Tool Slots or No Tool Slots?

Spoonwood · 2019-12-20 05:30:44

I did play a little with tool slots when they were bugged and present when a server had less than 15 people on it. Overall, I didn't like them, and found a few situations where none of the stated objectives for them got fulfilled. I suspect that towns run into similar problems when family size gets small or someone ends up the last person in town. I'm against tool slots on that basis, and from other things I've heard about them... I think one person has hypothesized them as rough on new players trying to learn different jobs. Also, there have been, and from what I've heard, still exist people maximizing the number of tool slots they have by unintended ways, which suggests them as not so good to me.

The original purposes for tool slots got described as follows:

jasonrohrer wrote:

1. To give you rich, interesting, and weighty choices to make in each life.
2. To ensure that each life really is different.
3. To force you to study and understand the most pressing problems facing your village now, and the problems it will likely be facing in the near future.
4. To enrich player interaction, communication, and cooperation, and short-circuit the tendency to "just do it all yourself" instead of coordinating your efforts with others.
5. To encourage trade between players.
6. To increase the importance of communication between village adults and incoming children.
7. To add an additional constraint to the game, because constraints are generally good. More constraints leads to more meaningful choices.

https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=8181

Have tool slots fulfilled these objectives in your experience? Some of them? None of them? Some of them kind of/sort of? Not at all? Very well?

Do tool slots have other benefits that are worth considering?

Do tool slots have serious disdvantages that should get noted?

Do tool slots make things easier on griefers, more difficult on griefers, or not change anything at all?

Please do not hesitate to share your opinion and any experiences related to tool slots.

Last edited by Spoonwood (2019-12-20 05:35:18)

MCzerotacos · 2019-12-20 06:04:55

Honsetly tools slots are even that bad. If u play the game often which i believe most players do then it wont even bother most players. I have been playing actively for like 3-4 days now and im at 17 tool slots. I dont even use 17 tool slots my entire life.

DestinyCall · 2019-12-20 07:12:05

Tool slots ARE bad. You aren't bothered by the system because you have accumulated more tool slots than you will ever need. So why have tool slots at all?

What does it bring to the game? It just adds annoyance and confusion when you try to do something and can't get it to work because you've hit an arbitrary limitation. Sure, you can do a lot of things without using a tool slot, but there's nothing more frustrating than reaching the end of your life and trying to finish one last project ... only to discover that you can't complete the job because you never learned how to use a mallet. Again .. why is this even in the game? To make me want to throw my monitor against the wall?

I had two lives in a row where I ran out of slots before I learned to use a knife and couldn't figure out why the sheep refused to die. STAB STAB STAB .. Nothing. Oh wait, the second time wasn't because of tool slots, it is because killing sheep is hungry work now and I was trying to butcher a sheep without a full belly. I remember when this game was less frustrating and much more satisfying. I miss that feeling.

MCzerotacos · 2019-12-20 08:13:10

Alright, how many tool slots do you guys have? Its not even that hard to gain tool slots in the first place as well.

DestinyCall · 2019-12-20 08:36:07

I haven't played much lately so last I checked my tool slots were in the 6 to 8 range, which is really quite yucky. I'm sure I could easily gain more slots by living more lives and playing normally. I tend to live a long time and I don't go out of my way to murder my own offspring, so my genetic score will drift upward over time. But my point is that it doesn't matter if you can eventually accumulate so many tool slots it ceases to be a burden and become completely meaningless.

Why do tool slots exist in the first place? What function do they serve? Is it actually satisfying or enjoyable to "beat" the challenge of having not enough tool slot? The whole system just feels artificial and pointless to me. It exists to create an arbitrary barrier that makes the game "harder" in the least fun way - by cutting off options without offering interesting choices.

Last edited by DestinyCall (2019-12-20 08:36:52)

Spoonwood · 2019-12-20 10:06:10

Tool slots only exist when a server has 15 or more people on it.

Cantface · 2019-12-20 14:06:52

Even with max tool slots if you're a busy, regular player you will run out regardless, happens very often and is frustrating having to adapt to a system that had so much more freedom not but a few months back.

Kinrany · 2019-12-20 17:08:55

I suspect the only people who are limited by tool slots are the ones who know how to earn enough of them.

Maybe the tool slot limit should be like 3, or 1 per 10 minutes.
Instead you'd learn tools either by making them, or by being taught by someone who already learned the tool.

Legs · 2019-12-20 19:13:26

Spoonwood wrote:

I did play a little with tool slots when they were bugged and present when a server had less than 15 people on it. Overall, I didn't like them, and found a few situations where none of the stated objectives for them got fulfilled. I suspect that towns run into similar problems when family size gets small or someone ends up the last person in town. I'm against tool slots on that basis, and from other things I've heard about them... I think one person has hypothesized them as rough on new players trying to learn different jobs. Also, there have been, and from what I've heard, still exist people maximizing the number of tool slots they have by unintended ways, which suggests them as not so good to me.
The original purposes for tool slots got described as follows:
jasonrohrer wrote:

1. To give you rich, interesting, and weighty choices to make in each life.
2. To ensure that each life really is different.
3. To force you to study and understand the most pressing problems facing your village now, and the problems it will likely be facing in the near future.
4. To enrich player interaction, communication, and cooperation, and short-circuit the tendency to "just do it all yourself" instead of coordinating your efforts with others.
5. To encourage trade between players.
6. To increase the importance of communication between village adults and incoming children.
7. To add an additional constraint to the game, because constraints are generally good. More constraints leads to more meaningful choices.
https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=8181
Have tool slots fulfilled these objectives in your experience? Some of them? None of them? Some of them kind of/sort of? Not at all? Very well?
Do tool slots have other benefits that are worth considering?
Do tool slots have serious disdvantages that should get noted?
Do tool slots make things easier on griefers, more difficult on griefers, or not change anything at all?
Please do not hesitate to share your opinion and any experiences related to tool slots.

1. There is no choice. I have to do what I must do. If I'm naked there's no other choice than making clothes. Etc. Those tools must be used.

2. Each life is the same. You do the same things you would otherwise. The only difference is which important thing you're left unable to do at the end.

3. There are always more problems. If the town needs something done, do it yourself. Otherwise it's not getting done at all. Tool slots prevent this. Solve one or two pressing problems then watch helplessly as everyone starves, because you can't make compost and nobody else knows how.

4. Which leads to interaction. Begging for some useful idiot to use one item on another one for you and usually being ignored. At best they do it grudgingly and you can make a smidgen of progress- until another tool-locked item is necessary five minutes later.

5. Trade does not exist in ohol. It is a communist society.

6. I've tried assigning jobs to children in the tool-slot update. They're often fairly receptive and want to help. They never ever know how. Can't bake, can't farm, definitely doesn't know smithing. Teaching is agonizingly slow and another baby is coming fast.

7. "Constraints are generally good," is that supposed to be a joke?

I think a big part of the problem with all these recent changes is that they're very much an afterthought. The game was completed, finished, released... and a year later dramatic changes are being made to the core gameplay. Nothing was built to work together, instead these changes were tacked on after the fact without any real integration. Hot coals are a classic example of this. They're used for cooking, making pads and dying clothes. You might only use them once in your entire life, but it still takes up a precious tool slow.

The concept can make sense and I understand the intent behind it. Encouraging people to practice a profession. Many new players embrace this while they're still learning. I know I did at least. You want to learn to cook? Spend a life as a baker. Still not sure how to smith? Spend a lifetime playing in the smithy. It makes sense and it's a good way to learn.

In practice forcing these constraints onto people is absolutely awful, most of all for experienced players that actually know how to craft and make a lot of different things. I said this in the original post introducing them as well. There are no benefits, only disadvantages. It's the wrong kind of difficulty. Difficult games are fun when they empower the player to overcome those challenges, not when they make you weaker instead. It's fun when you find a chunk of some obscure resource like niter and know exactly how to use it. The opposite is true when the game hard locks the desert that it spawns in and prevents you from ever grabbing the thing.

Spoonwood · 2019-12-20 19:14:57

Kinrany wrote:

Maybe the tool slot limit should be like 3, or 1 per 10 minutes.
Instead you'd learn tools either by making them, or by being taught by someone who already learned the tool.

Uh... 3 or 1 per 10 minutes?

How many tool slots do you need to make fire and run a forge again?

Axe or stone hatchet, Fire bow drill, adobe over the kiln, wooden tongs, and hammer, right? Maybe there exist more, I don't remember as I don't play with tool slots since the bug got fixed. But, I'm confident that 3 isn't enough to blacksmith.

Last edited by Spoonwood (2019-12-20 19:15:35)

Kinrany · 2019-12-20 19:35:25

Spoonwood wrote:

Uh... 3 or 1 per 10 minutes?
How many tool slots do you need to make fire and run a forge again?
Axe or stone hatchet, Fire bow drill, adobe over the kiln, wooden tongs, and hammer, right? Maybe there exist more, I don't remember as I don't play with tool slots since the bug got fixed. But, I'm confident that 3 isn't enough to blacksmith.

The very next line suggests other ways of learning tools.

You automatically learn everything you made. As an Eve, you need zero tool slots.

I guess they should be renamed into learning points.

Toxolotl · 2019-12-20 19:44:15

Tool slots are bad. Just like a lot of these limiter updates they force a playstyle. If you want to get anything done, you must play 'this' way and if you dont you are punished. Its made the game more boring than ever. Its doesnt create exciting challenges. It ruins the rush eve runs used to give. You spend a considerable amount of time thinking about slots and managing them.

Oh no the fire is out. No one is willing to learn fire bow. Guess ill take the hit. Use axe to make kindling. No one manages the fire and i have to consider waiting for it to go out or waste another tool slot throwing kindling on it. Exciting stuff. The only purpose of these updates is to limit veterans from climbing the tech tree too quickly or growing towns too fast.

Instead of extending the tech tree all we get is these updates to slow us down in the progression of the current tree. Its cheap and i expect better from potentially the greatest game of all time.

Spoonwood · 2019-12-20 19:50:19

Kinrany wrote:

You automatically learn everything you made. As an Eve, you need zero tool slots.

Huh? When tool slots originally got released, Eves didn't have tool slots, but Jason changed it. When I had tool slots on low population servers, I was an Eve most of the time.

Joseph Stalin · 2019-12-20 20:55:03

tool slots are better than racist family "specification"

DarkDrak · 2019-12-20 22:14:05

jasonrohrer wrote:

1. To give you rich, interesting, and weighty choices to make in each life.
2. To ensure that each life really is different.
3. To force you to study and understand the most pressing problems facing your village now, and the problems it will likely be facing in the near future.
4. To enrich player interaction, communication, and cooperation, and short-circuit the tendency to "just do it all yourself" instead of coordinating your efforts with others.
5. To encourage trade between players.
6. To increase the importance of communication between village adults and incoming children.
7. To add an additional constraint to the game, because constraints are generally good. More constraints leads to more meaningful choices.

1. Failed for like 80%. The first 10 games or so you do need to make choises on which tools to learn, ok. Once you get 12 tool slots, you'll end up dying without using 1 or 2 of them most of the time. And even when you get to make chosies, they aren't rich or interesting. "I'm butt naked and i need to make clothes. I'll need to use needle and thread 6 more times in the next 10 minutes, then i'll never use it again. Do i run around the town now, asking if someone already knows sewing and can do it for me, or do i learn it myself and run around the town later on when im out of slots?" The answer's pretty obvious. Unless you need something that you can clearly see other people doing and you dont really need to go out of your way to ask them to do it for you, you just do it yourself and hope to get help later.

2. Failed completely. If anything, lives feel even more the same than before. When you have more tool slots than you use, there's no difference from before. When you have less than what's necessary, then helping someone out and learning a tool that they need, effectively gets you stuck from choosing a different lifepath. So if you went and made some hoes 'cause you wanted to be a farmer, you'll end up being a smith 'cause you don't have enough tool slots left to be a farmer. You're stuck being smith for the 3rd time. yay.

3. I don't understand this point. "This town needs some experienced players to save it" and "This town needs more water" pretty much sums up all the problems of every town ever since water ceased to be infinite. If the town needs stuff like kindling, compost, clothes, pies etc, then it surely arent the tool slots that make you realize that.

4. Succeeded. Before i could spend a whole life without saying a word and my last words would be "ty", babytalked at the age of four. Now I end up asking people to use some tools i dont wanna learn, i get people to ask me to use some tools they can't learn etc. Again, it's back to normal once you reach 12 tool slots. But overall i see more player interaction in villeges.

5. Failed miserably. Still no trade is happening.

6. I mean. 20% success? It's better than before, but not nearly enough. You either see no changes form before you the interaction between an adult and a kid goes like this: "hey kiddo, i need you to use this axe on some branches here, can you do it for me?" "y" "good boy, thanks, these too pls" "np". That's it.

7. ... no comment.

Also:
- It led to a real lot of (perfectly anticipated) wasteful overlap. Nobody's gonna go around the town asking who learned what tools and to remember it. So a lot of people in the town know how to use an axe, needle and thread, stakes, shovel. Nobody knows how to use a bowsaw when you need someone to use it.
- For most tools, you end up learning them only to use them once or twice, not because they are your proffession. You learn hot coals only to save the town fire, not to use them. You learn adze to use it once or twice to get mallets.
- The system feels imbalanced (as a lot of other things, but whatever).

I mean, you need 3 tool slots to be a baker: oven, knife and hot coals. You can add in a hoe if you want to plant wheat. that's 4
You basically need 2 tool slots to be a farmer: hoe and shovel. You can add shears and knife if you double as the sheepherd. That's 4
You need 3 tools to be town medic: shears and hot coals and knife. You can double as butcherer with the knife tool. You can tripple as carrot farmer if you learn the hoe. That's 4

Then. You need 3 tools for basic smithy: Klin, tongs, hammer. You cna add file, but not double as naything more than a smith. That's 4. You can double as a kindling gatherer if you learn axe. That's 5
You need 6 tool slots for advanced smithy: klin, tongs, newcommen stuff (hammer, roller, bore, lathe). You'll end up getting hammer 'cause you really can't do anything else with that tool set. that's 7. And better fill up the rest of your tool slots with axe and file. That's 9
You need 4 tool slots to be a basic carpenteer: adze, mallet, bowsaw, flint-tipped bow drill. You might add in hoe to grow milkweed. That's 5. At that point you'll better learn shovel and axe and start gathering big rocks and logs. That's 7. Then spend your life gathering stuff 'cause it takes no tool slots and you don't really need to make more than a few carts and buckets.

Feels really weird to have some professions that take up your entire tool set and some that you can fairly well cover while dedicating your life to other stuff.

P.S. Appreciate again you making a new thread and linking to the old one instead of necroing the latter. I can see that you started to care about what i was saying in the other thread.

Last edited by DarkDrak (2019-12-20 22:17:42)

arkajalka · 2019-12-21 01:21:38

only peasants cant deal with tool slots. Git good.

DestinyCall · 2019-12-21 01:48:38

arkajalka wrote:

only peasants cant deal with tool slots. Git good.

Of course.

The upper class should dress in fancy clothing, eat only the finest yum foods, drink wine, and let other people dirty their hands like common laborers.

If you find yourself using more than three tool slots in your life, you are obviously working too hard to be considered true royalty. Please reconsider your life goals.

Spoonwood · 2019-12-21 02:17:52

DarkDrak wrote:

Appreciate again you making a new thread and linking to the old one instead of necroing the latter. I can see that you started to care about what i was saying in the other thread.

Apparently, you have deluded yourself here. I actually care less about what you said in the other thread now, since I've seen that you don't want respect to my choosing on this matter.

As I've said elsewhere, I don't expect that I will necro threads in the future. I don't expect I'll be saying 'BUMP' to some thread like Karl did. Or 'wazzup spoonie' as arkajalka did to necro a new thread. That's not my style. But you have kidded yourself if you think that your manipulative and disrespectful attitude has been effective. I'd have to read some old thread and believe there exists some reason to necro it for me to do so in the future. That's how I do things.

Stoop Kid · 2019-12-21 17:08:54

Tool slots are hot trash. Between that and the race restrictions, I haven't touched big server in over a month and don't intend to unless something drastically changes

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2019-12-20 05:30:44

Tool Slots or No Tool Slots?

#2 2019-12-20 06:04:55

Re: Tool Slots or No Tool Slots?

#3 2019-12-20 07:12:05

Re: Tool Slots or No Tool Slots?

#4 2019-12-20 08:13:10

Re: Tool Slots or No Tool Slots?

#5 2019-12-20 08:36:07

Re: Tool Slots or No Tool Slots?

#6 2019-12-20 10:06:10

Re: Tool Slots or No Tool Slots?

#7 2019-12-20 14:06:52

Re: Tool Slots or No Tool Slots?

#8 2019-12-20 17:08:55

Re: Tool Slots or No Tool Slots?

#9 2019-12-20 19:13:26

Re: Tool Slots or No Tool Slots?

#10 2019-12-20 19:14:57

Re: Tool Slots or No Tool Slots?

#11 2019-12-20 19:35:25

Re: Tool Slots or No Tool Slots?

#12 2019-12-20 19:44:15

Re: Tool Slots or No Tool Slots?

#13 2019-12-20 19:50:19

Re: Tool Slots or No Tool Slots?

#14 2019-12-20 20:55:03

Re: Tool Slots or No Tool Slots?

#15 2019-12-20 22:14:05

Re: Tool Slots or No Tool Slots?

#16 2019-12-21 01:21:38

Re: Tool Slots or No Tool Slots?

#17 2019-12-21 01:48:38

Re: Tool Slots or No Tool Slots?

#18 2019-12-21 02:17:52

Re: Tool Slots or No Tool Slots?

#19 2019-12-21 17:08:54

Re: Tool Slots or No Tool Slots?

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