One Hour One Life Forums

With the recent reactions the the 'Riches to Rags' Update, there is probably no better time to discuss difficulty in games than now. One Hour One Life has had a large skill curve for what is likely its entire existence, however there was an issue of "Well, the town is built now, there is nothing left to do." at the same time. Difficulty seems unanimously controversial no matter what game it's in, whether they be deemed 'too easy', or 'too hard', each player anticipates a different experience, comes from a different background, and more importantly, everyone has a different tolerance for different ways games are difficult. For the sake of the argument, let's assume that players don't face any arbitrary limitations, outside the game itself. Lifestyle is a valid concern, as learning difficult systems, or really a new game in any scenario, does take time, and resources from our day, however we should assume that the players have enough time for a full 'sitting', each time they play.
   
   Let's start heavy handed, there is an eternal struggle between the fresh experience, and the invested player's experience. There tends to be a noticeable difference between the 'Starting Player', the '10 Hour Player', the '100 Hour Player' and the '1000 Hour Player', and so on, though these values are just examples. Hours of playtime also do not account for any external research players conduct on their games of choice, which ranges from none at all, to breaking apart every mechanic of the game, inside and out. With such a diverse range of commitment, how do difficult games draw their appeal to different levels of player?
   
   Many would cite the 'Sense of Accomplishment' in regards to the appeal. Games that are 'difficult' provide a challenge, and there are many that find satisfaction from many different kinds of challenges only games provide. However, not every Gamer is looking for a 'hardcore' experience, and if a player doesn't have the time, or patience to devote to a 'hardcore' experience, then they are likely to not stay for long. This is not a mark against the player, although this is outside the control of any developer, and is based on the player themselves. While developers can provide a bit of leeway, multiplayer experiences do not lend themselves to the ease of adjustment that singleplayer experiences have. Even more so, most multiplayer games pit teams against each other, and procedurally generated content will always have the possibility for 'bad luck' and 'good luck' of vastly different proportions. In One Hour One Life, you find yourself dependent on other players to affect your rate of progression. This is on top of random starting locations, the randomness of players, the randomness of resources, and one of the most incapacitating skill curves in gaming. Even in the best of locations, a player that doesn't know what they are doing is essentially guaranteed to fail until they get a grasp on the game. There are very few ways to circumvent this, as to interpret recipes will typically require a basic understanding of the game beforehand, and managing not to starve until graying is an accomplishment all on its own when starting out. Once the player is able to keep themselves going, they can look to contributing just a bit more than what they themselves need, and thus begins the start of a potential 'successful' family. But how exactly is 'success' measured in OHOL?
   
   Players have made it clear that to 'survive', you do not need to participate much at all in the game's many systems, and it would be completely natural for any player to stumble upon this, once grasping the way temperature affects hunger,  the coveted Desert Cactus Hermit. While to many, it may not be a very enticing playstyle, or appealing, it is nonetheless part of the game, and is currently an option which is available, provided the correct amount of Cacti are available. It only requires the knowledge that such a playstyle exists. This doesn't stop many others from operating off food sources which more directly rely on the player's interaction, and building all sorts of useful objects to help make the group just one step closer to 'maximized efficiency'. Players make choices, and often times they make choices independent of one another, even within the same settlement. This can lead to all sorts of situations, ranging from awful tragic, such as multiple players assuming that Wells have gone unused, to amazingly convenient, like one person getting wild seeds on their own, and bumping into another person who decided to go get dirt, only to be greeted in town by freshly filled water pouches from a third person. While it may seem that at times, doom is inevitable... The game itself provides every tool needed to help push your village forward, and avoid this doom, and it can happen both on purpose, and on accident for both extremes. Success can be measured in a variety of ways, some view that 'breaking records' is the way to get a sense of accomplishment, and the Site supports this by tracking multiple statistics of players, ranging from family tree names and tracking for Generations, to 'Monuments Built', which produces evidence of the overall improvement of the playerbase, as they mark multi-generational projects completed. The game also tracks the number of players who live past the age of 55+ in a life, and may give some insight to how well players are surviving in general. Needless to say, OHOL provides official external resources which promotes certain types of play, while still primarily revolving around player choice. Some may enjoy the life on the Desert Border, some may prefer the task of building up a town, but ultimately, this is player choice. So where else does success come from in this game if not everyone is in it to break records or look at numbers?
   
   Some may say, it comes from building a family, some may say, it's building the perfect settlement, some may say, it's about getting the most hours in the game, some may say, it's about experiencing the game for 'what it is', some may say, they enjoy tearing down what others build up. These are all valid means of 'success', and the game itself doesn't offer this success on a silver platter, the game has no quarrel punishing you for your mistakes, and the mistakes of others. You are in it together with the other players, regardless of what each persons' goal is. This game provides a very Human experience, again, the freedom of choice is completely with the player, and this is reflected in a sense by the 'meta skill level', or rather, the overall ability the community has to use the tools in the game to succeed. Your goals can be decided from any number of things, either you need food, require tool replacements, or perhaps just want to setup a small house with a lock. But by far, there is one goal which seems to work against the grain of the game above all else...
   
   So what is the deal with making something to last forever? Players can be satisfied spending 15 minutes on a multiplayer shooter, be content with a couple hours of a single player experience, and go about their day only approaching a quick, five minute mobile game while on the john. But in a game where life is birthed, lived, and dead within an hour, what is 'permanence'? We need not look any further than the One Hour One Life main page for this game's stance on 'permanence'.

   
   The only 'infinite' thing stated here is 'time and space', but the individual? They are temporary, and so are our experiences. After you die from your settlement, look at what is described, next time, a different person, in a different place, and different time. There is no guarantee that you will ever see your work pay off from a previous life, but others certainly can, and will. Infinite is not something that's necessarily included in the Player's toolkit, and it is not needed, you only live an Hour. If this is not what you envisioned the game would be, then, things will likely not be getting much easier, and the game will be unlikely to progress catering to old playstyles, and not all playstyles are meant to be viable in every location at every time. The game will not hold your hand, that is your mother's job, so to speak, and much like the chance in real life, you may be stuck with a neglectful mother, left to figure things out on your own. You might ask how to make something, and everyone may stare blankly before announcing that they have no idea. You may run completely out of soil for what feels like miles due to an entire family's reckless consumption before you were even old enough to hold things, and be forced to abandon a settlement, or face starvation. Only Time and Space can be expected to be 'infinite'.
 
   So what does this have to do with difficulty? Well, there are a respectable number of players that feel as though the game's complexity does not reward the amount of effort put in after the 'Riches to Rags' Update. Yes, of course the 'solution' is 'just to adapt', and 'work your way through the game again', but understandably, some players dislike this new mandatory upkeep. Some feel as though it took an already 'lacking inventory system', and made it worse with 'no alternatives', and, no matter how varying degrees of sound arguments these are, the feelings are real. There is also a concern that often times, a group's efforts are undone by a single actor, whether it be intentional, such as removing Berry Bushes, and giving your mother a fair how-do-you-do with a knife, or the drastic consequences for 'casual mistakes', did you... Accidentally place that snare on a regular rabbit? Whoops, that resource is gone for good... Did you just take the last water from the Well? Your village may never see it hold water again... Did you poke a bear cave when you were a child that was left out, and unfed? Well it's their problem now... Did a mom seemingly hide in the corner with all the pies, and begin keeping every baby she could? Well let's hope your village has the nearby resources to accommodate this influx of people... Did you step on a Snake while you were out a couple biomes away getting an emergency cartload of Water? I think we see where this is going. These factors are Human elements, and have by far the largest impacts on your experience. Where you dislike one task, or lack the know-how, there may very well be someone very willing, and capable to fill that role for you, so you can do what you know, and enjoy doing. You may not always have it your way, but games are a choice at the end of the day, and this game is all about choices, especially the tough ones.

   I hope this at the very least sparked some thought on difficulty, as it's a very real element of gaming, and is part of the creative freedom behind making a game. Games, like all mediums, have to balance their appeal for their target audience with what the designer envisions, and if that vision is a game that is harder? There is always room to improve, and there is a strong theme of player choice, and a focus on the impact of those choices, choices that I find quite unique every time I play. Your experience, and way of taking it may be vastly different, and that is perfectly normal, regardless of your position, feel free to talk below about your experience with 'Difficulty'. The purpose of this is not to make game suggestions, but to rather further the argument of Difficulty in general.

Over the past week we have planned a city. Over the past three days, we have been working almost non-stop on the project, and were nearing completion. The exact layout will be posted later, but it had a collective expertise behind its creation, and had taken many hours to complete not only the setup, but hauling the resources needed to create it. It was created in a way which, when properly run, would be incredibly efficient. Each Farm Plot had the nearby Water Capacity in the form of Wells, and Cisterns, including the many Berry Bushes, 108 to be precise. 49 Berry Bushes were dried out, and many Wells were dried out, in less than two hours. Many others had berries picked, despite entire cart loads of berries being in plain sight only a few paces away. All of the Wheat in the settlement was cut down, despite the Seed Wheat being separated from the row dedicated to being cut. No one made compost from the cut Wheat, or even used the cut Wheat for Pies, it simply was Cut, and left there for the entire duration. A bunch of random people appeared and destroyed days of work without even knowing it, and likely without even considering it.

The closest description for what occurred is that a massive flock of locusts flew in, and chewed all of the food away from the settlement, and destroyed all the useful crops they could. They started to try and tell us how to run the settlement, giving advice such as "Don't pick the last Berry.", and claiming "I will be the Leader of this town, Mushrooms for everyone!". At the time this was going on, I was too young to type enough for anyone to comprehend my message. By the time I had aged to be able to speak, I noticed being able to only say two simple words at a time is rather detrimental to getting any sort of effective message across, let alone explaining WHY the settlement needed to be run a certain way, especially something as simple as not picking from multiple berry bushes with six berries on them, which are needed for both Mutton, and Compost, and you cannot put together Six Berries any other way.

We only have so much time to effectively speak, however the 25 Minutes of 'effective' speech is horrible for developing Oral Tradition, which is our only option outside passing on general concepts such as 'f for food' on the forums and discord. With no way to leave any Laws, any organized attempts crumble quicker in obscurity than the many hours and days it takes to build them. We have outpaced the limited speech in the game, and desperately need more effective ways to communicate. We do not have the time to teach the population over and over again, but it is also an essential part of having a city. Without order, and law, we have to resort to mass removal of the uneducated populace, or else more destruction than any amount of Murder could cause will happen. It was so bad that when there was actually a murderer in town, their efforts to kill us ended up benefiting the Settlement greatly, and helped prolong the inevitable self destruction of the Public.

If you got killed off from a really nice town where every 12 Berry Bushes had a Well, with quite a few cisterns, the whole place was walled, and had Milkweed as far as the eye could see, that you didn't build, then apologies, but without even knowing it, you were destroying days of organized effort, and it was very disheartening to come back after a long day and see everything falling apart because we stepped away for what felt like only a couple hours. I observed as people quickly undid any efforts I made to maintain the damage done, but no matter how fast I could grab water, I saw the Berry Bushes I left, the 108 of them all loaded with 6 berries each, crumble and languish into half of them dying out, when before it was uncommon to see even a single Languishing bush. I watched as they seeded every soil plot away in half of the Carrot farms, I watched as the Wheat was senselessly cut down, seeing people stand and eat, consuming and not replacing what they took, as I ran around as much as I could trying to keep up. The Bears, the Knives, asking you all to go North to the towns we setup for the Public... We didn't have much choice.

Maybe if there were a way to leave rules, this could have been avoided. We can only do so much to leave everything needed close by, and we can only design it so balanced, but if there's not anything to tell you which plot is seeding... No amount of clever design can save you.

For an example, I will show you a few of our modular designs. Not every station was completed yet, but again, this takes multiple days of effort.

(x = Empty Slot, useful for Baskets)
Berries:
Bush Bush Well Bush Bush
Bush Bush    x  Bush Bush
Bush Bush Cistern Bush Bush

Carrots:
Carrot x Well  x Carrot
Carrot x Seed x Carrot
Carrot x Cistern x Carrot

Wheat/Compost (Wedged between two of the above Carrot Farms):
Fence Fence Seed Fence Fence
Wheat Wheat Wheat Wheat Wheat
Compost Compost Compost Compost Compost