The more I play ATITD, the more I start to wonder if I might at least attempt a free trial of Eve Online without being permanently scarred for life.
Without ever playing Eve at all and judging only by screenshots and hearsay, I'm seeing a few similarities between what I'm doing in the desert and what I might be doing in space.
For one thing, the UI is exceedingly menu-driven. *click* *click* *right-click* *click* *pin this menu up* *click some more* *worry about my mouse breaking and set TAB button to work as *click* instead*
I gather that ships in space work also with lots of menus all across my UI. It's less traumatizing than I thought it would be. Just takes getting used to the nonstandard viewing and control system.
The pace of getting anywhere is slower than a hamstrung snail. I'm spending about 5-10 minutes of running time getting to my region's 'city center' and I'm just a couple river banks' away.
Getting up into the region northmost of us takes a good 20-30 minutes' jog. I can't believe I managed to avoid the days of Everquest and WoW and its ilk that forced the same thing, just with nasty mobs
The pace of getting anything done is also just as slow and methodical. And it can involve a ton of planning. Strategizing offline, project management and what not are quite essential for productivity.
Watching the veterans can often boggle the mind. I see them with heaps of apparatuses (or is it apparati?) happily mass producing goods that I can barely wrap my brain around.
Fortunately, one can still get by at a slower, cottage industry pace in ATITD for now. In Eve, I think I feel quite insecure unless surrounded by the right corporation. And I'd still be scared that people would be out to backstab me, since that is the accepted norm.
In ATITD, there are all sorts. Most will at least pay lip-service to cooperation, if only for self-betterment later on. Others are genuinely good-hearted and play ATITD as a social 'helping' sort of game, which is quite useful for newbies, instead of being thrown into the rough, cruel reaches of empty space in Eve. I suppose if I did enough research, I might be able to find the proper mentoring corporation, but blah, if the minigame is not fun, what is the point of learning menus?
Skill training in ATITD is very much different than in Eve. For the desert, it's all about sitting glued to your client, figuring out puzzles, recording information or waiting and clicking at the correct times. In Eve, I hear one sets the skills and then waits, and waits for days.
Conflict and drama seems to be part and parcel of these highly social-oriented MMOs though. In Eve, it's open season. Eve is 'honest' in that it doesn't hide the fact that people -are- out to get you. Just go get them before they get you, (or Be Prepared) is pretty much Eve's philosophy in play, methinks.
In ATITD, it's more what you make of it. I get the impression of an experimental sandbox with a slightly sadistic team of scientists pushing buttons to see how different people react. It's no Eden, but you don't have to develop a paranoid outlook either. It's very..human.
Some people are going to stay quiet and not participate, and they may even go to the extremes of being a hermit. Some people are going to disagree with each other, and get into loud quarrelsome arguments over the regional chat channel. Some people want things fairer, or more structured, some people want things more free and easy. Some people react badly to being pushed into doing something, while some people follow the herd and cheerlead from the sidelines.
What the dev team does, is set up a sort of 'roleplay' story, cunningly designed in the manner of all good GMs/Storytellers/whatever you call 'em to push people's buttons and make them dance or react in predictable or unpredictable ways.
Your reaction is your choice.
For myself, I have quite clear goals in ATITD. I'm mucking around with a little cottage industry. I'm trying out what I can, with a minimum of fuss and grind, and attempting to wiggle into friendly communities for the purpose of reward via social community (warm fuzzy feelings from helping and being helped) and access to systems that require a number of people to cooperate.
I am avoiding: things that require me to do things I consider distinctly unfun, and excess drama or meanspiritedness.
So I generally react to the global Egypt chat (full of lots of drama sorts) and storyline with quiet amusement, analyzing it from one step removed.
Fortunately, my choice of region is on the whole, a lot more like me and saner. But it's still diverse enough to be amusing at times. It's just not toxic, like certain other regions. *shudders*
For example, a recent Test of the Obelisk got me smiling. In this Test, you are required to build a big fat obelpenisk to stick out of the ground. To pass, your obelisk must be the tallest -ever- in the region for a period of one Egypt week (or 2 RL days and 8 hours).
Naturally, the higher your obelisk, the more materials it is going to cost. And things get exponentially worse the taller it is. A 7 cubit obelisk, the minimum, requires a couple hundred bricks and stuff. Maybe an hour's work or less. A 30 cubit obelisk requires several thousands of bricks and other stuff. By the time you get into the 40-50s, we're talking 20k bricks and worse.
Immediately, there was an uproar over regional chat when it was announced. Apparently, they had just changed it in this telling from one RL hour to above amount of mindboggling time.
Some people started to beg/insist/plead for a queue system. Of course, the problem is whether everyone respects the queue or not. There are no means to enforce it, y'see, save for the threat of social outcasting and what not. Cynics point this out to them. They retort. Yadda yadda.
A hilarious prisoner's dilemma, fully blown up into multiplayer scale.
If everybody cooperated, people could take turns to build obelisks, increasing one cubit at a time, for the period necessary, and lots of people would pass.
But of course, human nature being what it is, there are bound to be people who will attempt to shortcut the system, or never buy into it in the first place, and build something bigger right off.
And it may not be out of a desire to win either. It could be some newbie who genuinely does not know there is a queue. It could be someone just heavily into Architecture and less into the social aspect of ATITD who doesn't give a fuck about other people. It could be a griefer who gets his jollies out of watching people scream their heads off over regional chat, and twitch to his tune, rather than really hoping to win.
To me, this is exceedingly cunning design on the devs' part. It strives to short circuit most regions' attempt at cooperation and contribution to university tech research as people divert their energy into outputting tons of bricks and things to outdo each other. It's an immense materials and time sink. It gives rise to a lot of drama and cunning plans and conflict.
Already in my region, one of the calmest of the lot, we have had about 3-4 hours of obelisk discussion. We've had an attempt at setting up a queue by some vocal people who wanted to let their popular people go first, followed by first come, first serve. We've had someone (newbie or from an older Telling) short this out by building a 10 cubit obelisk, go straight into protestation and denial when confronted over chat, and saying awkwardly that he quit. We've had people get exceedingly grumpy over this, since now the standard obelisk size has been raised for everyone. We've had people who say to forget it, he's new, it's done, let's move on, let's not get sidetreked from our main cooperative research goals.
I've seen people who are amazingly forgiving and tolerant of any kind of behavior. (And I wonder why and what their motivations are.) And people less so. (Which is a lot more understandable, if sometimes unpleasant to hear them growling about it over region chat.)
And we've had a reclusive half-hermit half-griefer? completely overwrite the 10 cubit obelisk by building a 30 cubit obelisk in its place. Complete with "LOL" written in mud buckets at the foot of it. (So I guess I'm not the only one to figure out mud graffiti in ATITD.)
The uproar over regional chat was hilarious once more. Y'see, anyone who takes the test can at any time, 'meditate' and find out what size obelisk has been built, and the coordinates of it. Running there will let you click on it and find out its owner. "Who was it? Who was it?!" went the cries over chat. "WTF?" "Why did they do that?" Out came a name, and then the discussion started as to who it was, and if it was griefing.
Again, we had the amazingly forgiving apologists. Oh, he's a recluse, maybe he just likes to build architecture, he did contribute a ton of things for research, let him be, yadda yadda. We also had those who were exceedingly cheesed off by this act of community disrespect, saying they wouldn't help him out in anything and so on.
And we had one individual who just couldn't tolerate the injustice of letting him win, and announced that he was going to build over this 30 cubit obelisk because it wasn't right. So he did.
Now we have a 31 cubit obelisk in the region of Queen's Retreat. The queue system has been abandoned. It'll be amusing to see if this lasts the 2 days 8 hours, or if someone else will reset it with a 32 cubit one.
Me, like a lot of the others, we are not freaking out over it. To get a level out of this, all one needs to do is build a 7 cubit one, and tearing it down gives you back most of the materials. Officially 'passing' the test is where the nastiness sets in.
Later on, as technology improves, there are other obelisks that can be built as well. For probably less pain.
To me, it's more important to think long term, get in with a good group of people. Ultimately, if they like you and want to help you progress, I can see 10-20 people being able to output as many bricks and crap necessary to build however tall an obelisk, over a solo individual effort, no matter how hardcore the one person is with multiple accounts.
My personal choice is to react with absolutely nothing over regional chat. I happen to think that complaints are a big eyesore. Not to mention, big phallic objects sticking out of the ground. I'll build a cheap 7 cubit one to get my level, and then tear it down cos it's fugly. (At least ATITD allows that as a valid choice. Do a bare minimum to pass and break the level barrier. Be challenged a lot more in 'hard mode' to get a fancy title and the next goal point. Forcing everybody to compete would make me quit in a big hurry.)
But I reserve the right to tit-for-tat. I have marked the 30 cubit individual's name (and his spouses' or second account name), and will not contribute any of my votes to help him progress in any other test.
Still, one thing's for sure, there won't be anyone coming in to 'sneak attack' our region with an obelisk. Other more deserted regions probably have shorter obelisk heights than ours, and they will be targeting those, no doubt.
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