a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building
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I think it is temperature now, since the idea is that if you have clothing your probably better off.
Except your are more likely to have a more "ideal" temperature naked and starving on a desert tile than fully clothed foraging a grassland. The temperature feels off in general, grasslands seem way to cold for a biome that is green and full of life vs snow biome, the difference between the two is a teeny bit, but the difference between grass and desert is massive. I understand the whole being too warm is bad and wearing fur in the desert is a bad idea, but since when is running around naked under the burning sun of a desert any better?
This tails onto the thread about making biomes bigger and making each one more viable for a base rather than needing a mix of grass, swap and desert with X ponds, Y dirt and Z cactus to be truly viable. If forests weren't as draining as they are now, why settle somewhere else aside from access to water? Well if you tweak things, its because even though forest with dirt, berries, skewers and milkweed are easy to live off early on, and don't need warm tiles to lower food needs, you would eventually hit a road block and need to go out to find resources. These journeys into the unknown at the moment are only for iron and maybe milkweed if nobody left seeds on the ground when they first picked it up. Clothing outside of rabbit doesn't have the advantages you'd expect. A coat made out of the skin of an animal that lives in freezing cold water feels like it should give more than +1.75% insulation, and thats without touching on that you can only make a coat using seal skin. Same thing to reed skirts and straw hats. I would expect them to shade you and make you not get as hot as fur stuff in the sun, but thats not the case because we have a blanket Hot/Cold and Insulated/Not. You gain no benefit from trying to protect yourself from the sun and are better off stripping off naked, which IRL would turn you into a blistered dried up lobster. There is a reason desert nomads started using very light silk garments that fully cover you...
Granted, I've only been playing since the Steam release, but the farthest I've been able to get as an Eve is making the adobe kiln, and that was with all the kids doing their job and fetching me things. We ended up dying anyway because once my daughter grew up, the influx of babies was too much to handle. Even on a private server, the game is designed so you can't advance easily without other player hepl, so I can only practice so much.
First off sending kids to fetch things is way risky. Starvation is way more likely especially if natural foods nearby have been consumed (As an eve try really hard to eat to full away from base before returning so close food is left for kids) You are better off having them maintain farm and take care of babies if needed (you can hand feed babies always) As a mature adult you can travel further and easier than someone with 1/2 your hunger bars. This mimicks real life third world villages in that young kids and elders stay at home and do busy work while adults travel out to bring stuff back because they are more able and competent.
This is a really frustrating experience. It makes me feel like I am continually failing, since I literally cannot explore and learn before my feet are held to the fires of taking care of others. Of the few towns I've been born into, in all but one I spent my life fetching dirt and trying to stave off berry collapse.
This is because you were probably the only one doing it and no new child took your torch when you were able to go out and do those things. This is a combination of newer players and proper instruction of "This is the task we need to be done, that you need to do for the next twenty minutes until you can take on the next thing"
I really, really like this game, but I'm already feeling like I'm hitting a plateau where I can't amass enough actual game experience to progress past the stoneage. Having to use mods or set up a private server to partially overcome difficulties is not a great path forward. And I know some of this will get better with time, as players themselves get better, but that doesn't take care of the frustration of that steep learning curve or make it easier for the next wave of noobs.
Just my two cents.
You don't need to setup a private server. Just join an empty one and always spawn as eve. See how far you can get yourself each time, organize what you need and maximize your proficiency. Last time you had an axe in your thirties - next time in your twenties. Do the tutorial extra area to practice smithing. Aim to break out in 10 minutes or so. Follow Tarr's list. Get it all together and smash it out in one go and see how much time you have on your hands. Also - run away. If you really want to learn run off, get a sharp stone and a basket and punch out away from everyone and hunker down. If you can't reliably die of old age on your own, then when with other people someone else is essentially carrying your weight.
Lot of good thoughts here. Nice to see another first impression and their views of the difficulties of the game. All of the points that were brought up do makes sense, as in they are indeed difficult and frustrating at first.
1) Birth Control
The choice to have a child or not
That exists in game right now. Your problem with it is someone gets to be a "small" pile of bones instead of never happening. Ask yourself, in our society if a baby was born, and you knew it couldn't be cared for and thrive, but you had a way to let it be a part of something maybe better, that it could be the SAME baby for someone else, would we do it? It's called adoption and we do it now. By letting a baby die in OHOL you are just giving it up for adoption. Of course at first I was like "WTF all I do is get left to die they don't want me or I don't know what I am doing yet so they leave me" Once I learned the game I realized that was just part of the deal, that if they feel like there is no way to care for me or a place for me, I don't want to be there. One minute later either I will be somewhere more sustainable or as my own eve ready to take on the same challenge that I just experienced from the other side. This is a game that is built around the premise of the fruits of your labors are for strangers that you will not interact with and the future generations. Why are you then so attached to one single life/spawn? Just let it go... Start anew, clean the slate as Eve or find your place in a group that feels like that there is something to contribute to, rather than focus on being left behind.
I focused on blacksmith right out of the gate because many early villages no one knows that stuff. When I pop up somewhere established and the forefront is new territory for me, I feel slightly useless. If the only thing I know how to do is taken care of, what is the point of me being here. If your Eve/Mother knows that right at that moment there isn't much to add to, and its not the right time, why fight against that and cling to wanting to live that life so much. Just let it go, start anew. Its why we are all here man.
2) Inventory
The limitations at the moment lead to some essentially highly(debatable...) functioning trash piles, but thats on the players not the game. If you know that can be a problem and its how the game works, stop making a kiln one tile from the farm. Stop making eggs with the flat stones from the forge. Put your tools back exactly from where you got them. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, spread out. You are starting a civilization not a man cave that needs to have the TV, Chair, Food/Drink all at arms reach. Everytime I build a forge in a budding new player town, I move it away from everything else so its off screen to most (yeah you know what I am talking about, another "issue"). If you ever pop up into a civ that is riding horses around attached to carts and all the babies are wearing Gucci - pay attention to the lay out. Everything has its place and its own space - thats why they are riding horses.
Onto your story. I get it, I have died like that. I didn't stab people on my downward spiral to the grave, but then again I would have put the knife in my backpack and tried to set down that one gooseberry you didn't realize you even had in there. Secondly you said it yourself, "I was standing there texting and forgot to eat." Why then is this suddenly a problem with the game, you live a year every minute, thats six days a second. If you suddenly forget to eat for essentially 6 months yeah you gunna be dead. If you die because you couldn't get your hands free to pick up a berry, you waited WAY too long to take care of that. Its the equivalent of knowing you have slow growing cancer but saying, "hey it won't take me out for 15 years, I will deal with it around then. Lastly - you have a backpack... keep one piece of food in there, you never have to set something down if you just rotate food to your hands (again if you die holding a "two handed" item to starvation - some other decision is at play - not Jasons.)
I'd argue that 60min life and spawn on other people is not the one great unique idea, its the one liner that gets you in the door. The great idea is that when you realize how much is needed to reach higher levels, that you are happy to be the cog. You don't need to be the conductor, you are happy being one of hundreds of wheels that gets you there. You don't have a personal inventory because NOTHING is personal, its never meant to be there for you its for "us". To be honest the more I think about it, the fact that its no easy to clutter up and rob everyone of productivity, adds to the collective. Don't like messy towns, don't be messy. If you have ever cleaned up a place a little and thought "I can't believe how much of my life I wasted taking care of this" rather than "This was something that needed be done and I am okay with me giving up my time to do it for everyone else" then you might want to re approach how you view the game and what you want to achieve from playing it.
3) I just recently played with a view people together on voice chat while playing. It was amazing to have so much communication available especially over distances, but I realized that my output was sooo low. Too many distractions, too much talk and not enough elbow grease. When more people know the game, there will be less teaching needed. You don't need to know anything accept for where stuff is and what is needed. It doesn't matter what you want to do, its what needs to be done. Your responses should be acknowledgment or simple questions and then get it done. Simply saying NEE FRG or NEE FRM or NEE IRN followed with a question mark is enough to get going until you feel you need to articulate more. If you really crave more on top of them, send them here. Send them to the discord. Get them engaged into the community because come on, even with tons of exposure its not a game for everyone it will always be core enough to support that.
Also as to the other impression of hard to survive, heck yeah it is, but I believe that what Jason hopes is that we can advance enough that 95% of babies live to 60 in advanced civilizations that have roads that connect them together. It's possible just hard to do unless everyone is a collective, cogs turning the main machine.