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#### Rookswort Steady as a Rook Buff - Not Ten Minutes Any Longer... WTF?!?

As a glitch with a large energy tank, I have needed to munch rookswort regularly to keep my mood up above 90. The buff lasted 10 minutes previously. Tonight I notice that it only lasts 5 minutes.
What happened? is this a bug? a punishment from the giants? a spiteful twist of the IMG knife?
I don't like this. It was a pain to munch every 10 minutes. now every 5 minutes, I am pulling my hair out.
PLEASE CHANGE THE BUFF BACK.
Thanks.
Jope

Posted 6 months ago by Jope | Permalink

### Replies

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- So the mood mechanic is Glitchy (i.e., fun?) because it gives meaning to making and consuming drinks?
  Edited to add: I don't mean this question to be whiny and challenging. I really am trying to figure out what the point of the mood mechanic is. I was thinking maybe it was just a way to prevent people from leveling up as quickly, since its primary effect seems to be on how much iMG a person gets. It didn't occur to me that some folks would think making drinks is fun. Now that I think about it, some of my friends talk about liking to cook. Do some people feel the same way about making drinks?
  Posted 6 months ago by Sirentist | Permalink
- "Glitchiness" is more about compatibility with the general nature of Glitch rather than "fun" per se, though since Glitch is a generally fun game, they are not unrelated. For example, giving us all guns and letting us shoot each other might be fun, at least for a time and/or for some of us. But "gun" is just about the must unGlitchy thing I can think of, so much so that even typing it in this forum felt slightly distasteful.
  Drinking and drink making, however, is very Glitchy. Beyond that, there are those for whom it is fun, yes.
  Posted 6 months ago by Meromorphic | Permalink
- The whole mood loss / energy loss thing is most likely grabbed wholesale from the Sims, where you loose all sorts of things (toilet, food, social, etc) and the game is all about keeping those levels up (lest your character wet his/her pants, starve, go on a killing spree.)
  My feeling about mood maintenance is that it is just one more thing to do. A common complaint about Glitch, even (so I've heard third hand) from the devs, i that the game is "too easy." Players who play it all day or who are fixated on grinding to bump a little number may be complaining, but the question to be asked when considering modifying the behavior of mood one way or the other is, does it make the game better? Then you have to step back even further and answer the question, "what is better?"
  Me, I have to get to work. I don't have time for such questions. Good luck with it, folks.
  Posted 6 months ago by WalruZ | Permalink
- I always liked the idea of Mood in the game. It is sort of metaphysical for me: real life is better when you are in a good mood and you generally can achieve more when you have a positive attitude. The trickier question is how do you translate that idea into a working mechanic in the game so that it does not become "grindy." It would be nice to get a mood boost for community based activity like socializing, but how exactly could that be implemented?
  Thanks to stoot and staff for listening and responding to concerns. I don't envy their job at all but I'm glad they are trying to make a game that is fun and remains (relatively) stress free.
  Posted 6 months ago by Leelah | Permalink
- My question is: why does mood go down if you are just idle and chatting? Does TS assume that hanging out with friends would put you in a bad mood?
  IMO, the mood mechanic is pointless right now. Why do some things increase mood and some decrease them? Without a more interesting rationale, it's just another version of energy loss to be replenished with drink instead of food.
  Posted 6 months ago by Janitch | Permalink
- I think mood is just another dimension to the game (where I mean "dimension" in the "perpendicular axis" sense). Playing other MMORPGs, you usually have two main resources (archetypically health and mana). Since these games pretty much all involve fighting monsters, the one is your stay-alive-ness and the other is your use-attacks-ness.
  I feel like mood is a glitch parallel to mana. Your energy runs low and you die, your mood runs low and you are a lot less effective at doing things. Less effective was measured in xp and now imagination.
  Like I said in my earlier post, I think the idea was supposed to be that you could maintain a good mood to get a bonus or you could more easily be in a normal mood and not get a bonus, or you could ignore it and take a penalty. Instead it feels like you are at full and get the normal amount or you are losing something you deserve.
  I'm actually glad there is a meter other than the energy meter, but I agree that isn't doing what it should be doing in its current form.
  After reading over all these posts, the criticisms I'm hearing are:
  * People don't like mood as a concept because either they don't like their glitch to be in a bad mood (they empathize with their glitch) or because they see their glitch as an extension of themselves (they project their mood onto their glitch and it's incongruous)
  * People don't think that the actions that increase and decrease mood are the things that should make a glitch be in a better or worse mood (why doesn't chatting with friends increase mood?)
  * People find the mechanic itself to be stressful or unfun, monitoring mood takes attention away from the game and feels too mechanical
  * People feel that they are supposed to be at full mood all of the time - there isn't much depth to the mechanic
  I'm sure TS has ideas already and I don't doubt they'll come up with something that improves on the current system. I think that the key will be removing the disconnect between people and their glitchen that mood can create, giving mood some sort of depth or choice, and making it so that if you don't monitor your mood it doesn't cost you dearly.
  Cut to my own crazy idea
  I've thought about how to address these issues and come up with a massive game overhaul (sort of) that isn't refined or well thought out, but that I think might be something like the right direction to go:
  Suppose we kept the concept of "mood" but did away with a numeric value for it and you actually put your glitch in different moods by drinking different drinks. This would make the various drink buffs exclusive, and each drink would put you in a different mood for a certain amount of time. For drinks that already have buff effects this would just be giving the moods a name (what would be the name for the mood you are in when you don't spend energy interacting with animals?).
  The old concept of mood would be replaced by a handful of drinks that gave a buff that increased imagination earned (butterfly milk being one of these).
  This would accomplish a few things. First of all it would mean the mood system is a choice that we are making about our glitchen, not just another number to monitor. Second it would mean that people who didn't particularly want to pay attention to mood could choose not to (lots of people don't use buff drinks even if mechanically it would give them an advantage). It could also help to give people a sense of specialization without reducing flexibility.
  Posted 6 months ago by Humbabella | Permalink
- That is... A damn interesting idea, Hum. Nice work.
  Posted 6 months ago by Liza Throttlebottom | Permalink
- I third that idea Humbabella, particularly if your in-game avatar displayed the chosen mood. This would create even more interaction opportunities. For example, if you saw someone in a sad mood, you might take extra time to say hi or bestow an RK or something.
  Posted 6 months ago by Janitch | Permalink
- I think it's an interesting idea, too, but only if we abandon the mechanic of mood as a constantly draining-away state.
  Edited to add: Which I think is kind of what Humbabella is suggesting, heh. Okay so I just reworded it. At least this time I can get the general gist of what he's talking about, since there are no actual numbers involved.
  Posted 6 months ago by Sirentist | Permalink
- I do believe some further changes are needed, and Humbabella's ideas are intriguing.
  For the most part, when a game mechanic changes I simply adapt. However, the case of mood is different for me due to the problem of intrinsic meaning.
  Before the UI change, I could think of "mood" as having a special meaning in the context of Glitch, referring not to happiness or sadness, but rather to a vitality or mental power my character could maintain through interaction with certain kinds of living things.
  Since the UI change, it has been difficult to think of "mood" as referring to anything other than level of happiness, since the prominent face of my avatar goes from joyful smiling to progressively more sorrowful expressions as my mood level declines. While I am capable of disengaging from my avatar and treating "mood" as an abstract mechanic, the loss of immersive engagement makes the game far less interesting for me.
  The bottom line is that I experience a poor fit between the function and the representation of this particular mechanic. The previous rookswort buff allowed me to mostly ignore this. Now, even with the various tweaks for mood, the dissonance is literally staring me in the face while I'm in the game.
  Posted 6 months ago by Splendora | Permalink
- At least the buff is still there.
  Better 5 minutes than zero, right?
  Posted 6 months ago by Volkov | Permalink
- +1 Splendora! TL;DR: The new UI created a dissonance with its explicit, visual, happy-to-sad representation of mood.
  Posted 6 months ago by Kopek | Permalink
- That representation of mood has been there since beta. It's not new. What was new was the color halo surrounding the face.
  This whole discussion is fascinating. Until rookswort was nerfed, nothing had changed since Alpha. iMG was, point for point, exactly the same as XP. Mood decayed at exactly the same rate, drinks and rookswort had exactly the same effect. Upgrading your energy tank (through leveling) upgraded your mood tank as well. The decay rate was a percentage, the refill process used non-scaling unit measures.
  And yet, renaming XP to iMG and giving it uses in the game other than leveling brought a whole different set of attitudes toward the entire dynamic. Allowing people to decide how large to make their tanks suddenly made them aware of the issues.
  I was one of the people who has always paid attention to mood as an influence on iMG earned, much to the scoffing of many of my friends. My mood tank is exactly the same as it was the day we converted to iMG because, for me, maintaining high mood was much more important than maintaining energy, which is easily fixed as long as you notice it before 0.
  Mood is and was a much more subtle dynamic, with a wider range of choices as to how to manage it. With energy, you're either dead or you're not. With mood, sometimes it's ok to be low, and other times it's not. I like it as a game mechanic much more than energy. It is a much more interesting set of decisions.
  Posted 6 months ago by WindBorn | Permalink
- WindBorn: Except that your suffering avatar looks at you from a prominent spot! Before the UI change, it wasn't your avatar face, it was a little smiley you could easily ignore.
  But you are right about the rest of it.
  Posted 6 months ago by Kopek | Permalink
- My question is: why does mood go down if you are just idle and chatting? Does TS assume that hanging out with friends would put you in a bad mood?
  Your mood goes down if you are engaged in a non-mood-boost activity (like crafting), or you're not doing anything. Standing about and talking to friends isn't a game mechanic, so that counts as not doing anything. Lots of people like to talk to their friends in the game, but that's not really part of the game.
  Posted 6 months ago by WalruZ | Permalink
- Thanks for all the changes, stoot! Haven't been in world to try them out yet, but they sound like they'll make a big difference. They definitely make me a little less apprehensive about upgrading my energy tank.
  Posted 6 months ago by Aurora Dellaterra | Permalink
- Yes, I don't recall the picture of my avatar changing expression to reflect mood before this redesign -- or did I play all those months and never notice that my mood was reflected in the image? Aie.
  Posted 6 months ago by oscarette | Permalink
- The previous representation of mood was a round circle that changed two ways as mood declined: color shifted green > yellow > red and the cartoon face went from smiley to neutral to frowny. For me, this representation was not an indicator of the happiness or sadness of my Glitch, but rather a kind of gauge. Seeing a smile or frown on the face of my Glitch changed it (for me) from being a gauge to being a direct representation of how my Glitch feels.
  For some, this may make no difference. For me, it does not make a difference in how I use the mechanic (and I agree that it is an interesting and subtle mechanic), but it does change the feel of the game.
  Posted 6 months ago by Splendora | Permalink
- WindBorn, I don't think mood leads to interesting decisions in it's current form. The decision is almost always to stay at 100%. If you actually analyze the cost of keeping mood up and compare it to the imagination you earn by seeing how much you are willing to pay for imagination in other contexts (if you donate for imagination or eat sno-cones for example) you'll find that you should pretty much just always keep your mood up.
  I do agree with you that it is interesting that mood basically hasn't changed at all and it was a change to rookswort that brought out all of these issues.
  Posted 6 months ago by Humbabella | Permalink
- I believe WindBorn is correct that changing XP to iMG and giving it new uses has resulted in new dynamics and new attitudes.
  But why do people find mood management to be a chore that's not fun? Perhaps, in part, because the things that cause mood to decrease and increase are not intuitive. At an abstract level, we click or press a key and a display of pixels changes. What makes one click different from another, and a game different from what we call work is representation -- the words and images that give meaning and consequence to our actions.
  While the function of mood has not changed since alpha, how mood is represented has changed with the new UI. In user interface research, we find that small details of this kind can have a significant impact.
  Posted 6 months ago by Splendora | Permalink
- Agree Splendora. Mine was a knee-jerk reaction to the nerf, actually I have no problem keeping up my energy since my favourite click is on a piggy. This is, as you point out, no different from any other click I might make, just that it pleases me!
  Peception is all I guess?
  Posted 6 months ago by Jolycan | Permalink
- I find it odd that some people consider communicating with others to not be part of the game. It's a social game, so how else are you going to coordinate the social aspects of the game if not through chat? How do you set up a group for a quest or teleporting without chat? How do you work out where to meet for a trade or other commerce actions without chat or mail?
  Seems like in order for Glitch to be an actual social game, you need a way to communicate effectively beyond "Oh, that person hugged me they must be nice." But are they just hugging you to be nice or to get your attention? Chat is most definitely a part of the game even is some people use it as nothing more than glorified instant messenger.
  Posted 6 months ago by Xopher TAF | Permalink
- Xopher TAF,
  Groups and group threads are actually better for asynchronous communication. Chat requires that everyone be online at the same time. A thread (such as this one) allows people in different time zones to be part of the conversation and decision process.
  It also has the benefit of providing a set of notes that can be referred back to by participants, and by people who weren't originally part of the conversation.
  There's good reasons for TS not using Global Chat as their primary way of sharing information with and listening to players.
  Posted 6 months ago by WindBorn | Permalink
- Windborn,
  I whole heartedly agree that setting up events in the future can be more easily facilitated through the forums. However, I still feel that once you are in game and trying to coordinate in the moment, I'd say that chat is integral and very much part of the game.
  For example. I would indeed use the forums to set up a date/general time to meet up for a quest. I would not use the forums to make sure everyone is ready for a time sensitive/timing quest such (such as the peat digging quest) or to teleport to a new location. In game chat still serves a function that is very much part of the game. Do a lot of people use it for just general chat when they could just use the forums? Sure. Does that mean the in-game chat is not really "part of the game"? I'd say no.
  Also, I never once suggested TS should use global chat in place of the forums. Just making the point that the in-game chat does serve purposes for gameplay.
  Posted 6 months ago by Xopher TAF | Permalink
- There are probably more people now than there used to be who both care about how much IMG they are earning (those who didn't want to level or didn't care on way or another had no reason to care about mood before the switch) and more people with large energy tanks (or who are making an active decision about their energy tanks and thus weighing the cost of mood upkeep).
  I made it well past level 30 perhaps even 40 without even really realizing mood reduced XP I wasn't playing to level and XP didn't do anything so i had no reason to care until decided I wanted to hit 60 before the change.
  Posted 6 months ago by ThursdayNext | Permalink
- I like turtles.
  Posted 6 months ago by Sisfwip Murgletroid | Permalink

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