Topic

Projects: social or collective?

OK, I've now participated in several street-building projects. And they're very strange! We don't go into the new, undeveloped areas and tend patches, plant trees, etc. Nope. We all sit like zombies beneath a street vendor in an adjacent street, waiting for someone to bring the critical resource that enables all of us to hoe, or grind, or whatever, to complete the street.

The only social interactions are (1) people ask for energy from those of us who can meditatively radiated it or, (2) people ask on the help IM channel for planks, or dirt, or whatever the critically blocked resource is. This is not, in my way of thinking, very social!

Posted 23 months ago by Plurp Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • Fair enough .. But a little question: What kind of activity would you find more social ?
    Posted 23 months ago by Bibiri Subscriber! | Permalink
  • A good question! I would characterize a good social activity as one that (1) required people to communicate between one another to achieve the goal and (2) once the goal was achieved, resulted in people thinking "That was cool! I did that along with my friends Jarl55 and Blorple9."
    Posted 23 months ago by Plurp Subscriber! | Permalink
  • "This is not, in my way of thinking, very social!"

    it is a start.

    don't get me wrong, i'd be disappointed if projects remained solely where they are right now, but you have to start somewhere.

    some projects are more social than others. for example, the ones requiring lots of paper have necessitated big groups of teleporting people, coordinating their jump points to match paper tree locations, then meeting in one spot and warping around the game world in a kind of grand tour.

    there've also been cooking based project slots with people coordinating harvesting cherries, buying honey and making the final product among two or three people working in unison.

    not all projects are like this though. it depends a lot on the items required for the project and the number of people available to work on the project.

    "We don't go into the new, undeveloped areas and tend patches, plant trees, etc. Nope."

    to be fair to the devs on that one, what you're describing is a tremendous challenge from both a technical and design perspective. that would be extremely cool and i wish street building was more like that, but it isn't. maybe it'll be a bit more like that once we can add custom buildings to existing streets, which i've a feeling isn't that far off.
    Posted 23 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Well i think the first was accomplished in a way. Maybe your insatisfaction is because of the missing 2 ?

    I mean after a while every street unlocked kind of looks similar :).

    Maybe based on what types of streets you worked on you could have a penalty for working on similar streets in the future. Or to give it a more positive spin you should have a bigger benefit if you are working on new streets based on your past working experience and / or current level or something.

    I think this can make the hoarding of the resources for the projects we are experiencing now less painfull an also allows the benefit of working on a project for lower level people be greater :).

    Not sure how this translates in development resources for tiny speck thou :).
    Posted 23 months ago by Bibiri Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Perhaps another way to think of what makes a project social is this: did you make any new friends in the process, or were you just standing around with a bunch of other folks, none of whom you now recall?

    So maybe a conga line where one person hosts it in their house, another person brings and distributes lettuce, and a third person choreographs it, is fairly social, whereas mining along with a dozen other people, individually, is less so?
    Posted 23 months ago by Plurp Subscriber! | Permalink
  • "Perhaps another way to think of what makes a project social is this: did you make any new friends in the process, or were you just standing around with a bunch of other folks, none of whom you now recall?"

    both.

    barnacle/peat parties have been the best for this, along with the paper gathering mega-transport ride-alongs.

    calling out numbers and figuring who is going to collect what being the second best.

    ..but sure, some projects have nothing like that going on, and i really don't get to know any of my fellow workers.

    this is fine. not all projects have to generate friends or colleagues, so long as enough of them do.
    Posted 23 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • My suggestion would be to somehow announce the project in a way that would be global, listing the resources that will be ultimately needed for the project *but don't say where the project will be* until after a predetermined amount of time has passed.

    This would have the immediate effect of resource collection teams being set up with coordination in the chat channels. It would allow more people to participate, and hopefully negate some of the "New Street Project camping" that now goes on.

    I think this small change would increase social interaction.
    Posted 23 months ago by Yeoman Subscriber! | Permalink