a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building
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Absolutely, agree 150%!
Testing out new features is fine and great ... as long as we have tools to deal with people who use game updates as excuses to grief.
I will repeat my goal one last time, in case you missed it: to make the greatest game of all time. If you think it's possible to do that without some experimentation and failure along the way, you're a much better designer than I am, and I can't wait to play your masterpiece. But this is my masterpiece.
I'm going to keep trying things until I get there. Crazy things. You haven't seen anything yet.
You can try to stop me, but it won't work.
We aren't trying to stop you, we are trying to help you. (Ok, the majority of us are trying to help you.....some folks are just rude and mean.)
If you are going to create a masterpiece that is a MULTIPLAYER online game, you need a base of players that will be patient with you through changes. Cause you can't iterate to a better solution if you only have ten people playing the game each week.
And we are only going to stick with it if we are having fun. We are trying to tell you what would make the game more fun again.
For me that's pretty simple - give us back non-family cursing, so we can send the bow-spamming, stake-spamming bastards back to DT. Limiting cursing to your family unit might work in your endgame vision, but it is not working now, and it makes the iterations between tightly packed towns and spread out families painful to go through.
Looking forward to more crazy changes,
The problem here is that an adversarial player population was refusing to report this bug to me, nor offer me examples of how to replicate it.
I think you have trained us to be adversarial rather than cooperative. I've posted many bugs in github, but I've never gotten any thanks. I've told players reporting bugs in the forums and discord chat to report a bug in github and they've been unwilling to take the time to create a new login and password. You are relying on us to freely give you information about gameplay experiences you don't have time to reproduce. Discovering bugs is fun. Reporting them is work.
Other game developers have beta testers that they either pay for their time (in the big companies) or acknowledge in credits (like Klei). But most of the experienced and invested players for OHOL use modded clients. You tell us its our fault for not using your client, rather than trying to figure out what happened. (I'm thinking about the ghost character issue here). If the baby teleporting was client specific... why would anyone expect you to troubleshoot it, if they reported throug the normal channels?
This is bigger than just bug reporting... you have a suggestions Reddit, but no one active on the game believes that you check it.
And then there are all the many times people have strongly told you that something is a problem, and you've ignored them. Not being able to curse outside of our family is a problem, and locking us up in a box makes that problem worse. Apparently people warned you the 500 x 500 is way too small, and you chose to rely on your own logic and ignored the advice.
So you've trained us to not expect you to listen. Why would folks take the time to tell you something when we don't trust you to listen? Through what method would they contact you when they realize you are about to rollout a change that will make that issue urgent?
And the wild berry bush staking issue... there are 141 open content issues, and as far as I can tell, that's not one of them. So it hasn't been reported. I wasn't aware that it was possible until I looked at the tech tree. I had never seen it widely done in practice until last night.
It was widely known within the community. It was clearly discover-able on the tech tree, and I've seen people talk about it in the forums and the discord. I'm not your volunteer or your employee. Maybe you should think about how to reward the people who report issues and make useful suggestions to you instead of labeling *your entire player base* as adversarial.
Also, i think you are fooling yourself if you think your goal is to "create the greatest game of all time" It's super clear that your goal is to "create the best game I can make 100% by myself".
You are succeeding wildly at making the best game anyone could ever make on their own. But unless you clarify your limitations, players are going to keep on having inflated expectations. The OP I was responding to was someone expecting you to have a write-up before the update is released. That's an expectation that's reasonable for "the best game of all time" but not reasonable for "the best game anyone has ever made 100% on their own."
Yes, life inside the Thunderbox is pretty much battle royale, or maybe griefing royale. Someone was spamming stakes last night, so there were no long branches inside the box. Someone else was spamming bows, so there was no milkweed inside the box. I watched griefers demonstrate their ability to make a bow and arrow from nothing in thirty seconds. A lot of people got murdered. I have not played since the box got expanded, so YMMV.
Can someone explain what's in the patch? What the arc is, what the rift is. I played today and saw a line that I couldn't go though and lived a bunch of painfully hard lives, mostly starving because areas were stripped of resources. Are there patch notes or something? If so where? Thx.
Jason usually posts his notes on the update a few days after pushing out the update. That's not ideal for those of us who are using the update in between, but it's one of the things that happens because of Jason's one-man development style. On the one hand you gotta respect that the man was up through the night patching bugs. But almost all had been reported to him months ago, and if he'd asked on the forums or discord everyone would have told him 500x500 is too small.
Those watching the forums and discord usually have a vague sense of what Jason is aiming for before he posts the update notes... here's my take.
The Rift is meant to create an unpassable wall, which limits the space and resources available for making towns. Jason intends to create a sense of story arc for each world, based on the different lifestyles people will have when resources and technologies are at different levels.
When Jason said, the next arc is going live, what he meant is that he's resetting the map for the server to initial conditions, but also changing some of the conditions of the box inside the Rift.
If you want to join us in reading the tealeaves of what Jason is up to, there's a feed showing his updates to the code on the OHOL discord server. https://discordapp.com/invite/vnCGnb?ut … um=Connect
For the messed up bell signals... I've created a github issue.
Whatever and team... your observations are especially useful in diagnosing, since you actually know what the status of the endtower was at various times. (That is, they probably would be if Jason ever notices the github report...)
getting too many nowadays
i think is a bug, it just triggers with no target
yeah, there's two things going on. 1) there's no third tier level bell marker letting us know the apocalypse is about to happen. and 2) after the apocalypse occurs, any families that survive are passing along the old homemarker. Possibly just anyone born is getting the ghost endtower marker, but I only played as Flowers and Crystals yesterday, and both of those families survived yesterday's apocalypse.
I've opened a github report on the issue of the bell marker persisting for hours after the apocalypse happens. Feel free to add your experiences folks!
I can't decide if I'll add a second issue report or just add the no-bell-marker-during third-tier as it's own issue. It's kind of a biggie.
The leaderboard definitely needs more explanation... what are the units? What do the scores mean in terms of pips available at age 59? Does relative ranking matter for elder pips saved, or is it just the score itself? Also, it would be nice if we could "opt in" to show our forum username as well as the in-game name.
Twins Eves aren't related and thus can't communicate. It's a known thing and was done purposely because ???
Basically it exists so rich and interesting dynamics like the sword can exist.
Tarr, the OP didn't realize twins are built to not be related. So I'm pretty sure they won't read the obvious sarcasm in the "rich and interesting" quote.
To OP, Jason has used the phrase "rich and interesting" to describe the mechanisms like language barriers and warswords that naturally incentivize conflict in this game. The fact that twin eves don't understand each other is intended, as far as we can tell.
You might play OHOL if you....
....get nervous everytime someone gets out a knife to "chop the onions" or "cut the bread".
...say "F" when you are hungry.
...expect babies to stop crying as soon as their mom picks them up.
<dramatic eye roll>
First of all, please don't. It's not fun for the rest of us.
Second of all, there's a forum search function. Use it! There's an infamous forum thread by DaTruff where he detailed how he likes to breed pit bulls. Nowadays most people curse DaTruff on sight.
In case you are a RL fan of pit bulls instead of just an OHOL griefer.... Jason decided to make pit bulls the one dog breed that goes crazy and starts killing people.
Started playing last summer. I dont wanna gate keep but i dont think anyone who comes from steam could call themselves a vet/old time player
Well, I shouldn't be posting on this thread, then.... but I like to think I have made up for my latish arrival with play intensity. When I was most obsessed, I spent a couple months regularly playing twelve hours a day. Then we had our first round of thundersen's statistics and I realized how weird that was... and cut down to about eight hours a day. I also started reading the forums obsessively earlier than most from the Steam Tsunami. I remember regularly wishing I'd discovered the game before the rest of the Steam people.
I'm down to a couple hours a week for the last couple of months, and am forum posting a lot less. Part of that is I'm still not happy with the war vibe. But mostly my play has decreased because my RL has gotten a lot better. My health has improved and I have an awesome family that is worth adulting for, now that I can do that. (As I type there are two boys downstairs laughing together at some sort of Pokemon video. Listening to your kids laugh is the BEST)
With much love and respect for all the OHOL veterans,
THIS!
100 percent agree futurebird.
There are definitely choices that Jason has made that leave me feeling angry and frustrated. But IF we stay civil and explain how his changes are affecting the game, especially finding ways to document them, Jason has always responded. Maybe not the way we expected or imagined, but he's always responded.
I generally avoid making any personal attacks... it's a bad habit that degrades our ability to give and receive constructive feedback.
Respect for all, Deference to none
Thank you,
I'm a fan of all of these hotfix changes, and will probably log in and play the game over the weekend now.
For my $0.02... don't worry about the eve spawning near tutorial issue, mentioned elsewhere in the forums. Most are having fun with the novelty of it for now, and as you pointed out, you worked super hard this week. It'll wait until Monday and/or next week.
People from different parts of the world speak different languages and look different. That is exactly what "diversity" means.
I'm still thinking about how this will shake out long term, and maybe even thinking about marriage and other things (though they are very complicated to get right).
Personally, I like the language features in the update, and the way you tweaked them to be learn-able through age six. i don't have a problem with the game getting language diversity as well as ethnic diversity.
I'm much more concerned about the combination of families suddenly being racially pure, because you eliminated variation in model skin tones, and people have a way to slaughter non-family members that is so OP. From what I've experienced of this update's meta - this is what makes it impossible for multiple races to share a town.
Saw the bow precision, the recipe modification for the sword, and the cooldown updates. I think all of those are good steps.
IMHO, There have been some good discussions of marriage and adoption on the forums, especially recent ones led by futurebird. Hope you'll take a look at that resource as you consider your options.
Best,
Blue Diamond
/WARCRY emote....
I just experimented on a private server, and we found it impossible to kill each other with swords if we were dancing around.
However, the bow worked almost every time. Sword vs Bow, and the bow wins, easily.
I will change the server code a small bit here.
Right now, when you send a KILL message, you send a tile position of the target, along with the ID of the target. The server verifies that the target is really there, or moving near there, before allowing it. Really, it should just check if the target is still in range, wherever they may be moving, even if they're not standing where you clicked anymore.
In the future, I'm thinking about a "run forward and kill" mechanic, where execution is a non-factor. You decide to kill, you speed up toward the target, and there's no way for them to get away.
Also, probably require an /ANGRY emote as a safety feature. Stabbing someone by accident really must be fixed. Put on angry face first with weapon drawn.
The problem with run-and-kill is that there's still a tiny bit of execution with clicking on a moving target client-side.... not sure there.... maybe a bullet time when you're in ANGRY mode that makes it impossible to mis-click. Or time just freezes until you click someone or cancel the action.
Just FYI, the hetuw mode allows you to lock in an emote for as long as you wish to keep it.
So the emote won't make it harder for people to kill with swords.
Tho clearly that's not what you are worried about.
If you want to dig deep, the original screenplay for the trailer is here:
Ok, I did. And... while the script mentions the range of ages and gender of most of the people who appear in the trailer, you don't mention ethnicity. The trailer shows ethnically diverse families and communities living in peace. (The only thing causing violence is an inanimate tool that apparently is unaware it has killed a person.)
The representation of ethnic diversity was definitely part of the appeal to me and to others in the community. It's been part of the appeal most of the thousand hours plus I've played this game. Was the ethnic diversity in the trailer just an accident? A chance to show off the different character models you've developed? Do you intend for us to have peaceful multi-family communities in the future?
Right now it feels like you are intentionally driving us apart. Into racially divided families that speak different languages and can slaughter each other at a moments notice, regardless of how integrated we get. I mean, just look at the racially pure families behind fences in the trailer for the "Coming Together" update.
So your intentions for racial diversity from the very beginning - and going forward - have become more important to me. I'm not going to accept that you're "Letting things go where the game takes us" when an update causes this big of a change in the way our families interact.
Many people have said, "Those things are too hard, so that's why we don't do them. Make walls cheaper, and then we'll build buildings."
But that's not it at all. There are plenty of cheap things in the game that you rarely do. And there are plenty of crazy-hard things in the game that you do almost always, in every village. Getting a Newcomen pump up and running is no joke, but every village has one. And whoa, Newcomen machine shops everywhere too now? I hadn't seen many of them for a while...
You don't build buildings or walls or gates in the game for one simple reason: YOU DON'T NEED THEM.
I think you are thinking about this slightly wrong... it's not about how much we NEED something. We do the things that we know are USEFUL.
The solution to making us build walls isn't to make them cheaper, but to make them more useful. You tried this a bit with the temperature update, but then we realized how tricky it is to get a temperature benefit from a building. And how much of a death trap walls are, and how much the path blocking makes them a pain, even with the springy doors. And now they are gone. When a completed building exists it's used as an organized storage. There might be a fire with babies nursed next to it... but there's probably another one outside. And there might be an oven... but there's probably another one that's outside, too.
Let's talk about those newcomen pumps and machine shops... because I've built my fair share of them. And if I succeed in making them, I always build them BEFORE they are needed. Once you NEED a newcomen pump, it's too late. You need buckets of water to get it primed. You need food to sustain you while you gather than iron, sulfur, rubber and palm oil. We make pumps well before they are needed, because we know they will be useful for our children or grandchildren.
Maybe this seems like I'm splitting hairs... but it's the difference between living a USEFUL life expressing love for your OHOL family, and responding out of fear. You are trying to force us to build walls out of fear, but you didn't actually make them more useful. The fact that swords exist does not make fences and walls any different - they have the same pros and cons as they always had. We are just more afraid. And since this is a GAME and not real life, we respond to that extra fear by feeling stressed out, and in some cases, rage-quiting the game. We don't respond by building walls that we didn't want to build in the first place. (Yes, I know some people are building more fences... but it's pretty clear that isn't actually enough to protect anyone from anything, and we're still in the experimental phase.)
Add ways to make shelves on the walls; add non-firewood heating for enclosed rooms; make springy fence gates that let us pass while keeping the goram sheep inside the pen. Make these things MORE USEFUL and we will build them! And still enjoy your game.
Did you see Ferna's food efficiency forum post? (http://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=5706) She did some amazing analysis of how much work goes into each type of food. I don't hate mango slices because "I don't need them." I hate them because they are actively a bad use of limited resources and labor. And i'm far from the only player that is efficiency conscious. You don't learn to survive the brutal starvation rates of a naked toddler child-of-an-eve and not learn to value efficiency. You don't run a bakery in a big town without learning to value efficiency.
Stop giving us more things we MUST do, and give us more things that are USEFUL.
My vision for the game is to actually make you need civilization.
Couldn't you reframe this as "My vision for the game is to make every stage of civilization useful."
If you succeed in making civilization NEEDED... how can Eve survive? How do her children survive? They NEED civilization, and they don't have it.
If you succeed in making civilization USEFUL... a lucky or smart Eve can survive, but she can't clothe her children or leave them with renewable food sources, or iron for a pump.
You have succeeded in making rabbit clothes and Newcomen engines useful. You have not succeeded in making mango slices or walls useful. i you want walls and fences to be useful, that doesn't mean you should add more fear of violence from swords. That means you should keep working on walls.
I can imagine a game where swords make walls needed out of fear... very easily, there are thousands of examples. But I know from experience that I get bored of that dynamic really quickly. And the way the mechanics work right now, walls or fences are not effective defense against swords in OHOL. And you can do something BETTER. Make our walls useful.
And if we're talking about non-peaceful defenses, Tarr, do you really think that one guy with a sword could take out several people with bows?
Yes, I watched this happen as a sword wielder killed my family. I was too young to grab a weapon, and as a boy I wasn't targeted until the end. The invader was hiding the weapons as she killed, so as the last surviving member of the family, I grabbed an arrow and started making my own bow, and was killed by the swordswoman running at me as as I tried to aim at her. Bows are great for someone who is standing still, but an active attacker is never standing still.
I've played a couple lives since then, but they've mostly been dominated by the sword. Now I'm not playing anymore, I'm just forum lurking and trying out new games.
You think that walls or fences work as a peaceful defense mechanism? They don't work. Tarr has explained this - it's just a way to get your family starved slowly or get them trapped inside with a murderer. In the meantime, you lose all those actually interesting interactions with friendly strangers integrating with your town - like the peaceful woman with the sword you mentioned. Your family was foolish to let her live. That is what this update is teaching us as the new "meta".
I've changed my Steam review to negative. War Swords have to go before I recommend this game to any new players.
Thanks Psykout.
I think number of generations would have worked in the old eve spiral spawning system, but with eve's adjacent to established cities, the number of generations a family has lived is no longer that indicative... lots of eve's have wool clothing they picked up from scavenging, and have higher technology goods available.
Some people like to play early towns. Others like the relative stability of a mid tech town, where there's still a need for major improvements. And some people just want to crank out diesel engines and take pictures in sprawling cities with spread out families.
While there are many reasons players choose to SIDS or run as babies, the tech level of the community seems to be the most common. This is based on my experience of twinning with other players. While I'm fairly flexible with whatever shows up, I know what kind of town a lot of people on these forums will play in, and which ones they won't.
Now that we've switched to an eve spawn grid, there is no forcing function putting Eves out in new territories. Eves already had an incredibly high failure rate (Only 10% of eve lineages have over an hour of fertility, according to hundersen's old analysis of the life log data.), but now the likelihood that they will successfully start a town in a NEW location is even lower, whether or not the eve lineage survival rate changes.
So we have two problems...no one is spawning in pristine wilderness anymore, and a lot of people refuse to play in a town that isn't at their preferred technology level. Could we solve both of these with one solution? Since we need some new function that directs eves to pristine as well as populated regions... why not let it be the player's choice?
In my ideal world, the settings screen for OHOL would have one more section. Do you want to play in a low-tech region, a mid-tech region, or high-tech region? The default option would leave this choice up to chance.
While there are lots of other key technologies that could be used...here's how i would tell these technology levels apart. I'd define low-tech regions as areas in which there is NOT a newcomen atmospheric core, or one of the things made from it, anywhere between a given spring and its adjacent springs. A high-tech region would be an area where there IS a diesel engine or something made from it. And a mid-tech region would HAVE newcomen atmospheric cores and their resulting products, but NOT HAVE diesel engines or their products.
In my ideal, choosing a tech level would not impact whether or not you are born as an eve or a baby. Eve's spawned in mid-tech or high-tech regions would follow the current pattern.. spawning in places with higher populations. But Eve's for low-tech locations would appear at springs that have not been visited by any players in the preceding week, while still being closest to existing mid and high-technology areas. This generally means low-tech Eves would only spawn into regions that had been wiped in the last server reset, and have abundant natural resources.
While choosing the tech level we live our lives at would reduce some of the randomness... it won't change all of it. Is your mom Tarr? or a newbie? Are you playing a boy or a girl? A ginger or a rare dark male? Did griefers kill the sheep just before you were born?
There's already so much that varies between one life and another in OHOL - just because of the other players. Letting us choose the technology level won't change the randomness much, seems likely to reduce SIDS rates and thus improve player experiences, and will provide a method for placing some eves in pristine locations, while preserving the tension new eves have created in established towns since the update.
We need shields that protect from knives, swords and arrows.
We also need "run" and "come here" emotes... gesturing with our hands in a direction does not require language in real life.
I heartily agree. When I see a tagline that reads " a multiplayer game about parenting and civilization building" it gives me a number of assumptions about the game like 1) generally peaceful and 2) community oriented, etc.. Neither of these seem to be the case, so if Jason could explain what he sees as the essentials of "parenting and civilization building" I'd understand his goals a lot better.
There's also a lot of expectations built up around the original trailer... how much of that does Jason expect to implement literally (Lasers? robots? tshirts? desks?) and how does that video express his vision for the game?
There are three reasons why I think you are getting more negative feedback for OHOL than for previous games - 1) people who play OHOL a lot are passionate about it, and get nervous about losing it's unique characteristics 2) people are having a hard time accepting that your vision for OHOL might not be the same as theirs and 3) an increase in our society in the time-worn confusion between the qualities of an action and the qualities of a person.
A lot of what futurebird said resonated for me... this game is important to me because it is one of the few games I enjoy. I'm older than most of the players, and have complicated health issues that make 3D gaming (something like Rust, for example) completely out of the question. Some days I can't read without triggering a migraine, but I can still play OHOL. It's just less detailed.
But that's not the only reason OHOL maters to me. You've done a great job in creating a series of lives I care about. I enjoy this game a lot.
So OHOL is important to me. The fact that there is a single guy working on updating it, who makes choices that impact how the gameplay works, regardless of whether I or the rest of the player base agree with him or not, is kinda scary. That fear response to change has nothing to do with, well, logic. The fear doesn't care who you are, the fact that you created the game in the first place, etc. So to some extent - my tone gets harsh because I CARE so much about this game.
I am sometimes appalled at my own tone when I go back and read things I've posted on this forum.
On a related note... American culture in particular is losing its ability to negotiate and compromise. We want it our way, and nothing else will do. I used to work in public policy --- and boy do you see this playing out in American politics. But it goes all the way down to the interpersonal levels of our society.
There are of course differences between your (Jason's) vision for what OHOL could become and the ideal game for me - and that's probably true for every single person who currently enjoys the game. I'd prefer a lot less violence, much less these wars that you envision in OHOL's future. So adding something that increases the level of violence leaves me upset. I've accepted this as a difference in our ideal playstyles... but some won't be able to make that leap. I hope you can have some sympathy for their emotional response, even if the tone is inappropriate.
On the other hand, I am enjoying the fact that it's easier to find dead towns, and the non-violent family vs. stranger interactions that have played out in my lives since the update.
But on to my most complicated point.... critiquing OHOL or your (Jason's) choices in the direction for OHOL should not be the same as personally criticizing you. But our culture is getting REALLY BAD at telling people apart from their ideas, attitudes and actions. If you've studied logic, there's the whole fallacy of an "ad hominem" attack. Saying something is a bad idea because of the person or group the idea comes from.
But we do it the other direction, too... someone did something bad, now they are permanently a racist, or some other form of "deplorable". Someone speaks critically of an idea I champion, and suddenly I feel as though they are attacking me. (I try to be really aware of this issue, and yet I still feel attacked whenever it happens...). Both the critic and the receiver of the critique can be guilty of confusing the action and the person, making it ever harder to set up constructive dialogue.
So I find it sad but unsurprising that people are attacking you when they find something they don't like or understand in the game... it's like being colorblind and not being able to tell red and green apart. We don't see the difference between the person and their actions. A lot of people are going to define who "Jason Rohrer" is by how OHOL changes, and since we have stronger emotional reactions to things in the near-term... those judgments will be based on what changed this week.
This rush to judge a person by their most recent action isn't healthy. But to withstand these kinds of personal attacks, it helps to know where it is coming from. In some cases, you might find that their critique of your action is reasonable, even if their critique of you as a person is not.
I think you are very brave for pursuing your dreams for this game so publicly, for making weekly changes, etc. and I hope you continue to craft OHOL into a better version of itself.
Regarding property fences, are you experiencing a bunch of major problems with hoarding?
In my experience, IF there are more than two property fence enclosures finished and closed off, then that town will die.
This is not because of hoarding perse, but that people stop being responsible for the town's problems if its outside their fence. Is there is no one making pies? They can't tell. If the fire goes out, they can't tell. If the well is dry, they have their personal bucket, and won't notice until it's too late to dig out of the situation. If there are several people acting this way, it becomes a problem.
It's more about hoarding their attention and responsibility than any particular commodity. Whenever I tell someone inside a fence, "You have the last shovel, can we dig....?" They are generally willing to help out. But sometimes they aren't there, and the resource is locked away.
But honestly, most people figured that out in the first few days, and it haven't seen a sealed up property in a while. Folks are much more likely to put the fences up as an informal boundary, and not bother with the gate.
I actually did use a property fence successfully in one life... I was gathering all the materials needed for taking pictures, and it was easier to create a fence and put a gate on it so that only people helping with the photography project would go in and out. It was a very large and bustling town, and found that a lot of people were scattering my materials in their own search for tile space.