Adam Eivy (antic)'s dashboard

Adam Eivy (antic) reported a problem in RIPL on November 04, 2009 05:10:

Get UserID by Username in Widget Builder

Add the ability for a developer to get a user's ID by username. It's very difficult to find a user's UserID (you have to go to the user's RIPL profile, view the page source and get the value of ggViewUserId in the javascript code--not so easy to find for the average developer)

Adam Eivy (antic) replied on June 21, 2009 15:34 to the idea "Terms of Service" in Spymaster:

I'm actually shocked at the automation restriction. If we don't automate our tasks, we end up just being a bunch of monkeys clicking buttons every 5 minutes, which is a pretty lame game experience. I can't see any self respecting spy lowering himself to be a button drone.

A more fun way to play is to think of your strategy, set up automation, check back and alter your strategy to buy new items, assassinate people, etc as you advance.

It's obvious that many people are doing this. I've seen some people jump multiple levels (and I mean top levels, 35-36-37) in a period of a couple of days. This could only happen if they are automating task/assassinations to get ahead while they work/sleep.

I was expecting automation to come into the game as a tool that you could buy, like "train a recruit" or 'buy an assistant".

This game is about strategy, not button pushing. That's what didn't draw me in about mob140--there's too much you can do and you end up pushing too many buttons. I just want to make a strategy and make it work, let it ride out and check on it periodically.

I can't reason why that would be sabotage. If it's an issue of server load, just add more restrictions--like maybe you can only run 20 tasks per day or something. I just think it's a bit crazy to put the burden of game play restriction on the user (especially hidden away here on this feedback site) rather than to build your own safeguards.

Anyway, that's my two cents.

Adam Eivy (antic) asked a question in Spymaster on June 21, 2009 03:05:

Account Suspended due to "Sabotage"

Again, this game lacks transparency. What are the rules? What are you allowed to do? What are you not allowed to do? What did I do to get suspended?

If you can answer these questions, why not make the answers more publicly accessible so real players who have been participating since the beginning don't accidentally get booted for something stupid.

What gives?

This gets me thinking though: This game is about Spymasters. Isn't it supposed to be full of subversion and sabotage? Maybe sabotaging the directorate should win you extra experience or something.

Adam Eivy (antic) replied on June 21, 2009 02:59 to the idea "Power Structure Ultimately Fails" in Spymaster:

Well, now they've suspended my account for 'sabotage'. That's an ultimate fail.

A comment on the question "How does Safe House income work?" in Spymaster:

wait, you might lose money from a safe house? The site just says it might pay you nothing. If you are risk of losing money then it would seem that it's not worth having 'high' risk safe houses at all--but that's tough for a user to calculate since we don't know what our rate of return/loss is...

This answer still leaves me without a solid understanding of how the income really works. – Adam Eivy (antic), on June 05, 2009 05:07

A comment on the idea "Power Structure Ultimately Fails" in Spymaster:

thnx. now I can train revolutionaries \m/ – Adam Eivy (antic), on June 05, 2009 04:57

A comment on the idea "Power Structure Ultimately Fails" in Spymaster:

I think we have the same views with different perspectives. Nothing is going to change the fact that spymaster pulls users from twitter--and that is cool :) but the problem is in the way users are granted power. I think you and I would have much more fun if our spymasters weren't just there because they follow us on twitter but because they want to be part of our factions. There's a big difference there.

If, for instance, I follow you, but I also follow a hundred other people in spymaster, you get me on your team, but so do a hundred other people. But what if I just want to form a team with you? Wouldn't that be cooler? Then you could win over more twitter users to join your spymaster faction--rather than just belonging to you like they belong to everyone else. There are a lot of ways to look at and think about this issue but I'm really rooting for the ability to create groups/teams/factions/organizations (whatever you want to call them).

Additionally, the problem remains that if a twitter user like @cnnbrk decides to join spymaster, I'll be their spymaster, as will whatever fraction of their 1.67 million twitter users who play the game. That's freaking crazy. I don't want to be on the @cnnbrk team. I want my own team with my friends and people who want to support my faction :) – Adam Eivy (antic), on June 05, 2009 04:55

Adam Eivy replied on June 04, 2009 05:54 to the update "Black market prices have increased" in Spymaster:

sad, I was hoping that ciphertext revealed a secret code to unlock something cool. That would be fun ;)

Adam Eivy replied on June 04, 2009 05:39 to the idea "Power Structure Ultimately Fails" in Spymaster:

OK, now I'm at level 21 but I can't play my task because I only have 11 spymasters and it requires 12. So now I'm begging fellow players to follow me on twitter just so I can play this task. That's broken.

Please follow me: http://twitter.com/antic

Adam Eivy started following the idea "See revenue generated by safehouse" in Spymaster.

Adam Eivy replied on June 02, 2009 20:59 to the idea "Power Structure Ultimately Fails" in Spymaster:

I find it very odd though that I'm at level 17, my attack/defense is a measly 408/112 (even though I've purchased more than enough equipment) and I have a "High" risk of assassinating a level 1 player (who has over 1000 attack/defense simply because he has a lot of twitter followers who play the game) -- BTW, I only have 10 spymasters. The limiting factor for me is that I don't want to go out and follow a bunch of strangers who play the game, in hopes that they will follow me and boost my spymaster count... it just doesn't make sense.

However, if players could create their own spy factions and join other people's factions (but you can only be in 1 faction at a time)--then your spymaster number would be the number of people in your spy faction (literal spyring). This would improve the game a million-fold. As it is, I'm facing a situation where I'm running out of tasks because I don't have enough twitter follows who play the game to allow me to continue--and I can't assassinate anyone without major risk of defeat. I love this game and the idea but there appears no way for me to progress at this point.

Adam Eivy shared an idea in Spymaster on May 31, 2009 22:47:

Power Structure Ultimately Fails

The structure of power is wonky. Currently, if you have a large number of twitter followers and you join, you are likely to be way ahead of someone who has been playing the game for weeks but has few followers. This replicates the power hierarchy of twitter rather than creating a new hierarchy of power in the game. If a celebrity joins the game, that person is automatically in the top ranks. If this continues, only famous people will be in the 10 ten player stack and common players will find it worthless--because you will never be able to excel passed the level that your twitter follower count allows. There's a massive problem with a user coming in and playing for a while, building up strength and a network within the game while a new user can pop in and automatically start out with 10 times the power and be unstoppable. Additionally, this gives power to large companies and twitter spam users that have gobs of followers who don't really care to follow them as much as other users. Perhaps the game needs a way to affiliate with a particular person as your spy handler rather than a 1 to many setup that creates too much power all around.

Adam Eivy replied on May 31, 2009 22:27 to the question "How does Safe House income work?" in Spymaster:

I'm not sure what the percentage is supposed to be but I don't think I'm even getting 1/4th each refresh.

And what's the deal with the risk? Does that mean you are at risk of getting your pay cut/stolen due to a crackdown or something? Or is that just for the future when we will be able to directly attack a spy's safehouse?

Adam Eivy replied on May 31, 2009 18:03 to the idea "See who spymasters are and who I am for" in Spymaster:

It would also be cool if there was a public dossier section with the top 10 players and their stats. It's likely that the spy community knows all about the biggest players--and that would let us see how we rank in the overall system :)

Adam Eivy shared an idea in Spymaster on May 31, 2009 18:01:

More Descriptive and Informative Refresh

I think you should change the name of "Refresh in" on the timer to be something more like "Resting...", "catching your breath" or "rejuvenating" ... something more descriptive of what it's actually doing for you. Also, it would be nice to know how much health/energy you are getting every 5 minutes (what's the rate of rejuvenation?)

Adam Eivy replied on May 31, 2009 15:04 to the idea "Assassinate your own people?" in Spymaster:

Agreed. It's totally whack. I invited someone, he tried to assassinate me (failed) and I had mixed feelings. If he succeeded, he would still be giving me a little strength (since he's in my ring, yes?)

There's a major lack of transparency in how attack/defense is truly calculated. There are many allusions to the size of your spy ring giving you power and your followers having better weapons giving you more power--but there's absolutely no way to figure out if or how that is factored into the game.

Adam Eivy started following the idea "Assassinate your own people?" in Spymaster.

Adam Eivy replied on May 31, 2009 15:01 to the question "Attack / Defense Sum Calculations?" in Spymaster:

It seems there's a maximum threshold for attack/defense, depending on your level & spymasters. This game needs more transparency. It's a really bad experience to buy a weapon, have it grant the said amount of attack, then buy another and only get a portion of the advertised gain, then buy another and get nothing. If the numbers are changing, they should change (visibly) in the market itself (i.e. an item is +10, you get to the point where another purchase will only give you +5, then the text on the item now should say +5--when it gets to +0, it should say so).

Also, there's no way to tell if selling an item is going to decrement your attack/defense (or by how much).

This game has a lot of potential but it's missing a lot of polish.

Adam Eivy started following the question "Attack / Defense Sum Calculations?" in Spymaster.

Adam Eivy replied on May 31, 2009 14:54 to the question "How does Safe House income work?" in Spymaster:

It's really not clear how frequently they pay (or at what percent of the total they pay out). Is it hourly, daily? no clue.