a big deal. Bat poop isn't a big deal if me and the other miners take the time to feed them as we mine and build up stock. I haven't even tried to get loam yet and as such I don't know what it is even. Hah!

    @Zee, you're case was different for that 20% earning. You were the only person on the server with the Skill needed for that particular action. I got 10% on the first project I attempted. It's hit or miss. I still need to learn how projects come about. I harvest and save quite a few resources in preparation for projects now. I thought 1000 cherries was gonna be enough for one but it was only half but it was nice not doing it all forcing people to contribute.

    My future strategy will be Bags. I only learned this test you could have multiple elemental pouches and so now I keep a few full if I can. Also when you set bags on the ground all the stuff stays in them. So I began to color coordinate my bags and name them. While I still have to leave them on my house floor it's not as cluttered and the label tells me what is inside.

    I know my reason behind finishing a project quickly was to get a new street to plant more fruit trees or a new housing quarter or just something new period.
    Posted 24 months ago by DiB Subscriber! | Permalink
  • about those barnacles...
    I (briefly) helped a barnacle collecting party, which was interesting. My connection was a bit spotty, so I found it difficult to follow what was happening. The co-operative aspect was good, but the methods of communication available were limited and clumpy.
    I think perhaps the barnacle collecting is a bit dull as there is so little else going on in the fire bog/swamps. If there were other things to collect or do there, one could scrape barnacles just in passing. Petting and nibbling pigs would be cumbersome, too, if one had to go to the special piggy world to do just that one thing.

    about projects...
    I think the purpose of projects and the role they play needs a bit of tweaking. Knowing in advance what the rewards will be if you help out or donate items makes the whole project participation very competitive and kind of selfish.
    A sort of project frenzy takes over with people piling on to get higher on the project leader board or whatever.
    If you don't already have the required items or skills in your bag right there, there's really no point in going out and collecting and/or making them, as someone else invariably will beat you to it, and on your return with your 300 bits of paper, you will find that they have already been donated, possibly bought at auction.
    This makes the projects a bit like the shrines, where you can buy favour (or XP) with money.

    I would love it if the projects filled another role- more community building, more selfless contribution. What if we didn't know what the rewards were when we donated? What if we could see who was leading, who had contributed the most and where we stood in the rankings, but didn't find out what the prize was until after the project completed?
    That's kind of how I think of projects. Street building, church building, free clinic building, etc- you don't know exactly how it will pay off, but you hope it pays off and that the area/ community will be richer for it.
    Posted 24 months ago by Wrendolin Subscriber! | Permalink
  • "I would love it if the projects filled another role- more community building, more selfless contribution. What if we didn't know what the rewards were when we donated?"

    the rewards are still incredibly minute compare to how much money and XP you can make doing things other than projects.

    stoot mentioned that the rewards were boosted, but the boosts i saw were still next to irrelevant.

    the reason that people contribute quickly to projects isn't competitiveness, so much as the thrill and challenge of doing things efficiently and unlocking lots of new stuff. like what DiB said.

    .. and i have no idea what the devs are thinking with boosting the rewards. even if they boosted the rewards into the realm of consequence.. all that would do is drive up the demand for the rewards, which would then have to be split across more players and be even less consequential. either that or the same top 8 players would get all the top rewards all the time and dominate the rewards so much that no one else would bother to try.

    i see no upside to boosting the project rewards. people are doing the projects anyway without getting decent rewards and collaborating with each other and all that. the motivator is already there in the thrill of the unlock .. so what's the point?
    Posted 24 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • "It may seem like fun to some now but can anyone honestly see themselves collecting barnacles day after day, week after week?"

    what isn't dull is the recruitment.

    the more people you recruit, the less harvesting has to be done, and the less boring it is.

    so no, i don't see myself collecting 100s of barnacles day after day..

    i see myself [and others] organizing 100s of people simultaneously scraping ten barnacles to produce 1000s of barnacles at the same time.

    or sending their robots to do it.

    the more coordination beforehand, the less grinding people have to do. grinding is a punishment for not coordinating.
    Posted 24 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • p.s. i like the barnacles being up in the air : ]
    Posted 24 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • And striatic had to bring up robots. So... Alternate accounts. I don't have one but some do and in the final release as things stand it would be a must! Personally I can see having a lot of alternate accounts for the sole purpose of having immediate transportation to anywhere I want with whatever resources I needed at the time or to move me to a designated favorite location.

    Which makes me think something else entirely crazy but as the devs read this and part of the point of this entire discussion. I work with computers in an administrative and programming capacity for a living my degrees are in networking and computer security. Is the data transmission secure all the way through? I haven't analyzed the packets or decompiled the swf assets and run swfscan on them yet. Nor have I tried to write a program to try and subclass Glitch. But if the game were to go live I can see the advantage of doing this to literally have a robot player.

    Why would I go to such lengths? I really like this game. And everything about it. There are just some minor changes that could really affect gameplay. Having played through some resets though just reinforces this sentiment on certain areas. I know they are working on a bigger world with transportation even but moving around the world is soooooo tiresome right now. Having a way to just teleport in the middle of a major town would be nice. That doesn't seem too hard to implement and given a level, skill, item, or recipe restriction would prevent abuse early on in the game preventing people from exploring glitch and caring for the surrounding wildlife. Because no mater what level I am I still will water a tree when I pass by if I have my watering can on me.

    Regarding hoarding resources to get project completion honors- As I go through Glitch I water trees, pet pigs, play music for crabs, and other various tasks as I move about the world. In doing so I get a lot of resources with no real use to me. I don't cook my own food and for energy or donations everything off trees is useless to me. So I end up with a lot of cherries. A lot. A thousand in a glitch day or two. Same goes for mined resources. With a limited use for metal and a high reward of gems the ingots are always aplenty. If I want to see a new street then what is the harm in donating 200 cloudberry jams by myself if I have them?

    Which leaves the last thing to address. The chat window. Are there plans to improve the UI or enable it as resizable floating window? It would help with coordination and keeping the help channel clear from less then helpful conversation.

    And as a parting note of levity. I just happen to stare down at the "Glitch is built by Tiny Speck" and clicked Tiny Speck and saw job applications. Might have to send in the Ol' CV.
    Posted 24 months ago by DiB Subscriber! | Permalink
  • DiB has a good and important point. In GNE, the protocol between client and server could be hacked, and was. Players could accumulate infinite stuff with no work. I found it very discouraging because, although I could hack the game too, I didn't want to, and tried to attain really difficult goals (like making a GNE) legitimately. Because others could do so with very little effort, it didn't seem worthwhile for me to do so. If Glitch has this glitch too, that would be sad.
    Posted 24 months ago by Plurp Subscriber! | Permalink
  • "But if the game were to go live I can see the advantage of doing this to literally have a robot player."

    i'm not sure that would *necessarily* be a bad thing.

    an API controlled player character could be tremendously efficient, but there is in game friction that an API controlled player would still have to deal with .. and i could see other, human controlled players being able to "dupe" a fixed logic bot.

    for more thoughts on API robots, look for "good robot usses" here: alpha.glitch.com/forum/gene...
    Posted 24 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • "i see myself [and others] organizing 100s of people simultaneously scraping ten barnacles to produce 1000s of barnacles at the same time."

    That would destroy the game for me. Players raising and deploying armies to harvest resources is akin to corporations destroying rain-forests with little regard to individuals and small communities quietly farming or crafting on their own. Sure the resource grows back in time but perhaps not before another plague of locusts descends.
    Posted 24 months ago by bluto Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Maybe I am wrong, but I have been assuming that the stacked barnacle scraping was actually a glitch that players are able to take advantage of for now, but not forever.

    The firebog is not being unlocked for development right now, but lots of projects need barnacle dust, so it makes sense to artificially boost the yield (or not fix the glitch). Maybe for staff it is just less work at the moment to let the barnacle glitch stand than re-writing the requirements for existing projects.
    Posted 24 months ago by Nanookie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I happened across a project yesterday and since I had recently found barnacles, so I decided to go collect. I assumed it was like every other gathering and went on my way. But after a short time in the marsh I was told I was "poaching" since I wasn't in the group. I was about to log off anyway so it was more puzzling than anything.

    The group collecting one node does seem like a bug, and if not it would punish those with high latency. Not to mention even in zones with only a few people I've gotten big lag spikes, the typing chat countdown method with a prime time live server and lag may cause serious frustration.

    Not to mention at some point the size of the group could actually cause problems as people may be collecting and their turn for teleporting and turning in items may happen after the submission amount has been reached.

    This happened to me after milling ginger to submit, when I started ginger was empty or low. I went and collected and ground up some and by the time I got back, ginger was locked out. Not a big deal for spices but seems like barnacles could cause friction.
    Posted 23 months ago by Kraxle Pop Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Poaching? Tell them to go make their eggs elsewhere. You can't magically claim anything in this game unless it's in your inventory or in your house.
    Posted 23 months ago by Johnny Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Scarcity really pushes cooperation and in game economics. The groups harvesting barnacles in a group were using a "glitch" to overcome it but it made the game interesting and far more sociable.
    Posted 23 months ago by Freeman Subscriber! | Permalink
  • "But after a short time in the marsh I was told I was "poaching" since I wasn't in the group."

    dude, that was after chasing you through 3 streets trying to engage you in polite conversation, including IM, which you continually ignored.

    telling you that you were "poaching" was the only thing that finally got your attention. if you don't want to be spoken to rudely, perhaps consider at least acknowledging friendly attempts at communication.

    "The group collecting one node does seem like a bug, and if not it would punish those with high latency."

    it doesn't. we've had many barnacle parties now over many test sessions and NEVER has latency been an issue.

    of course, a very convenient assumption for you to make.

    i've talked to the devs about it a few tests ago and while unintended, they liked the social effect of the shared scraping parties and let us know they would not be fixing the "bug".then they went ahead and introduced a 9 seconds communal bog harvesting quest that seemed to be inspired by the simultaneous barnacle scraping.

    "Not to mention at some point the size of the group could actually cause problems as people may be collecting and their turn for teleporting and turning in items may happen after the submission amount has been reached."

    wow. we're full of assumptions today. multiple tests now and again this has NEVER been a problem.

    we constantly monitor the number of barnacles being collected by the groups and compare that to the number of barnacles needed for the project .in the case of the party last night we had someone timing the initials scrapes and another person keeping a count of the total collected by the entire group so that we wouldn't over harvest.

    of course if you'd tried working with the group instead of scraping all the barnacles in sight without a thought to anyone else, despite people trying to engage you in conversation, you would have known that.

    "Poaching? Tell them to go make their eggs elsewhere"

    when you are denying other people the ability to gather a resource when cooperation would not at all reduce the number of resources you're gathering, that's hostile to other players.

    one player selfishly destroying a barnacle and denying 6 players working together from gaining the benefit of the barnacle? that's ignorant, but innocent.

    running away and ignoring conversations to even learn the mechanics of barnacle collecting? and then coming to the forums to complain about the group efforts using imagined technical problems which have been demonstrated not to be problems over multiple tests? that goes beyond ignorant and into the domain of the selfish.
    Posted 23 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Striatic even wrote a note that was placed at the first street when entering Shimla Mirch! ( which was really well written btw )

    I guess there needs to be more work on communication / cooperation. We'll see in the next test, maybe there'll be fewer rogue players.
    Posted 23 months ago by Freeman Subscriber! | Permalink
  • freeman - i wrote the note after the Kraxle Pop incident.

    some players prefer to go through the shared game world with no consideration for what groups of people to do to benefit each other and the effect their actions might have on others, and then come to the forums and lob willfully uninformed bombs.

    i think this will probably always be the case. informing them by note won't prevent it.

    the problem is that some people enter the game assuming that selfishness is *always* the optimal personal strategy. they've been trained to believe that selfishness will always produce the maximum profit for them in *all* situations.

    the thing is that, given the barnacle re-spawn times, selfishness is the sub-optimal strategy for individuals.

    let's assume Kraxle [or Johnny] had gone on poaching, believing that the group scrapers were all a cliquish bunch of hippies trying to limit his freedom to scrape barnacles on his own.

    Kraxle [or Johnny] would actually be reducing their profit, because the dirty hippie group would get to at least some of the fresh barnacles first, considerably lowering Kraxle or Johnny's haul. possibly even by half.

    in this particular scenario, the only way to achieve maximized individual profit is to cooperate as much as possible. in short, greed is objectively bad.

    of course, if you've had it drummed into you that working in a group is antithetical to individual reward it is easier to assume that working in a group *must* be somehow unfair [inequalities in project donation] and *must* inevitably lead to technical errors [latency] .. evidence be damned, cooperating *must* not be beneficial except to some bossy elite who likes to throw their weight around.

    "I guess there needs to be more work on communication / cooperation. We'll see in the next test, maybe there'll be fewer rogue players."

    unfortunately, there will only be more rogue players. despite the fact that cooperation dramatically increases harvest yield for everyone, cooperation is such an anathema to so many people that they will avoid it despite the fact that avoiding it will cause them to spend much more time to gather much less.

    it's actually sort of hilarious.
    Posted 23 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • The issue with claiming an area isn't about the greedy player mindset, it's that some people just want to play the game on their own, and being called poachers when just doing their own thing isn't great for the game.

    Now, if you were trying to talk to him, telling him what you were doing, and even possibly invited him, that's a different story altogether! If he ignored you the whole time, until you called him a poacher, then it may have been well deserved.

    If I was in the area looking for things to gather and I had seen a group of people doing something like that, I'd join in, but I'm also a fairly observant person and I understand that the game is meant as a social thing. Mostly I'd join in because it sounds like it's fun.

    The main issue is that some people think that personal wealth is important in the game. Yes, you can purchase a house when you get some cash but I haven't ever thought to myself "how can I make some more money?". The homes don't even cost that much, I think that's purposely done to show that money isn't that important in the game. I have a tank-load of money and it just accumulated on its own. At this point in the game I'm just giving things away.

    Once people learn how the game works they will start joining the social game. Until then, you will have to deal with the people who just want to play it on their own, and also with the fact that getting certain items will be a challenge when it's a rare item.
    Posted 23 months ago by Johnny Subscriber! | Permalink
  • "Now, if you were trying to talk to him, telling him what you were doing, and even possibly invited him, that's a different story altogether! If he ignored you the whole time, until you called him a poacher, then it may have been well deserved."

    that is exactly what happened.

    i even direct IMed the guy, so it wasn't like he missed it in the flood of local chat messages.

    i also didn't "call him a poacher". i informed him that he was poaching. a small difference but less aggressive. if i could have used a word other than poaching i would have, but clearly nothing else i was saying was getting through and i needed something short and attention grabbing.

    "The issue with claiming an area isn't about the greedy player mindset, it's that some people just want to play the game on their own, and being called poachers when just doing their own thing isn't great for the game."

    problem is, it is impossible to play the game "on your own", no matter how much you want to.

    it's a shared world with limited resources, and thus playing on your own isn't possible. near everything you do [outside of maybe a pure backyard and vendor based game strategy] has an impact on other people. sometimes a profound impact.

    sometimes an impact as profound as, like, their having to spend 2 hours instead of 1 hour of their personal time collecting barnacles. just because you'd rather brush off a cluster of people and do your own thing even when doing so causes you to spend more of your own time and effort as well.
    Posted 23 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • We'll figure something out. It's become a more community driven game so those players will just end up being ostracized. They'll have trouble when they have to work in a group to complete a group quest or project. I'm talking about those that were approached and the situation explained and still refuse to work with others.

    I'd like to see a dunce cap placed on an avatar for a limited time, especially for those that steal items from others that were clearly at another avatar's feet. I'm not too happy about that guy that stole my gem while I was mining. It would be great if the system told you your inventory's full and ask if you want to drop something to make room instead of just putting it at your feet.
    Posted 23 months ago by Freeman Subscriber! | Permalink
  • The first time I encountered a party Striatic asked me to stop, explained the mechanics, then invited m to join. I have made a lot of friends.

    Yesterday we also optimized it by forgoing chat. We wait for the leader to start scraping then do it. Super efficient and very little lag.

    I also have not been purposely out for money, people are more interesting and I spend almost no money on food. My needs have plateaued so I mostly help in challenges, projects or chat.
    Posted 23 months ago by Ani Laurel Subscriber! | Permalink
  • i dunno about dunce caps or ostracizing anyone.

    seems counterproductive. wouldn't work, just generate animosity.

    i think the only way that will possibly work is making the amount of profits lost by not cooperating clear. if players who aren't cooperating "fall behind" those who are cooperating, i think that's the only factor that might make them think twice about reckless individual exploitation of the game world.
    Posted 23 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • The Peter out Pete quest is a prime example of the social game. I just happened to go into that area when a group of people were trying to figure it out (I made a Peter out Pete group for anyone who wants to know how it works). I joined them and helped everyone complete the quest. Everyone was happy and at the end half of us friended each other.
    Posted 23 months ago by Johnny Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Wow. I just read this entire thread and am so stoked about the amt. of philosophical thought that you all have put into this.

    From a newbie perspective, I needed 2 tests (holiday & most recent) to figure out what the heck everything was about. I didn't communicate much because I was taking it all in as I'm sure many others have been. There were things that I may have done that pissed people off and didn't realize it, and the beauty is that this time around I realized what I had done wrong once it was done to me.

    I'm happy to have finally seen and participated in 1 project (although i wasn't really advanced enough to help much.) The amt. of cooperation and branches of creativity are awesome. Communication is key also. I read striatic's note by the barnacles and would've had no clue about group harvesting at that time as there were only 2 players there talking, so thank you.

    I'm sure that people who continually play will get the idea. No dunce caps please :)
    Posted 23 months ago by Smendelanoche Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Looking at the leaderboards...many of the people up there were in partys.
    Posted 23 months ago by Ani Laurel Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Ostracizing, well, I don't think it would be deliberate. People just don't want to help someone who's being anti-social.

    Don't take the dunce cap suggestion too seriously, I was just pissed about the drive by thievery. No scarlet letters or other badges of shame required. I would like the system to prompt when your inventory's full if you'd like to drop something to make room. I'd gladly drop some grain for a diamond. It would reduce the risk of accidental thievery ( if that's what it was ).
    Posted 23 months ago by Freeman Subscriber! | Permalink
  • You're all talking about projects, which is interesting, but where are they exactly? Should you just wander about looking for one? Because that isn't working, at least, not for me.
    Posted 23 months ago by Wilzorose Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Ditto on Wilzorose's comment. I only managed to start playing during the last test and was out there doing my own thing. If I hadn't read this thread I wouldn't even have known about the more social aspects of the game.
    Posted 23 months ago by Sugarcube Subscriber! | Permalink
  • There were not a lot of projects this game. Groddle Heights and Shimla Mirch were done by peole with projects.

    There is usually an alert in Help chat or on the map there is a greyed out street.
    Posted 23 months ago by Ani Laurel Subscriber! | Permalink
  • The map should indicate on which streets projects are running. Sometimes it`s not obvious which connecting street has the active project.
    Posted 23 months ago by bluto Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I saw the note about the barnacles - a good idea, but as there was nobody much around at the time it wasn't clear that there was any reason not to take them. You should add to the note that they take ages to grow back and that they're used in projects (and maybe that they're no use for anything else though I'm not sure about that)
    Posted 23 months ago by Emu Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I had to make barnacle paste for something or other yesterday.
    Posted 23 months ago by Tingly Claus Subscriber! | Permalink
  • "I saw the note about the barnacles - a good idea, but as there was nobody much around at the time it wasn't clear that there was any reason not to take them."

    actually, when nobody else is around it is a good idea to harvest them on your own.

    they'll come in useful on a project at some point, so why not harvest them instead of letting them sit there. the note does say that if nobody else is around, harvesting them on your own is probably fine.

    the problem with harvesting alone is if you're doing it as the same time as other people are trying to harvest...then it becomes a significant issue..

    ..but if nobody else is doing it, swing for the fences and go on a solo barnacle harvesting spree.
    Posted 23 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • "You're all talking about projects, which is interesting, but where are they exactly? Should you just wander about looking for one? Because that isn't working, at least, not for me. "

    As a project vet at this point let me offer some tips (not to say the interface couldn't be helped along more):

    - the easiest thing to note is on the map when there's a dimmed out / faded out street that means there's a project to create it. The actual project will be on the current street found on one side or the other

    - stumble upon it - watch the loading screens carefully or the messages above street spirits as you go about your gaming

    - ask in help chat if you want to find something

    - there's a "New Streets" group you can join that is sometimes active and sometimes less so, but you can probably find more direct discussion in there than help chat
    Posted 23 months ago by Another Chris Subscriber! | Permalink
  • The tone of some of the comments in this thread really bothers me. Branding people poachers, and rogue players, and getting all sarcastic with people bringing up issues seems counter to the nice atmosphere of this game. I don't like having stuff yoinked either, but you have to give people the benefit of the doubt. It's possible they don't know better, or don't understand yet, or didn't see the IM window (I've missed a TON of IMs), or whatevs.
    You are criticizing someone for playing the game in a way you don't like. But people wandering on their own and harvesting on their own is not against any rules. And if you drop a gem (as we all have), it's on you, not the guy who walked by and picked it up.
    Anyway, my two cents.
    Posted 23 months ago by Helcat Subscriber! | Permalink
  • "You are criticizing someone for playing the game in a way you don't like."

    i am criticizing someone for playing the game in a way that impeded a bunch of other players, in a way that has a tangible effect on the amount of time it took us to accomplish a goal.

    it isn't like i thought his avatar looked funny or that he put too much emphasis on leveling or that he was saying annoying things in the local chat.

    i've ran into many barnacle scraping players and asked them [politely] to join scraping parties. more than a dozen over a handful of tests .. i've never had to chase anyone over 3 streets and use both local and direct IM [i think i may have invited him to a party chat as well] in order to get their attention. so i'm somewhat incredulous about the idea that he accidentally missed all my messages until coincidentally i used the word "poaching".

    i wasn't even given the opportunity to create a "nice atmosphere" there.
    Posted 23 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • It's nice when people can step aside or join, but it's also nice when people don't have to deal with name-calling when they decline/ignore/aren't paying attention. This could spark a change in the game like if being in a group is ridiculously better than going solo, the problem would fix itself except where groups compete against each other.
    Posted 23 months ago by Tingly Claus Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I have to agree with Helcat, I dislike the tone in this thread. If you look at the address for this page, it starts with "alpha," meaning the game is still in development. Seeing as how it's still in development, many things keep changing and new players are added all of the time, so it seems to me that there are probably more people out there who don't know what's going on than those who do.

    If I see a barnacle on a house, I'm going to try to interact with it and if I see a gem on the ground (or anywhere else for that matter) I am going to pick it up.

    The conversation on this board might as well be boiled down to, "Stupid newbs do everything wrong."

    /rant
    Posted 23 months ago by Zaphod Subscriber! | Permalink
  • tingly, i didn't call him a name.

    i described what he was doing as "poaching".
    Posted 23 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • "Poaching" isn't exactly high praise outside of cooking eggs. [BTW, I added to my post above while stri posted that. I also don't think the tone in this thread is that bad.]
    Posted 23 months ago by Tingly Claus Subscriber! | Permalink
  • "If I see a barnacle on a house, I'm going to try to interact with it and if I see a gem on the ground (or anywhere else for that matter) I am going to pick it up.

    The conversation on this board might as well be boiled down to, "Stupid newbs do everything wrong.""

    zaphod, as i've described earlier, i've encountered many newbs "doing it wrong" and every one of them was willing to stop for a couple of seconds to listen to what i was trying to say. none of them have been "stupid" and almost all of them have been extremely open to the idea of cooperating. i'm not complaining about new players taking a crack at scraping barnacles. actually that's great, as it means more people that who are interested in harvesting barnacles and who might also be interested in doing it in a group.
    Posted 23 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Maybe we need a Glitch Police Force for people to join. Just sayin'.
    Posted 23 months ago by Eleanor Rigby Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I was harvesting as I was because I wasn't aware of the group method. I don't recall seeing the whisper. I posted here not to complain but to note it so that it can be improved on in the future. I didn't think being told I was poaching was rude, just curious because I was unaware of the mechanic.

    It was the first project I had found and this idea of group harvesting was new, esp. since there is no hint or anything about it. I assumed that harvesting worked on an individual basis like all the other gathering activities in the game.

    The idea that a limited resource can be multiplied by group gathering is not apparent through the UI.

    So I did a search on it here, found a thread that talked about the mechanic, had an ah-ha moment and posted some thoughts. My speculative thoughts were based on other games I have played, where lag is a regular fact of life. And most other games don't have this mechanic, I now presume that anyone who starts gathering while the first person is still gathering gets "attached" to that first gather. My speculation is that at launch with many many peoples, lag will be an issue even for this nice way of handling gathering for a group.
    Posted 23 months ago by Kraxle Pop Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Kraxle, i'm glad you weren't offended by the use of the word "poaching". i wasn't intending to offend you but trying to distill the idea into one potent word that might catch your eye in the viewport since you were moving rather fast and the IMs weren't working.

    regarding lag, i wouldn't be surprised if the barnacle scraping "bug" is fixed by the time the game leaves alpha, but the mechanic is a good one and the server performance and UI more than adequate for experimenting with simple, real time collaboration in the context of the alpha test. further, the developers have since integrated this mechanic into the game in a "non-bug" form with the peat digging quest, which is a simultaneous harvesting quest with a 9 second window. unless a player has consistently more than 9 seconds of lag, it isn't a problem. if the player has inconsistently more than 9 seconds of lag, they might miss a harvest or two now and then, but that isn't a big deal.

    oddly, the communal peat harvest is more difficult to do than the barnacle scrape, despite one being a hack and the other one being intentionally constructed. tho this difficulty is related more to UI awkwardness than to server performance.
    Posted 23 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink