a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building
You are not logged in.
If the meta actually shifts to "kill all your neighbors" then it will not matter that Eves are spawning closer together. You won't be meeting new people to talk or trade or raise your babies around them to learn their languages. You will be killing off anyone who builds too close to your "base"
The moment towns become "bases" I think this game has lost it's thread-- that spark of uniqueness that makes it not like every other resource war game...
I don't think gamers are any worse than any other random groupings of players and being nasty in a game is far better than doing it IRL. But, I'm still not a fan of the "git gud" "kill or be killed" uh... "culture?" of most games. Like it's just really hard for me to get invested in that mentality for fun. I thought that maybe the Invading Eves were just desperate: the wilds are stripped and towns re not friendly to outsiders. But, now I think it's more like "oh I can kill all these people and that means I'm a bad ass" or something like this.
I'm also bummed to be banned from the tutorial town which was really making me happy for the past few days. I was born there on my first try without using /die at all. 24 hours? Great.
If you live a life and are murdered are you excited to get back in and play again? I'm not talking about if you start something and end up being killed but if another player kills you and the reason isn't clear? It's been a long time since I got randomly killed. Boy is it discouraging and not fun!
To guard against murder I've tried keeping a knife or sword on me, but I'm no good at attacking people and my heart just isn't in it. Basically, I find that suddenly I'm really bad at a game I used to be good at (or thought I was at least competent at) and the way to get better is to get faster at killing other players which I don't have any serious desire to do.
At least whoever keeps killing me is having a good time.
One observation is that Eve's coming in to town to kill people is also happening in the Tutorial towns which means this isn't about resources at all. It isn't that Eve's have been pushed to where their only option is to kill I think people who like to kill other players now have a reason to spawn as Eve because they will be close enough to towns to kill people and can't be cursed when they do.
That's pretty crumby for people who just want to build an engine, or farm carrots.
Some of the people doing the robbing aren't "Eves" but other towns who just want the iron. Just fence the iron. Or better yet, put it in to machines and tools that are more bulky and hard to steal.
Tools will still go wandering, though, so consider a tool shed for any tool not being used.
As towns divert the energy of productive players in to tasks like guarding it will only make the iron shortage worse. Right now it takes and entire life time to hit a single vein. Go out on foot and find it, mark your path back, bring the supplies to dig the mine and die just as you arrive home. I like doing that, but most players are adverse to spending most of their life out of town with no one to talk to. And you never know if the iron you bring back will be used by your town or swiped up by another during a period of low population.
A town can keep going for a long time without iron.
As long as you don't cut down the good trees you have kindling.
If you make an Ax *use it up* cutting trees near your town, that way your town has wood for longer, and you can be careful not to cut ANY tree with branches. Those trees make kerosine!
A stone hoe and even using up the last of the wild skewers is a smart move.
The limiting factor is really the Ax to keep that main fire going. So, maybe make two Axes and use them *both* up cutting nearby swamp and pine trees. Stockpile wood like the town won't have an Ax some day. It's much harder and more obvious to steal wood piles than stealing a single Ax.
A nice side effect is the decreasing number of knives. That's iron to smelt and free kindling.
Swords become oil pipes.
Heh.
I think the new meta is "daughter we must run for four generations" Eve runs, her children run always in the same cardinal dirction, two more generations run, and only then do you look for a spot to live.
Yes, and I'll kill you if you don't give them a fighting chance.
I don't want leadership that's imposed by a game mechanic. I have been in leadership positions in-game and it's because I was clearly the person who know the most about how things worked. In other cases I'v cheerfully done tasks to help others because they were doing something I could see was important and didn't fully understand myself.
--SUGGESTION:
Jason, I'd suggest make the monthly-thing (show some stats and such) available, what I (player) have done etc and maybe suggested voluntary donation (based on something there) that doesn't give anything, up to dollar or two. Also this window could have OFFICIAL voting with only results visible for you, questions you want there, maybe what you think people would like the heading of game to be. Only make sure ppl realize cash is just suggestion, no obligation, same with your asking what people see interesting. And no mention/never will be shown anywhere if I paid or not. Never show/store game-life donations. Never show vote results.See, you have best understanding how much time some seemingly-easy change would take and if it fits your plans etc... And for good's sake take a month's vacation dude !
This suggestion is great! It would give a controlled forum for feedback and capture some of the opinions of people who aren't in the forum or discord.
Also, I think the vacation suggestion is fair. No one can do anything that takes real energy for more than about 10 months without burning out a little. Vacations are important!
Holy fucking hell almighty! I think pein might've outdone himself with that post. That dude makes some text walls, but this one is something else. I really don't want to read all that, but I skimmed it a bit and saw my idea posted in there. Could anyone, who took the time to read it, summarize it and tell me if he was saying it was a good idea or bad idea?
I was going to say something, but if I accuse anyone else of making text walls that could backfire for me rather quickly. But, I to would like a summary... please?
PS. I'm happy to make a summary of anything I write and try to remember to do so... at least some of the time.
Opening doors is definately a huge part of why enclosed buildings are annoying. Is there a way it could be changed so characters would autopath through doors and fence gates without having to click to open them? (I want my character to open and close the door without me having to click them)
The reason sheep pens never have gates and the reason people get angry and take off all the doors of a building is that it is extra work for basically no reward. I would like to use fence gates for pens but you click once to open it and all the sheep run out or you can build an airlock which requires two clicks to get in and out. Berry corners allow you to just walk in and out without any work on your part.
If gates worked as well as berry corners I would always build gates. If it is possible this would be a huge quality of life improvement.
Agree. What if we could add springs to fence gates and path through them with an opening and closing animation? That would make fence sheep pens a nice upgrade from property fences or oven bases. The berry corners are functional but always look messy to me. I would love to have proper pens.
Making it so you had to add a spring to the fence gate to get it to auto-close seems fair resource wise to me.
And I would love it if spring doors didn't require the extra click. I never ever make doors for the buildings I build since they are just too annoying and my main goal in making an enclosed space is to keep people from randomly walking across the work space.
Here are some simple ideas for implementation:
-make it possible to put up to 6 bowls of flour OR up to 6 bowls of wheat in a stone crock as storage. At the same time make piles of wheat left on the ground decay.
-make it possible to shovel up to 10 poops in to a wooden box, transforming it in to a manure bin. The manure bin would not be able to be moved or made in to a cart.
-add an all wood tool "wooden shovel" for moving poop only (to avoid iron being used up cleaning up poop)
-address the issue where it isn't possible to put some items in to boxes such as bowls of seeds so that those items could be moved and cleaned up more easily.
-add a morter and pestle for grinding 3 wheat at once, using a round stone isn't ideal and is not efficient.
-add a "large clay bowl" for big batches of dough, for pies and bread.
Then let the tool rack hold any items, but design it to look good with tools I'm thinking of basically a fence attached to a sledge something you can drag around that holds 4 tools on the top and 4 baskets on the bottom.
Can we all try to express our criticism of this game in the future without saying nasty untrue things about Jason as a person. As much as I disagree with some of his ideas I think it's unlikely and silly to think he doesn't want this game to be good. It's unreasonable for us or Jason to expect that every idea he implements will be great work perfectly and make everyone happy.
Frankly, I'm impressed with most of the changes and disappointed with only a handful. The only "game breaking" change was the way the sword worked at first IMO, and Jason was responsive and fixed it. I still think that our towns aren't ready for swords, I don't think they are meeting an urgent need. I think more character models, storage, and some way for men to be fathers are more important.
And I could be wrong about what's important. So, can Jason, so can you. So can we just not call each other whiners, idiot, arrogant, etc. when we don't agree on ideas and focus on talking about WHY we hold the ideas we have about what the game needs so strongly.
Contrary to some of you I don't think that our visions for the game are *that* different. We want it to be fun, worth being invested in emotionally, exciting etc.
Some of the time I think that maybe making changes every week is a bit much. It's bound to make players cranky to deal with so much change all the time. Just as you learn the rules SURPRISE! New Meta! Maybe bi-weekly changes would be less difficult? But, that said this game has existed for more than a year growing and changing at this break-neck pace and we have all kept up and Jason isn't dead of exhaustion so why not keep going? I've never seen a game development process like this in my life and I love it. I love the interplay between what the community does and what Jason creates. I love the crazy things like tutorial towns and pens made of oven bases that players figure out. I love all of the creativity not just in the games content but in what we choose to make of it.
So, lets keep the conversation going, keep being critical, but as we do that remember that we *all* care about this game and so we should try to be supportive of each other even when we don't agree and get angry.
Of frigging course I expect tools and weapons, but I do not expect swords to magically hurt only people outside of my family; them not behaving like weapons do in the game I see as bad design and on top of that, swords as a whole is a poor solution to an issue of favoring your family and being wary of others.
This is worth repeating.
I do think that some people were a bit rude in the way they came at Jason about a change they (rightly IMO) didn't like. I think we should give Jason some credit since most of the changes he makes even some initially unpopular ones are mostly good for the game.
That said. I think the complaints about the game not always staying true to the main vision and attraction: building civilization. Are really important. And it seems like Jason is looking to address these concerns.
The sword is much better, the language update was brilliant. Give me some storage tech, more character models and a way for men to be fathers and I'll be ecstatic. Even if those changes don't come the game remains very good.
The sword just felt like a sideline and it wasn't balanced well. That's expected to happen some of the time with a live development process and without our feedback it would take longer for that balance to happen.
I just wish we could talk about IDEAS that we hate without attacking the people who have those ideas. That includes not calling people who dislike a change to the game whiners.
Spring doors should function like walls, and stay open a bit longer.
I like the window idea, but why make it have a temp detriment?
Agree on all the ideas about trains. Really trains should be used to connect long distances and go almost as fast as cars.
To prevent train cars from being used as storage, just add a cheaper storage option at the same time.
Same thing for shelves. Add walls with shelves AND a tool rack for storing tools outside that isn't as expensive as the wall with shelvs.
So what if we have some sort of marriage so kids could have two parents. (but it would not be at all required to have kids, might offer a fertility boots though)
But if you get married both of you become like kids under 3 to each other and you get 3 min (honeymoon) to absorb each others phonemes?
The way babies are learning language is working so well and so neat. I was born in a town with 3 languages and due to exposure in my youth some people had these fantastic accents but I could understand them, and others we almost understandable but not really.
... and marriage would put you and your kids in the same curse group. So it's not something to just do with anyone.
I don't think, either, that space is the main reason that walls are not constructed more frequently. However, maybe if only walls could be augmented with a cabinet or shelves, the extra storage might be another reason to make buildings. Also, two-story buildings would be cool and useful if space is limited.
A shelf that holds 8 large items in rows of 2? That's a reason to build a building!
I to love dirt road but the simple change of making steaks do floor tiles first would also be a huge help for road building. It's cut the number of click need to position the steak by 4. Huge time sink carefully clicking the steak for each tile 4 times.
It's been in github for a long time and I really hope it gets changed some day.
Yeah the tutorial towns were really fun. Can't last forever, but it's not making anyone miserable.
Also, thanks for the changes and listening.
*shameless bump*
S T O R A G E U P D A T E
Ideas from brain storm going on at the discord:
-You run faster if you have nothing in your hands
-You're running speed is tied to how full you are
-running with a bloody weapon depletes your hunger 2x faster
I just wanted to call attention to this poll:
https://www.strawpoll.me/18007331/r
Take a moment and vote.
Personally (as I said before) I don't think what features should be in the game should be a matter of voting, but I do wonder where most people stand on the sword. We have 44 votes so far. As always, the sample from the forum may not reflect the general player base. I've also shared this in the discord. (it's not my poll, but I'm curious to see how it turns out. )
I see the cooldown on killing someone with a knife as symbolic of the fact that someone would fight back if they were being murdered. If someone attacks another person with a knife even if that person is unarmed they will fight back. Even if the victim doesn't hurt the attacker back it will still take much more effort than using a knife to cut bread. In the game the process takes the same amount of effort as chasing down a loose horsecart.
In dungeons and dragons even a barbarian can be taken down by enough unarmed kobolds. The sword just needs to be balanced so if enough people want to stop it they can regardless of their tech level.
What if, when you are holding a sword you can be hit with ANY tool. So with a hoe, a shovel, an adz, anything. If you are hit 3 times, or 5 times with tools you die.
Increase the length of the cool down with each kill? So you get one swift kill, one kinda fast kill, then you are down to the speed of the knife and maybe it resets after like 20 min. to prevent people from lurking and picking people off when they are gathering wood?
This would also mean that if you wanted to raid you'd need group co-ordination which would make it less of just one jerk running around killing everyone.
---
Another idea is to move the killing functions to the sword only so make the knife for crafting and cooking make the sword for killing people and animals. For get the outsider aspect. I know I've said this before, but it just doesn't make sense to me. So, the sword becomes the new knife. I like the way it looks as a game object. So, just removing it isn't ideal to me.
But, I just don't understand the magic that make it only kill people not in my family.