Topic

Why Glitch Was SO Fun In Beta (my opinions)

When I found out that Glitch was going back to beta on twitter I was really really frustrated. I was on the bus coming home from work so to ease my anger I tweeted to the @playglitch twitter handle: "although I respect your choice to unrelease I think you've forgotten about what made glitch so fun in the beta." Not thinking much about it I then opted to request a refund for my subscription I had purchased back in the beta period. The refund was granted a few minutes later and I went on my way. 

A few minutes ago the @playglitch twitter handle replied back to my tweet with the question: Well?? What made Glitch so fun in the beta?!?

I opened twitter.app on my iPhone and started to reply but then realized that this was going to be a bit longer then the 160 character limit of one tweet. So I decided to post here, maybe some of you will have your own opinions but the point is that the devs are really looking for ideas as to why glitch is getting just a little bit bland. I have spoken to a few people who I know in real life and they started expressing concern over this about a month ago. So here it is, pretty unedited thoughts as to why I think glitch was way more fun in the beta and what I experienced in these few months as I slowly got bored of glitch. 

1. Not being able to play at all times: Although I will admit I was super annoyed durning the beta when the world was closed and all I wanted to do was go play it really created this element of novelty. The day the world would open I would keep checking tweets from the @isglitchopen account so that the minute they tweeted I would login. Once I refreshed the beta.glitch.com page and it said open before the tweet was published and I was super excited. I really am not saying that you should start closing the world periodically; that wouldn't be a very smart move, but I do think that there is some sort of phycological element there that you can explore to make the game more interesting. 

2. Reset Reset Level Up Level Up: When the reset happened I immediately felt this need to level up as quickly as possible and re purchase my 50k house. This was a huge mistake, I pretty much spent the whole time mining away on the huge sparkly rock from levels 7-18. I know this was all my choice and I could have left whenever I wanted but I really felt the need to make money, level up before I could have as much fun as I did in beta. In fact this wasn't the case, it just got more and more boring each level I got. In fact I made it to level 23 in the beta in much less time then I spent now making it to level 20. 

3. If your not playing your still learning: This is really a part of the game which I am starting to hate. Although its cool and all to be able to learn skills when your not playing, I think there should be cap on how long you can be inactive before you are denied the ability to learn more new skills. There was a few weeks where I was learning 10 skills without ever going to the game due to not having the time. When I did get back it was awesome and I spent the whole time finishing the quests I had for those skills but after a while I pretty much had every still in the game without even have used most of them. I was surprised once when I noticed I didn't need to pet the pigs to get the meat since I learned AK3-5 all while being away. So this comes back to the whole the game is closed so we can't learn skills issue that we had in beta which I think made the pace of the game much more enjoyable.

4. Subscription: When I first started playing glitch I knew I was going to super this great game. I liked the credit system (although im not too much of an avatar guy) and I liked being able to TP. But again going back to learning skills to fast, I already have TP5 in a few weeks so I had absolutely no use for TP tokens. These and credits just kept piling up in my account and I have so many of them I don't think I will never need to buy another credit in my life. The vote part of the subscription was really what I was interested in when I purchased a subscription. I would even pay the 50$ again just to be able to vote. I complained about this in the forum months ago with an assurance that there would be votes soon, but to this date my votes are piling up as well. All this leaves this excess and feeling that this is no reason to play because there is nothing to spend. I really really wished they would have tested the voting system a few times with some issues they had internally and make us feel like we were still in beta making decisions. 

5. API: When I found out you guys had an API I was like OMG OMG OMG as I am a coder and I enjoy doing crazy things with open apis. I started making some cool arduino applications with the API and I even got some recognition from the @playglitch twitter account. This was awesome. This made me want to keep playing with the API and making more cool stuff. As soon as you guys opened your dev.glitch.com page I was like OMG OMG OMG this is so awesome. As time went by I noticed that support was really only aimed at iPhone sdk, android and the web. Although people have done some cool stuff with theses SDKs and APIs I don't really think there is anywhere else developers can take your app passed the official app you guys already offer. There are some cool web applications which I enjoy but not many mobile ones. Glitch runner is cool tho! I think opening your dev community to a more DYI hacker type of people will really create amazing projects and much more novel applications then standard "apps". It is also a great tool for teaching people how these things work which I think you guys are completely missing. 

Wow this note is way too long, I have 100 more things to say but can't really fit them all in logically but I think there were some mistakes made when launching the game that took away from the experence we all enjoyed when we were in beta. The biggest thing in my opinion is learning skills way too fast. Now with the iPhone version of the app I would be checking off new skills each morning without having an intention of logging in that day. This is cool and all but makes it way to easy to learn skills and takes away from the experence. The API is also a huge thing I think could make a difference. Opening up the API to the non standard app coders will really bring some amazing projects and even products for your game. 

Again guys there are all my opinions so please don't flame, If you guys have any opinions please leave them here as im sure the devs are paying attention now more then ever. 

Thanks for your time! 

Posted 13 months ago by vcazan Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • Angry and frustrated about an announcement that doesn't mean all that much?  "We're going to do some big patches, and we'd like to take the opportunity to do a marketing stunt."  Maybe that in itself is why you're angry and frustrated, but...  Why don't you save your anger for things that matter?  I suggest browsing Change.org to see what some of those things are.

    I often get angry at relatively inconsequential things too.  I shouldn't.

    EDIT: After reading more TS posts about the unlaunching, I do not think it's a marketing stunt.  It has some advertising and marketing benefits on the side, but TS seems to be doing it because they honestly feel it's the right thing to do.  Only from an uninformed outside perspective does it look somewhat pointless and melodramatic.
    Posted 13 months ago by Impspindle Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Too many words!
    Posted 13 months ago by OMG BACON!! Subscriber! | Permalink
  • He does make one point that resonates with me - learning skills in absentia.  I don't like this at all.  I think there needs to be things that we do in the course of learning each skill to keep the learning active - for example, while learning an animal kinship skill, it would make sense if we had to do something with the animals in order to complete the learning process.  I hope the skill learning process changes to be more meaningful.
    Posted 13 months ago by Jewel Stoned Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @Jewel Stoned: The prerequisites for some skills are akin to what you describing. For example, you can't get one of the higher cocktail skills until you've made a sufficient amount of the lower level cocktails (same with the higher level cooking skills).
    Posted 13 months ago by BarryW Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @berryw those help but the majority don't
    Posted 13 months ago by vcazan Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I actually hated the resets after a while.  After the second time my skills were reset, I was kind of tired of having to go back and repeat the same steps and do the same missions again.  I even skipped a couple of the tests just because I knew more resets were coming and I didn't want my progress wiped out again.

    (I'm with you on the API, which I first realized there was an API to play with, I spent the next 2 weeks playing around with stuff during early beta.)
    Posted 13 months ago by Cainunable Subscriber! | Permalink
  • vcazan — I'm the one who asked you on Twitter. Thanks for the thoughtful reply. Don't be too angry though … many of the things you mention are direct motivations for going back to beta. It didn't feel right to keep taking people's money and saying the game is launched/live/not-beta and make those kind of fundamental changes.

    As for the API: we can only do so many things at once, but it will be getting some love as soon as possible :)
    Posted 13 months ago by stoot barfield Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Good thoughts. I feel very differently about the skills learning in absentia, though. 

    Before finding out about that, I had plateaued in my interest in the game and was playing less and less. 

    When I found out I could learn skills even on days I didn't have time to play, it totally reinvigorated my love for the game. Now I play more and am much happier when I sign in after a few days and I have new things I can do and new quests to finish.

    I do agree with Jewel Stoned and BarryW though that the achievement barriers to the cooking and cocktail skills made them more interesting to learn than TP or AK skills for example. In fact, the whole issue I have with skills is that they are based on time at all. You don't get better at guitar by signing up for a class on the basics and then just waiting a long time; you get better by actually practicing. It takes time to get better, but only because practicing takes time. I think the artificial time it takes to learn skills should be completely switched out in favor of getting achievements that unlock the next skill level. If the high-level achievements are hard enough, it will take plenty of time to get the high level skills anyway.

    Similarly, when you learn more IRL it makes it *easier* to learn new things, not harder. But I'm not even going to get into that since making skill leveling based on achievements would make that a non-issue.

    That's my take on that topic anyway.
    Posted 13 months ago by Paddy Pablo Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Thanks stoot, I think what you guys did was very brave and as time goes by I'm getting more and more excited about the future of this game. I'm glad you guys are looking out for your community rather then your pockets!
    Posted 13 months ago by vcazan Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I like the balance to the skill learning. It appeals to both rare and frequent players. Rare players can train thier skills and have a lot to do when they log back on. Frequent players can accumulate favor and make donations to get those skills done in less RL time.

    I do like having small achievment requirements before the next skill though. It means you need to try out a skill at least a little but before you can get the next level. I completly skipped mining 1 and have no idea what it's like to be a noob miner. In retrospect I feel like I missed out on a little nuget of the Glitch experience.
    Posted 13 months ago by BoomFrog Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I think I'd be super-annoyed if I couldn't learn skills in absentia. Particularly in a month like December, when my work really picks up and I have limited to no time to play. Besides, if you don't want to learn skills, let the skill you're on run out till the next time you log in (and don't use a skill-queue)... granted, it's not the same as not learning at all, but then you'll know what you were working on, at least.
    Posted 13 months ago by Djabriil Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Oh the resets!
    And APIs are weird for me.

    I lose the sense of accomplishment if I let something else play for me.
    Even if its a skill queue API.
    Posted 13 months ago by Volkov Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I really would hate not being able to learn whilst off-line as I don't like the thought of needing to be in-world to make that kind of progress.  For now while skills take no work at all to learn on my part, it seems to be a waste of time to require you to be in-world to... do nothing and sit around.  You know?
    Posted 13 months ago by ♪♥~ Auren ~♥♪ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @post

    1) I read it, I don't see you as someone who is necessarily angry
    2) I have some no-no hit me up.
    Posted 13 months ago by Rook Subscriber! | Permalink