One Hour One Life Forums

This is a follow-up thread to my in-depth analysis over Jason's questions asked during the fences update: [Discussion] A look back on questions raised from the Property Update

There were a few questions that I did not go into detail with, that I would now like to touch on.

(tl;dr at the bottom as usual)

                                                                                                                         Enter Maslow's Hierarchy!

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is a psychological theory encompassing the human condition and our prioritization of certain needs that are universally shared across society. Each tier is important in the expansion on what we call "society", as without the pillar below it, the needs of the individual cannot advance without being considered 'irrational'.

                                                                                                                     How does this tie into OHOL?

In OHOL, we primarily see the first tier of Maslow's Hierarchy, and sometimes the 2nd & 3rd. Let me go into these now, so that we can easily see how these relate to the current gameplay experience:

Tier 1: Physiological

• Homeostasis - Stability of the human body despite changes in environment (temperature)

• Food & Water - Not just preventing starvation, but a guarantee that you have food available at a moment's notice

• Sleep - A place for downtime (Fire/bakery)

• Shelter - A place of gathering (Fire/nursery)

• Sex - The guaranteeing of the next generation, making sure the lineage doesn't die out

The 1st tier of Maslow's Hierarchy focuses on the basic physical needs of the individual being handled. Homeostasis focuses primarily on temperature, the only non-constant that the in-game player can affect. This can be affected by activities like

Though we cannot drink it directly, gathering water is a vital component of maintaining the food supply. Because a large chunk of time involves laboring over supplies that maintain either the food or water supply, we can consider an overwhelming amount of One Hour One Life is stuck on the very first tier of the hierarchy. Most rational & gameplay-oriented players are stuck in this 'loop'.

Tier 2: Safety

• Personal Security - Security from violent individuals, natural environment (bears)

• Emotional Security - Security on the presence (or lack) of other families, and tolerance to/from other townmembers

• Financial Security - Personal welfare from the communal pool of resources in town.

• Health - Guaranteed safety from violent attacks (Med Pads)

• Accident Safety - Confidence in others helping in emergency

The 2nd tier focuses more on the wellbeing of the individual and their 'security' in life. Since OHOL primarily operates in collectives and does not have enough support for personal wants/needs, we can extrapolate aspects of these individual needs to the group at large.

Does the town 'feel' safe in its current standings if a violent individual were to come along, or a griefer brought violent creatures into town?
Does the town 'feel' safe to its members to interact with one another, inside and outside of their families>?
Does the town believe it has stockpiled plenty resources to sustain all its citizens' current projects/workstyles?
Does the town have enough medical pads prepared and un-griefed for use in a violent outcome?
Does it have enough medical pads in case of an emergency situation? (usually bears/boars/stab mistakes)

Most towns/villages fail to meet one or all of these requirements, thus the rest of the rational players not stuck at Tier 1 are stuck at Tier 2, working to gather more materials to stockpile, trying to keep the village safe from griefers/'dangerous' foreigners, and otherwise.

Tier 3: Social Belonging

• Friendships

• Intimacy

• Family

The third tier in the Hierarchy does not translate well into OHOL from IRL; I will chalk it up as the individual player(s) finding belonging within the Town/village. Sometimes this takes place at birth, if the person's mother/parent gives them enough affection that they want to see the place grow. Other times, it is spurred on by seeing the general well-being of the town itself, and if they are able to have positive interactions w/ others. Roleplayers may take the concept of marriage and 'act it out' through wedding ceremony.

This tier is one that seldom players are able to perform naturally, excluding the maternal support. Sustaining a large stockpile of resources, medical supplies, and food, while having a sustainable population, is close to impossible. Only in villages where the 'Yum bonus' has been catered to for every townsmember or a true abundance of food and other goods do towns get to experience this tier of development.

It is also detrimental to towns when players act on Social Belonging in the absence of their Physiological and Security needs. Such players may end up enhancing the speed at which the town's stockpile of resources, food, etc. deplete, while contributing little to nothing in return for their growth of emotional connections. 

However, if towns were able to maintain all three of these tiers, the town's society reaches the point needed for a local culture to develop. The time opened for interactions between family members, external families, and partners would eventually lead to a tradition to be passed down from generation to generation.

Tier 4: Self-esteem

• Status - The person's current reputation

• Respect of others - Respect from other people within the Town

• Respect of Self - Respect for one's status within said Town

While the 4th Tier of Maslow's Hierarchy is more abstract than the previous ones, it is also the tier critical where the cultures of the Town would expand enough that a political institution forms. All the ongoing relations between family-members, external families, and otherwise would provide the foundation for players to seek personal recognition, status, importance, and respect.

Given that OHOL has gold crowns and unique, colored clothing, the establishment of a political structure, like a monarchy, could form, along with many other potential political systems (capitalism, communism, socialism, fascism). Their establishment would depend on the environment and the variables leading up to their formation. The success of each system becomes highly dependant on what the players in later generations are willing to tolerate.

In addition, Self-esteem is also the level at which institutions, such as law enforcement, and other job specialization, would begin to form. For Jason, this is the privatization of goods, specialization of roles within villages, "Where are the Monarchs?", etc. that he is trying to have 'naturally occur' in OHOL.

Tier 5: Self-actualization

The "final" tier of the Hierarchy is not going to be touched on here; this explores the realm of potential for the individual, where they transition to achieving their personal ambitions/goals. This one needs little discussion at the moment, anyway, as it is beyond the current scope of OHOL and what Jason is trying to accomplish at this time.

In conclusion....

If Jason is trying to implement systems of politics, cultural development, getting players to 'care about their families more', et cetera, Maslow's Hierarchy needs to be further examined. Having players struggle to gather resources, survive, maintain their family lineage, and providing limited (to no) tools to defend themselves (Property fences honestly do not count) is restricting the majority of players to the 1st and 2nd levels, with some deviating up to the 3rd for good/bad reasons. Unless something changes that provides more types of foods, more types of "law enforcing" methods, maintaining the survival of a Family, Village, or Town, we will not see progress made into the 3rd and 4th levels of Social Belonging and Self-esteem.

Discussion, as always, is appreciated.

EDIT: This was originally posted 10 months ago, btw.

Hello. This thread is going to be looking at questions that Jason asked back on April 21st regarding the state of OHOL. The point of this thread is not to push specific ideas or to explain the details of what features would help answer these questions.

If you'd like to get to the TL;DR, scroll to the very bottom.

The point of this thread is going to focus on the underlying concepts, roadblocks, and the general kinds of features that would help answer the questions asked. I'd like to encourage discussion, as hopefully instead of simply giving Jason a request of what we each individually think, we can give him axioms, observed opinions on 'the state of being', etc. and how that translates into the features still not properly fit into the game.

On April 21, Jason asked the following questions in the Proper Fence Update:

I'm going to tackle these down the line, feel free to reply to this thread on one/all of the topics as you want.

Where's Trade?

Trade is complex and has a long history in IRL society, with historical records indicating barters as far back as 30,000-140,000 years BC. It began as bartering, as currency was not yet a concept, involving the trade of scarce resources that the two parties could not have acquired in an easier fashion.

As such, before we can answer where trade 'is', we have to first answer the question of 'what is scarce' and 'who owns resources? On top of this, we must also understand if we are operating on the scale of macro- or micro-economics.

Let's start w/ macroeconomics, which would involve actors on the scale of villages, towns, etc.

Scarcity varies. A resource could be plentiful and easy to exploit, but not locally available. A resource could be local and numerous, but difficult to exploit/refine. A resource could be local and easily exploitable, but too low in quantity. Each of these scenarios is undesirable, and can happen with a number of resources.

And now an example:
Village A is in the middle-stages of technology, on Newcomen Pumps, and is continuing to advance itself. It has plenty of tools for farming, shearing, you name it. They've started working on building a pumpjack and a newcomen freestanding tower, but haven't made any more atmospheric chambers. The location of the map they were in does not have a jungle nearby, and is a 10-minute total walk to get up to 10 palm kernels.

Village B is in the late-stages of technology; they have diesel wells, buildings occupying the cold grasslands, and insulated buildings in the jungle with wooden floorboards. One of their core buildings that keeps people warm is halfway complete with bear pelts; they have placed 20 of the 49 total needed. Once that room's done, another 49-tile room needs to be carpeted. The nearby bear caves have all been emptied, and they won't be able to reasonably harvest more without traveling 10 minutes just to gather a handful more.

In this example, Village A has situation 1; a good quantity of palm kernels that are easy to refine, but they are not locally available. Village B has situation 3; there are plenty of caves and they're easy to exploit, but their quantity is too low to sustain the demand.

If Village A gathered bear furs and had no need for them, and Village B had plenty of palm kernels that they could gather locally, the two could reasonably open a trade between each other. Bartering would allow A to send their furs to B, in exchange for B sending their kernels to A. Both match their supply-demand shortcoming by taking advantage of their supply-demand surplus.

This will not happen.

The reason that this will not happen is because this scenario does not exist in current OHOL. The scarcities were artificially created in the example. Village A would never be 10 minutes walk from palm kernels, and Village B would never have an easier time trading for bear furs than continuing to travel around on horse-cart. The example also operates under the assumption the villages are aware of each others' existence, which happens only on rare occasion between the dozens of family lines that are created (and survive for a while) each day.

Macroeconomics within OHOL is currently limited in scope, and in its possibilities of interaction. On the macro scale, every village has roughly an equal level of access to resources as each other village on the map. The resources may be generated randomly, but are generated randomly AND equally across every biome, every region, every quadrant, every time.

Let's transition now to microeconomics, trading between players within a single village. How do we enable trade between players?

This premise first operates on the idea that individuals have resources that they can consider 'owned' by them. The concept of ownership is difficult to identify, given the situation that every player exists in within OHOL. Every family, town, village operates on the idea of communal ownership; resources are gathered by the players, and left in the village to be used by "the state" - which in this case, is all other players in that village that would like to claim it.

Let's pull out another example in the form of a brief story:
Steve is a 5th-generation male. Their village is in Kerosene tech but has not yet constructed a Diesel Well. His mom gives him the task of helping keep the farms alive while the village works on their other projects of iron-gathering, rubber-making, fur-collecting, etc. etc. After a couple minutes of work and gathering milkweed/crops, the Steel Hoe breaks down, and he needs to get another one.

Steve goes to the current smith, Anne, and asks for a Hoe. She tells him "You'll need to trade me for it." Steve asks why, and she explains that she gathered the iron and chopped the wood for the charcoal to refine it into steel and to make it into a tool. Therefore, she wholely owns the steel and wants something in exchange for giving it up. Steve has nothing to trade her, as he has given all of the food supplies and milkweed to the town bakery for making better foods and stews.

Anne then proceeds to eat a pie that she got from the communal bakery, and then stores it in her backpack that she got for free from the village hunter, and resumes using the communal forge and flat rocks that were left from the previous family generations.

Steve decides to take one of the steel bars against Anne's permission, makes a hoe, and resumes working in the farms. Disgruntled from the interaction, Steve decides to take Anne's advice on ownership and builds a property fence around the non-berry farms, and resumes tending to them. Anne, upset about Steve taking one of her steel, puts up a property fence around the kilns, so that other members of the village can't take them forcefully.

Michael, the town baker, goes to the farms to get more food from Steve, and is surprised by the fence. He asks for the usual grain and stew supplies, and Steve tells him "You'll need to trade me for it."

The example story illustrates the issue with the idea that players within a village can 'own' resources. For all intents and purposes, villages operate on a communal resource pool; each member both takes from and contributes to the same resource pool, for the sake of sustaining the village. The baker produces food for everyone; the farmer farms food for everyone; the smith refines ingots, for tools, for everyone; and so on, and so forth. All of these jobs are interchangeable, and do not require any training beyond understanding how OHOL's crafting works. Each family generation brings with it new "workers" to provide to the village, and "demand" for resources from that same village.

A conflict occurs immediately when any member of the village attempts to privatize their work on their own. When Anne privatizes her steel, she removes herself from contributing to the resource pool, but continues to take from it. Does Anne produce her own food or take from the communal bakery? Does Anne tend to the crops to give over to the bakery to justify taking the food, or does she take from the communal farms? Does Anne make her own water source or use pondwater, or does she take from the communal well to tend to the crops? Does Anne gather wood for her own fire, or is she using the communal fire shared by all? Does Anne chop all of the wood used for said fire?

The problem here lies in the impossible boundary of distinction between private ownership and ownership by the community; unless every member of the village privatizes their individual work, any attempt of privatization will inevitably 'trigger' a conflict of interest in providing to the individual over providing to the community, which is antithetical to the OHOL experience of "caring for your family", unless the definition of caring for your family is to charge your fellow man for your labor.

Where are the Stores?

This falls pretty close to the topic of trading, as it manifests itself into a physical location for where bartering would be handled on a larger scale. Stores (which will hereon be referred to as markets) can exist on the macro and micro scale, but in the concept here we can assume that it's the micro scale being intended.

Stores within a micro-economy broach the same topic of private ownership; the grey area between private ownership and communal ownership will spur conflict when a privatized player attempts to force a communal player to spend their community's resources for the goods being withheld.

Stores within a macro-economy would exist in situations where villages establish physical locations in each others' towns/villages to barter surpluses of goods that they do not require use of, in exchange for goods they have shortfalls in. This runs into conflict once again with the macro-trading issue of 'technically infinite' resources available to both societies, that these stores would never exist.

The current technology-tree of OHOL does not support cross-technology societies for trading. In a brief example, Village U has diesel tech

Where's resource contention?

Resource contention has been mentioned several times on OHOL. The lack of conflict over resources stems from multiple reasons; the constant creation of new villages over an infinitely-generating map, the lack of applications for some resources, and the lack of overarching geopolitical societies taking root. Let's touch on each of these:

1) New lineages in Unexploited Terrain

In a fixed location, certain non-renewable resources (and resources that are scarce in the region, if they existed) will diminish to the point that external exploitation becomes a priority to the Village/Town. When this point is reached, the function of the town has shifted from maintaining its existence through constant technological advancement, to expanding its reach of resources and attracting others to its town borders. Usually, this society has hit the Diesel well and has stabilized its food supply, its clothing, and its main buildings, emanating Maslow's hierarchy (which we will get into below). The village's new focus becomes stabilizing the non-renewables, such as building/acquiring horse carts, and ringing bell towers to maintain the town's population. The latter has changed recently, due to the introduction of swords, but I will not get into that for now.

In the current state of OHOL, villages do not have long-term permanence. It is only recently that villages have started to have regional permanence. The average family lineage gets between 30-50 generations deep before 'expiring', which is about 15-25 hours on average.

2) Multi-purpose Resources

OHOL has a variety of raw and refined materials that make up the technological tree. These vary from Soil and Iron, to Charcoal and Steel Rods. In order for the game to facilitate resource contention adequately, resources need to be able to have multiple use-cases where the opportunity cost of investing the resource for W means giving up X, Y, and Z as other options.

Iron/Steel is one of the most visible resources that experiences this opportunity cost debate. Should you upgrade all iron into steel to make every steel tool in an early village, or just the bare essentials and save the rest as Iron for a Newcomen core? Should you invest into the pumpjack to get kerosene as quick as possible, or produce more backup tools just in case one of the primary ones breaks down? There is no straight answer to how to spend it, as all options are ultimately 'good' for the village, depending on the circumstances and the individual opinions of those present.

This is not the case when it comes to other resources, like rubber, copper, glass, clay, and many more. Only some of the technology tree in OHOL expands horizontally, rather than vertically. These technologies are few in number, and usually center around iron and steel, while most others can only contribute to one or two important facets of technology, like copper for Looms and radios. These resources have very low opportunity costs compared to iron/steel, because the only major sacrifice is time spent on other laborious activities.

3) Geopolitics

This one is the shortest of the three, as it is a feature that does not yet exist in the game. Geopolitics delves into the macroeconomic scale of the game, between villages that recognize themselves as their own political entities that seek to control resources on the map. However, because there are no truly fixed resources to 'control', and because there are no family lineages/societies that survive long enough for political entities to form, this does not come to fruition. The game would require a radical change in how long towns or family lineages survive, along with the addition of rare map-tied resources, for geopolitics to come into the game. 

Where's crime? Where are the sheriffs?

Crime currently exists in the game as 'griefing'. The catch-all term has been used between various types of individuals that inevitably live in every growing/developed town. Their actions generally are for the purpose of inhibiting other individuals' play, whether that be for their own benefit or not is up to them. Crime has yet to be elevated to the status of 'crime', as the game lacks any real sense of player-run law enforcement or political entity per town to establish "what activities are crimes".

Sheriffs, much like Crime, do not sufficiently exist in the game due to the lack of law-enforcement tools and the necessary societal structures (governments, political authority, public trust) to enable them. Players that consider themselves police, sheriffs, or of a law-enforcing position are primarily acting as vigilantes, carrying out justice as necessary and from their own perspective. This bleeds back into the previous conversation of Geopolitics, where the lack of familial/town sustainability makes it difficult to establish political entities and, in turn, a security force, such as police officers/sheriffs.

In conclusion (or TL;DR for each question's answers)

"Where's Trade?"
- Trade is missing on the macro-scale, due to map generation uniformity of biomes and resources. With enough time, every resource is more easily and readily available to the village that it does not need to interact w/ other villages to get said resources.
- Trade is missing on the micro-scale, due to the indistinguishable boundaries between communal economics & private ownership.

"Where are the stores?"
- Stores are missing on the macro-scale due to resource non-scarcity between higher-tech villages attempting to trade with lower-tech villages (what do low-tier villages have to trade that high-tier villages cannot get easier?).
- Stores are missing on the micro-scale for the same reasons of trade lacking on the micro-scale.

Where's Resource Contention?
- Villages, lineages, and map locations are not permanent enough, but are moving in that direction
- Majority of resources lack opportunity cost, low variety usage limiting debate for how to use said resources
- No geopolitical growth due to "short" lineages unable to take root in a specific location, maintain town(s) population(s)

Where's crime? Where are the sheriffs?
- Crime is currently lumped into 'griefing' due to lack of law enforcement methods to tackle crime differently from griefing.
- Sheriffs/officers do not currently exist due to lack of political establishment/authority, individual vigilantes act as 'law enforcement'

Where's Trans-generational Conflict?
Where are the Monarchs? Where are the Guillotines?

I'd like to address these questions too, but I'm going to need more time for them, as this went quite long. In short:
-the Guillotine is just one tool of law enforcement that would push the game in the direction of having sheriffs, but would still require a legal system, entity, or similar to see positive use.
- Monarchs are in the realm of political entities, which do not truly exist in OHOL.  For the most part "monarchy" has been roleplayed in the game with crowns, but with no legal authorities over their fellow players it inevitably collapses following 'bad' monarchs or players that do not want royalty.

Now that macro-scale conflict is being pushed slowly into the game through Swords, and families are even closer than ever, I believe we need further changes to map terrain.

The spring coordinate system has changed how Eves spawn, and made an orderly 'fault line' spaced out across the map. I believe with the new proximity, we could maybe start to see the generation of mountains and rivers for long-term map shaping and strategic village placement. Both mountains and rivers could be naturally impassable, such that raiding attempts would be limited from those directions unless improved upon with advanced technology.

Mountains

Mountains would both be a cold biome, and also guaranteed a 100% chance to have a physical 'mountain' tile on top of them. The only way to interact w/ them is to 'mine' them with pickaxes to dig through to the other side(s).

Bonus: Let mountain tiles roll in the background to change into iron deposits after their base form is mined by a pickaxe.

Bonus 2: Mountains block vision of tiles beyond itself and where the player is located (might be server intensive for checking the render distance per click)

Rivers

Contiguous rivers could be thing, and block off entire segments of the map from crossing. The only way to get over them would be to construct a bridge over one of the river's blocks. The bridge could be sabotaged in the immediate timeframe after being constructed (just like property fences) in case a village is trying to prevent people from crossing. Just like other buildings, it would be subject to decay over a long stretch of time, and would be destroyed if not maintained.

Bonus: To prevent debate over using river water for crops, rivers could just be a source of saltwater, and a 'dumping ground' for emptying bowls of ____.

Thoughts?