I think Units should be awarded for all the different activities in tower, not just the minigames.
Why? It’s unfair to people who don’t like minigames and it over-promotes minigames over other activities.
Arcade - tickets should be exchangable for Units
Casino - sometimes, when spending time in the casino, you get free chips (which can be exchanged for Units)
Boardwalk atractions - This one is eazy, reward Units based on performance
Theater/Club/Other “idle” activities - When spending time in these, ocasionally, pop-ups would appear. They would ask a trivial question (pick the blue melon). If answered right, Units would be awarded
Ocean - Pretty sure there will be rewards for exploring the ocean
Condos - When spending time in condos, bags of Units would appear on the ground. The number of them would drastically increase with the number of people inside the condo. (with only one person, the multiplier would be 0x , meaning no Units would appear)
Workshop - getting likes and downloads on your workshop items gets you Units.
Performance as in, how intense you use the boardwalk attraction? They are just a thing which you can use, not really a game, so we have to see what performance at boardwalk attractions is exactly.
I feel like the idle activities should have something to do with the theater. The pop-up thing could be used anywhere.
Maybe get units for finding things buried down the sand? This has been suggested I think.
Yes, if not just regular prizes like a real arcade.
You already get chips in the Casino. Play slots or something. No other casino in the world just hands you chips (except Zynga Poker).
This one isn’t really clear, but it sounds good.
No.
Not exploration, per se, but I would be for finding treasures and selling them.
No.
No.
I have nearly 30k GMC on my account. Yes, that’s a lot. I’ve won big in the Casino, played a lot of games, gotten a lot of achievements, and sold things to get what I want. Right now, I’m not pining for anything else. It’s actually why I’m hoping to have the option to “start over” in TU so I have goals again.
If I ever idled in GMT, guess what: I never got GMC. That’s the core of every gamemode. If you’re idle after X amount of time, you don’t get GMC. That should not be changed for TU. It’s already stupid easy to get money.
The nicknames have always been one of the main focuses of Tower, so the promotion of them is justified. Now getting money is fine from other things but it needs to not outdo the minigames.
While I’m probably going to have a fun time with the mini-games, I won’t always want to play them and I definitely know of folks who wouldn’t want to.
For your Arcade idea: Yes. This seems like a pretty solid method of contributing to unit generation.
For your Casino idea: Not really in favor of this.
For your Boardwalk attractions idea: I’m not really certain on what would be involved here, but yeah.
For your Theater/Club/Other idea: No, not in favor of the question. I much like the PointShop way of things here how it works on the Cinema gamemode where you get a configurable amount of currency per X time spent in there. I’m going to be using the Theater/Club element of Tower Unite the most, so it’s important to get something out of that for me.
For your Ocean idea: Certainly, perhaps treasures that can be discovered that can be turned in for units.
For your Condos idea: This seems kind of stupid, really. I wouldn’t want random bags of Units spawning in my Condo. Instead, perhaps you can get so many units per visit.
For your Workshop idea: This is fine but there need to be goals met first, like 100/500/1,000 downloads/likes, etc.
People need to realize that mini-games are not everyone’s cup of tea, and that should not lock them out of being able to fully experience the game (as Units will be necessary). There needs to be a diverse and expansive Unit allocation system in order for this game to really appeal to more than just a niche.
The reason why I’ve suggested pop-ups over sheer time spend is simple:
Without pop-ups, it would be very easy to AFK and farm Units. And when in theatre/club, you don’t use your mouse for anything, really. It won’t be that big of an annoyance.
And the free chips in casino- I’ve suggested that as a reward for spending your time. You can either spend your time in minigames, which gets you units, or casino, in which you can /lose/ units. I think some extra chips wouldn’t hurt that much.
Also, I don’t see a reason minigames should be the /main/ way of getting Units. There are people who like other activities. Why should they be punished for doing what they like?
There’s no reason to be punished and I agree that we need other ways to earn units (though you should only get them for DOING something) but the gameports have always been one of the main features. They’re designed at the core of the experience to get you to have fun with others, make new friends and be the top way to own the most units, aside from winning the casino or finding some rare treasure.
Heck the gameports are even the first feature shown on the website.
People who only want to use other features are of course more than welcome to come but I have a hard time seeing them staying for the long term if they don’t end up liking the games (and there’s a game for every kind of person anyways)
The little activities you can find around GMT right now (Checkers, waterslide, duels, etc.) are fun, but how many times? Sure, I duel for a laugh, play checkers with a friend, and go down the waterslide once a month, but in the end…that’s it?
Every time I play minigolf, there’s an x-factor of someone giving hilarious reactions when they don’t make it in the hole or make a hole in one. When I play ball race, I might set a new high score. I might develop a new strat in Virus or UCH. I might make it to the end of Zombie Massacre. These are things that can happen during the minigames, giving replayability outside of just being fun. And really, if the core focus of the game doesn’t appeal you, it’s time to play another game. That’s like saying you like Minecraft but don’t like mining or crafting or exploring.
@Arsenic is right. On the TU website, everything comes secondary to the games. I don’t have a lot of GMT friends. My condo isn’t important to me now that I’ve decorated it the way I want to. So now, I play it for the games. No matter what you do, everything comes back to the games.
Pop-ups are annoying and I don’t want them popping up. Ever. We’re past the age of pop-ups. I hated how they appeared in Skyrim (with mods) and in New Vegas (when DLC loaded), I hate it when they appear when browsing websites, I hate it when they pop up to alert me of a Steam event. Don’t suggest pop-ups at all. If I want free credits, I’ll play video poker a few times.
This is idling.
I find it hard to believe that any of this is about actual gameplay seeing as a lot of your suggestions (four out of seven) don’t involve gameplay. They involve sitting around, doing relatively nothing. Your last one might not even involve playing the game or any of the gameworlds at all.
There are going to be new activities in TU… lazer tag, bumper carts… these can offer replayability, if only minor one.
There are people that prefer visiting other people’s condos and being social over playing minigames. You might not enjoy decorating your condo and visiting condos of other people, but that doesn’t mean other people don’t enjoy it.
Then, suggest a better way of preventing indling in the theatre.
How comes watching videos in the theatre doesn’t count as “gameplay”? It’s still gameplay, even if you sit with your hands idle, watching youtube videos. Visiting condos is gameplay too. So is visiting the nightclub or gambling in the casino.
Watching videos doesn’t count as “doing” something?
The reason I’m suggesting all of this is that without a reward, everything except the minigames would be ignored and empty. (Like in GMT). Theatre, boardwalk, club… all of that is fun, but people rarely use these. If they were rewarded in the same way they are being rewarded for minigames, they would have a reason to even consider visiting these other activities.
I use GMT as it stands for a frame of reference but what you said at the top of your post is the big what if:
Any time I’ve played Lazer Tag in real life, I always get a print-out of my scores, and the top players would sometimes get coupons or whatever. I can see Pixeltail offering rewards for that. Also maybe for who gets the most bumps in bumper cars or doing well in bowling. Hell, maybe we could have League nights in bowling where you can bowl for prizes.
No, it isn’t. It’s watching YouTube videos. That’s not a game. A game is interactive. A game is where you can win or lose, advance or fail. A game is where there’s something against you and a punishment for doing something wrong. Tetris was a game because if you didn’t make enough lines or stacked too high, you would fail. Bejeweled was a game where if you ran out of moves or out of time, you would fail. In Minigolf, I can fail if I’m not careful with my shots. YouTube is not a game. The only way I fail at watching a video is by looking away or my internet crashing.
There is a possibility you could get paid based on how people like your video. See my point below.
But two of those three things are purely social. There’s no reason to pay me for visiting someone else’s condo. I barely use the condos. I mean, yeah, people do, but they do it for fun. Never in GMT have I ever seen someone ask “why does the condo not give me money?”
I can see a reward system being added to the nightclub based on how people like your songs (a la plug.dj or Dubtrack). That’s where the system works. A DJ gets paid for playing songs people like.
Don’t reward people for going to the movie theater in the first place? You don’t need money to enjoy the theater, why should the theater pay you? It’s not like every other cinema server where you need credits to request a video or whatever, where the whole game is the cinema, as opposed to the cinema being a small part compared to everything else.
As I mentioned above (because I didn’t write this in order, just whichever part I felt like writing first), people could be rewarded if people upvote videos they play in the theater. If people like it, you get money.
Then there you go. Go to the casino, spend money, make money. You want easy money? Play a few hands of video poker. It’s stupid easy to win money in video poker. Under no circumstances should just being in the casino make me eligible to win something. Gambling in the casino shouldn’t automatically give me money, either, unless I win. That breaks the whole point of a casino.
See, the problem is you’re assuming how people are going to play this game. Pixeltail likely couldn’t add all the stuff to Gmod Tower they’re going to add to Unite because Garry’s Mod is a fucking mess and so is the build of Source it uses. I’d like to take Playstation Home as an example here: One of the first games that was added to it and persisted was bowling. It didn’t matter what time of day, I’d always see people playing bowling or pool. It didn’t matter if you got a reward or not, which you didn’t, it was played because bowling is fun. So now, this fun new game is in Unite that didn’t exist in GMT. It’s new, it’s fresh, it’s exciting, compared to the other activities that were often basic and stale. Checkers loses its charm after a while.
In summary, your suggestions still have the same problem: People getting paid for doing relatively nothing. Payment can be used as a reward system for various activities. Doing well in lazer tag, playing liked songs in Nightclub and Cinema, finding treasures, what have you. That’s the way to do rewards because it involves people actually putting effort in and not going to a movie theater and clicking through pop-ups while Minecraft Let’s Play #9362 is being played.
Alright, I kinda agree with the rest of your post, but still.
Even if the player’s doing relatively nothing, he’s still investing his/her time into the game. Each player has only limited time on his/her hands. If player invests his/her time into a minigame, he gets rewarded. Shouldn’t he be rewarded for investing the same amount of time into different activities that the game offers?
That’s basically my problem.
The activities are comparable to minigames on Tower. The main focus of Tower is the game worlds. If you want a game that rewards you for just using it as a timesink, I recommend checking out Progress Quest or Cookie Clicker, or maybe some of the easier scenarios in Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 where you just had to do a couple of things then watch the screen until you won.
By not awarding you for watching videos. This is just dumb.
Honestly, the only thing I agree should give you Units are games like bowling, laser tag, fishing, and maybe a few arcade games. Even then, you are getting Units at a snail’s pace. Game worlds will always be the go-to method of earning Units.
Plus achievements for activities in the plaza, sure.
???
You’re telling me that no one watches videos or uses their condo because they don’t earn GMC from doing it?
I’m pretty sure you’re wrong. Last time I played, everyone was using their condos and many people were watching videos with others. All while not earning any GMC from doing so.
