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ATITD2 Early Impressions
Darniaq writes "While a relatively small game as defined by player count, A Tale in the Desert was a rather robust experiment into just how much crafting a massive online gamer would like to do. The game is also more evocative of a massive online real-time strategy game than a roleplaying one ala Everquest or City of Heroes. And now there's a sequel. The staff at Grimwell.com has temporarily relocated to Egypt, and provides a live report."
"Besides arguing, there is another way to resolve bigger conflicts: the law. Unlike any other game, players are allowed, within certain limits, to change the rules of the game. For this they first need to write a petition outlining the law they want to introduce, for example not allowing players to place their house closer than 100 feet to another player's house. They then need to collect a certain number of signatures from other players that support this petition."
"For example the first test of Art requires that you build a statue, and get 20 players to look at it and judge it interesting."
"ATITD is a very social game, supporting both individual and collective achievement. It is possible for everyone to just playing for himself, but not very effective. To advance your personal path through the tech tree, you often need tools that are quite expensive to build but infrequently used. So forming a guild which shares its tools makes a lot of sense. Public-spirited individuals or guilds can even make their tools available for use to everybody else.
So while there is no combat, there is most certainly the possibility of conflict. Sharing property in a group is not always easy. And everything you do, affects the other players. Build a house in which to place your tools, and at the very least you prevent somebody else from placing a house at the same spot, or block somebody else's view. Build and operate a mine, and you will cause pollution, making somebody else's sheep sick and flax wither. You are changing the world all the time, and that can have positive or negative consequences."
My prediction: This game is absolutely ripe for the picking by people who are good at backstabbing and sycophantry. People who are highly skilled and socially unskilled will be reduced to workerbees, while the PHB types will wind up cliquing their way to the top and lording it over the rest. I can't wait to see this...
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Indeed. And the key to keeping the workerbees from all turning against you in such a situation is to pit them against each other by defining arbitrary lines between them.
In real life the upper class pits the Union worker against the migrant farm worker.
In a MUSH Joanne pits her flirtees against Lisa's.
In ATITD2, I am assuming that the workerbees will be led to vote for and against things by the designated popular person (maybe even a former workerbee, but also likely to be a vapid uberflirter). They'll naturally form cliques as a result (I think it's called a "cult or personality"?), and opposing cliques will duke it out with words and votes. Of course, the people at the bottom who support the survival of the ones on top will be fighting amongst themselves and will not see the big picture.
I'm not saying the upper class will be running a conspiracy; this is just how they get when they're elevated to that position. The danger is in that no one really realizes the box that they're in, and that they're being played.
The danger is that pollution will run rampant in this virtual world, and other tangibly, measurably bad things will happen, as cliques use their popularity muscle to get their way on things.
Depending on how well ATITD2 is implemented, you could be looking at an accurate representation of Earth in a digital petri dish...
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Ooooh, fun!!!
Can they use a 2/3 majority to pass a law that requires future laws to be passed by a 100 person Senate and xx person Congress?
If so, can players then bribe voters or these new 'politicians' with in-game resources?
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Gamespot reviewed "Real Life" once. It got a 9.6, but that's a really subjective opinion....
I found both parent comments interesting and even more so because of a very important factor NOT present in the game: PHYSICAL INTERACTION.
You see, while it may be true that nerd-types may often look "uncool" and while it may also be true that "flirting" can help achieve some goals without effort, in this game these factors are modified. As always, in the net, it's not what you look like it's what you write like.
I wonder, will players of the game go as far as actually meet in the real world and discuss game strategy......and other stuff?
To err is human, but to forgive is beyond the scope of the Operating System...
<snip>
But this game... take it to its ultimate conclusion. It simply becomes a more and more accurate rendition of real life.
But ... as this is a game I can be somebody else. I can even try being several different people.
All without ruining my real life, of which there's only one.
M.
As someone who played Tale 1, for the most part I agree with the parent that the game is poorly paced. The 2nd telling didn't actually improve much from what I can tell. One of the largest changes, requiring you to build compounds to hold all major structures, (including sculptures, which are voted on by the populace to pass the test) now makes every area look just about the same.. a sea of off-white compounds. Worse yet, you can only view the contents of one compound at a time, forcing even those with a cable modem and decent graphics card to be reduced to the least denominator. If the compounds merely established boundaries of an area you've claimed I'd be much more apt to like them. As it is now, they are a magical tarp covering all of Egypt. I came, I saw, I had better things to do.
"Don't waste your time or time will waste you" -MUSE
You just described 90% of MMORPGs. Personally, I prefer a MMOG with a fabrication system gone beserk to a game that expects you to spend days leveling your character.
Then trade other goods for the wood you need. Or use your offline to collect wood. Or play around with things that don't require wood as a resource.
Obviously, the game isn't for everyone, but it's more complicated than you try to make it out to be.
I will be paying for it. Typically, I can't stand MMORPGs that are all about grind, but ATITD2 has been an absolute blast to play in the last week, and I find myself spending all my free time playing it. I'm not sure that "grind" is the right word. You do stuff to progress, but I don't find it particularly monotinous. Unlike other games, where you kill and kill and kill and do little else, in ATITD2, you build, make items in many different ways, explore, farm, raise animals, trade, and there's a great variety throughout all of it. The game strikes me as much more social than other games as well. And you'd think the lack of combat (aside from duels) would make the game completely boring and uninteresting, but I quite like it. It's a very different and enjoyable MMO experience, and in my case, doesn't have the feeling of grind that most others do.
The monthly cost is a bit much ($13.95), but with much fewer players than the vast majority of MMORPGs, I can understand the cost. In addition, you don't need to pay anything to play except for the monthly cost, and there is a free trial if you don't get a chance to play the beta.
Most people would prefer nearer to the 'top' of the 'heap' than not. If there is only one 'top' of one 'heap' than only a small percentage of the population can be happy (I'll defer an exact definition of happy).
In other words, everyone wants to feel special.
Fortunately, in real life there are multiple 'tops' (fastest 100m runner, richest person, sexiest babe) and multiple 'heaps' (local, regional, or global; money or power [although correlated]; skinny or curvy).
This allows for much more special feelingness to be attained in the population. Virtual worlds add more tops and heaps, but they also add more chances. In real life we carry consequences of all previous choices and actions forward, and often route into a condition of reducing flexibility. In the virtual, one can 'reset' as often as one likes (bound by real world restrictions since the real world must host the necessary real bodies and equipment).
One nice feature of the virtual worlds is that they could eventually draw population away from competition in the real world, making the satisfaction of us real world participants higher.
ATITD is half a game. It is a crafter's utopia and little else. What ATITD is missing is any sort of excitement, adventure, exploration, or intrigue. It does an amazing job getting rid of 'levels'. Most of what it does right it does dead, on, it just isn't enough for most people. I swear, when I play ATITD I feel like someone made an amazing kick ass MMORPG, then stripped away everything but the economy, and ATITD is all that is left.
ATITD has the right idea, and I think it is an excellent example of how MMORPGs can progress past the stupider the fuck AD&D mentality. Now what we need is that takes what ATITD does right, and puts it in an interesting world with a little excitement and adventure. Bonus points if this hypothetical world can utterly ignore levels like the way that ATITD does.
ATITD is not for everyone. In fact, it is not for most people. What it is, is some original thinking that should jar the some creativity into the future generation of MMORPGs. Obviously the next generation of MMORPGs hasn't gotten a clue. World of War Craft, The Matrix, and the other up coming MMORPGs clearly are still stuck with a AD&D mentality, but hopefully the generation after the next round of Everquest and UO clones come out we will see some REAL innovation like what is show in ATITD. Here is hoping.