What do you actually do in Torn city??

[Callan S.]

Like, I made a research account some time back and apparently signed up as a grocer. Then forgot about it.

Logged in again and the job has given me alot of cash over that time. So buying big gats and chainmail was fun...but then...what else do you do, except petty crimes for not much money and not very often?

I can see nothing I can do? Like in legends of zork, you go hit an area and there's even slight brain activity involved in estimating whether to spend an action point to cash in loot, or press on with the hitpoints you have.

Here there's nothing? But there's a boat load of players? Is it the voting system? Keep getting people to vote just gives you exposure? How does his voting system work, anyway? Does it confirm somehow that you voted, or just count if you've gone through a vote link?

Or am I missing some sort of game you can play there?

[Jackolantern]

It is just the snowball effect. Like all indie browser-based games, the hardest players to get are the first few. But each player who joins may refer people they know to come play as well, causing a chain reaction. So it just depends on if a game can reach a point where the game goes super critical mass and starts getting a gigantic influx of players over a short time. I don't necessarily believe it is directly tied into the quality of the game, because I feel that Torn City is actually quite boring, lame and derivative. Yet it has over a million players.

However, more on the topic of what you do, I think you have seen most of it. Train to raise your stats, buy some stuff, go on missions. Wash, rinse repeat.

[Torniquet]

i think like alot of games like that, its the simplicity and ease that you can play that draws in the crowd.

they are games that require little effort to play, and is seen more of a who can get to the top first and the quickest.

alot of them also tie into social networking sites and have buttons where you can share on facebook, myspace, diggit etc. someone clicks that then their friends see it and generally see what the hoohar is all about.

[Callan S.]

Yeah. In fact I kind of wonder if the 'nothing to really do' factor leads people to post in the forum and start interacting at that community level. Ironically not because the game has content in it, but quite the opposite!

I'm thinking of putting some sort of mini forum in my game - more like hitting set responces eg 'like' , 'disagree' or something to subjects. Set up a few to give the forum the appearance of activity. Perhaps show the top subjects and responces on the front page of the game.

[Jackolantern]

I also think that having a world of things to do can actually be a negative in "action point" games. If the player has a choice between 20 or so major activities, it could frustrate the player to think how long it will take before they can try them all, and may even make them paranoid that they are not spending their action points wisely.

These types of games seem to lend themselves to very casual players who log in and play for 10 or 15 minutes a day while on break. Of course there will be a more hardcore element even in very casual games, and these are likely the players who are buying action points. They see an opportunity to propel themselves past their casual brethren, and feel they can progress to the top more easily than in games that are hardcore-focused.

That is my take on it at least

[Callan S.]

Something I'm working on now is the player being able to earn an automatic, daily income of a certain amount of cash. I wonder if that's a feature for that 15 minute player, as they could achieve this daily income in this time. Then they have a foothold in the game.

Hmmm, perhaps I'll make it the first few get a big bonus of cash at first, just to start things off...put that in the adverts (using project wonderful - yay 0 bids!).

[Jackolantern]

You could simply give them a "Go to work" button, and when they click it they get a lump sum of money. However, they can only click it once every 18 hours or so. Mechanics like that (like Daily Quests in WoW) make the player think about your game each day and try to embed your game in their daily routine. It is a method of sucking casual players in to keep them coming back and make them more involved in your game.It also gives casual, 15 - 45 minute a day players a feeling that they are getting somewhere in the game. Maybe for more involved players you could give them tasks that will give them a better job when completed which will give them more money once a day. If you really want to have some evil mechanics, set it up so they can't go AWOL on their job for too many days or they will lose their better job and go back to the default job

[Callan S.]

Yeah, that's cool. What I had in mind was money each day, plus also each day you can actively do the job (click it) a random number of times (say 2-8) for more money. Also built a money high score chart into the page.

Further for the first five people to aquire the job I've coded it to give a relatively huge lump of cash as a prize for being the first.

Actually that's what I've been thinking on - basically for game world setting reasons I want the money earned each day to be around $1-$4 dollars, as your still just starting out in the game world (I'm adding the bigger stuff latter). Each active, player initiated doing of the job earns...hadn't decided yet. Perhaps $1-$6? That lump of cash from above would be from $100-$200 dollars. Except perhaps that doesn't sound terribly dramatic? And the amount per day doesn't sound dramatic? Like perhaps people play these games to live out the fantasy of making thousands per day, compared to how much they usually make? Basically I have my wanting to stick to the setting as I see it Vs perhaps this doesn't sound dramatic.