a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building
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Also, people in real life trade INSIDE the same region, based on voluntary specialization. My friend grew strawberries down the road from me, and I programmed computers. If he had a problem with the electronic components on his farm, I might help him in exchange for strawberries. Also, I definitely engaged in "share picking" of his strawberries, where I'd pick 20 pounds and get to keep 5 for free, trading my labor for fruit. None of these things had anything to do with regional differences, or "bananas traded for apples."
yes, in the middle of the US of fucking A, a late capitalist society
that business model is hardly viable in a less developed economy
Couldnt there be something like each time the pump is fired it has a 5-10% chance of going dry and needing to be upgraded to oil
i think this works better as an upkeep to oil, each time it breaks you have to drill again and has a change to go actually dry.
so every cycle can fail, sometimes permanently
actually works for pumps too but 5 to 10% completely negates the one advantage of coal (being its cheap to fire), might be overkill
Again, ovens are also too good and heaters could exist
Booklat1 wrote:but you need to be a complete idiot to let all these things happen
even if it does, any good player can at least try to scavenge
Dude, all I did to end up in that situation was get born on the wrong side of a fence. In an area with really crappy scavenging, as it turned out. It was not worth an hour of my time. Futurebird is right. Who wants to be the peasant? Not me, either. Nor do I have any desire to be the person on the "good" side of the fence, screwing everybody else over for no other reason than because I can.
you can literally /die and roll again for a family in which your ancestors arent idiots
btw, this is an issue with fences, not balance, which is literally the only thing i care for at this point
With all due respect, I think you have to work on yourself and how you view your players if you want to be a successful game developer.
he is a succesful developer, wtf
wells were of course an example, iron can also have more tiers to make it limited earlier and oil could maybe have a chance to run out
i dont think that the general idea of "nerf x to add upgrade" should be all we get, but we're far from exhausted of it
Yes, but you make this sound like the threat of being griefed is from outside of your village when reality it's the people who are born from within going to be the ones who grief you. It won't be the random Eves or travelers who entrap you in your prison it's your kids, you know the folk who spawn within your giant gated area.
Sure it makes sense to gut curses when we have some nonlethal way to deal with people while also being able to place them in a prison but that's not what we currently have. Right now with how it looks you either roll over and be someones bitch in the attempt to seek out punishment for their misdeeds or you remove them and they get off without consequences. Murdering someone needs to actually do something, extended area bans, extended ban times, something. Murdering someone should equate to saying "I absolutely do not want to be around you." If I deal with someone one life, I really don't want to deal with them doing the same stuff in the next life.
As I said before, sure you would have some innocent players screwed over by being murdered but most players aren't getting murdered every single life. However, if you're getting murdered every life that should be a sign you are either doing something people dislike or you're the worlds most unlucky player.
yup
Booklat1 wrote:1-actually enforce the challenges it proposes to us, even if not too hard. Kindling should be at risk of running out before we get oil, and water should really run out before pumps.
Both sound rather difficult to implement, since ponds spawn randomly, and oil requires a good bit of kindling to get going (to process the iron into the proper parts, and then run the rig, and distiller until it's up to a useable point). People could also grow trees, and then the kindling problem can theoretically go away that way also. So oil would be very difficult to balance in my opinion. Water running out also depends on the number of people in continuous play during a settlement. Like there's a one well town on server12 (which is non-continuous play) which has a kerosone newcomen pump. Water didn't run out, in part, I think though I didn't see the early days, because of water regeneration and the player made a charcoal pump. With a smaller group in continuous play water regeneration can have more of an effect than with a larger group. Since apparently there's no intended average number of people that a continuous settlement has, balancing water such that it really runs out before pumps also seems rather difficult. If a place with 8 ponds near the farm becomes more difficult with respect to water, then a place with only 3 ponds near the farm feels that change even more. So I have doubts about the sort of balance you seek here as all that feasible, or it's kind of a project that requires a bunch of time to refine when there exist bunches of other projects that might be better pursued.
Of course though, such balancing would feel right if nailed down.
Balancing this shouldnt be impossible for a game dev with many years of experience
and of course, the idea isnt to make it impossibly hard, just actually challenging.
btw, kerosene pumps cost 10x less kindling than coal pumps, ideally stuff like ovens and forges could also benefit from oil later
I think most people would agree now that the temperature update was good. Buildings still aren't there yet, but clothes matter now.
Buildings should have mattered instead of fences, less spammy, dont offer free pens, are an actual interesting and forgotren part of the game
Booklat1 wrote:FeignedSanity wrote:...
variation is the base of selection, it is needed for competition to arise
also, more obtuse than half the techtree having no practical use?
No, it is not needed. You can compete over one resource just fine. There is no explicit need for multiple competing resources, for competition to be necessary. That's just silly. Would it be more interesting? Possibly, but not necessarily.
And that's exactly my point. A lot of the tech tree is obtuse and difficult to balance (making everything viable) because it's so varied. Which I think is fine, because it's not tied to the survival of a civilization. That's where all the variation to keep things interesting comes from.
Thats not silly, that's the fucking premisse of darwinian selection
Upon the existing variation acts selection, which kills some and not others. Competition arises, as a behaviour, as an effective strategy to ensure ones survival/descendants survival.
i understand the design perspective you offer, but it doesnt foster competition, variation is extremely needed for that.
Booklat1 wrote:but if you look at it reasonably you'll see that before we start starving there's some alternatives to stuff running out (less iron means more hatcheds, less kindling means oil is important)
its not eat or starve unless jason freaks the fuck out
It is if someone locks up all the food and the milkweed and the iron.
but you need to be a complete idiot to let all these things happen
even if it does, any good player can at least try to scavenge
You don't follow people with weapons into the wilderness
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I think what we're missing is more choices in the late-game to do once your village has hit the Diesel/Airplane tiers. We need new technologies that replace the 'perfected' technologies of prior, and simplify them or make them less , as we continue moving up the chain of technology.
The early-game Eve cycle has been nearly perfected because there is really only one way to advance; kiln, rabbits, furnace, farm, steel, sheep, compost, clothing.....I don't think we want people to do the same thing over, and over, and over, throughout the entire gameplay loop from Eve -> Diesel well town. Since Jason brought up RTS, we can draw solid parallels that the early-game is pretty standardized, while the 'build order' moving into the mid- and late-game diversifies based on the environment. If we want to see a better endgame, the resources in the end-game need to be rarer or scrutinized not on the biome scale of rarity, but on a map-wide scale. Not just building an end-game where everyone is forced to go through the same "build path", making the same things in the same order.
i think all this is true but if mid-game is too easy/too static we'll never be able to design interesting endgames
I agree with happynova. I love to cooperate and help other people and be helped and maybe fight some griefers now and then. I could even get in to a war story if it was organic enough. But, being pushed in to an eat or be eaten world isn't what I think of when I think "building a civilization" I mostly want to end a life knowing I made the place better for the future. That's what gives me the buzz in the early game so consistently and in the late game often too.
If this is going to be about who can be the most ruthless and grab the most and dominate I don't have the desire to try to win at that. It's a valid kind of game, and lots of games are like that but for me it isn't "fun" or "emotionally rewarding" -- it's just frustrating if I can't be the one on top and even if I am the one with all the goodies it's hollow for me.
This isn't because I'm some sort of super nice person either I worry it sounds that way. It's just about what games offer and there are so few games that offer the chance to be the hero by helping others.
Or as I said in another conversation here "who will want to play as all the peasants?" No one will. And I'm not volunteering.
but bird, we're incredibly far from that, we need at least some competition
i'm sorry if calling you nice the other day came out wrong btw, but if you look at it reasonably you'll see that before we start starving there's some alternatives to stuff running out (less iron means more hatcheds, less kindling means oil is important)
its not eat or starve unless jason freaks the fuck out
lol no
...
very reasonable comment
I don't think the reaction has been that negative.
Not compared to the deafening outcry after the temperature overhaul back in February.
people really hate nerfs, even though they are needed
fences are much more game breaking
Why does milkweed look like the flowers in the video?
Im copying this from a response i gave to futurebird, the first idea refers mostly to what you talk anout:
I think this game needs only two more things
1-actually enforce the challenges it proposes to us, even if not too hard. Kindling should be at risk of running out before we get oil, and water should really run out before pumps.
2-Compromise to the idea that variation in design is needed for variation of gameplay to arise. This means both design a bit for alternative game loops (preferably branching early from main metas) and just inparting variation as a part of everyday design. Maybe we'd live in jungles if we had inseticide, maybe settling near mines early would be best if we had resource x with resource y from savannah doing z. We dont ever do any of this because metas arent jusr optimal, they're the only alternative in a world with little options.
guys, more challenges doesnt necessarely mean create more conflict, they just open more opportunity for both it and cooperation
working hard together doesnt exist in a world without issues
I 100% agree, specially that major changes shouldnt be rushed
I think this game needs only two more things
1-actually enforce the challenges it proposes to us, even if not too hard. Kindling should be at risk of running out before we get oil, and water should really run out before pumps.
2-Compromise to the idea that variation in design is needed for variation of gameplay to arise. This means both design a bit for alternative game loops (preferably branching early from main metas) and just inparting variation as a part of everyday design. Maybe we'd live in jungles if we had inseticide, maybe settling near mines early would be best if we had resource x with resource y from savannah doing z. We dont ever do any of this because metas arent jusr optimal, they're the only alternative in a world with little options.
Resources can be made to be infinite long term but finite on the short term. You can have mines regenerate iron over time just like wells regenerate water.
but they should be finite long term, thats the whole point
if it regens we have no reason to migrate
this is all i've been asking for, a reason to care. thanks
I'll make a comment on variation later, for now some quick suggestions for resource contention and making families matter:
1-finish off ginger and black characters, make mutation harder to occur
2-quality of life tech costing uncommon resources is a great way to divert resources from main production lines
3- maps shouldnt be small, some areas should be blocked by natural features (some removeable)
4-spirals could maybe start over after a while, abandoned cities are an interesthing gameplay
well we can make iron mines being upgraded by other resources that are not nessecarily rare, but you are goin to need a lot of them, like copper or zinc or other things. The iron mines can also have a limit, like after multiple upgrades it have to be abandoned becuase all the irons in the vein had ran out. So this make getting iron more interesting and can make use of the other resources in the game that currently dont have a lot of function. People can also then set up camps around iron veins instead of just people going out to find iron veins and building a road.
thank you. Finite upgreadable iron is the best way to limit its production through time while still working as a depletion mechanic.
Booklat1 wrote:jasonrohrer wrote:I'm hoping to keep one core limiting resource, instead of multiple parallel ones, to make it easier to reason about.
why should it be easy to reason about it? variation is so important
Or it adds unnecessary complexity and makes it obtuse. I'm with Jason on this one.
variation is the base of selection, it is needed for competition to arise
also, more obtuse than half the techtree having no practical use?
I'm hoping to keep one core limiting resource, instead of multiple parallel ones, to make it easier to reason about.
why should it be easy to reason about it? variation is so important
You can't focus on tech if you are starving.
but that is misunderstanding what im saying. Eves should be afraid of starving, after that it should be soil, water, iron running out, not food.
I think wood and rope are great costs for quality of life tech, like carts or storage.
also, which is it, fences made farming milkweed easier or it didnt matter?