Topic

Slave labour in the mines

It's ironic to me that a game as creative as Glitch reduces it citizens to working in the mines for lucre of the realm. 

I'd REALLY like to see more of a community/civilization feel. Imagine what the skills of Glitch culture could be! Painting, sculpting, song writing/singing, playing instruments, dancing, clothing design... the ability to work in groups to put on "performances...

More play and less work (harvesting, harvesting, cooking, cooking, mining, mining) I don't want to go to work in the mines everyday. It feels GROSS. And I figured out today that I do it in order to donate to shrines so that I can speed up learning so I can cook better food to work in mines and harvest more resources to make food to work in mines and and be able to teleport to places (like the mines).

Additionally, the highly commercial idea of currents, vendors and auctions squiks me. In my earlier stages I struggled to figure out how to find tradespersons. To be able to have a classified (or something) where we can find skilled folks would rock! (cook me some food and I'll fix your tool!)

Lastly, I was excited to see penmenship.. I value reading and writing highly. I got that skill early. I was saddened to see that it isn't valued in game. Notes? there isn't even a quest tied to it. Poets? Novelists?cookbooks? memoires? "record history"? They could be timed similarly to mining or gardens (it takes this many in game hours to achieve this and you must schedule time - like meditation). Why write? Why collect paper? why?

Perhaps a "weekly" "newspaper" or "monthly magazine" with top "stories from the Glitch news feed, tech updates, interesting posts, new groups, breaking policy could be "purchased" in game/delivered to our mailboxes/homes. It could be subscribed with currents or purchased at a vendor (got to have reading). And a benefit for those who "read" or buy those things? A book shelf/store/library with tomes that increase skill (kinda like the sims but not). 

Does it all have to be about acquisition? and achievement? What about tickets to a "concert" or a "movie" or a "play"? How about club houses with meeting times where people can trade skills and knowledge IN game? When we help each other, what are we helping each other to do? Mine in groups? and hang out at parties?

If we are in the minds of giants, then I'd like the giants to work towards being a little more cultured please. Hopping petting, nibbling, milking, squeezing, cooking, mining, "exploring" is fun... but more dimension please. These giants have big brains.

Thanking you for your attention, 
!Kona

Posted 14 months ago by LadyKona Paradox Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • +100000000000000!
    Posted 14 months ago by roderick ordonez Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I do enjoy the folks who use notes left around Ur to share poems, stories, and to create scavenger hunts and quests. 

    Being musically inclined, I'd love to have penpersonship and tinkering lead to sheet music, musical instruments, or at least music block making.  I'd much prefer to have the music blocks created by other Glitches than randomly dropped from interactions with plants and animals.  Even better if we were able to craft outside of the standard collections and create our own tunes.  Having instruments, bands and concerts, whether mostly automatic, or actually allowing groups to create new music, would be marvelous.

    Right now all of the mining and other "grindy" things I do are for acquiring new skills, so I can try the entire variety of what the game will let me do, or gathering for street projects, which is currently one of the most creative things I can participate in.  I am greatly hoping for more creativity and less grind.
    Posted 14 months ago by KhaKhonsu Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I share your pain Mereret. This is a VERY unpopular opinion, but I'm really hoping they nerf the mines a little bit. <_<
    Posted 14 months ago by The Black Chicken Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @BlackChicken: I'm trying to read backwards in the forums to understand what you might mean when you say "VERY unpopular opinion". Might you clarify?

    !Kona
    Posted 14 months ago by LadyKona Paradox Subscriber! | Permalink
  • For those interested in this topic, you might want to track the following as well. It has a good complementary discussion going.

    www.glitch.com/forum/genera...

    !Kona 
    Posted 14 months ago by LadyKona Paradox Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I completely agree! I'd like to be able to CREATE, not just labor in the fields and the mines.

    For example, I could cook NEW foods (create recipes)! Or I could make musicblocks (collect all five!). Or I could make pictures for you to hang in your house!

    Or even design a wardrobe item!
    Posted 14 months ago by Pascale Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Look through the groups - there are many Glitchen instigating fun for currants and joy.
    Posted 14 months ago by Kookaburra Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +1
    Posted 14 months ago by Axe-a-lot-l Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I just want to say +1000 to the creating your own music-blocks and recipes idea.
    Posted 14 months ago by Sparklebooty Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I don't know if nerfing the mining is the answer though- why keep taking away when there could be more added? I get that people are concerned with the emphasis mining gets because it's more lucrative than other trades... but why not just make adjustments to other trades to make them competitive?
    Posted 14 months ago by Djabriil Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I'm with djabrill - as long as mining is the most profitable activity, people will mine obsessively. But when/if we can earn currants or favor just as well by other means, mining will be a sometime activity, not a constant grind.
    Posted 14 months ago by Epilady Subscriber! | Permalink
  • hey, nobody forces you to mine.

    if you are driven by the need to do the most profitable thing, that's your business/problem.

    if you want to so other things, go do other things.
    Posted 14 months ago by flask Subscriber! | Permalink
  • It's very easy to get obsessed with the numbers... I've run into people who've told me "I gotta get to 1,000,000 currants". But really, what does a million currants GET you? There's no way to take that 'money' out of the game - and I think the game is better for it. That's just a number. In a video game. On the internet.

    In my opinion, the real wealth in this game is in the human interactions (*). For example, what I remember most fondly about my first 50K house wasn't the joy of clicking "buy" and acquiring that beautiful piece of virtual real estate - it was that my new neighbour came round and gave me piglets and chicks as a house-warming present.

    These interactions are for US to make happen. The game gives us the tools and we build on them. There's been talk of newspapers, farmer's markets, racing leagues... these things (in both execution and variety) are still at a very early stage. The game itself is at an early stage. I hope to see much more happening to encourage this Glitch-to-Glitch contact and creativity - and it's good to raise this here so as to encourage the developers. I think what we have today is a basic game skeleton. The future is about adding more of the awesome community, creativity and interaction.

    [I know what you mean about the desire to grind though... I don't obsess about the currants, I have more than enough to do anything in-game that I want, but I'm currently (haha) obsessing about skill learning... I'm doing the same as you: mining for donation for faster learning for skilling-up. But once I've knocked off the last of the multi-day skills I want to put my fancy pick aside & concentrate on the people again.]

    (*) if you can call them human interactions, given that they're actually electronic chat streams with strangers at the other end of the internet.
    Posted 14 months ago by Snazzlefrazz Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Re: Newspaper: 

    See: 
    http://www.glitch.com/forum/general/10232/
    http://www.glitch.com/forum/ideas/8834/
    http://www.glitch.com/forum/general/9002/
    http://www.glitch.com/forum/general/5887/

    if you can call them human interactions, given that they're actually electronic chat streams with strangers at the other end of the internet.

    Those strangers are still sentient human beings or AIs good enough to fool one into believing they are human. Please do not discount your fellow Glitchen.
    Posted 14 months ago by Linar Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I agree with lots of the things stated in past replies, but after reading the main topic posted 
    by LadyKona (especially when she said the word "Sims"), I thought "Hold on there: I agree 
    that the game should diversify a little, but I don't want this to become one of those second-life, "do-what-you-can't-do-in-real-life" kind of games." like SnazzleFrazz said, the game is only just beginning to spread across the internet and has, with help from this Ideas section, much progress to be made. The employees at Tiny Speck are working hard every day to read what problems players might be having with the game, working on making this imaginative world a better place for all Glitches. What they've created here is the image of a whole new idea, but it's still only a draft. It's for us to help fill in the blanks, color the white spaces that they've roughly outlined for us. The concept of this game is based not only on the fact that we are in the imagination of Giants; the clever pun "A game of giant imagination" also means that it is based on what we can imagine, they simply give us the possibility to bring our imaginations to reality. And we are now in the stage of telling them that their reality-from-imagination machines are limited, while our imaginations continue to grow, and we must help them grow the game as our imagination does. The possibilities are unlimited when your dreams are reality.
    Posted 14 months ago by MrCake Subscriber! | Permalink
  • It's for us to help fill in the blanks, color the white spaces that they've roughly outlined for us.

    What are these spaces? I'm genuinely curious.
    Posted 14 months ago by Pillow Guerrilla Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Please do not discount your fellow Glitchen.
    Ahhh - but that's just what an AI would say ;-)

    ...we must help them [TinySpeck] grow the game as our imagination does
    This is very true. I see Tiny Speck as players and explorers just as much as we are. Together we shape the future of Glitch.

    I agree that the tools we currently have for creativity are relatively limited at the moment. I feel conflicted here... I want more player-created content in the game but I adore the existing style of the game. I worry that if (say) players were able to create their own clothes then the quality would drop and the experience would become disjointed. Sure we'd have some masterpieces but we'd also have a lot of really bad stuff :-) [Plus clothing is TinySpeck's revenue generator... I think they need to keep that particular feature under their control]

    Whilst it's sensible to put the game out there for us to play with and explore and shape together, there is a danger that some people will be frustrated by this early incarnation and walk away. I guess we'll just have to see how things go.
    Posted 14 months ago by Snazzlefrazz Subscriber! | Permalink
  • if you don't like mining, don't do it.  there's a lot of other ways to make money in the game, mining is just the way that requires the least amount of thought.

    that said, one thing I miss about Game Neverending in comparison with Glitch is the amount of things that can be crafted.  Glitch craftables seem to mostly be useful for grinding - powders that enhance your gameplay, food that lets you grind more, tools that let you grind new things, etc.  GNE had craftables that were totally pointless aside from being fun!  I would really enjoy seeing weird craftable items that don't directly affect gameplay. how about the ability to make bubble sculptures out of various types of bubbles? what about combining sparkly powder with some other powder to make fireworks? one of my favorite things in the game right now is the purple flowers. I would love way more things like that!
    Posted 14 months ago by mirth Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I kind of agree.  I love mining, I love how lucrative it can be (I helped my best friend get her dream house here last night because of all the currants I had saved up, from mining!) but I was thinking just today, about how much fun it would be to have a "knitting" skill, and be able to craft wearables or decorations like tapestries.  We would of course need some goats, llama, sheep, or alpacas for that but then, shazamazamawowwee!  ^__^  Imagine the kinds of creativity that could come out if Glitchens could take up knitting needles or tapestry looms...
    Posted 14 months ago by ♪♥~ Auren ~♥♪ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I agree that nerfing / downgrading Mining will cause outrage, but I see no reason why there shouldn't be other ways to raise currants in the game, especially if those skills required advanced learning skills in order to excel.

    The nice thing about Mining is that it really underscores the collaborative effort / sharing concept found throughout Glitch (I am big on cooperative play, most games are strictly competitive*). Many hands / picks make light work, and earn bigger bonuses.

    More collaborative activities that are not strictly quest-driven (like dirt pile or peat bog digs) would be grand. 

    (Edited to add the disclaimer that I have an MA in Interactive Design and Game Development, and whereas I was more on the ID side--coming up with ideas and streamlining usability / designing the look and feel of a project rather than the behind-the-scenes coding and designing game mechanics--I was particularly drawn to games that broke the mold and introduced different modes of interactive play between users that were cooperative, community-building and shared rather than competitive or involved grinding or striving for limited resources.)
    Posted 13 months ago by ✰ Lorelei ✰ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I like the idea of crafting a musicbox with your own tune - maybe with penpersonship III (to write the scoresheet) + Tinkering V (to assemble the box.) The tune can be played several times til the fuel cell dies.

    As a "refugee from Mabinogi", I noticed that 99% of the players cannot make any MML script. Yet, providing an interface to "draw" the scoresheet is definitely not the cure, unless it is as handy as Sibelius or Finale.
    I would recommend using exactly the same MML format as Mabinogi, since there is already a lot of scripts and good 3rd party tools.

    Real sound rather than score music? I think MP3 or OGG files can be really troublesome - should avoid this.
    Vocaloid? that will be welcome but too challenging and expansive.
    Posted 13 months ago by Dr Pegasus Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @Dr Pegasus - I know I've read somewhere where Stoot said he's got some sort of step-sequencer idea in mind (though IIRC he was talking about a separate thing from Glitch).
    Vocaloid would be waaay overkill, I think, as well as next to impossible for most people to get a good result out of- maybe those of us who know how can import wavs rendered from various DAWs to use for musicblocks (though that might make people who don't know how feel out of the loop). Interesting idea, at any rate.
    Posted 13 months ago by Djabriil Subscriber! | Permalink
  • people aren't forced to mine.

    i only mine to make powders.

    while i'm mining i have a sharp decline in my income. yes, i have mining 4. no, it's not as profitable for me as other things.

    so if you WANT to spend all your time in the mines, go ahead. don't complain to me about it, though. if you're not having fun, you're playing wrong.

    if there's no way for you to have fun in this game, you're playing the wrong game.
    Posted 13 months ago by flask Subscriber! | Permalink