Topic

I review the last two months of content.

justindaigle.com/blog/2012/...

Unlike my last two reviews, this one's got quite a bit of opinion in it, so it may be a good read even for existing players (if you're one to not care for pieces with a lot of opinion, sit out the last half of the review).

Thoughts on the review are appreciated.

Posted 5 months ago by Jus​tin Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • Good!

    And, craftybot really is still coming: it's just that the main engineer for craftybot has been working on the new tutorial for the last month+. It was 90% done before so we're about halfway!
    Posted 5 months ago by stoot barfield Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Awesome! Thanks stoot for the clarification!
    Posted 5 months ago by Jus​tin Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Feels like replying to your review on the resource routes, being your most "heavily opinionated commentary".

    I agree with your optimistic vision of the route network connecting people, but it doesn't mean it's a social one, it's basically mostly a -grinding- network. Resource routes don't connect friends together, they connect resources together.

    Once you're there, the only things you can do is hit harvest, one step, harvest, one step, harvest, one step, harvest,... and on that point the streets of Ur were a lot more interesting, you had to jump around and discover the scenery, covering the grind a bit.
    The missing link is the customization of the land itself, to make each home street unique and more interesting. So yeah routes are useful and I'm using them, but it's slightly boring right now.

    Regarding your conclusion, Glitch is still too much centered around resource collecting to be that "game of giant imagination" you describe. You basically unlock stuff after x resources, rather than really creating much for now. But tiny changes (like this one) can make all the creative difference for the future.
    Posted 5 months ago by Lemo Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Ah... so true. You also bring back fond memories of the Glitch artwork in Corridor Six.
    I think there were more comments on the topic, but I managed to find this one in about a minute of looking.
    www.glitch.com/forum/genera...
    If that were to include item antigravity, as it exists underneath C6, that would make an amazing creativity space (albeit without an option to lock down floating items, doing so in a public space like a tower would inevitably bring griefers).

    Also, I think somewhere else (long time ago, not gonna bother to look it up this time), there was mention of further land customizations, although if I recall correctly, that was a faraway future thing (one fantasy of mine was that they'd let us use the level design tools on our streets, but when I brought that up to some people several months back, they basically thought that was way too geeky, and it is; I'm just a nerd with weird fantasies =P).

    I suppose my point in a nutshell from the blog post was that previously the game was only about collecting resources, which only had a purpose of being hoarded or sold. Now you can use those resources to build and change the world (increasingly so by the day).
    Posted 5 months ago by Jus​tin Subscriber! | Permalink
  • You're may be looking for this post (long time ago indeed)

    About the resources, you're not exactly using them to build. It's rather the construction project that uses you :p

    On the opposite, with player art like I the one I linked, you can choose the resource you like to use, and the visual result is directly connected to your choices ;)
    Posted 5 months ago by Lemo Subscriber! | Permalink
  • To be honest, while houses and towers and all the new stuff is good and all that, it's just not what I envisioned when we were in the stage of questioning Stoot about houses and the whole 8 weeks and that. I thought of adding streets, adding beaches, balconies, oceans, boats, meadows, whatever at a press of a button. No limits, literally a game of giant imagination, at our whim.

    Of course, probably this is where we're heading, and what TS has in mind. However, still, it's not exactly same. Houses, towers, right now they all have limits. We can only choose from X wallpapers, and X styles of houses. What if we could have more? What if we could design our own things (like another website I've played, and it's worked out nicely)? Our own places? Credit bought credit things commissioning staff to add something?

    I know this is more or less, not enjoying what I have, but complaining. But yet, I think Glitch could achieve so much more, if it would work in the right direction. I've seen Stoot's snap of the balcony in his test street, and hopefully this will get released soon. To be honest, I'm willing to wait many months before the next change, if only the update was huge, and so much was released.

    Creating our own streets, adding on streets, group islands/halls, just so much we could do. Having houses spread through multiple streets, just... I don't know how to explain all my ideas unless I spend a couple hours typing up a text wall, but there's so much more we could have and do.

    Focus more on players and what they can easily do and access. Art. Creativity. Living space. Unlimitable things. Not resources, routes, selling SDBs... But the things most users have not imagined; the things we do not have at all. Do not add to what we have, create to which we do not have.
    Posted 5 months ago by Palindrome Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Sure, but we don't need huge stuff, we rather need small pieces, so we can create huge stuff.
    Posted 5 months ago by Lemo Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Thanks for sharing this review with us. Great read :)
    Posted 5 months ago by foolbunny Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @Palindrome Though I have only been on Glitch for a few months, I concur.  I get the impression that it's going to take a while to implement those things, however. The changes they are rolling out right now seem to be the quickest additions they can make at this moment. This is probably  just to tide us over before the MAJOR changes. We'll see if Tiny Speck will make it so that we can customize like what you are describing.
    Posted 5 months ago by Yuki Aiko Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I dunno, looking back at Lemo's post about where stoot thought we were and where he'd like us to go, I'm optimistic. That's about when I joined, 11 months ago exactly, really, and since then we've just come so so so far. I made a similar post in another forum, but there was a day back during beta the first where you couldn't pick a player-defined number for most actions in game! Trying to donate? You have 1, 3, 5 or all to choose from, with the game offered numbers depending on how much you had.

    And while that sounds pretty negative, I think it just shows that the game has evolved a lot and that there's a lot of room for further growth :)
    Posted 5 months ago by Liza Throttlebottom Subscriber! | Permalink
  • As a player, I've been hanging around for quite some time. The world I joined was much smaller... Groddle, Ix and Uralia - and sometimes you had to wait several weeks for a 'test' to open. The world has expanded, we've received new skills and stuff to do, and overall the content has become much more robust. User controls and interfaces have become more friendly and slick. It's been great, and a wonderful experience to partake in.

    Even so, it's not the world I joined. I personally will always lament what I feel is a huge loss - Ancient Street Projects. Before the cries of "it was just a resource dump" begin... they were, but they also used to be more. They didn't announce themselves or show up on a map, you had to wander around and look for the street vendor with a sign over his head. Many people will remember the process of talking to a vendor, dumping resources and unlocking a new 'phase'. Fewer people will remember the voting.

    Ancient Street Projects were different because the donated resources were used to 'vote' on a (very) limited selection of appearances for the street creation. Your 24 dirt would translate into X% of a vote towards an either/or selection... tall trees or flowers, floating platforms or mushrooms, Alchemical or Hardware Vendor. In the end it generated a huge amount of excitement, what will it wind up looking like? Did my votes win? It gave you a reason (and teleport) to go back and see.

    So why do I lament it? Because it was a big reason I hung around. I'd never seen that sort of user-level input/direction over the physical world. It wasn't just trees and rocks and gardens (which didn't really exist except for a broken-ish interface in homes). It was background, foreground, and vendor selection. You actually did have a say in what the rest of the community would see, not just what resources they could obtain.

    I think the hardest thing for me to accept is the knowledge. Once upon a time, there was more direct input into the greater world. The technology existed at one point. I understand many of the reasons the ability was removed (unbalanced input, repeated selections, player in-fighting) and am sure there were more than a few technical hitches... but to constantly hear a drum banging about how 'the players imagine the world' kinda creates a disconnect in my brain. I feel like we used to, but haven't been able to in better than a year.

    As much as I adore the new houses conceptually, the loss of the old houses feels like it falls in the same boat. I was a bog dweller, I have also been an Alakol resident, before that I called the Heights home. I loved the charm of the individual housing types. I couldn't get enough of the ladders and holes and loops in my bog apartment building, loved the upstairs/downstairs of my hill home, enjoyed being able to jump from my rooftop garden to my pig pen. Now we're all in fairly cookie-cutter houses shaped like those in the Meadows. Sure, the wallpaper can change (whatever happened to the old wallpapers anyhow? the video game, rook, sock hop themes  should be re-usable). The size/shape winds up being the same block for everyone in time. They lack the charm, the details.

    TS has created a wonderful world, but it's really not what I thought I'd stumbled on so many, many moths ago. As diverse as the world has become in some aspects, it's become very 'boilerplate' in others. I'll keep hoping for more detailed control, and waiting to see what TS has up it's sleeve... but I can honestly say I'm not inclined to renew my subscription when it comes up next month. It was hard enough to justify the expense for a 'closed' game when the cost was 1/2 off but held the promise of launch. Since then, the world has spent better than half the year closed and launching 'soon' is back to being a joke.
    Posted 5 months ago by Wandering Confusion Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Wandering confusion captures my thoughts about housing as well (I wasn't around for street projects). Overall, the flexibility to put furniture of our choice in our houses is a vast improvement -- but the houses themselves have less variety than they did before. Vine ladders? A basement cave? Funky curved cavern rooms? Can't do them with the new setup.
    Posted 5 months ago by Yendor Subscriber! | Permalink
  • What Wandering Confusion said. 
    Including his doubts about subscription renewal. I have lost my job and find it difficult to justify internet, let alone Glitch, yet I would like to think that if I renew it, it will be for the same reasons as I did a year ago - sustaining a great idea. I have until September to decide. 
    Posted 5 months ago by Zira Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Justin, I liked this review very much.  I have been enjoying the new content, despite my being so piteously behind in the Industrial skill tree (I seriously blew it off for months even before I quit playing, so I really have no excuses).   Also, like some of the older players here, I miss a busy Ur.  During the odd occasion when I have shared a street with someone else for mining, my offers to co-mine had a distinctly pervy feel to them, and that bummed me out.  Still pro-route though!  I don't use 'em much but they represent exactly what Glitch is supposed to be: a world built by the players.

    I am in favor of the housing/tower upgrades for sure---and I think they offer enough variety for people to express themselves, having seen the shelf art of Faereluth and others, and the awesome Egg museum of Eglantine, the Cubimal Museum (aka CPU Crusher)...and I have not even really begun to tour towers yet.  I will say that Glitch has become a bit too much like RL in that respect...I am putting off pleasure and culture to grind, in service of my own modest home and tower dreams.

    What's missing is the party of dwarves knocking on the door in pairs, the "unfamiliar presence that has entered us" to our very Glitchy bloodstreams.  Now that Glitchen subsist so much in their homes and private byways, maybe some true adventure can evolve from its public spaces.
    Posted 5 months ago by Nanookie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I'm really sad that I missed street projects (I joined in April) and I really hope they come back. They sound so WONDERFUL.
    Posted 5 months ago by Aliera Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Thanks Justin for your attractive,  information packed and thoughtful blog.  I'm glad you're in the game.  Have a happy day.
    Posted 5 months ago by Peachesan Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Routes don't have to be about resources, and not all of them are. There's a route for literature and poetry, there's now a route just so you can look at towers easily (many of which don't sell anything, but instead are simply an exercise in player creativity), there are routes that are connected solely by individuals' mutual desires to promote a particular positive concept (freecycling, community kitchen, civility), and there are routes for helping players to find player-made games and quests (like streetwalkers).

    If you only look at the Resource Routes, then yes, routes are grinding without the fun (though given many resource members still engage in creative shenanigans, it's just without the jumping). But if you look at it broadly, it really is a sign the game is becoming much more about imagination. And the social aspect is definitely there - at least my interactions with other players (whether real time or via notes and butler mechanics) have probably increased 10-fold or more. I'm sure the database could give us an exact number. ;)
    Posted 5 months ago by Faranae Subscriber! | Permalink