Topic

Spread the Project Love (and XP)

Working on projects this test showed how many vital but unrecognized and unrewarded (at least directly) actions are necessary to complete a project.  Everything from feeding other Glitches to running and supplying fuel for machines, getting raw ingredients and general support.  I have no idea how to make it so these vital efforts can be rewarded but I think they should be.

Posted 19 months ago by renniSaint Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • I don't, to be honest.

    First of all, that's pretty much impossible, like you said. To track who you bought the ingredients from and then mixed them and then contributed to the project, or who gave a a project contributer food, or who supplied fuel for machines that would later be used for projects...it would just get really complicated.

    Second, it's my opinion that helping with the project is reward enough. It's actually been said that perhaps even direct contributers shouldn't be rewarded, and rewarding those who supplied the direct contributers would just get to be too much. Contributing to the projects expands the world, it makes gameplay more enjoyable. IMHO, that's reward enough. If people really need rewards that bad, they can actually contribute to the project - it's perfectly possible to do that while helping support others, and it makes the project go quicker to boot.

    This is just my opinion, though...anyone else have thoughts?
    Posted 19 months ago by Cupcake Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I’m with Cupcake, I think rewards for projects should be taken off.  It leads to too many people hovering in one street demanding other people auction things so they can get the XP etc.  The reward for helping at a project should be...helping at the project.  If people so badly want XP and currants, let them mine and sell the gems.
    Posted 19 months ago by Oo Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I also agree with Cupcake. For a couple of days before the Tower project started, I spent a lot of my time wandering around collecting earth, loam, and barnacles (To be fair, I started doing this because they nerfed shrine donations and mining got less useful to me). I was more than happy to donate my modest collection of materials to those with the skills to make AA and AAA blocks and bricks. My reward was being among the first to run into the tower to find it a one room dead end. It was crazy fun and made me feel much more a part of the game than auctioning loam at outrageous prices just to profit from a high profile project. To me, this is a good step towards making projects more community based. I remember when the project requirements were so basic, no one really needed to help anyone else. Much better now.
    Posted 19 months ago by Shwan Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I don't think rewards should be taken off. Mostly because as it is, the rewards are symbolic.. you could get 10x more exp, energy, mood and currants if you were playing solo and doing other random activities.

    In fact, working on the projects is so time, energy & currant intensive that the reward is only a slight relief.

    Even if I wanted to spend days working on the projects, eventually you need to go play solo to catch up with new skills, refill your pockets with currants, boost your energy, etcetera.
    Posted 19 months ago by Yaya Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I enjoy contributing to a project, even if my contribution consists of giving a few materials to someone else, or giving support. I also like getting the notification when the project is complete, especially the offer of a teleport to see the result.  Even if all I had to contribute was a little earth or labor, I just like participating... so I don't mind not getting a reward for every case. I'm not sure this needs fixing?
    Posted 19 months ago by Lelu Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I agree with Yaya. As I mentioned in a similar thread, the "rewards" given for projects don't even come close to paying back the enormous amount of energy (and possibly currants) they require. The same amount of experience (if not more) could have been gained by doing other things instead. If you're doing it just for the rewards, you'll be sorely let down when you see how little you got for your efforts. 
    Posted 19 months ago by Shepherdmoon Subscriber! | Permalink
  • But that's kind of the point, in our opinion(s), you shouldn't be doing it just for the reward.
    Posted 19 months ago by Cupcake Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I put in 70K of the 500k currants needed to open the tower. It was more then worth it to see everyone running around that Tower Base in the first 4 hours trying to figure everything out.
    Posted 19 months ago by Shwan Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Yes, Cupcake--I was agreeing that it shouldn't be done FOR the reward. But the reward should be there to help you recap some of the energy and resources that you lost. Working on projects always completely cleans me out of food.
    Posted 19 months ago by Shepherdmoon Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Well, we know the devs are trying to slow work on projects down, maybe one way to do that is to make the only reward you get for working on projects a trophy, or nothing at all.  That would certainly curtail some of the competitiveness (but not the excitement of opening up awesome new places to explore).
    Posted 19 months ago by renniSaint Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Totally agree with most of what you said Cupcake; although, it is not simple for everyone to contribute to a project... having tried several times myself.  I will probably not really attempt to contribute to another project, but seeing the new streets open after a completed project is so much fun for me! :)
    Posted 19 months ago by RainyRain Subscriber! | Permalink
  • When it comes to intermittently, and remotely helping further a project along... well, I got a few tricks :D

    As part of opening the Tower, the second to last phase stalled out on hog-tied pigs (not dirt / bricks... that part finished quickly in the final phase).... a few of us spent hours (plural) wandering around gathering pigs and auctioning them. Keeping in mind, you can only ever remove 1 pig from any given street only once (ever for now)... you can only carry one hog-tied pig at a time.... there's a 5 minute cool down between catching pigs... bait costs money... 

    You'd think with all the free 'work', and projects are soooooo impossible to contribute to - it wouldn't have been difficult  to find someone to donate the silly pigs. Wrong. I had to beg in three popular channels before anyone was willing to stand under the silly project and buy the pigs (for the market rate of a whopping 45 currants each) and keep the project moving.

    Now here I am, begging for someone to help with the beneficial half of the process, putting semi-permanent restrictions on my character (I can't collect another pig in the Heights until after the reset)... knowing I then get to spend the next week hearing about 'how difficult the projects are'. Stow it. There's plenty of room for participation left - it may not be in a way you would prefer, but the opportunity is still very much there.

    Soooo.... out of the supposedly hundreds of people who supposedly worked on that Tower project, to all those who claimed it was an 'importance' and spent the better part of their time elbowing others out of the way, all those who scream about how unavailable projects are... where was your pig donation?

    More closely related to the topic... should I have gotten rewards for my contributions? Absolutely not. If my butt is too lazy to walk it back to the project myself, then the reward should certainly go to the person who was a little more motivated. I shouldn't be getting a reward because I happened to hoard 2000 metal and I happened to sell it at the right time to the right person to dump into a project. On that note... should I also get part of their quest reward when they turn that metal into ingots?

    I did at least expect a thank you, and I received one from exactly 3 people.... more often what we heard was 'didn't anyone work on this project while I was sleeping?!?!'. Really? So, you're going to go get some rest after wiping out the 'easy' requirements, then come back shouting how nothing got done (it did) while you were away... talk about crass. Given all the above, next time - I'll walk the pigs back myself or charge enough to make it worth my effort.

    My only objection to Street Projects is they bring out the worst possible of the entitled, On Demand, selfish, and nasty internet behaviors as possible.
    Posted 19 months ago by Travinara Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +1,000 again, and bringing up another good point about Hog-tying mechanics that should probably be more closely looked at. It gets really frustrating to see people not actually solving the problem and doing the harder parts of the project, and yet complaining that the project is moving too slowly.

    Also maybe the limit on hog-ties can be reset every month or something. Seriously once a street per lifetime means that eventually you'd have to roam around to the far reaches of the world to find streets where you haven't hog-tied a pig before. Especially if there are more requirements like that one.

    Then again, if there were just a hundred people working on that project, and each of them hog-tied just 3 pigs, then how much more quickly could things have gotten done.

    You can't have everything and still do nothing. Eventually the piper must be paid.
    Posted 19 months ago by Jhennauchan Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Wow trav .. i certainly don't hope that was directed to me in any way whatsoever!  eek.  It seems to me you're getting a bit heated. 

    I, personally, didn't work on the tower project since it was a bit crowded (and i did a thing called sleep lol), but instead tried to work on one in Alkalol, which I find to be most difficult for me.  I'm not going to dwell on my own strategies.  I stand by my statement though... it's not easy for everyone to contribute; that's why there are so many familiar faces at each project.  You need to have a certain skill set at some point.

    I feel that maybe renniSaint is expressing her (his?) own frustrations with helping in project in the only what she can, which may mean she cannot directly contribute.  I can relate to that point, even if I do disagree with the idea of "spreading the love".

    I think the main point of the thread though was whether there should be bonuses for the hog/tying auctioneers (per your example) and I believe you're saying no for the same reason of being satisfied with the award of the street opening?
    Posted 19 months ago by RainyRain Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I just enjoy the projects,whether there are rewards or not..:)
    Posted 19 months ago by Joos Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I realize I have a rather blunt (and often colorful) way of putting things... no, my statements are not directed at anyone in particular. Trust me when I say, if I have anything to say to someone in particular... I'm not shy about saying it to them directly.

    Take a few minutes to go back through *most* of what has been argued in the last three weeks. It really has little to do with mechanics or resources... the real root of the problem is the expectations (and then demands) that everything be accessible to everyone all of the time. Each and every action must merit a reward, then more rewards, then more rewards.... I think I'll take up stock in bandages rather than belts and braces if every 'fix' is going to nerf the game to make it easier for everyone to avoid understanding patience is a big part of this game.
    Posted 19 months ago by Travinara Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I just want to say that I, for one, was surprised to see that the stage with hog-tied piggies was done when I came back the next morning.  :p  So thank you, Trav and all the other people who made it happen.  

    To add to what RainyRain said, perhaps more people are seeking rewards from projects for contributing indirectly because the recent projects require higher skill levels to contribute or work.  Perhaps when the game goes live - or sometime in beta if it goes on much longer and people continue to join - the devs could look into varying the difficulties of projects?  But I supposed if this happened, a few higher leveled glitches could just pop in and dump everything into the project in the blink of an eye. 

    So complicated....
    Posted 19 months ago by Millie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Something that has been suggested before is having level or skill caps on certain portions of the project, i.e. you need 500 beryl rocks to be donated by a glitch of less than level 10 or 1000 uses of a chopping board by a glitch of less than level 12 and no higher than cheffery 1.  Things like that which would encourage the higher level glitches to actively seek out newbies to participate and bring them into the projects.

    Also, I guess the reason I started the thread wasn't that I couldn't participate directly and get the rewards, but rather the reverse in that I felt guilty about just how much of a share of the rewards I was getting and that a lot of other people (like Trav) who I felt contributed much more weren't getting much recognition or reward.  So again, maybe the thing to do is make the reward for projects nothing more than the fun of having a street open up. 
    Posted 19 months ago by renniSaint Subscriber! | Permalink
  • My understanding is that the devs feel that projects are getting completed too quickly as is. I don't expect them to do anything to make that happen and that as players we probably need o adjust our expectations of that.
    With Cupcake that the complexity of who donate what for what gets way complicated fast. If you feel you need more of a reward for donating indirectly, the solution is pretty clear: auction stuff. And ask for how much it is worth to you. If it is not worth that much for someone to buy it, they won't. It is awesome that folks with block making skill do the work and then give blocks to people who donated the material so they can donate to the project... but that is really them just being awesome. They heard the skill so it would be totally within their "right" to reap the rewards.
    (Hog-tying could probably use a tweak to the one-a-street per lifetime. I get the reason but as time goes on and the game gets bigger, over piggy population could become more of an issue. I am all for solutions that put the hands into players instead of something more draconian. Not sure what a good time frame is though.)
    Posted 19 months ago by Lord Bacon-o Subscriber! | Permalink