A Story About Candy, Belly Aches, And Atlas

[Olthoi 65]

When I was a kid, once and awhile I would be given a couple of dollars and allowed to walk down to the local Five And Dime store to buy some candy and treats with my friends.  Oh boy they had rows and rows of candy and treats.  We wanted it all.  But, I would only ever have a couple of dollars and that was enough for a few things like a Coke and a candy bar.  We would walk home eating our candy and talking about all the stuff we couldn't buy that we wanted.  Although we were eating amazing candy, we were always obsessed with the stuff we could not get.  Man life would be perfect if we had ALL THE CANDY!

As an adult looking back, I know now that only getting a little bit at a time was best.  Imagine how sick we all would have gotten if we were allowed to have all the candy we wanted?  The Belly ache!  Getting a little candy at a time and dreaming about the rest was magical.  It made the anticipation of the next visit to the Five And Dime exciting and something you always looked forward to.

I read these forums all day long and the majority of the posts are about making something easier.  Or about making something cost less or take less time.  Some outright ask for a game mechanic that just does all the work for them.  Or a skill tree path that allows a solo player to do everything by themselves without needing to reach out to others or adapt.  Easy food, easy materials, easy gold, easy building, etc, etc, etc.  I play the game and want many of these things myself at times.  But should we get all of that? 

I don't think so.  Building a big ship should be hard, farming the material should feel like work.  Keeping yourself and your tames fed should not be automatic.  Crew should be expensive. Having a stone base, the best possible, should be an achievement, not something you can slap up in a weekend with 1-2 players.  A solo player should have to trade or raid to get the things they cant make themselves.  

Why play if all these things are given to you?

I don't want a belly ache, I want to dream of the next thing I am doing in game and be proud of it when I finished.  I want it to be hard (but not impossible).  I want another player to see my base or see my ship and say "wow".  If everything was easy, that wouldn't happen.

Sometimes its best not to get all the candy.

 

Olthoi

[Jean Lafitte 451]

Now, imagine the Atlas we really live in.

You've seen the television advertisement for the new candy store in town. And from those ads, it appears fabulous.  It's a veritable Willy-Wonka of everything your sweet tooth desires. You simply must have it.  Normally, you'd keep going to your old candy store until someone tells you if this one has the great candy it claims in the ad.  But this time, you dare to be brave. You and your friends decide that you will be the ones to try it out first.

While walking to the candy store talking and dreaming about all the wondrous goodies, you and your friends look up and see the world drastically change.  Instead of being just a few steps from the store entrance, the store suddenly jumps a block away. You're at the right address but now the store is down the street even further. Rightly confused, you and your friends continue walking toward the store and again as you approach, the store once again moves further away. This happens several times. And while this seems to defy the laws of good business sense, you and your friends are undaunted. Finally you make it inside.

The proprietor dressed in a baker's hat and apron smiles broadly.  As you approach the counter, you're suddenly stopped, unable to move.  The candy man looks at you and holds up a single finger.  From behind the counter, four of the most popular kids in school some proudly walking out and stand in front of you.  Their hands in front of them, these brats are holding some of the most delicious looking candy you could have ever imagined. And as you stand there, unable to move, they begin shoving this candy in their faces until their cheeks poke out and they munch and munch and munch. Your mouth is salivating but all you can do is watch. This all looks so mouth watering.  And when those kids finish eating, gobs of green and blue goo dribbling off their chin, the proprietor ushers you out the door and tells you to come back tomorrow.

Bright and early the next morning you and your friends gather and run as fast as you can to the candy store. You rush inside your money in hand. And then, you're instantly teleported back outside. You turn and look and your friends are just as confused as you so you all try to run in once more only to find yourselves back outside. You keep trying and trying to get in the door of the candy shop and it keeps throwing you back out. For hours and hours you try.  This candy, you've seen it, you've smelt it.  It's worth this effort.  Finally, many hours later you get inside and it looks wonderful.  All these glowing goodies!

But as you start to walk toward them to see the treasures in the jars, something seems wrong. You can barely move.  The counter is only a few feet away but it seems to take forever to get there.  It's like you're moving in extreme slow motion. You spend even more hours just trying as hard as you can to get close to the candy on the shelves. Exhausted, you finally collapse on the floor.

Early the next morning, you wake to find your friends are sleeping on the floor at your feet, snoring so loudly you can barely think. Trying hard to ignore that, you realize that you are alone in the store with the owner. Finally, you can move. It's still in jerks and fits but you can move.  Using this opportunity you begin examining the candy and oh, it looks so wonderful.  You start pointing out the things that look most scrumptious and the candy man begins bagging them up for you. He takes your money and hands you the bag of goodies. You wake your friends and being the generous soul you are, you tell them you'll share. As you leave, you hear the proprietor chuckle as he turns away and walks in the back.

Giggling, you and your friends begin walking home and you pass out the candy.  As you try to hand it to them, you discover you can't.  The only thing you can do is drop the candy on the ground. Your friends shrug and pick up the candy you dropped. One friend bites into something that looks like a giant gummy.  But in the center of that gummy is a ball bearing. He looks at you with a scowl. He gives you an angry smile and you see that all of his teeth have broken off. Your other friend, which you gave a large piece of bubble gum is chewing. And she's chewing, and chewing and chewing and no matter how much she chews, it's just a giant wad of goo in her mouth that couldn't even begin to produce a bubble. She looks at you in anger as the bubble gum has oozed out of her mouth and now covers half her face.  And the candy bar you bit into, you now look at it closely and realize it's not a candy bar. Thinking back to the movie 'Caddy Shack' and the candy bar in the pool, you wonder, should you really have eaten this?  Do you dare sniff it to find out if what that stuff in your mouth is what you think it is? Doody?

Suddenly, a dog surrounded by an orange glow leaps out of one of the bushes in the yard you're walking by and bites your head off. It kills your friends with equal ease. Magically, you find yourself lying naked in your bed at home.  And your only thought is, the candy... the candy...  You stand up, run out the door and race down the street and just as you approach the bag, the dog reappears and bites your head off again. Again, you're back in your bed naked.  The candy... the candy... and again, you race toward the bag of goodies... and the dog bites your head off yet again.  Over and over this scene repeats itself until anger gets the best of you.  You go in your dad's bedroom and get he revolver hidden under the socks in his dresser.  With renewed confidence you strut down the street toward the bag.  The orange wolf appears and you level your dad's gun right between it's eyes. You squeeze the trigger and, 'BOOM' the gun fires. And the dog bites your head off.  So now, you've lost both the candy and your dad's gun.

 

Are you getting the picture or do I need to continue this story?

I could tell you about the lions that eat your house, I could tell you about the snake that kills your dog. I could tell you about the cars full of 'gangstas' that drive up and down the street shooting at anything they see. I could tell you about how your toothless and gum covered friends are no longer your friends. About how they think you fooled them or lied to them.  I could come up with a thousand analogies of how this game is nothing like the candy store they portrayed.

You sir, had the luxury of going to a candy store and purchasing candy. The candy store we're all trapped in is more akin to the Steven King movie 'Neeful Things'.  Or like Charlie Brown after halloween, you look in your bag expecting candy to find it filled with rocks.

A game should be a challenge. I love a challenge. There is a fine line between challenge and bullshit.  So many times, this game has already passed well over that challenge line and straight into bullshit. The job of the dev's is to keep this game a challenge, despite the desire of all the kids in town, and not turn it into bullshit.  Because too much bullshit and those kids will end up shooting themselves in the head just to end the misery and never return.

Because you see when a candy store advertises candy, that's what they should deliver... no rocks.

[Warspectre 141]

1 hour ago, Olthoi said:

When I was a kid, once and awhile I would be given a couple of dollars and allowed to walk down to the local Five And Dime store to buy some candy and treats with my friends.  Oh boy they had rows and rows of candy and treats.  We wanted it all.  But, I would only ever have a couple of dollars and that was enough for a few things like a Coke and a candy bar.  We would walk home eating our candy and talking about all the stuff we couldn't buy that we wanted.  Although we were eating amazing candy, we were always obsessed with the stuff we could not get.  Man life would be perfect if we had ALL THE CANDY!

As an adult looking back, I know now that only getting a little bit at a time was best.  Imagine how sick we all would have gotten if we were allowed to have all the candy we wanted?  The Belly ache!  Getting a little candy at a time and dreaming about the rest was magical.  It made the anticipation of the next visit to the Five And Dime exciting and something you always looked forward to.

I read these forums all day long and the majority of the posts are about making something easier.  Or about making something cost less or take less time.  Some outright ask for a game mechanic that just does all the work for them.  Or a skill tree path that allows a solo player to do everything by themselves without needing to reach out to others or adapt.  Easy food, easy materials, easy gold, easy building, etc, etc, etc.  I play the game and want many of these things myself at times.  But should we get all of that? 

I don't think so.  Building a big ship should be hard, farming the material should feel like work.  Keeping yourself and your tames fed should not be automatic.  Crew should be expensive. Having a stone base, the best possible, should be an achievement, not something you can slap up in a weekend with 1-2 players.  A solo player should have to trade or raid to get the things they cant make themselves.  

Why play if all these things are given to you?

I don't want a belly ache, I want to dream of the next thing I am doing in game and be proud of it when I finished.  I want it to be hard (but not impossible).  I want another player to see my base or see my ship and say "wow".  If everything was easy, that wouldn't happen.

Sometimes its best not to get all the candy.

 

Olthoi

This is the most long-winded attempt to grossly oversimply and justify poor game mechanics that I've seen in a while. Congratulations on the most verbose hyperbole anyone has created in one post. No one is asking for things just to be handed to them. Way to miss the point.

But that's OK, go ahead and white knight the developers that are doing a bad job. Tell them their convoluted and warped game mechanics are perfect and hemorrhaging their player base is actually a good thing. And when the game tanks keep telling yourself it's because us complainers are just 'entitled' and just wanted everything handed to them. 

Now, bully for you that this is your epitome of what a game should be, but some of us have had to struggle for things in real life and would like a game that distracts us from our problems, not one that imitates what we're trying to get away from or makes things worse.  Games are, in my opinion, supposed to be fun. And there's a whole lot here that isn't. 

[Olthoi 65]

4 hours ago, Warspectre said:

This is the most long-winded attempt to grossly oversimply and justify poor game mechanics that I've seen in a while. Congratulations on the most verbose hyperbole anyone has created in one post. No one is asking for things just to be handed to them. Way to miss the point.

But that's OK, go ahead and white knight the developers that are doing a bad job. Tell them their convoluted and warped game mechanics are perfect and hemorrhaging their player base is actually a good thing. And when the game tanks keep telling yourself it's because us complainers are just 'entitled' and just wanted everything handed to them. 

Now, bully for you that this is your epitome of what a game should be, but some of us have had to struggle for things in real life and would like a game that distracts us from our problems, not one that imitates what we're trying to get away from or makes things worse.  Games are, in my opinion, supposed to be fun. And there's a whole lot here that isn't. 

LOL!!  Talk about verbose!!! And you snuck in "hyperbole".  Wow.  Call mom and dad and tell them the degree paid off.

[corpse 13]

The first two posts go well together.  Point and counterpoint.  I am really torn.  I am in a very small company, but we are 5 very active players.  Should we have been able to build a Brigantine in 3 days?  Maybe not, but we were doing this during 2X harvest.  We complained when the changes were made to stone construction, but altered our home base plan and it seems better in the long run.  I do not pretend to know what the devs are doing or what their plan is other than what they tell us.  I do notice that there are constant patches and occasional (maybe frequent) rollbacks, from minutes to hours at times.  What that does tell me is that they are actually working on things.  When I see 3-4 patches within a couple of hours, that means they aren't just sitting back counting the money - which according to some will dry up very soon unless they fix things.  Again, I am torn.  We had a mostly enclosed animal pen - no roof, but 3 high stone walls, and still lost 2 wolves, two bears, 2 chickens, a pig and 2 cows.  I think an alpha spawned in or something. That was pretty devastating.  We would really like to claim the land right next to us that has someone sleeping that has not logged in since day three.  Our base is built not really on our land, but land that was granted to us by a friendly company. 

I will say one thing though... this shit is CRACK!  We are on pretty much every day for hours.  Some of us exploring to find materials we don't have access to readily.  Some of us treasure hunting, some of us base building, but all of us trying all of it.  Our next big excursion is to the northern regions to see if we can tame a penguin or two.