One Hour One Life Forums

One of unintented consuequences of Jason's vision is lack of social structure. Even most successfull village is more like a colony of ants. The reason is, game design discourage to apply real life mathematics, which cause people to create society. So, we are lacking families, trade and wars, I'll call it FTW. There is also more, ownership, stability and resource scarcity. I want to discuss each in separate thread, because possible answers to all thoughts would thrash the thread beyond my understanding. I start with ownership

Topics

No heritage

While we strongly discuss how to encourage parents to care about their children, little was said how to encourage children to care about family. I personally, just wait until 3 years old, tend a berry field trying to complete my outfit and I never care about parents again. In real life it is also happening, but a common behavior is taking care about parents. We can justify such behavior by jindness or love, but it has also a strong mathematic reason: heritage. In OHOL ownership is limited to what a character can carry on itself. You do not have to trade off goods with your parents, because most of things are a common thing. You just take what you need! If access to tools, food, shelter and clothes would be more dependend on the will of elders, young characters would need to put more effort into connection with them and help them complete their projects. There will be will on both sides, parents and children, to stick to each other even more, than to stick to the village.

In my last game I've made a locked box, shared a doubled key with a friend. When I was old, I wanted to pass it trough and... I did not know who to give it for! I was just a male without possible heir. Indeed, males in OHOL are just like ants and bees, just a relatives working hard on the whole tribe survival, but not contributing to chosen family or sorted people.

No merchants

Trade is emerging only as a roleplay or single players initiative. Even if it happens, it is caused by clever strider who can clearly recognize a temporary state of two villages, what may be beneficial for both sides. There are also other reasons why trading is hard, but how can a merchant gather goods for trade, if he has no certainty his goods would not be distributed among villagers, just because he cannot guard his property? To have real trade, you need a real ownership.

No warchiefs

War is performed by soldiers, but is caused by rulers. Ruler needs goods to offer to his soldiers, even before they can plunder enemy settlement. If it is pay, or fief, he also needs a way to secure his ownership. Such rulers can create law, negotiate truces and trade agreements, make ultimatums and carry wars. Yes, there are crowns in game, but be honest: is there anything a crowned char can offer more than un-crowned?

How to secure ownership

The only way is to protect own goods. Jason gave us for this reason bows and knifes capable to kill other players. And here comes Jason success: players developed social rules how to not cause a killing spree! Players are hiding weapons, dissasembling them and limitting only to responsible, hard working citizens ignoring family relationships. It causes, that thievery is common and unpunishable to the level, when all settlements are a communist paradises. What is not held or worn, belongs to everybody.

Access

There are locks to doors and chests, which came out to be griefing tool, also unintentional. It's because locking is extremally easy, just put lock on doors and run. To fix it, putting locks must become a complicated, long lasting activity, just like compost or stew making, which will give time to other villagers to react, if a lock would be put by not trusted players. Make it loud, so everybody in village knows what is happening. Add steps with screwdrivers, screws, bow drills, deadbolts, deadbolt holes, handles etc. Allow also to open doors with logs as rams or lockpicks, but make it multistep, loud tasks which will alert nearby players.

Guards

There is a possiblity to make an NPC guard by implementing AI to dogs, useless at this point. Like, make a person feeding and immediately picking up a puppy owner. Let the owner pick a name at this point, just like with human characters, and apply single commands.
- Your name is Jake
- Jake stay!
- Jake follow!
- Jake guard home! (dog attacks everybody in building except owner and closest relatives)
- Jake guard hoe!
- Jake guard basket!
- Jake bite DaTrüf!
Small dogs may bark at people near doors or guarded items, big may also bite.

Violence

Most players are using tools, which in real life may be deadly weapons: shears, hows, shafts, hammers, rocks, fists. This one implementation would be the most controversial, it is to allow for more PVP options. But it would need to create a semi-hp combat system, which would not be welcomed by many players. We already have a blood bar during letal injuries. What, if this bar would become a HP gauge? Like: stab and pierce wounds would cause bleeding, the blood splashed below would blink and slowly get wider and wider, killing a person in the end. But fist, stone and shaft hits would be blunt damage, immediately increasing the blood bar, but not causing bleeding. This way, blunt-hit victim would have it's warning.

Conclusion
More ways to secure ownership will not cause FTW on itself, but it will provide more movements towards them.