Topic

Good game balancing

I said it earlier, I think in my "Third Impressions" post, but this game is very excellently balanced. The exact amount of time it takes to "reincarnate" is long enough to make it worth avoiding, but short enough to avoid frustration. The money gain in quests is just small enough so that regaining wealth (say, after buying a house you can't afford.. whoops) takes a while, but large enough so that the regain is quick enough to not be annoying. The exact costs of items are also, I've found, pretty well-reasoned and timed with the estimated amount of wealth a person might have at each skill. Each level-up is frequent enough so that it stays exciting, but spread out enough so that you almost forget about it.

I could go on, but my point is that the game constants have been very well-tweaked (or you're just extremely lucky).

Posted 23 months ago by RobotGymnast Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • Am I right in assuming we are running at an enhanced speed during this test phase? In which case some of those tasks may well take longer when the game launches. That`s not neccesarily a bad thing as you don`t want to run through the requests and skill levels too quickly.
    Posted 23 months ago by bluto Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @bluto: Oh man I really hope not. If things were slowed down much, I'd lose interest very quickly. That's one of the issues with most online games: things are easy in the beginning, and it becomes excruciating to get a minor dopamine squirt later (e.g. leveling up). If research has taught us anything, it's that random rewards for doing something are much more effective than expected ones. In this respect, I think Glitch is good, because the expected things (e.g. getting resurrected) are kept short and sweet, and the things like new quests are a little more sporadic.
    Posted 23 months ago by RobotGymnast Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I agree that the game is reasonably balanced, though I would be OK with a somewhat slower pace of leveling up. Currently, it seems as if I get some pat on the back (leveling up, discovering something new, some new award or other) every ten minutes. Well, OK, that's probably an exaggeration, but pretty often. So much so that I kind of expect that, when I click on "Post Reply" here, I'll get an award for "Okay Forum Poster." You know?

    So! If various awards and levels were slowed down by a factor of, let's say, two, that'd be OK with me. But if they were slowed down by a factor of ten, then I agree with RobotGymnast that that would be deadly dull.

    And this brings up an interesting point. If the current pace of the game is the intended pace of the final game, well, it seems that even a modestly dedicated player like myself can learn all the (current) skills and get up to Level 20 or so in 2-3 weeks. Then what?

    While I dearly love conga lines and barnacle scrapes, I wonder what there will be that retains my interest for months and months.

    If I correctly read between the lines, Tiny Speck is figuring on a subscription model, so they're depending on keeping our interest for months and months.
    Posted 23 months ago by Plurp Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Agreed, although I think a factor of two might be a little slow (not sure). But really, if the only thing keeping you playing is the speed or slowness at which you level up, that's something they should fix, because it means that long-term, no matter how much leveling up is slowed down, they will lose customers who achieve that goal.
    Posted 23 months ago by RobotGymnast Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Leveling is a minor part of the game. I've thought they should have the interface reflect that better.
    Posted 23 months ago by Tingly Claus Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I've found that leveling up is a minor part for me, too. Learning new skills and completing quests is much more fun for me. However, I've had little fun that didn't revolve around something finite (skills, completing quests, leveling up), so that's still a bit of an issue.
    Posted 23 months ago by RobotGymnast Subscriber! | Permalink