In two more rounds of sweeping changes made to Glitch (that I’ve decided to cover together, as they’re related), Tiny Speck has added the new Imagination (iMG) system, as well as the long-awaited housing reset. The imagination change (and the user interface changes that go with it) possibly marks the biggest change made to the game since I’ve joined (and possibly since it’s inception – even though I’m not really familiar with the game’s history before last November). Once again, this review will include not only facts, but also my opinion on the changes (which, aside from one major thorn, is mostly positive).
Imagination
Imagination cards, and some new UI bits
The first of these recent rounds of changes was the conversion to Imagination. Imagination, commonly referred to as iMG, is the replacement to the old experience (XP) system. Earned by the same actions that earn XP, including gathering iMG quoins, which replace XP quoins, and new Qurazy Quoins (which give huge amounts of iMG), seen below (although upgrade cards exist that increase the amount some of these actions can dish out), the primary difference is that imagination (which I’ll refer to as iMG for the rest of this review) is spendable. The player is dealt three cards, which they can re-deal for free once per day. They can then purchase one or more cards using iMG. These upgrades include improvements to Super Harvests, improvements to learning speed, increases to one’s energy tank, and increases to one’s quoin multiplier, as well as some pretty random stuff. My upgrade video will primarily showcase energy tank and quoin multiplier cards, as I’d already purchased most of the unique upgrades during the conversion.
An iMG Quoin (the small purple one) and a Qurazy Quoin (the large white one)
A selection of my purchased upgrades
Supposedly the experience is to be different for a player new to the game. For those who have already been playing, our XP was converted to iMG (and our levels dropped accordingly – Level 60 players were moved to Level 42). Note that I said “levels.” This means that in addition to being spendable, a lifetime count of iMG earned is also kept. This determines one’s level, in the same way as XP previously accomplished this task. However, one’s energy tank (or mood tank, which is now tied directly to energy tank) is no longer level-dependent. At the time of conversion, energy tanks were, however, assigned based on level (level 60 players received energy tanks of 1610). Now, energy tanks can be upgraded using cards, allowing for absurdly high energy tanks. Mine, for example, is 5990 at the time of this writing (for comparison, level 60 players had energy tanks of 2860 before the conversion). While it is not my goal to cover strategy in this review, it is worth mentioning that the community as a whole questions the value of having a large energy tank. I find it convenient, but it does vastly increase teleportation costs, and it does make mood harder to manage, although mood is a non-issue if you have a supply of the Rookswort herb to munch every ten minutes. Following is a video demonstrating the upgrade card system.
Some of the “upgrade” cards are not actual upgrades, but purchasable items. These include the Reshuffle Card, and the Get Out of Hell Free Card. These cards are also much cheaper than the upgrade cards. The Reshuffle Card allows additional reshuffles to one’s hand past the one allowed per day, and the Get Out of Hell Free Card allows you to leave hell with full mood and energy (normally, one leaves hell with almost empty mood and energy). These cards can also be found on the auctions.
The upgrade card system, if used wisely, allows a player new abilities that really enhance gameplay. One of my favorites is a card that increases the amount of seeds received when shucking herbs. While a lot of the upgrading felt like buying back things I already had as parts of skills, this isn’t much of an issue since at the point of conversion, almost anyone who had played much at all received so much iMG that it was easy to buy back all the abilities one might have had before the conversion, and more. Actually, as far as new players are concerned, I see this as a good thing. Previously, you could basically just sit around and learn skills all day, and never play the game. One could become “really good” at Glitch, and never actually enter the world (in reality, some skills were tied to a few easy to earn achievements, but almost any of these could be earned in mere minutes). Since the only way to earn iMG to purchase these upgrades is to actually play the game, this now requires active involvement in the game in order to improve one’s character. As it should be. It’s only fair that in order to become good at something, one should invest time in doing so. It’s how it works in the real world and in most games, and now Glitch also works this way.
User Interface Changes
Many user interface changes were implemented at the time of the iMG conversion. Look back at my first review, then look at the following screenshot.
Different, huh?
I don’t really know how to describe why, but as a 99% generalization, I like the UI changes. It’s more modern, or something like that. Energy is now represented by the curved bar near the top left. Mood is now represented by an image of your player avatar in the same location, whose expression changes based on your current mood level. This also replaces the player menu that used to be present in the upper right corner. Click the mood image (or your name above the image) to access the player menu. And in perhaps the most controversial change of all, the magic rock (or familiar) that used to occupy the center of the screen is now gone. In addition to the keyring upgrades, the functions previously accessed via the magic rock are now accessed by means of the iMG menu, as seen below.
The iMG menu
While I also think the magic rock was a nice, uniquely Glitchian touch to the game, and will be missed, I’m rather enjoying the new UI for the most part. I do have two minor complaints though. The first is that the new UI seems to add a little more lag to the game. The second is a “scrolling” behavior that has been added to the iMG, energy, and currants meters. If one of these is increased or decreased, as opposed to quietly changing to its new level, it now increments toward that level, much as the display on a gas pump might. And, to me at least, it gives the impression that even a small change to these is actually much bigger. I don’t know why it gives me that feeling. Maybe it’s just because so much attention is being drawn to it. But to be honest, I really don’t like it. Now, onto the housing reset and related stuff.
The Housing Reset, Construction, and Imagination (Again)
First let’s briefly revisit cultivation (along with a not-so-brief video), which I covered in my previous review, and how it now relates to Imagination. Now that housing has been reset (meaning houses, yards, and home streets have been restored to their default states, and old houses are gone), cultivation items cost iMG (like upgrade cards do), and all changes to stuff are permanent (as in they won’t be reset again). Unlike upgrades, housing-related upgrades are exceedingly cheap. By “exceedingly cheap,” I mean possible to max them all out with about one day’s worth of iMG grinding. It’s worthy of note that I’m only talking about upgrades that can be purchased with iMG right now (enlarging one’s home street and back yard, and placing cultivated items in these locations). Housing expansions, which are performed using a Construction Tool, are quite a bit more involved. I actually managed to fully expand my house in one day, but I found doing so exceedingly taxing (it’s worthy of note that it probably is not intended to max out one’s house in one day; this was just something I really wanted to do). In addition to now costing iMG to cultivate one’s street and yard, players are no longer limited to one of each resource per home street or yard. The only limit now is the size of the land on which the resources are to be placed (I have thirteen tree patches on my fully-expanded home street). The price of any size increase or resource goes up with each of that increase or resource purchased, but it’s only by amounts that any player with an efficient iMG-gathering strategy would find trivial. In summary, cultivation now costs iMG. But it’s fairly easy to max out all cultivated resources, as opposed to upgrade cards, which keep appearing indefinitely.
The Housing Reset
Yesterday, housing was reset. This means that all customizations a player made to their house, home street, and back yard, were reverted, and the house was returned to a template state. This was only planned to happen once, meaning now players can customize their houses with confidence, knowing that their changes are now permanent. This has four major implications. The first is that old houses are gone. New houses are now the only houses. Old houses, while inferior to the new ones, will live on in screenshots we’ve taken of them days before the reset.
There used to be a signpost leading to my old housing quarter here
The second is that furniture items can now be crafted. We’ve been given a small selection to start with, but beyond that, furniture items are crafted using a Construction Tool (this also includes Wall Segments, used to expand one’s house). Resources needed to do so include Planks, other wood items made from Planks using a Woodworker, metal items made using a Metalmaker, and Fiber (and fabrics made from Fiber) and Snails (obtained from the new Fox and Sloth). Following is a video demonstrating construction and house expansion.
The third, visible in the video above, is that many upgrades to furniture (as well as most wallpapers, floors, and ceilings) now cost credits. I’ve always wondered how Tiny Speck stayed afloat, considering previously the only real gain acquired from purchasing credits or a subscription was extra clothing and vanity items (although it was more than worth it anyway, in my opinion at least). Since you’ll likely want lots of (upgraded) furniture, this may finally provide them with what I’d imagine to be much-needed income. Which is great news, because I really want Glitch to stay around for a long time (and ad-free; I admire the fact that TS respects clean user interfaces and doesn’t try to gain revenue by placing advertisements in the game or on the Glitch web site).
The fourth change brought about by the housing reset is what happened to the items stored in our old and new houses. They were placed in Moving Boxes, which were placed in our newly-reset houses. This is the major thorn I mentioned at the beginning. Unpacking these boxes left all your items in a huge pile on your floor.
Really? FML.
As seen above, for those of us who hoard things, this was unpleasant. I know I managed to pick up that mess in a few hours’ time (I made sure to clean it up completely so I could create the review screenshots and videos), but organizing all that stuff was not fun. As picking up Moving Box contents won’t affect new players, and those who play the game already have already suffered it once and shouldn’t have to again, I won’t focus on this much. Suffice it to say cleaning that up was extremely unpleasant and tedious.
Where from here?
Aside from group halls (which the staff have been rather quiet about lately), imagination and the completion of housing mark what more or less amounts to the completion of what we were promised at unlaunch. And Tiny Speck has delivered on those promises and more. The game is almost completely different now than it was before the unlaunch. While I don’t know what all TS has planned for the future, it seems like the most sweeping changes are now in place. Stewart Butterfield (the creator of Glitch) has suggested that player-driven vendors and craftybots (used to automate crafting) are some of the next things to be in the works. I look forward to these upcoming changes, and trust that they’ll be every bit as impressive as the previous ones.
Roughly a week before I began writing this review, I achieved a major milestone. According to Wakoopa, I have played Glitch for over 1000 hours. (that’s approximately one month and eleven days of time spent in the game). So I decided to celebrate by writing a review. There are already plenty of reviews out there, so I intend for this one to be different in several ways. First off, I joined Glitch after having read a review of it, which is partially why I decided to write this one. The review was more so interesting facts about Tiny Speck than a proper review of Glitch, so I’ll take it upon myself to provide that (among other things, it included only a couple of actual gameplay screenshots, and no video). Even if more comprehensive reviews do exist (I’ve honestly only read that one), they’re still most likely out of date. Glitch unlaunched several months ago, and much has changed since then. In fact, the biggest change (the imagination conversion; more on that when it happens) is yet to come. My bet is on Tuesday…
This brings me to another way in which this review will be different than any others you may find out there. As Glitch is currently in a state of near-constant change, I’ll try to review new content as it’s released (however, this review will cover the game in general, while emphasizing on the direction the game’s going so far). This will hopefully allow me to provide new direction for my blog itself, as I’ve been rather starved for content lately, despite promises to the contrary. A final note before I begin: If you’re looking for a purely factual review, stop reading here and go somewhere else. I tend to be highly opinionated on all things Glitch, and as such, I have no intent to spout out facts without giving my personal opinion of the gameplay elements involved. With that being said, let’s get started!
General Gameplay
Housing
Me, standing under a sampling of my trophies (click to enlarge)
There really is no “point” to Glitch. This is reflected in the game’s very own slogan (see below). That is, there is no singular goal to achieve, although this is contrary to what the Glitch Wikipedia article, by far the worst piece of literature I’ve seen on the subject, may otherwise lead you to believe. Time travel is not, in fact, a core gameplay element, and, as far as I know, is only part of an early quest. There are, however, many separate goals to achieve. Gaining experience points (which, most likely next week, will be converted to a new system, imagination, which is basically like spendable xp that still retains a lifetime count that determines one’s level), earning achievements, and collecting currants are the most significant, although others, like completing quests and fighting the Rook often come into play. A recent hobby many people have taken up is decorating one’s house (a small section of mine can be seen above), which is now possible due to the much-improved new housing system that Tiny Speck is in the process of transitioning to. Almost everything in new houses is customizable, from the wallpaper, floors, and ceilings, to the decorations. This is opposed to old housing, seen two screenshots down, that cannot be customized at all.
“Do stuff. In a game.”
Old housing had several templates to choose from, but the templates can’t be altered… at all
There are indeed several kinds of old housing to choose from, however what you see is what you get. The exterior, interior walls, ceilings, doors, furniture (however most furniture in old housing is merely part of the background), etc… cannot be customized to any degree. I won’t focus much on old housing, besides pointing out its deficiencies, as old housing is quickly on its way out.
Decorate Mode, along with a sampling of upgraded and non-upgraded furniture
Housing customization takes place within Decorate Mode. Here, one may make enlargements to their house, change the wallpaper, flooring, and ceiling, or add and remove furniture. Above, in the furniture tab, is a view of a category of furniture items, in this case seating (entirely ignoring the fact that a sitting posture does not exist in Glitch; you can always stand on the chairs though…). The items can be dragged into the game window to place them in one’s house, and from there can be “upgraded” to one’s choice of styling.
A furniture upgrade window
The exterior of my house, located on my home street
Here the exterior of my house, as well as its location, my home street, can be seen (for what it’s worth, it isn’t possible to stand on some houses, and even some of the platforms on my house, that look like actual surfaces, can’t be stood on; not really a major review point but it still really bothers me). Notice how the inside of my house is much larger than the outside (interior and exterior size are completely independent of each other, and exterior house size is, in fact, static). That being said, it is possible to expand the size of one’s home street (or back yard; home street and back yards function in the exact same way, but are customized independently).
Customization menu for my home street
House Customization (Exterior)
Both the street background (and background music – I was overjoyed when this was announced as I wanted the Uralia theme music instead of the much-overused Groddle Forest theme that formerly applied to all backgrounds) and house design are customizable. The background has one of ten or so predefined choices, and houses have seven base styles. These base styles have many further customization options (for example, the House of Whimsy design has an average of nine different choices for each customizable area listed). This alone makes new home streets much preferable to old housing quarters (which were basically just lines of the old-style houses, all on one street). But wait, there’s more!
Cultivate mode on home streets
Another feature of home streets (and back yards) is Cultivate mode. Unlike old housing quarters, which were barren lots usually containing nothing but housing (a few housing styles did have some resources, although they were template-based and not customizable by residents), home streets can be cultivated by their owners. This means that resources (which will, in the future, cost imagination, described earlier) can be placed on one’s home street. These resources are consumed with use, and must eventually be repaired. For example, herb plots, the item which breaks most often in my case as I’m using them to grind herb-related achievements at the moment, require lumps of earth and guano to repair. The ability to have customizable resources on home streets, coupled with the ability to link your home street to those of five friends, has led to interesting player-created developments, such as housing resource routes. These routes so far have been designed around harvesting trees, and due to their organization, have easily been the best way to gather large numbers of tree-based resources. These are particularly useful for finding usually hard-to-find resources, like planks, which have also met increased demand as they’re likely to be necessary for building furniture and upgrading one’s house, once those features are available in their final form.
Gardening
1200 words and we’re just getting started! Let’s move off the topic of housing now, and onto actual gameplay mechanics. First up is gardening. There are two kinds of gardens: crop gardens and herb gardens. This used to be more significant before the introduction of new housing (while no longer explicitly on the topic of housing, almost any other topic easily ties back into it). Previously, the kind of house you chose to have determined what kind of gardens you had. Bog houses had herb gardens, and all other houses had crop gardens. Tiny Speck has responded by allowing new housing to contain any kind of garden you wish (this also comes as a consequence of the fact that new housing is not tied to a specific region). I’ve created the following video to demonstrate the mechanics of gardening. While crops and herbs serve different purposes, I will only demonstrate herb gardening in this video, as crop gardening and herb gardening essentially follow the same process. The only real difference is in how seeds are obtained. Herb seeds are obtained by shucking the herbs, and crop seeds are purchased from vendors or by feeding the crops to a Piggy, who will then plop out seeds (in a pleasant contrast to the nerfings mentioned later, this has recently been enhanced to allow more than one packet of seeds to be obtained at a time through feeding).
Mining
I’m not entirely sure an MMO exists that doesn’t include mining. Glitch is no exception. However, it has mining, with some strange (and sometimes completely illogical) twists. For instance, you get rewarded with bonuses for mining cooperatively with other players. Four kinds of rocks exist (beryl, dullite, metal, and sparkly). Metal can be smelted into ingots, and the other rocks can be crushed into elements, which can then be used for assorted alchemical purposes such as creating powders and rubbing plain metal ingots into other kinds, which can then be used in crafting.
Animals
Up until last Tuesday, there were three primary kinds of animals in the game from which one could harvest, Butterflies, Chickens, and Piggies. In yet another demonstration of how Glitch brings innovation to the mostly stale MMO genre, Butterflies can be milked to receive Butterfly Milk, Chickens can be squeezed to receive Grain, and Piggies can be nibbled to receive Meat. The amount of these items that you receive is dependent upon your Animal Kinship skill, and at lower levels of this skill, additional action is required before these actions can be successfully performed. Assuming you have the Animal Husbandry skill, you can also use Chickens to incubate eggs.
Introduced on Tuesday were two additional animals, the Fox and the Sloth. Foxes are harvested for Fiber (for future use in furniture crafting), and Sloths chew Metal Rods into Snails (assumably for some construction use; a snail is a half-screw, half-nail item – see below). Foxes and Sloths were introduced along with five new gameplay regions and a few new streets in existing regions. I particularly enjoy the mechanics of harvesting the new Foxes. Difficult? Yes. But it’s far less “grindy” than the mechanisms for harvesting the old animals (watch the video above and try to imagine finding pigs and harvesting each one twice [the limit with a maxed out Animal Kinship skill] for an hour or more).
Snail
Trees and Other Resources
There are eight kinds of trees in Glitch (Fruit, Bean, Gas, Spice, Bubble, Wood, Egg, and Paper). The items harvested from these trees are used in cooking and other forms of crafting. Multiple other resources abound, including peat bogs (used for making fuel cells for machines), jellisacs (also used for making fuel cells), barnacles and fireflies (used for making crystals and crafting a few other items), and dirt piles. The following video gives a brief overview of some of these resources.
Commerce
Auctions
I’ll be totally honest, Tiny Speck has really screwed the pooch on auctions. They’ve stated a goal of encouraging more trade between players, and as such are phasing out vendors. Okay, I get the recent vendor nerf (vendors now sell higher and buy lower). But if you’re trying to encourage trade between players, why make auction items take about eight minutes longer to be received? You want to nerf the undesirable action, not the desirable one. This is without even going into the asinine fees associated with using the auctions. That said, sometimes it’s unavoidably necessary to use auctions. They’re great for finding (almost) any item you may need (with some exceptions; see below).
The latest auctions
Marketplace Forum + Marketplace on the Go
Among the many shortcomings of auctions is that many items (generally either really worthless items, or really valuable rare items; although cubimals spread this entire spectrum) can’t be auctioned. Furthermore, you again have the ridiculous taxes on auctions. There exist two major solutions to this problem; one official, and the other player-created. The official solution is the Marketplace forum. This allows players to discuss and facilitate trades. A player-created solution also exists, in the form of a group called Marketplace on the Go. It allows bargaining to take place within a chat/IM-type setting, as opposed to the threaded forum styled official solution.
Final thoughts (or are they?)
For all its shortcomings (really, the only ones that need to be addressed at this point are those involved with auctions; and making sure that annoying Groddle Forest banjo tune actually stays in Groddle Forest – although they’re making decent headway on that), I can still safely say Glitch is the best game ever. Why else would I average six hours a day playing it? Plus, Tiny Speck has pretty well proven that they’re quite capable of addressing shortcomings. I’ll once again use as an example the housing system. The old system downright sucked (well okay, it seemed fine back when we didn’t know any better; but when presented with something better, we realized how awful it was). The new system isn’t even quite finished, but already, it’s vastly superior to the old housing quarters. I haven’t made much mention of this yet, but possibly the best thing about Glitch isn’t that it’s a great game (and it is; you’ll never find better), but that it’s got an awesome community. That’s not to say that there aren’t a few bad apples. Just like any other MMO, you will run across the occasional griefer (word of advice here: don’t let random people in your house; it’s one of the most common ways they steal things). But in most cases, griefers aren’t a perpetual issue, just an occasional annoyance. More often than not, the people you run into will be either benign, or friendly and helpful. I’ve been playing Glitch every day for close to six months now, and there’s a reason: An MMO with lots of new ideas, coupled with the best community on the internet is a winning combination.
I usually don’t assign scores to products that are beta/pre-release, but Glitch couldn’t be any more deserving of this rating.
Overall Rating: 11/10. (yes, that’s eleven of ten)
While there are still many changes to come, that I will assess in future posts as new content is released, I’m certain that Glitch will only get better.
Thanks to Zen Kitty for help with the review, and to Scarlett Bearsdale, Kristen Marie, and Saucelah for corrections/suggestions!
I’d like to end with this screenshot, just because it looks cool.
Roughly seven months ago, I posted about what I called Sonyfication, a term I created to describe the acts of a company that promises and delivers features, then, out of nothing more than pure greed, removes them. The namesake of this term was, of course, Sony’s removal of the OtherOS feature of the PlayStation 3. My first usage of the term was aimed at Spotify, who initially offered free (but with advertisements) unlimited listening, then altered their free plan to enact severe limits on listening after six months of membership.
Today, Glitch has announced that it’s “unlaunching.” That is, they are returning to a beta stage. As an end-user, and as a developer who understands (at least to some small extent) his responsibilities to the end user (oh, and let’s not forget, a huge fan of Glitch), I figure I have a few things to say about this.
Before I begin, let me make one thing clear: I am not comparing Tiny Speck (the developers of Glitch) to Sony, or to Spotify. I have nothing but the utmost respect for Tiny Speck, and nothing but the utmost of loathing for Sony and Spotify. Tiny Speck is not doing this unreleasing of Glitch for profit, but to make the world of Ur a better place (unlike Sony and Spotify, who clearly performed their actions as a malicious act of greed). I applaud their motive, but I’m worried that the results may still be disastrous. So I’m not entirely confident that the term Sonyfication is appropriate here. However, for lack of a better term, it’s what I’m using.
Quoted below is my comment on the Glitch forum topic on the issue, verbatim, and in its entirety (but with some formatting added):
I’m going to add myself to the list of “please no reset” people. As much as I’ve always wanted the honor of “being in the beta” and getting a pickle and all that jazz, I’ve realized something. None of that will make up the 99 hours I’ve devoted to accomplishing stuff in the last three-ish weeks. I’ve more or less renounced real life in favor of spending more time on Glitch, although if I lose all I’ve got on here, I may not come back. I feel really sorry for those who are up at levels 50-60. The amount of time they’ve had to spend doing rather menial tasks in the game (I’m looking at you mining) is incomprehensible to me. The previous resets (while I can’t actually speak for those who had to deal with them, as I had not yet signed up) made sense. If people sign up knowing it’s in beta, then they sign up expecting the worst. However, many people, myself included, signed up after this period, and expected smooth sailing (I’ve written about this kind of thing before; companies like Sony and Spotify have promised features then later removed them, in an act I’ve termed “Sonyfication”). While I’m a developer myself, and certainly acknowledge the fact that software can have bugs after launch, as I am also an end-user, I realize my responsibilities toward the end-user as a developer (e.g. making it a priority to cause as little disturbance to users as possible when there are indeed bugs).
One possible solution (I realize I’ve never developed anything on as large a scale as Glitch; so correct me if I’m wrong on this) would be something like what Chrome does. Have a “stable channel” (e.g. Glitch as it is now), and a “beta channel.” Then, completely informing them of the possible repercussions (resets included), allow them to opt into the “beta channel.”
That said, and to attempt to end on a somewhat positive note, I’m glad to see that things like housing and the ability for more player control over the world are being addressed. Remove the ability for players to kill each other by splank fight, and I think Glitch has the opportunity to become the perfect game (the lack of violence as a core gameplay element is key, in my opinion, and I applaud Tiny Speck for making such strides in this arena; also, I realize that the term “perfect” is subjective). For what it’s worth, I’m not offended by or opposed to violent games. It’s just not my cup of tea.
You already posted that there. Why repost it here?
A couple of reasons. First is visibility. My comment will quickly be buried in that forum post. Here, it will remain at the utmost level of visibility for, at the very least, the better part of a month. Second, is out of my respect for Tiny Speck. The Glitch forums are theirs, not mine. I have a bit more I’d like to say on the topic than what I said there, but I respect that the Glitch forums are their home turf, so I’ll instead post the extended version here.
So I’ve always wished I were in the Glitch beta, as I felt, until today, that in order to really be part of the community, it’s a prerequisite. Furthermore, and partially for the same reason, I’ve always wanted the Special Item That Only Beta Testers Get (aka Señor Funpickle). However, what I never really gave much serious thought, is that sure the pickle says you were in the beta. But that’s not much of a real accomplishment. It’s actually just a stroke of luck, being in the right place at the right time. What really struck me in light of this was my reconsideration of a Glitch who was level 59 for as long as I could remember, then finally accomplished reaching level 60 (by comparison, I’ve attained level 30 at the time of this writing), and another Glitch who was in the beta, but has only attained level 8. Let’s assume the level 60 Glitch wasn’t in the beta. Still, it’s obvious as to which one was more devoted to the game. So really, a special item doesn’t properly make up for resetting one’s level, as it isn’t an accurate indicator of the amount of effort and time one has put into the game. Upon giving this some consideration, my advice to Tiny Speck would be to provide an additional piece of information on each player’s profile, stating “Pre-Reset Level: [level number].”
In addition to level number, the other thing I’m most concerned about is cubimal collections. I’ve, admittedly, only recently started collecting cubimals (for those who do not play Glitch, just know that a cubimal is a collectible in-game item, often of excruciatingly high value). However, I have a little over half the different kinds of cubimals in my collection (sadly, the more common half of the cubimal spectrum, in general). Of these, a couple were obtained from Cubimal Boxes, and the rest were obtained by trading with other players. This is cause for alarm. What if, after post-reset, these other players are no longer able to trade cubimals at the same prices I paid for them the first time?
At this time, I’d like to reiterate the ultimate moral of this post: the responsibility of developers toward users. Especially after launching my first paid iOS app, I’ve learned some of these responsibilities quite well. Like see that “App Support” link up top? In my opinion, it’s unnecessary clutter. It’s also the first time that my blog contains content that I don’t really want. But Apple requires that I offer a support page (maybe in the future, I’ll create a support page separate from my blog), so I have to put it there. Returning to Glitch, the subject of this discussion, I understand the previous resets. As far as I am aware, it was made quite clear to users that they were part of a beta, and that there would be resets. However, for those of us now, who signed up to what we thought was a finished product, the ethics of the situation have changed. A beta was not what we signed up for. Stuff like resets wasn’t part of the deal. So I leave Tiny Speck with this challenge: No more resets, please. And I do understand that you’re working for the good of the community (and I’m deeply sorry that I had to mention the likes of Sony and Spotify in this post along with the good guys). Even if you do have to perform a reset in the course of this (and I’d also like to remind the reader at this point that they said it’s extremely unlikely, and to apologize for my “the sky is falling” tone), I won’t lose any respect for you. Will it perhaps preclude my return after such a hypothetical reset? Yes. But that’s more so my fault than theirs. I simply can’t bring myself to spend the many hundreds of hours to get back to where I was. Ultimately, Glitch is a free game, and I suppose Tiny Speck doesn’t really have an obligation to go out of their way to avoid a reset. But I challenge them to go above and beyond what’s expected, as they’ve already more than proven that they can, and to ensure a seamless user experience by avoiding a reset. I have faith in them, and until some terrible reset comes, I shall continue to play Glitch in every possible minute I can find.
"Tandem, is that kind of like spooning? Mommy doesn't allow me to watch porn, especially not gay porn starring people in fake police uniforms." - anakata
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