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Games.com报导:社交游戏令玩家抓狂的四件事

发布时间:2010-10-13 14:57:45 Tags:,,,

首先,我要声明我很喜欢社交游戏,他们因为无需付费,而且在游戏中还可以遇见各种不同的人。同样,我为社交游戏在过去的两年中的迅速发展表示高兴。

然而,在我FarmVille、Mafia Wars等社交游戏长达一年后的现在,我不得不提出自己对这类社交游戏的四点抱怨。

1,出错,出错,出错

我对社交游戏最大的不满在于游戏总是出错,譬如游戏道具无故消失、按键失效或游戏连接失败等问题时有出现。一旦某款游戏起个头,另外的很多问题就接踵而至。

例如这周末我在打理FarmVille的庄稼时,游戏突然跳出了一个“游戏服务中断”的信息框,这就意味着我不得不重新载入进度,将我刚刚完成的事情再做一次。因此,5分钟前我刚刚收获、种植的庄稼,我现在必须在重新收获、种植一次。

同样这种情况在Mafia Wars也有发生。尽管Zynga游戏开发公司一再承诺即将提供更稳定的游戏环境。但在这之后,Mafia Wars发布了一项特别任务San Juan,之后被公司收回然后又重新发布了一次。而在这之后的几星期又发生了类似的Beat the Feds时间。然后不久,FrontierVille也有一次类似的大规模重复载入。

也许有些人会说这是社交游戏的本质——游戏开发后不经测试就投入运营。但我希望有朝一日社交游戏的整体形式得到升级。毕竟将还存在许多问题的游戏投入市场并不是明智之举,尤其游戏开发商要考虑到这些间歇性问题有可能导致玩家的直接经济损失。

2,烦人的弹出广告

Frontierville Discounts

Frontierville Discounts

我注意到最近很多游戏都引入了任意弹出窗口来通知玩家各种游戏虚拟货币促销活动。这像极了夜间时段那些愚蠢的电视直销节目。我既不需要Slap Chop也不需要Perfect Fit按键,我更不想买FrontierVille的马蹄铁。除非游戏推出一个2.5折清仓大甩卖我才可能在游戏中花点现实货币。除此之外,我不考虑购买任何游戏道具。现在Zynga旗下的多款游戏都很盛行这种广告方式,但这对我无效。

另外,弹出窗口也是一件烦人的事情。我既然已经同意游戏在我的墙上发帖了,为什么我还必须点击那些请求在我的Facebook墙上发帖的弹出窗口呢?

3,游戏中要做很多额外的任务

在社交网站Facebook上玩游戏的一个优点就是节省时间,我可以忙中偷闲,玩个5分钟游戏。一开始,FarmVille等热门Facebook游戏的任务很快就能完成。而一般玩家升级到最高后,游戏也就结束了。但是,为了让玩家继续玩游戏,游戏开发商们发布了一个又一个的新功能——特别战斗事件、可建造的道具、节日活动等等。尽管这些新增功能的确让玩家忙碌了起来,但它们也同时强迫玩家完成过多的任务。

Zynga公司的Treasure Isle可谓是其中最糟糕的一款。在这个游戏中,我曾经同时进行4项任务。然而为了这款游戏,我并不是在挖宝,而要花费所有的时间在Facebook墙上发帖,请求朋友送我染料、绳子或其他任务道具。另外,RockYou公司的Zoo World也是一样。

Treasure-isle-too-much-to-do

Treasure-isle-too-much-to-do

4,花费几个小时“接受礼物”

赠送和接受礼物是社交游戏的主要组成部分。我喜欢收到礼物,Pet Society, Cafe World和PetVille等几款游戏的确发布了很棒的送礼进程。但是在我最经常玩的三款游戏(FarmVille, FrontierVille和Mafia Wars)中接受礼物却很耗时。

整个接受礼品的流程如下:在Facebook点击接受礼物,稍等片刻后我进入了游戏界面,然后点击确认接受礼物,最后再点击回到Facebook游戏礼品页面(如果还打得开的话)。

有时我会接受别人的赠礼,但那时页面不会直接进入Facebook,而是游戏会自动读取。然后我不得不狂按返回键以免读取游戏的时候被卡住。

尽管知道开发公司这样设计送礼步骤有一定的理由,但我衷心希望可以有更简捷的方式。我不想点击任何按键——只要将页面自动转换到礼品盒,让我节省接受礼物的时间,投入更多到玩游戏中。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译)

For the record, I love social games. I love that they’re free to play and accessible to all types of people. I love that their popularity has exploded over the past two years, and that they’ve been turning all of game-dom on its head.

But, after playing FarmVille, Mafia Wars and the rest for just over a year now, there are a few things in these games that have really started to gnaw on my nerves — four in particular. They don’t actually make me want to chop down a door with an axe like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, but they make me go, ya know, something, something.

Bugs, bugs, bugs

My biggest gripe about social gaming is the bugs. I’m talking about all of the little glitches in games that never really seem to go away. Examples of this include items that mysteriously disappear, buttons that don’t work or losing connection to a game. It’s like Whack-A-Mole, once one bug is bopped in the head, another one pops up somewhere else.

For instance, I was tending my FarmVille crops this weekend and got the ever annoying ‘Game out of sync with server’ message, which means you have to reload the game and re-do everything you just did again. So after spending five minutes harvesting and planting crops, then I had to do it again. Then I had to reload the game again. Then harvest the same crops again. Ugh.

This has happened to me several times in Mafia Wars as well. After promising that a more stable game experience was on its way, Mafia Wars rolled out a special event, San Juan, and then had to roll it back again. Then it launched again. This had also happened a few weeks before with the similar Beat the Feds event. FrontierVille, lately, has also been a big reloader.

Some might say that’s the nature of social gaming — everything’s created and pushed out to players without proper testing, but I’m looking forward to the day that this whole form of gaming evolves and it will not be acceptable for games to have so many problems after it’s made public, especially considering how many players might be losing real-life money due to some random in-game hiccup.

Annoying pop-ups advertising virtual currency sales

I’ve also recently noticed that more games have started introducing random pop-ups, informing me that I’ve been especially been chosen to participate in a sale on the game’s virtual currency. It’s all very annoying, kind of like those silly TV infomercials that play on a loop after midnight. No, I don’t want a Slap Chop or a Perfect Fit button, and I don’t want to buy any Horseshoes in FrontierVille either. The only way that I’m might possibly consider spending my real-life cash for virtual cash is if there was a 75% clearance sale. And that’s just to consider it. Zynga games have particularly been aggressive with this form of advertising, and it ain’t working for me.

Pop-ups in general are also annoying. If I have already given blanket consent for a game to post messages to my Wall, why do I still have to click on pop-ups that ask for my permission to post something to my Facebook wall?

Too many extra things to do in a game

One of the great things about playing games on Facebook is that you can get in and out quickly. I can take a break from writing or whatever I’m doing, jump into a game for five minutes, play and then be done. In the beginning, it was easy to run out of things to do in FarmVille and the other big Facebook games. Once you reached the max level, it was pretty much game over. To keep people playing, developers responded by rolling out more and more new features — special fighting events, buildable items, holiday-themed events, etc. While these new add-ons will certainly keep the average virtual farmer busy, they have also started to pull players into too many directions, rather than giving players a more directed experience.

Zynga’s Treasure Isle is one of the worst offenders — I am literally working on four side projects at once, and instead of digging for treasure, I usually spend most of my time posting message on my Facebook Wall, begging for friends to send me dye, ropes and other building materials to get the jobs done. RockYou’s Zoo World is another serious offender. Just slow down on the projects, partner. Not everyone is playing your game 24/7.

Accepting gifts … for hours

Sending and receiving gifts is an integral part of the social game experience. And let me tell you, I like getting gifts, however, accepting them. A few games like Pet Society, Cafe World and PetVille have streamlined the gifting process quite nicely. But, when it comes to accepting gifts in the three games I probably play the most — FarmVille, FrontierVille and Mafia Wars — it’s a time-consuming affair.

The process breaks down like this: I click to accept a gift on Facebook, then I wait while I’m bounced to the game. Then, I click another button confirming that I want to accept the gift. Then I click another button to go back to my Facebook game gift page (if available). Sometimes I’ll accept a gift from someone and instead of directing me back to Facebook, the game loads automatically right afterward. Then I’m frantically scrambling to hit the back button so I don’t get stuck waiting for the game to load. Exhausted yet? I am.

While I’m sure there’s a reason the gifting is set up this way; I really wish there was a better way to get the job done. I don’t want to click anything to receive gifts — just let them flow automatically into some virtual gifting box and let me have those hours I spend accepting gifts every week back to actually spend more time playing the games.(Source: Games.com)


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