Leviathan Harpooner (New Game), Jobs Questions

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Huggles
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Leviathan Harpooner (New Game), Jobs Questions

Post by Huggles »

http://www.subeta.net/games/battleship.php

Does anyone have any idea what the hell is going on here? When there hasn't been a new game released in ages, I'm surprised they did it with so little fanfare. Although, from the looks of things, it doesn't deserve any. I will say that it did lead me to click around Subeta some more and discover jobs. Does anyone see any purpose in these either? You get an achievement for employing one of your pets, but they seem utterly useless otherwise. There's a scant collection of employers and they randomly deny or accept your pet's application. Apparently 4 had been working a job for the past year, but since I didn't collect her paycheck daily, I only made about 4 sp. But she doesn't actually do anything while she's "working".
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Re: Leviathan Harpooner (New Game), Jobs Questions

Post by AngharadTy »

The leviathan game is very lame. It's like a one-player version of battleship. Except more boring. And also stupidly difficult. I have played level 2 over and over and over and can't get to level 3. I probably just have the worst luck in the world, but still.

edit: Haha. Public complaining ftw. I just won level 2--and I have no idea how. I found a 5-long leviathan group, and another 5-long, and a 3 long. Which is funny, because I previously lost several times with three groupings. I still stand by my declaration that this game is boring. It is not a good game.

Jobs do basically everything you just said. You can click daily to collect the salary, but it's a pittance. You can ask for a promotion, but there are very good odds they'll be fired. And it's not that much more money, even if you get a few promotions. And you need a pet with... 500? 600? intelligence to get the SAI job.
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Huggles
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Re: Leviathan Harpooner (New Game), Jobs Questions

Post by Huggles »

Well isn't that just peachy. I figure if the game had somehow been tied into the Pirate vs Islander war and had been released around the that time, it'd at least be relevant if no more fun or interesting. It's quite pitiful really. The jobs at least sounded cool. I got my battle pets jobs as city police, and my chibi hikei would like nothing more to spend all day trying to blow up balloons. :(

What should have happened: My pets sign up to be police officers of a city/land. Then while I'm roaming around the site, I get smacked by a random event saying someone's broken into a bank. If it's an npc, we go directly into a coliseum smackdown and instead of loot I get a commendation. Build up enough and I earn a promotion and access to the secret police doughnut shop. If it's a user playing a game of safe crack or who signed their pet up as thief, and we go play some not dumb mini game to determine who wins. Or maybe some use some weird formula to determine who wins, kind of like the when zombies got thumped trying to nom people wearing protective gear. Or maybe the combination of pet rank and a new skill "stat". You'd use your active pet and then tag other pet's via lookup for whatever action. Maybe they could try to steal items from shops instead of restocking, but getting caught or trying too many times locks you out of that shop. I don't know! What?!

Rargh. Caramel frappe fevered rambling.
Marah
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Re: Leviathan Harpooner (New Game), Jobs Questions

Post by Marah »

Well, I like battleship, but this game leaves me confused. I played level 3 and got a string of 7 and one of 5 or 6 but it still wasn't enough to level up.

Also, it could be a little bit bigger!

I think my pet works in the bakery, because they were the only ones who accepted her. Doesn't really fit. I like your suggestion Huggles! (She could make your secret police doughnuts)
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Re: Leviathan Harpooner (New Game), Jobs Questions

Post by Seerow »

According to Scarsdale, Harpoon is pretty much another purely luck based game. As if we don't have enough of those. Each level starts with a fixed X amount of monsters you need to harpoon while another randomized formula adds or subtracts monsters randomly each game. So you could in theory have a level where you need to find only 1 baddie, then in the next have to find 18 (I believe that was the highest). In order to win you need to kill all of them for that level, but the catch is you have no idea how many that is. Scarsdale is worried that people will just keep restarting the game to get a low number if he lets it show, so instead we all get to play around in the dark. There is no rhyme or reason to the monsters locations, unlike battleship where you had specific groupings.
The graphics themselves leave much to be desired. The game is so utterly small and the difference between where you've chosen or not are not overly apparent. I had a hell of a time trying to determine where I've already looked.

Neurogalaxy (which Subeta owns) has a similar game called Cake Battle and I really enjoyed it. How Subeta could take something so enjoyable and turn it into such a headache I don't know.

I like Huggles idea for jobs! That would be a really unique feature to add and would help tie pets into the site more. I haven't bothered with jobs since Ishka got enough int to join SAI for the achievement.
Last edited by Seerow on 15 Apr 2010 04:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Leviathan Harpooner (New Game), Jobs Questions

Post by Officer 1BDI »

Seerow wrote:Scarsdale is worried that people will just keep restarting the game to get a low number if he lets it show, so instead we all get to play around in the dark.
I didn't know you could restart the game! I'd been playing through every attempt in level three despite knowing there's no way I'm going to find all the leviathans because I didn't know how else to get out of a given game (granted, it's been a few days since I've touched the game so maybe a restart button's since been added).

I'm also stuck on level 3, and will probably remain stuck on there for the rest of my Suebta career. :P

And I love your idea, Huggles. I might actually remember to get my pets jobs if that were the case.
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Re: Leviathan Harpooner (New Game), Jobs Questions

Post by Sunwolf »

Marah wrote:Also, it could be a little bit bigger!
I wish it was - with my terrible vision, I can barely make out the rough water vs. the calm water! I got through two levels, but also got a headache from squinting and straining. I wish that there was directions, too - I had no idea that the monsters you had to shoot were random.

Re jobs - with lots of patience, all my pets earn 150-508 sp a day, expect for my smartest, who earns 5,000. I get about 13,684 a day, which really adds up. You just need to wrangle an amount that you're happy with, and remember to collect every day, as part of your dailies.
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Huggles
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Re: Leviathan Harpooner (New Game), Jobs Questions

Post by Huggles »

Meh. Even with 15 pets, that's still less than half the sp of a single wizard quest. And it's even less than a quarter of the reward for a normal Saggi quest. If money's the only reason to have a job or play this game, then it should at least be a fair amount. Dark matter dice, a game that I think is fun now that I understand how to play, only rewards me with around 900 sp every game. But even though it can be played every 6 hours, it's end up being more like a daily. I can get 50k from a quest that takes me 12 seconds to complete. Oh well. I suppose I shall return to my treasure chest hoarding and ignore them both.
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Re: Leviathan Harpooner (New Game), Jobs Questions

Post by AngharadTy »

Seerow wrote:So you could in theory have a level where you need to find only 1 baddie, then in the next have to find 18 (I believe that was the highest).
Maybe that's only the highest possible count on some of the easier levels? Because I've lost multiple times with over 20 leviathans showing. I can't tell you how much that makes me want to break something. I'm pretty sure this is the worst "game" I've ever played. I would rather play Russian Fork In The Eye Roulette. The only reason I'm playing is that if I beat this level, I win a book. I want a book. And it does get me pageviews, so, flowers. But dear god, I might snap and start tearing off my clothes in rage.

There's no logic. There's no strategy. There's no way to give up when you're down to 6 moves and you haven't uncovered a single thing and you know you're not going to win but you have to click hopelessly anyway. It's brainsmashing and soulgrinding and uninspired. The only reason I, as a plain old user, feel they'd even add this to the site is that they wanted to have a good laugh at our expense.

This is the worst game. I hate it and it wants me to die.
Leviathan Hell wrote:You lost! Would you like to try again?
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Marah
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Re: Leviathan Harpooner (New Game), Jobs Questions

Post by Marah »

Hugs Ty.

Actually I ended up beating level 3 with 2 rows of 2 leviathans. I'm now stuck on level 6 where three rows with 4,5 and 7 was not enough. somethings you get so many leviathans you would almost have to find one very turn to beat the level.

I would like a little bit more logic too. Something that would make it a puzzle instead of random clicking. I don't see how this is different from the fidhing game. Except more tries and less hints.
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Re: Leviathan Harpooner (New Game), Jobs Questions

Post by Seerow »

I was going by the numbers Scarsdale had posted on the forums when the game first went live, so they are probably a bit outdated. And holy shit, 20 monsters, that's insane!

I haven't really touched this game since it came out and I can't imagine me doing so again. In my own stupidity I played it for a few clicks yesterday then almost went insane with the lag and the uber tiny hard to see graphics of it. This game was such a pointless stupid waste of the staffs energy, and ours.
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Re: Leviathan Harpooner (New Game), Jobs Questions

Post by Cranberry »

I am also stuck on level six. The game sucks and is no fun at all. I thought it was going to be more like battleship and it's not. It's just completely mindless clicking, and the only thing it's good for is page views.

I find that (with Google Chrome, at least) if I just click a whole bunch of squares really fast, the page only fully loads once, and when it does all those spaces are cleared. Sometimes I'll just rapid-click about 15 times right at the start and see if I've uncovered any monsters when the page loads.
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Re: Leviathan Harpooner (New Game), Jobs Questions

Post by Officer 1BDI »

I do find the sheer amount of luck involved with this game pretty fucking ridiculous; I hadn't touched the game in days because I was sick of losing, and this thread inspired me to give it one more go, and BAM, my first click hit a Leviathan and I ended up winning by finding a whopping string of 5 leviathans (did they cut the numbers down for level three? Because I was finding 8 or 9 before and still not winning).

But there was no skill involved in that. The whole thing is complete guesswork, unless you actually hit one of the buggers, and even then you have to guess which direction the string happens to be going in. You could waste three hits alone on just trying to figure the direction out.

I'd prefer playing against an opponent (even just a computer) and eliminating the stupid hit limit entirely in favor of "Who hits all the leviathan first?" There'd still be some luck involved, but I'd at least enjoy strategizing where to place my sea creatures.
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Re: Leviathan Harpooner (New Game), Jobs Questions

Post by Rakumel »

I cannot recommend this game for any reason, not even for pageviews. For pageviews I just play Mystic Spindles. It's kind of dull and tedious too, but at least it's not purely based on chance and you can quit at any time. Even though the sP payout is a pittance, at least you can earn points to spend at the Spindles shop which you can use to buy intelligence points for your pets or books for them to read, so it's not a complete waste of time. As for the book which (I assume) is exclusive only to this Leviathan game - well, I hope other people that have better luck or more patience than I do will beat the level required to get said book, and want to sell it, and I can just buy it from them.

That feels absolutely bizarre saying that because usually I'm a huge cheapskate and if there's a way for me to get something for free instead of paying for it - no matter how maddening that way is - I'll almost always try that way with dogged determination. But after playing Leviathan only a few times, and reading that your outcome is - *SIGH* - based mostly on chance, I thought, "The hell with it, I don't need the prizes or Achievements THAT badly." I know most games are a combination of skill and luck, but I think they're relying way too much on the luck part, here. That doesn't make the game more fun and exciting. It makes it more frustrating, and for no good reason. A two-player option, like in an actual game of Battleship, would have been a better twist.

And I would totally get my pets jobs if they worked the way they did in Huggles' imagination. The jobs system the way it is is just flat-out boring and there's no way to tell what exactly gets you a promotion and what gets you screamed at and fired. Least not that I've found.
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Re: Leviathan Harpooner (New Game), Jobs Questions

Post by Haken »

Ya the Harpoon game is extremely difficult. Well Level one is easy as you get 54 guesses, I was lucky in level 2 as I happened to find the leviathans after a few clicks (but it did take me 2 tries before I finally reached level 3). I stopped at level 3. I just can't seem to get it, so few guesses over so many possible spaces.
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