Topic

easy currants and drop-in gaming

now that i'm at a higher-ish level and have completed all the skills i want [except the 17 day Teleportation V] i'm starting to appreciate certain ways in which the game is structured to encourage casual, drop-in play.

*easy currants*

some people have .. i don't know if "complained" is the correct word .. but have expressed concern over how easy it is to accumulate a large number of currants very quickly and then have little to nothing to spend them on.

this is GREAT for me. it means that i can log in, grind out some quick currants in a thankfully efficient and high speed fashion, buy whatever new stuff is available or buy enough energy to contribute to projects or experiment with levitation hacks or whatever i want .. maybe speed up a skill learning time a bit .. and then when i am bored, leave the game for long stretches of time without feeling that i'm being somehow left behind because i didn't spend two or four times the time grinding my way up to 200k currants.

even if i don't actually leave the glitch site i can chat in global chat or read and post to the forums and do generally social, non-grindy things. there is relatively little distraction from keeping my in-game status at a level where i can play without a feeling of burden when i do decide to do game-play-ish stuff.

so while the game certainly stalls out at level 20 and above, and while there are many times where i want to play glitch but there is frustratingly little to do .. i rarely feel like there is a *need* to play in order to keep up.

*coop gaming lock in and drop in*

that is, unless i'm right in the middle of some kind of game-play activity - particularly social ones .. in which case i do find it rather difficult to tear myself away to deal with a pressing need like a phone call or email or scheduled task.

this leads me to mentioning a design principle that i think might improve the game's social activity components.

you know the "lego" games? like "lego star wars"? they are usually built with a "drop-in" function that i presume is meant for parents and friends to be able to drop in and out of the kid's solo game-play session.

i hope that glitch takes this into account when structuring coop gameplay elements. cooperative mining fits this mould well just by virtue of being based initially on solo mining and being so casual in nature.

there are more complicated types of communal gaming, however, which might not straddle the solo/coop divide so well. i hope that these aspects of the game, may they come, pay careful attention to the ability to switch relatively seamlessly from communal to solo mode.

Posted 18 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • +1 (I hate just giving a plus one and not adding to something... but sometimes you just want to say you agree and don't have much to add)
    Posted 18 months ago by Lord Bacon-o Subscriber! | Permalink
  • errr Transportation V is 6 days, 7 hours as I read it...
    Posted 18 months ago by MeherMan Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @MeherMan.. not if you have every other skill learned other than the better learnings.
    Posted 18 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I have 4 skills left to learn,and have only better learning 1 and 2,and my TP V,is showing at 14 days,1 hour and blah blah minutes
    Posted 18 months ago by Joos Subscriber! | Permalink
  • a little unrelated to the top post ..

    i like the new skill slowdown system, although i did get kinda hosed by the way it was implemented. it should create more differentiation in skill sets across the player base which is more important than any pre-reset inconvenience it has caused me.

    it does effect "drop in" play a bit tho .. as one of the reasons i pop into glitch to play is to try out new skills. the longer the interval, the less i am prompted to drop in.

    i don't think skills need to be modified, but i think it would be good to have some other timer based prompts that fill in the gap that skills leave after a while.
    Posted 18 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @striatic - You're right. It will make learning new skills as they are added very unattractive for the higher ranking players. It's almost better to have increasing times across a skillset rather than across all.
    Posted 18 months ago by g33kgurrl Subscriber! | Permalink
  • if you don't do it across all, i think you don't get as much differentiation but across skillset would still lead to focus in certain areas.

    thing is, we used to have increasing times across skillset instead of across all and it didn't work super well. everyone learned everything, and quickly.

    these days everyone still learns everything, but slowly : ]

    my opinion is that glitch really ought to limit the skillsets we can move into even more than it currently does, but that some other things involving long term timer based acquisition in exchange for significant gameplay changes is brought in to supplement the skill system.

    maybe personal equipment that takes months to 'cook', but have a significant permanent effect. like a jetpack or something. or a grain silo in your backyard. i dunno.

    could include week long stages that require a weekly login for setting up the next stage. that's the kind of thing i like.
    Posted 18 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I agree and like the drop in gaming aspect. I feel like I can live life without missing anything here and drop in and play a while.
    Posted 18 months ago by Gruff McGruff Subscriber! | Permalink
  • YES.  I love that I dont have to be tied to the game and worry about what happens when I'm off line. 

    Anyone else play Evony?  That game drove me nuts with it's constant need to be online and active 24/7.
    Posted 18 months ago by Feylin Subscriber! | Permalink
  • If the game is open and you're not playing, your pigs will still start to eat, and your trees will still need watering and petting.  In that respect, you do have to play routinely.  I'd appreciate it if life cycles within houses were suspended while people were logged out, mainly to avoid the "I went on vacation and my pigs turned to meat piles" scenario, which many find very upsetting.
    Posted 18 months ago by glum pudding Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Autofeeders perhaps? Robots to um...squeeze your
    chicken?
    Posted 18 months ago by g33kgurrl Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @glum pudding just set up and fill a bunch of feeders, those already exist. collectors too.

    i'm fine with the death cycle. if you don't want to come home to dead piggies a second time, you set up a bunch of feeders : ]

    the trees will eventually die as well, yes, but i believe that is set up on a longer time scale.
    Posted 18 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Yeah @glum, I forgot to do that and was gone about 9 hours straight during the last test and my pig departed...
    Posted 18 months ago by MeherMan Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @ striatic  "@MeherMan  not if you have every other skill learned other than the better learnings." Ah, thanks striatic, didn't realize it would be such a huge jump and thought you'd mistyped. I sit corrected.
    Posted 18 months ago by MeherMan Subscriber! | Permalink
  • it is a super huge jump, as it should be : ]

    if i had to do it over again, i'd pick skills in a very different order, but the teleportation stuff was added after i had everything else trained already.
    Posted 18 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink