One Hour One Life Forums

I live near woods where white tail deer are frequently seen. Well, lately I haven't seen them around, turns out they've migrated farther into town and are eating from people's bird feeders, last year's fruit from the fruit trees and lawns, shrubs and bushes. It's also safer in town because people drive slower, outside of town they speed up and if deer cross their path out there, there are often accidents. Carried a dead fawn off the road, to her mother, last yer, less than an hour after the fawn was hit. The mother was crying, calling to her fawn to come out of the road... when I approached with her fawn, she ran into the woods, but she saw where I laid the fawn, so she could approach it, safe from the road, and deal with the reality of her child's death. I went back there a week later and the fawn was gone. She still had one fawn, and I saw the two of them together a few more times last year, but they weren't as happy without the other fawn around. Luckily I got to see all three of them together, several times, for months before the accident.

I'm glad the deer are fattening up, I just hope they don't get too careless in town, and take that carelessness back to the outskirts with them when traffic is back to usual, and people are driving just as fast as ever, leaving and arriving to this area. The problem with the lack of traffic, people who like to drive, and drive fast, are freer to do so now, with fewer cars on the roads. So, I'm afraid while sightings in towns are going up, deaths from accidents, just outside, are going to go up as well.

An important part of the game is missing since this last iron update.

People are not taking flight to new areas with the intent of bring people closer to fresh, new resources.

It used to be necessary, when water came chiefly from ponds and there were no natural springs.

It came when iron was rarer.

It came when people ran out of carrot seeds.

People would play a few lives, in a few times, realize they were all struggling and move one, as a young woman, they would fly out of their home and travel 200, 300, sometimes 500 or even 1,000 meters, back when those really felt like long distances, away from their home, and by the time mother's had started popping out children, they'd found the nearest, grassland with loads of milkweed, near a swamp with lots of ponds, clay and reeds, and, back before the temp update, a desert, where people could balance their own temperature perfectly on the edge. A very important place for a family, it took food consumption down from one pip every 4 seconds, up to one every 22 seconds, which is still difficult to manage today, with clothes and fire, but back then you could move along the edge of the desert and enjoy a perfect temperature, or, lock your temp meter, by moving and never stopping, and locking it at perfect temp, so you could just run for, what seemed like miles, and not stop to eat.

Developed cities are boring. Hungry work is lame, really takes the fun out of really big projects.
What are people supposed to do, take a cart of milk buckets to the swamp, to cut down 200 trees for those two 10x10 wood floors?
Think about this, no home on Earth, no matter how big, required 200 trees to fall for it's floors. The tree, as it exists in game, produces a pathetic amount of resources, for what it represents. The process of making fire, can take up to 15 minutes, to gather all the milkweed for the thread, for the rope. Gathering the branches, trimming them down, chopping the branches with the hatchet, getting the leaf, tinder, kindling sequence down.
You can tell this is a big deal.
Not so for falling a tree.
One chop and it's done, and the rewards are pathetic.
Good sized trees take a full day of real life to cut down with an ax, and another day to remove the branches, saw the trunk into logs and cut limbs down into kindling and firewood. Taking down a tree could easily require more effort and be more rewarding, than it currently is.
That way people could floor more rooms, have more of a reason to have a carpenter's workshop in town and getting lumber would be a more important part of the game that felt more engaging.

There are no redwoods in game, but taking down a good sized tree, of any kind, involved a lot of time, a lot of work, and a lot of people.

Making wood work and tree clearing a more rewarding, more involved endeavor, is just one example of an area of the game that could be expanded upon, give people more resources to work with and towns more of something to be proud of. Circular saws, band saws, jigsaws, stick saws, there are so many machines, lathes, planars, circular sanders, belt sanders. There is a world, of tools, to turn a tree, into furniture, into a home, and to turn a forest, into a town, and this game is sorely missing out on exploring the aspects of that world.

Women should have pouches like kangaroos.
Men should evolve steel hands.

Or at least have them fashioned on at age 13, by metal surgeons.

Is that the word I should tell my doctor, to get treated?

In regards to recent, say, last few months worth, of mechanical changes.
I think most of them are bad, but, most of them we can adapt to and live with, with further changes.
If we are to keep, that people cannot recreate, or, procreate, outside of the 100 meter radius of a family well, then perhaps people should be able to share wells, with other families. So that those other families can give birth there. For instance, it could be a mechanic like the elder fence removal mechanic. An elder of the Smith town, puts a message on the well, saying that they want to be able to share the well with the Miller family.The note has to remain in place, and unremoved or, unchallenged, for so many minutes, and when the motion is adjourned, the two families are now in charge of the well and their females can produce kids near them. The declaration of peace, could also be used to allow two families to use the same well.
And ideally, all families would be at peace, and all players, all families, would be able to reproduce, near any of them.

As far as I know, one family can only have the iron mines near the original family well. So, while a mother could go off, place 10 stones around a spring 200 or more meters away, and claim that spring and the area around it, for their family, the incentive to do that does not exist because they will not receive access to the iron mines near that new spring or well. Yet another, dumb, meaningless restriction. The reason for not allowing families to have multiple iron sources from multiple locations was, what? That people who chose to do too much work for that family, would be limited, by the amount of iron they were allowed to get from the map?

Didn't even test out the iron & well change with any new wells getting any new iron.

My hands are too cold, I can't type much more.

Let's just say, any change that is made, should have some way to unmake it, if the players are willing to go some extra steps
Because, I assure you, people will take the steps necessary, most of the time, to return to the state they were in, before any sort of racial or reproductive change. Until/unless those steps are considered not worth the effort of undoing changes, to return to previous states.
I said a similar thing when you made the temperature change, but in that case, I said make changes gradually, not suddenly.
Obviously you didn't take that message, at all, into consideration with, any, of these changes.
You make a few people happy with these changes, but just upset and turn off, many more.
Some people will say "Ooh, a new change, I'll come back and play the game for that." but they hardly bother.
People want no murder, people want to murder freely, people want curses, people want no curses...
what a mess.

This is was really made Ultima Online a shit show too, when they started catering to people who complained and made big sweeping changes. Like Felluca and Trammel!? Wtf was that? UO was UO, they should have never made two versions of every server. One for the original UO and one where players could attack other people. It should have been one or the other from the start, and never changed to accommodate ANY % of the audience that requested accommodation. That is always a surefire path to a shitty game. The ideal game designer is like the ideal figurehead, the ideal leader. We come to you for your game, your idea. You are supposed to have a plan and stick to it, and then we play along. The rules are stated from the start and don't change, they can't change, you are supposed to already know the future. When you don't know, we lose loyalty, we lose trust, we lose faith. Never waffle, future game designers. Never waffle before your audience. Small little nerfs and buffs, sure, big sweeping mechanics changes, never a good idea. Make a different game at that point. Don't ruin your reputation with the die hard fans you do make from the start. They are the keepers of history. Your game will live in their memory, until they die. Leave it a good memory, not a mess.

I have always tried to see murder in One Life, as an accident. An accident caused by mental and social misunderstandings, or, an accident caused by physically failing to fully control mechanics. How many times, we passed knives or bows to other people, only to shoot them or stab them and have them instantly die, early in the game's history, because we thought we were going to pass the item to the other player and had to find out first hand, that having a loaded bow or knife in your hand and clicking on the other player, instantly killed them.

I imagined it like Stardew Valley, you're down in the mines, you find a new sword, and at the end of the day, your arms are tired, your mind, is tired, you just want to sell some things and get home, maybe check your progress on the monster kill board. You stumble into the Adventurer's Guild at 9:50 PM, just in time to talk to Marlon and Gil, real quick, before the place closes, and as you go to place your old looted sword on the counter to sell to Marlon, it slips out of your tired, rushed, hands and the blade sinks into Marlon's side. You were doing so well, at the game, but now it's taken another turn. Marlon won't survive his injury. You will never be able, to talk to him again. He is removed from the game. What is worse, everyone in town, everyone else in the game, will figure out that you killed Marlon.

You can try to rush back to town, to wake Harvey, to get him to rush out to the guild and heal Marlon, and that could certainly play out.
You could try to carry Marlon, to Harvey's hospital, but you have been in the mines all day, working so hard, swinging your sword at monsters, picking stones, hauling ore. Your body is just too tired to carry Marlon that far.
What are you going to do? What can you do? Marlon's dead. Gil's decide to go tell the mayor about what has happened.
Anytime Marlon is ever mentioned by any other NPC, it will remind me of how he died. How your mistake, lead to his death.
Nothing will be the same, between you and everyone else in town.
Every possible interaction with you, the whole town will always remember, that Marlon's life was cut short, because of your haste and clumsiness.

It didn't have to happen, but it did. Now you have to live with it.

Real accidents happen. Many of my classmates from real life, are now dead, because of accidents. Mostly automobile accidents. Many have died because of a lack of knowledge, and shared experiences, involved in the taking of illicit drugs. I can't even recall why some of them that are dead, are no longer with us. People, people just make mistakes sometimes. Even if it didn't seem like a mistake at the time. Even if killing the person that was bullying them, felt like the right thing to do, they did not go to prison the hero and they probably won't come out feeling like heroes, if they ever come out at all.

Yes, we have no police, no court system, no correctional institutions. No grief counselors, no psychologists, no antipsychotic medications. No mental institutions, no dungeons, no guillotines. There is no authority in game, but us. There is no compassion, in game, but our own.

People who want to experience this game without being threatened, who don't want to threaten you in game, are unlikely to come out in a more public form and tell you they don't want murder to be so easy. Murder in video games, is already too easy. And you may feel, that because it is so normal, elsewhere, that you should have it, anywhere, you like.

Players that don't want to kill you, in game, probably don't want to argue with you, outside of the game either.

They will just leave, if this game becomes that way. As good*, passive, hard working people, have migrated away from violent, authoritarian stages of civilization, for hundreds, of thousands, of years. And because of their good*, passive, hard working efforts, now have nuclear weapons, drones, missiles, and far more advanced weapons, than people who would still be stabbing each other, with knives, arrows or swords. This is why human's closest living ancestors on this planet, are gorillas, apes, chimpanzees and other, old world, primates. We got away from them, figured out more effective solutions* and went back to their camps and towns, feeling morally justified through new words, feeling empowered, by new technology, and we killed them all. Time, and time, again. Premeditated genocide, has been the rule, for humanity, for a long time.

Who are any of you to stop yourself from giving in to those urges?

Modern day, humans? I guarantee, everyone of your countries, has taught you, the justifications for war, through your History Classes, through your, Movies, your News Organizations and through your Games. Play along, and murder is okay. Go rogue and pay the consequences - suffer the wrath of the state.

Now you are in a game, with an average of 50, other, people playing on average at a time. How easy, it would be, to pit you against each other, into little tribes.
How unfulfilled, you must feel, with your education in the justification for murder, atrophying in your memory.

I want you, feeling as though your military education, of any sort, is going to waste, to see your contribution to the futility, and to get away. Get away, from this state and find peace and productivity, outside of conflict. Focus, on efficiency. Focus, on communication. Focus, on technology. Maybe you will find a reason, to live, without needing to defend yourself. Maybe your existence, can be justified, because of what you create, instead of because of what you are afraid, will be destroyed. But none the less, go off, into your directions. Find new strengths, elsewhere.

There are still, so many possible outcomes, for our future. But not if we sit here, playing the same game, with the same pieces.
The goal of chess, will never be, to make life better, for every piece, in every game, from this game forward.
Our goal, with One Life, should be. It should be, to leave chess, the gorilla, of games in the past, and to move on, to something greater, than any chess player, could even imagine, a game could be.

Not just to see the game of war, as futile, but to see the opportunity, for a greater game, off the board, imperative.

Maybe your descendants, won't come back to the chess game and ionize the table from space, maybe they will. Maybe they will find, greater meaning; a greater, justification, for their existence, with greater laws, greater courts, stronger educations and a higher sense of morale authority, than we could have found, in games of the past. Maybe we can all see past conflict with life, and see, the a greater challenge, a greater threat, to our existence, are the unliving, unthinking, remorseless processes of, the universe itself, which we have yet to bring to life. The lifelessness zombie of space, that surrounds Earth, moaning, shuffling towards us, from every direction. The vampire of entropy, that saps blood, endlessly, from the Earth and Sun. You want real conflict? Fight off the unlife of the rest of the Universe, before it has the chance, to pull us back, into pre-Hadean conditions. Before it reclaims this planet, for unlife, for the never born, never aware, never life before, that is unknown everywhere but here.

--

Fight the greatest war of all, against the absence of life, everywhere else, in the universe.

May the lessons we learn, from the battles of this war, be the children's tales of future outposts, from here to the last star.

--

In the meantime, we have to find ways to unwire ourselves, from the cannibalism of our past. We are a little too dependent, one exploiting the natural automation, that comes with being alive and maintaining ourselves. This is how we are pushed to war, by more manipulative members of our own species. It is why some of you desire the ability, to murder, rather than to understand, and to pass on that ability to understand, to others. Especially to those you would want to see suffer, because they don't feel like a part of you. People are not tumors. They know what they are doing and why they are doing it. That you don't know, is not your fault or theirs, but your desire to cut them off, like a tumor, rather than to understand them, like a lesson and to see them, like, another seed, it is not your fault, but ours. Clearly we have not expressed to you, the value of life, above all other things. You are not a white blood cell, they are not a disease, we are people. Treat them as you would a real person, because they are a real person. There are many things we have to teach each other, many messages, in many languages, and very few of them, can be typed, or spoken.

Stop killing yourself, game.

Stop cutting off parts, of your own body.

You must understand.

With every person you turn away, you are removing a limb, or an organ, from this body. You are letting infections, spread, from you to other people. Infections of hate and impatience, infections of intolerance, frustration and poor judgement. You want permission to kill? Expressing that desire alone should forfeit you from ever ever being granted that ability.

We have work to do. You killing off one of us in training, does not help us to transform the world, into what we want it to become, first and foremost; a place where more people, are happy to be born and reborn, to work hard and transform the land, into a place, capable of supporting, an unending stream of each other. Growth; healthy, sustainable, growth, has never been more crucial. Good people will come and stay for the solace. There are no other types of people, only places, of pain and confusion, that lead them away, and through here, where we can remedy those injuries, if we just have time. You, threatening to kill, threatening to take that time away, only makes the most important job; the hardest, most impressive, most imperative job, that much more difficult.

Please, see the error passed on to you.
See, life's mission, from above as inside.

Give those most in need of your time, the most of that time,
in true patience and guiding wisdom,
and we will all grow, together.

We will, all, grow together.

--

Coconut, next time someone does that, just let them know how much it means to you.
We all have hearts. We can understand.

I miss when a new player would find themselves in the wild, and have kids, and then state they didn't know what to do, and helping them start a new home from what was available near the place we found ourselves.
Logging back on, 8 hours later, and finding that camp to be one of the most successful, or more productive, of all the towns in existence at the time, after having lived at 4-6 of them, the next day.
It always made me wonder, if that player had revisited their town as well, and saw, just how great, any place can become, long long as people are willing to stick around and work hard at it.
Now the chance of turning an AWOL female's nice, home away from home, into the game's equivalent of a bustling metropolis of it's own, is utterly impossible, or at the least, very discouraged, very unlikely and just not a scenario, for a new person picking up the game, to find themselves in, now that the game is telling them "Your ability to bring new players into the world, stops at this line. You cannot have children, anywhere but in these specific zones."
This is the kind of art where a person gives a million dollars to a museum, to rent a studio, and puts nothing in it.
While claiming, the lack of any art, is art.
Or those canvases put on display, with no paint on them, that arthouse critics will then defend, saying "The artist is putting the audience in their seat..." or some such nonsense.

Kinda starts to feel like any change, is just a coin toss. Heads, you'll enjoy it. Tails, it's bullshit.
And as everyone's version of heads or tails becomes different, we're all just left playing a game that is only ever 50% of what we'd like it to be.

"Better to have loved and lost..." not when the odds of loss hover around 100%, given time, and the chances of finding love again, become slimmer and slimmer as the game moves away, from what it was, you fell in love with, to begin with.

It's an odd model of game design, that's a safe bet.

For a non-existent biome, that also resides there.

Moods of players do shift from wanting to be in developed, or non-developed areas. To play out various stages of development. Trying to cater or not cater to that, causes problems either way. As does giving players the options to choose the stage they play at, or not. It wouldn't be too hard to cater to more scenarios, if there were more people and playing on different servers was a more attractive option, but, for now, if you want to be with people, you take the state they are in, not necessarily the stage you want to play at the moment.

I'm not a fan of removing the early stages from those lists of options, but others are fans of rushing stages. What can we do, if we both want to exist with others?

Did you happen to play The Matrix Online when it was a popular MMO?
It's combat system was very "Rock Paper Scissors" but none-the-less, pretty fun to engage in combat. Even though a lot of people rated the game poorly because of it. Still fun, that along with the existence of that world, and being able to explore by jumping and flying. Had to know pretty deep into that tree, to fly, but, players that registered the game early, or bought it early, even got the ability to jump a little higher and farther, than people that joined later. I don't recall the exact number, but it was something like 120 meters, instead of just 100 meters. Either way, exploring a metropolitan city, by jumping around it so much at a time, was pretty enjoyable back that long ago. And, like I said, the combat system was pretty RPS, with ways from martial arts to hacking (which was basically spellcasting) to engage other players. Then we did missions to get reputation with the machines, Merovingians or, what was it, Children of Xion?, whichever faction we'd sided with from the start. I enjoyed being with the Merovingians as gathering places for that faction, were the night clubs of The Matrix, and the sounds, the lights, and the bad-ish dancing emotes, all made for a strange time waiting for some people, to play as characters from the stories, with boss-like powers, until either they would lead us to some opposing faction's gathering, or they would come to ours, and a mass combat scene, would unfold between 20 to 200, maybe more, people at once. Trying to take out other players, but ultimately, to take out those characters from the movie, and the game's storyline, past the movies.

Check out people talking about it sometime, if you didn't get the chance, or just take my word for it, for such a time in MMO history, a lot of fun lessons were learned by the industry, from those experiences.

It'd be nice if there was an organization that made it their philosophy to maintain copies of games and preserve those experiences, for people, for all time.
Something like GOG for MMOs, multiplayer games, and just, the history of human games in general. Experiences these games, as they were for their time, they shaped history, and the perception of the world, for a lot of people. It'd be like the public library, for the games of history, available around the world. Someday people on Mars, will access Earth's video game cloud, to get copies of Moon Patrol, Surviving Mars, or play some form of Eve Online.

Like old pictures...

Long as you are making up new animals for biomes, they should all have new ones, why not?

Reindeer for Tundra
Cow's Leather for Prairie

Then maybe we can get cow's meat and how steaks and burgers.
If that is where we are to go.

Here is one of my old posts from May 9th 2018 on Food Consumption vs Temperature https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=1544
where I tried to express a similar concern, albeit, in a time of some different mechanics, regarding rooms, heat sources and the effect the temperature of the environment had on the player's temperature meter.

Some of, this picture

is still relevant today, in terms of the relationship to food consumption rate and the temp meter.

Though I think the matter of the oven, kiln, smithy and engines giving off heat, is important, in the meantime, all the industries revolving around hot coals, are also worth keeping in mind. Players, should be encouraged to look at the world, as if through a pair of infrared glasses and areas that would appear in that Goldilocks zone of 10-12, should be trafficked considerably more to decrease food consumption.

Most of the map is naturally cold, why should the heat of these fuel burning items and industries, be going to waste?

Or, the smithy could be a very hot environment, when you are surrounded by kilns, forges and the Newcomen, and that, excessive heat, could translate, to increased food consumption, while the area around the smithy, becomes a more reasonable temperature as it produces a balance between the, hot, oxygen hungry coals of the forge and the cold, surrounding, environment.