c[]'s [Qi] City RPG has a brilliant new game mechanic

Author Topic: c[]'s [Qi] City RPG has a brilliant new game mechanic  (Read 9865 times)

As with most high school students on summer break, I've managed to thoroughly forget up my sleep schedule a few weeks before the start of school. So naturally I've got to go through the awful process of fixing it before the school season starts up again, and the only reliable way of switching from a nocturnal sleep schedule to a normal one is by pulling an all-nighter and staying awake until 9pm or so. That way, you go to bed at a normal hour and wake up at 8am the next day with a normal sleep schedule.

I did that tonight, and so I've been playing some of my steam games to help keep me awake until I can get some coffee. I opened up Blockland and joined the most populated server on the list, which happened to be c[]'s server.

As soon as you get on the server, there's a friendly reminder that you can type '/help' to learn about how the server's commands work. The menu is pretty straightforward and looks like this:


My player only spawned with $100, so the next logical step seemed to be that I should get a job. The help menu tells me I can type '/help list jobs' to learn more about the jobs I can get in c[]'s city.



Oh, well that's unfortunate. Like most software problems I assumed that the issue lies between keyboard and chair, but after a few minutes of unfruitful poking-around of the help menu, I can't seem to find anything that tells me where to get a job. After awhile I give up and try the next best option of pestering the playerbase until some helpful guy gives me advice. However, as soon as I ask that, it detects my question and gives me a link to an FAQ page.


Unfortunately the FAQ doesn't work and redirects to the 404 page of the website's host. I suppose that all this might be intentional though, an attempt at getting the playerbase to break out of their typical, interfaced comfort zone and explore the game itself without having everything handed to them. In a country in which mandated state-standards are being rewritten to be too complex and too bureaucratic simply in order to recoup the academic performance of a generation which is ever-lagging in the departments of simple grade-school arithmetic, this might be a good thing after all.

Soon, some guy tells me that there's some building you have to go to get a job, and he escorts me there after I wander around for a few minutes aimlessly looking for a building with some kind of 'jobs' sign. He leads me to an unremarkable looking gray building with a few desks inside and no signs indicating that 'this building needs to be visited before you can even play this game'. For something as pivotal and important as that, I'd expect at least a flashing arrow and some sort of type-faced stationary sign telling players like me that 'you can get a job here!'.


I walk up to the brick where you stand to get your job, and it as well has a very simple interface that seems pretty easy to use.


I press '2' to apply for a job, and I start to ponder what way I'd like to contribute to the virtual economy of this server. Since I'm a new player, I choose the 'labor' department and it gives me a list of available jobs.



Unfortunately, all these jobs require an education level of >1, and my education level is 0. Fortunately for me, the education brick is in the same building I'm in, removing the necessity to search for some kind of unmarked trailer or re-purposed gas station where the city planner might have put a school. I'm greeted again with a friendly and simple interface.


I've finally reached the moment of truth, where I can get my education and then become an actual, honest-to-god working citizen of this society. I go to 'obtain a degree' and I'm dumbstruck by what I see.


Yes, that's right. I have to make more money in order to apply for a job that will get me money. I'm skeptical that this is the intent that the game developer has, so I ask some other players and they confirm that you need to get a 'degree' before you can get /any/ job. Fortunately for me, the default job 'Immigrant' pays a salary of $12 every 3 minutes, so all I need to do is wait approximately 38 minutes before I can raise the $155, get a job, and actually do something on this server.

So I suppose the gist of this entire thread is that I wanted to bring attention to a brilliant new mechanic in game design posited by none other than c[], the idea being that you make a game where players cannot actually participate in game play without sitting idly for a minimum of 38 minutes. But in order to keep the players from getting bored, you simply put a ton of obstacles in their way such as dysfunctional menus and counter-intuitively placed buildings without clearly indicative labels or signs. That way by the time they actually figure out where they can get a job or buy an 'education', it'll have already been several hours and they'll have enough cash to afford the degree!

Brilliant!

This is why I really need to make a CRP.

when reached for comment, c[] only said "gamers aren't able to take this much innovation so quickly".

This is the best drama OP I've ever read lol.


Honest to god, this was the most entertaining OP I've ever seen.

So you found a City RPG that sucks?

wow that's unheard of

Anything by Qi is automatically stuffty lol


I actually think all of that stuff was made by Aoki, c[]'s just using his mod.


You win the drama award of lol


On guys CO-Operative cost here in about 7 hours I will solve this problem with c[_].

On guys CO-Operative cost here in about 7 hours I will solve this problem with c[_].
Holy stuff windows phone is terrible
FIXED
Ok c[_] and I will fix this problem in about 7 hours. (Were sleeping in Finland)