I really liked the dynamic of the mourning feat: the actions I could directly control (dying, over and over) helped other players' individual success, not my own. That way, I felt like I was contributing to the community's progress, but not necessarily grinding for my own benefit. It made me feel warm, happy, fuzzy feelings about the game as a community. Or perhaps that was just the no-no and the crowded heat of Hell One. Either way!
As for the invite feat, I'm another person intentionally sitting it out; I'd rather invite people outside the context of "There's this big community competition thing, I get in-game stuff for inviting more players." I'm delighted to promote Glitch, but not in a context like that.
I hope many of the players hopping on board today decide to stick around, and I look forward to seeing what the next feat is.
@Fnibbit: Why is it weighted to the start of the feat? Flickr is Global and started at 2 o'clock in the morning for me. So I didn't know about it until I woke up and logged in. At any time it is somebody's morning somewhere. And, especially as it is Sunday people will be logging on to Glitch at all times, all 24 hours of hours of your day
I think she was responding to me talking about overnight, IR, so early stages being first 8-12 hours, not just evening time in the US. There were a few euros around for the start at 9pm my time too though.
Sure, it's always morning somewhere. But the longer the feat has been going on, the larger the percentage of people who already heard about and anted in to the feat.
Other people have said similar things, but I wanted to give my perspective: I really dislike this feat, and so am not participating. I can't think of anyone to invite who I think would really like the game, and even if I could think of anyone, I would want to tell them about it first and see if they're genuinely interested before I sent them an invite. Unsolicited game invites, whether through email or Facebook, are one of my least favorite things about social media.
Aside from that, though... what makes this feat feel like such a letdown to me is that the previous two in this epic were AWESOME. The first one (collecting QQs) got more people out on the public streets than I've seen in a long time, and was the perfect opportunity for me to finish my bootlegging hooch quest. The second one (mourning/celebrating graves) required cooperation and communication between players -- I visited new people's home streets, traded deaths/mournings, bought no-no, and gave away drink tickets and wine of the dead. Both of these feats promoted the sandbox and community aspects of Glitch, and gave us a fun communal goal IN-GAME. This third feat, however, doesn't require any in-game effort at all. People are going to be getting rewards for something they do out-of-game, independently, and possibly using alternate or fake email accounts. I loved the community-building spirit of the previous two feats; this last one has none of that, which is a big part of why it falls so flat for me. I hope future feats are more about in-game worldbuilding, because that was what made the other two actually fun.
"Lucille Ball: What do you suggest? It seems like if it is both too easy AND people are staying up for 24 hours straight, wouldn't making it harder mean that people stay up for 36 or 48 hours? :)"
Stoot, I've been thinking all day about how to answer your very good question about the feats. Here's the problem I face. I'm not super-competitive. I'm competitive enough to try to leaderboard a 2-hour street project, but not competitive enough to spend the better part of 24 hours winning a contest in a game. I'm quite certain there are 26 players who are more motivated to win than I am, so there isn't much point trying to leaderboard. Once we meet the basic goal to open content, my emotional reward for continuing to participate is pretty minimal. I do sorta-kinda want the artifacts but rare stuff isn't my big MMO motivator so getting a second small petrified rock is not worth hours of time to me. I'm more of an explorer/socializer type. And please understand that I'm fine with the competitive aspect of the Feats. There are players who love contests and MMOs shoud have contests for them.
For ME, the motivation is in the new content. What will the Feat open? Is it a feature? A new region? New skills? I'll mine sparkly for 24 hours if I must in order to see the new stuff, and I'll thoroughly enjoy the process. As long as the Feat has not met the minimum goal, I'm interested, engaged, and will keep happily doing the same repetitive task that didn't seem fun as a competition. (Go figure, aren't people weird?) I'm also fairly social, so Feats like the conch-playing are more fun to me than the Quarazy Quoin feat was but I'm sure we'll have some social Feats. Mining in groups is productive so I'll probably go play now and try to find a crowd of other players to join to make the sparkly feat fun. :-)
I hope this answers your question usefully. If the Feats are truly difficult to accomplish, you provide not only motivation for your competitive players, but for the explorer-types who will work hard, so very hard, in order to see something new and interesting.
Now if you'll excuse me, we're only 14% of the way to the sparkly goal. Time's a-wasting!
Does anyone know if we failed the last part of the feat? I did contribute ( not much 5 invites ) ...But no notification when I sign in this morning as to whether we failed or succeeded ..I'm assuming we failed as I didn't receive any rewards. ??
The Hispikulu's Amazing Ramble as geared towards new / lower level players. And the Sparkla's Shine on the Giants, the current feat, seems geared towards higher level / financially wealthy players [IE. currants to purchase sparkly, higher energy tank to mine, etc.]. I feel that the most fair feat, thus far, was the Deaths & Reminiscences. Anyways, my point is, what about a feat geared towards middle level players? I don't know HOW it'd be done but I was just suggesting it.
I appreciate that The Call to Feast was 'goal not achieved' but didn't it say that all participants would get a piece of magic gravel or was that only upon successful completion?
"...didn't it say that all participants would get a piece of magic gravel..."
Yes, it did say "All participants will also receive at least one piece of petrified rock...", and if TS meant, "IF THE FEAT IS SUCCESSFUL, all participants will also receive at least one piece of petrified rock..." it would have been nice for the explanation to say that.
The meditation Feat was good for mid-level players who have the meditation skills. High-level players with big energy tanks had long meditation cooldowns. And the conch feat was good for anybody.
Can we get something done about getting no mood/energy benefits from feats because the bonuses land at new day? (Or when you log back into the game and get new day/bonus at the same time.) Maybe give us the mood/energy when we crack our petrified rocks so we can choose when to get them?
I also got no magic gravel from the sparkly quest.
Also, my immediate reaction to the Call to Spam was disgust and contempt. Anybody who leapt in to defend it should carefully consider the fact that, while the event was indeed optional for every player, the end result of failure to generate enough promotional spam was to penalize the entire player base by withholding new content and withholding rewards even from those players who did choose to participate.
Finally, I do not believe that any game designer worth their salt is unfamiliar enough with Zynga or their business model to not understand the analogy that was being made by the posters.
Good point Lucille.. the mood and energy bonuses from Sparkly were utterly useless so why even bother mentioning them when it just makes people cranky. Better to just award the img... or a celebratory cake that can be eaten at any time. ( I haven't given up on my desire for cake in Ur)
Also this latest Quest feat... how many times can a person do a quest like Summer's Day in a game day because I'm thinking a pretty steady rotation is the only way some long-time players are able to rack up more than 50 quests completed in two hours.
Looking at the profile page of the leader, the answer to that becomes clear -- a repeatable, triple-counting quest. The reminisces are repeatable hourly, this other one immediately.
I am actually having a bit of fun speedrunning this quest over and over. I've learned a few tactics to shave off a few seconds -- especially waiting for Zzybzfrx to get into position to talk to me -- and I'm currently striving to run a perfect lap with no mistakes.
That's not to say this feat couldn't be eleventy times better than it currently is. I'll have some more to say about that after the feat is over.
Shogo: Please read Stoot's lengthy response in regards to the Invite Feat. Analogies to Zynga were and are false equivalencies. Failure of the feat did not and will not prevent the release of new content - it was explicitly stated before this epic began that an additional feat would be added to the epic should any feat fail. Additionally, TS has stated before that content releases' *timing* might be decided by feats, but not whether they will occur at all. Likewise, non-participation in the feat did not cripple players' ability to otherwise play the game. Rewards are given when something is successful. They would not be rewards otherwise. Saying that those of us who did send out an invite or two during the failed feat were punished is inaccurate - we would no more say a player is punished by not receiving sparkly if they cancel the mining action before the action is completed. The nature of feats is that a single player cannot decide the completion or non-completion, only attempt to ensure its completion (or for that matter, find a way to prevent completion).
I thin that a better comparison might be made with WoW's Recruit-a-Friend program or with PBS's funding drives. The only real problem with the invitational feat was that since feats are new, and players sometimes take antagonistic attitudes toward developers (which is common across most MMOs), players took the feat in the worst possible light. I'm not sure what TS could have said other than "this epic is a pre-launch event!" to convey that this was meant to be a fun one-time invitational push. I myself would have been less wary and apathetic toward it had such a sentiment been clearly conveyed. I also, however, think that TS's mistake was understandable given that there have been repeated suggestions from forum-posters to provide incentives for invitations.
For those that felt the ambitious 10k number was ridiculous: there have been several excellent articles and interviews with free-to-play developers in the last month which explain that for at least non-MMOs, the free-to-paying conversion rate is extremely low, only something like 3% of a player base. While Glitch is more expensive than most pay-as-you go apps, and about average for a free-to-play model MMO, it has an incredibly tiny player base. Based on Stoot's math, it sounds like Glitch (albeit in beta) has maybe a tenth of the size of active player base you find in a game like Star Wars or Eve Online. For an MMO, any MMO, the larger the player base, the longer it can last.
I really love those feats...but I was wondering if we were going to have a little breather in between feats?
My poor little piggies are starving from neglect, my herbs have dried out, my glitch hasn't been able to change clothes in 3 days.(.yuck! I feel so sticky and sweaty with all that mining, all those quests trips to the desert to talk to a cactus, then race through the snow, jump to catch a bug, ). I want to be able to catch my breath..lol
Just a little break, like one day apart maybe between each feat, that would be nice.
Jeasilver: if you read the link to the blog post waaaaaaaay up at the top of this thread, you'll see that Feats will generally now be organized into Epics. We are currently on the last feat of this Epic, so your breather will come tomorrow :)
So Mom (Sirentist) took me and my sister (elekanahmenisarook) on a long drive and she made us repeat the same thing over and over and over again and THEN she made us spell! We aren't good at it. www.glitch.com/snaps/PUVI4E...
Then she took us to this chaotic place that was kinda cool but not like when dad takes us to Groddle Meadow. www.glitch.com/snaps/PUVI4E...
So then she got ALL fed up with us and sent us away.
My favorite part about the incantations feat was that when I logged in, I hadn't read about it. When someone came on the street and said "This game is preposterous", my response was literally "I like it though :)"
I like doing the feats but I am only willing to spend several hours, not 24+ hours like some people. Also, the reward showing up giving me health and mood have been absolute wastes EVERY SINGLE TIME. They always show up when I am at full health and mood. Absolute waste of rewards. I like getting everything else that we get. Wouldn't it be better to reward us with a card to fill up whatever amount we win so we can use it when we need it instead of when it's a total waste?
Absolute waste of rewards. I like getting everything else that we get.
So enjoy what you enjoy and don't worry about the rest. Or, if you care that much about "waste", make sure you have an empty tank in the last minutes of the feat!
Nothing is wasted in this game ("apart from your time!" shouts the voice in the corner - but we'll just ignore him)
I've got thousands of currants,, thousands of img, (no, not millions of either) and generally try to keep my mood and energy at high levels. I don't *need* any of the rewards I get, but I love them.
These feats were great fun, the idea of organising them into an epic is inspired and the final incantations feat is exactly what I play Glitch for!
i loved this Epic!! this was major fun!!
about the energy and mood rewards, i also think it is a kind of a waste, mostly, because our tanks are full when the reward pops up early in the day. and maybe this doesn't happen with everyone either, depending of our position in the feat's leaderboard, but could we please get this reward in the form of pies? small amounts of that reward distributed in several pies so we can use them when we really need them? rhubarb pie, anyone? even if we have to eat it during that day or the pies will poof! thank you:)
can't wait for the next one:)
Yay for the suggestion of rhubarb pie! On the last feat I received 8x my mood tank - even if I'd been totally drained, most would have been wasted. Would love to take some of those rewards home for later.
Since I was vocal with some criticism earlier, I wanted to also make sure that I said what I loved: This last feat! It was odd and quirky and you could wander around by yourself and you never quite knew what would happen. You could work with other people, or alone, or stalk strangers. You could focus on just doing the feat, or you could do it while you were wandering around doing other things. It was silly and great. It was preposterous and strangely addicting, just like Glitch.
I can't believe you guys think this was the "lame make-up feat". It was the best one of all!!