ATITD

[schild]

I'm thinking of picking this up to play on a limited basis. I want something completely different that doesn't require much thought while playing. Anyone have any experience or whatever they'd like to mention, or why I should stay far, far away?

[WayAbvPar]

I want something completely different that doesn't require much thought while playing.

Hell, Tetris would fit this description! Of course, I am pretty sure you have to have a vagina to really enjoy Tetris. My wife and all her friends love it, while all my friends (save one, who I tease mercilessly) think it is insipid.

[schild]

I play Arkanoid to kill time at the moment. But I'd like something a little more involved and persistant. CoH required my eyes be on it all the time.

[Numtini]

ATITD is very highly soloable, but it has a lot of time sinks. Travel is the worst. It takes forever to get anywhere and the world is too large and there aren't really enough people, which makes socializing in the game hard if you're not a very social person. On the other hand, you do have to cooperate with others on some projects, so you can be working with other people but still do most of your play solo.

It's fun though and there's some great social stuff once you do know people like beetle and plant breeding or wine and beer tasting.

I think there's a free trial isn't there?

[schild]

Yea, but I don't want to get into it unless it's worth the time. I need a virtual world right now, so bad that I'm almost willing to resub SWG. Unfortunately my entire guild moved to another server and I'm not grinding to get to where my main is again.

[daveNYC]

I've heard Eve allows you to play while reading a good book.

[schild]

That's not QUITE what I meant.

[daveNYC]

I did play ATITD for a little while.  It doesn't take much thought or attention to play in the sense that if you wander off, you'll be able to come back a few hours later with no harm done to your character.  However, when actually playing, I found that there was always something that needed doing.  Either making more boards/bricks, growing more flax or veggies, or getting more wood/grass/thorns.  Many of the tasks do require you to pay (close) attention to what is going on on-screen.

It really depends on what you mean by not much thought.

[Furiously]

Puzzlepirates?

[schild]

Puzzlepirates?

Played it. You HAVE to pay attention at all moments.

[schild]

This is not an easy answer to come up with, I'd know, I've played most of the stuff on the market. What virtual worlds there are, are heavily flawed. SWG has been azzrapzored by player cities and flawed game design, ATITD seemed like a certain kind of hell where little tasks never stop, Toontown is for children - no two ways about it, Puzzlepirates is a glorified Yahoo! gaming parlor.

Sigh. If "There" were still around I might have checked that out. But, I refuse to play Second Life. Bleh.

[Nebu]

schild,

The game is a free download and comes with 24h of online time to mess around.  I recommend that beyond anything anyone says, that you give it a try.  You're out nothing and might have some fun.  Feel free to contact me in game as I have recently gone back and can help you get acquainted with the interface.  Here is a good article that summarizes the game from someone that has also started recently. Now, for my editorial...

I played this game at release as a solo player and found it to be a nice combination of social interaction with some puzzle solving mixed in.  In the low tech game (early on), it is very easy to start and finish things as you feel in the mood to dabble with them.  When you increase your technology, the systems become more complex and it become much more cerebral.  I loved this, but not everyone likes to study systems and take notes in a game.  One thing that I would warn you of is that things begin to steamroll after you have developed a camp of some size.  

I will give you two viewpoints to be fair... I love what this game is trying to do and have even gone back to see if things had improved.  I'll start with the bad (Why I left the game after playing solo for 3 months) and finish with what I've noticed going back.

Why I quit:

1) Chores.  I found myself logging on at odd hours to feed livestock, check my vineyard, harvest mushrooms, etc.  It started to feel more like a time commitment than a game... so I left.  

2) There are some tasks early in the tech tree that require multiple people to accomplish.  Dependance on others coupled to a sparce population made for a difficult trading situation.  

3) In the early game, the large guilds controlled the economy.  This was so much like every other game that it made me nuts... especially when some of them would charge outrageous prices for goods because they knew that they either had little competition or that you wouldn't want to run for 3 hours to make a trade.

4) Some of the tasks got to be mundane to the point that the world became full of macro drones (not a good sign).

Why I went back:

1) Some of the best people I've ever met in an mmog.  Most are intelligent and eager to help... if you can find them.  Current subscription base is around 1300 with many being mule accounts and the world is huge.  If you can ever find people to chat with, chances are that they are outstanding.

2) There are no foozles to whack.  The game is about building, trading, and social interaction.  It's refreshing.

3) How much of a time commitment you want to set is entirely up to you.  People complain about treadmills in the game and they do exist, but YOU GET TO CHOOSE WHAT YOU WANT TO DO.  Log on and do stuff until you don't want to anymore... there's no commitment to stay beyond the self-imposed.

4) Everytime you log on, you can accomplish something... even if it's small.  You can log on for 10 mins or 10 hours.  It's all up to what you feel like doing.  

5) I went back with a group of friends and this has made a HUGE difference.  Now, we split up the mundane "chores" and have much more time to focus on interesting/fun activities.  We also have no limits on what we can do since we have enough of us to accomplish any task.  

6) To see how it ends.  That's right... the game ENDS and it's going to end within the next month or two.

I'll end the diatribe there... the game has its positives and negatives for sure but it's a fresh step in a new direction.

[HaemishM]

Well, Eve is pretty and doesn't really require you to do much while playing, not to mention you can make "progress" while offline, sort of.

[Nebu]

Well, Eve is pretty and doesn't really require you to do much while playing, not to mention you can make "progress" while offline, sort of.

Eve is a game?  Damn, I thought it was a screensaver!

[eldaec]

I wouldn't recommend ATITD for casual play.

The game positively requires you to actively work with very large numbers of people to get much done, and it very much requires large spreadsheets of recipies and so on to work out how exactly you make purple paint, or establish the mating preferences of sheep, or hunt mushrooms.

The game really is in the complexity of the community efforts, the action of playing the game itself can get rarther tiresome.

To be fair, the 24hr trial is worth it just to see how crafting *should* be done. But it's unlikely you'll want to stay beyond that unless you really want to get into the community stuff around the game in all it's catass glory.

[geldonyetich]

I have to wonder why you're looking for a game that doesn't involve much thought to begin with.   But then, I've been pushing for more involving games for awhile.

Here's my MMORPG gaming life over the past few years:

Everquest, engage autoattack, kick in a hotkey or two if battle is going awry.   That was fun, but after year of that I'm tired of it and need something more - something with deeper gameplay - something more involving...

"Asheron's Call?  No!  Even less involving.   Dark Age of Camelot?  About the same.    Ultima Online?  Pity these veteran players won't pass me the time of day, nice fossil collection you've got there, Origin.   Anarchy Online?  Everquest in the future.   Earth and Beyond?  Everquest in space."

"I like Neocron, kinda like System Shock online.   Eh, but nobody else plays it, and the game is far too treadmill centric on the long run anyway.  Next!"

"Hey, how about Eve.  OMG, those graphics are orgasmic.  Good thing I got into the beta... oh my god, what a crash-tastic mess.  It's okay, they'll fix it by release with my valuable beta feedback.   Um, hey, this game is absolutely and totally uninvolving to the point where my character's skill determine my success or failure utterly in every endeavor I undertake.  Can't get much more involving than that! Crap! Next!"

"Oh, Planetside is a massively multiplayer FPS!   I like it!   Blah, this balance sucks.   Okay, I've seen just about everything this game has to offer me, and the rate they're introducing content is just too slow to satisfy.    Next!"

"Star Wars is online now?!  Friggin sweet!   Hmm.. what the hell?   The combat seems to be logically flawed so that I injure myself more than the enemy injures me.   But this is a big game, so what's left?  Wait, is harvesting resources and turning them into virtual bric-a-brac my only purpose in life?!   Next!"

"Damn, I give up.   Since nobody seems to be able to improve upon the fun it brought, I'll settle for Everquest at this point, better resub.    It's okay I guess, but haven't I been here before?   Bah, what was I thinking?  I knew this would happen: next!"

"Wait! What's this - FFXI is like Everquest Plus!   Take the good parts of Everquest, add instancing housing, a subjob, flexible job switching, Renaki, and that good ol' Squaresoft charm.    I like it!  Erm, but why can't I bring myself to play it?   Guess I'm too easily distracted, because two months later everybody's moved on.   Okay, next!"

"Say, this City of Heroes is the most involving MMORPG I've ever played - no autoattack here!  I like it!   Erm, but people tell me it lacks breadth.  I guess they're right, but who cares so long as it's fun?   Shit! The developers just shot themselves in the foot by deliberately endeavoring to make the treadmill longer by cutting my superheroic confidence down a few notches on the measuring stick.   Bah!  Maybe they'll reverse that judgement, but for the time being I've better things to do."

"Hmm, what's this.  Schild wants a less involving game.  I've never played ATITD, but I'd better spam the board like I do so consistantly because I'm lousy at managing my own time."

So you can see where my logical train of thought is going at about this point.   You want a *Less involving* mmorpg?   Install one of the half dozen or so MMORPGs which had that exact problem - maybe give Anarchy Online a spin, for example.    Or maybe read a book or install a screensaver.

[Anonymous]

Progressquest. IN. SPACE!

[Rasix]

Progressquest. IN. SPACE!

Damn, I was hoping for a link somewhere in there.

[HaemishM]

PROGRESSQUEST! IN SPACE!

[Rasix]

Hey, I occasionally had to hit buttons while playing Eve.  

Actually, I thought it was a pretty well made and interesting game.  The travel times were just atrocious though.  I think that's where most of the arguments for the game being a virtual screen saver come from.  Sure the combat was less twitch based than people would have liked, but it was engaging and did actually somewhat rely on player skill and strategy.

And I did finish most of the three books in A Song of Fire and Ice while playing.  That has to count for something.  

If Eve could find a way to make travel times less lengthy, get people into capital ships sooner, and speed up some skill gain, I think it'd make a fine game and one I'd actually pay to play.

Edit: So I think one major takeaway for the industry as a whole from Eve and ATITD is: long travel times across mostly baren landscape is not fun.

[Daydreamer]

ATITD sounds like the exact opposite of CoH, heh.

Anyways, I got a week and a half long break between when finals end (6/9) and when my summer school/work begins (6/21) and could use another timesink in between when CoH gets repetetive.  How would I go about contacting you peeps in game?

[schild]

Teamspeak? I'll make a ATITD room.

[Rasix]

Hah, if others give it a free trial, I'll try again.

I think we all need to start in the same area. I remember the map being rather large.

[Daydreamer]

Thanks.  I'll see you guys there next week.

[schild]

Downloading it now. Teamspeak info is stickied in the City of Heroes forum. Nebu said above the game ends in a few weeks or so. If it restarts after that and we enjoy it, maybe we'll make a group to actually get shit done. Let's see if its fun first though.

[Mesozoic]

You could wait for the sequel.

[stray]

I was really considering resubbing to Shadowbane, but now I'm in console heaven. Hopefully that will quell the addiction until WoW, Darkfall, or hell, even MO comes out. If I had to pick though, SB is most enjoyable of the bunch (not to say it still isn't shitty).

[schild]

I subbed to ATiTD, there is a wipe at the end of the month, I won't feel bad about it if I don't like it. $12.95, game ending with a wipe, if I want to sub in the sequel i can. Works for me.

[Pig Destroyer]

I enjoyed what little time I had in ATiTD.  I just felt very overwhelmed, and never had a large group of people to play with.  I played at the very beginning for a couple months, and actually resubbed earlier this year.  I cancelled again when I started playing....EVE! lol  Now that I am selling my EVE accounts, I am thinking of making a return to ATiTD now that people I know will be playing on a regular basis, or at least trying to.

I've already resubbed my AC account in anticipation of the new server, a new beginning in ATiTD could be really fun as well.

Excuse me while I continue to ramble on to myself...

[Mi_Tes]

I've already resubbed my AC account in anticipation of the new server, a new beginning in ATiTD could be really fun as well.

When does the new AC server open?

Edit - Nm, found out it opens June 9th.  :)

[Mesozoic]

When does the new AC server open?

Edit - Nm, found out it opens June 9th.  :)

Greetings!  You have been invited to join us for the launch of our new Asheron's Call world, Verdantine!  Please consult our schedule of events, provided below:

8:00 AM EST:   Tea and cookies.
9:00 AM EST:   A speech from our founder.
10:00 AM EST: Verdantine comes online.
10:01 AM EST:  Complete fucking anarchy.
10:02 AM EST:  Server crash.
11:25 AM EST:  Server back online.
11:26 AM EST:  Login server crash.
11:27 AM EST:  Wailing / gnashing of teeth.
12:43 PM EST:  Completely unrelated billing snafu.
1:00 PM EST:    Lunch.


Hope to see you there!

[Pig Destroyer]

Luckily for me, I'll actually be working that day, and the following day is my anniversary. So I won't actually be able to PLAY on the new server until about 2:00am Friday morning.

In ATITD news, I started a new trial, my in game name is LaceratedSky.  I'm not even off newbie island yet, but it won't be long now.

[Nebu]

Pig Destroyer,

I played this game a while, left, and have recently returned.  Send me a chat if you have any questions. I'd be happy to help you get acquainted with the interface or give you a few supplies to help get off to a decent start.

Nebu

[Rasix]

Our little camp isn't doing too bad.  Would always welcome more people to the fold as the game just gets better with more people involved.

This is a pretty good little game. I'm hoping the second telling improves on some of the game's glaring weaknesses (and it looks to).

[Kenrick]

Am I the only one here who doesn't know what the fuck ATIDIDDTDDT or whatever even IS?


/begin internet search

edit:  Found it.  blah.