One Hour One Life Forums

Yes, Tramax, I didn't think of a "boss superior" like Floofy rightfully disagrees with, but someone who tries to keep the big picture and reminds of critical things..

Or also someone people could come to to ask like "where do I find rabbits..." etc.

Floofy wrote:

AlanB wrote:

Yesterday, I found an awesome spot as an Eve. A mix of various biomes. A lot of water. Had everything going real quick. One issue: had all boys.

And, I like the fact they were all boys. That's part of the game.

When a game starts getting 'tweaks' to make things easier/predictable you start losing emergent gameplay.

My favorite/most memorable moment was when I had a 'newb Eve' pop me out as a girl, then a few moments later another girl. Our Eve mom died shortly after due to starvation trying to support two of us. We were both still infants, but I grew up just in time to find a nearby berry bush and save myself and my little sister.

We ran around as kids, barely surviving, helping each other until I was 17 and had a baby girl. Then... a wolf got me. We said our goodbyes and my sister grabbed the baby. Went on for a few generations after.

These types of moments will get ruined if the starting/Eve mechanics were to change.

IMHO, it's the unpredictable moments (even in village building) that makes this game good. If things become more predictable and 'easier' then it'll kill the meaning of the game. Which, IMHO, is about the struggles and not the need to build a super-civilization.

I remember a moment where i had a single girl, and that girl actually had ZERO childrens. In my case, i had the opposite feelings as you. I just felt like the game wasted 40 minutes of my time. What's the point of building a town if you're gonna have 0 descendants?

I do agree with you struggles is fun, but when its just IMPOSSIBLE to have descendants because the game decides you get no daughters, that's not fun imo.

Heck, i agree the game should be hard and i'm all for making it harder (especially at later stages of civilization), but it should be hard for the right reasons (for example, the little starving story you described), not because you get all boys. That's not "hard struggle", that's stupidity.

What time? Perhaps there just wasn't enough players on.

But the thing is yellow fever isn't dangerous if you know exactly what you're doing. It's the same principle as why people get mauled by bears in the middle of a city, if you don't know how to counter a bear you end up dying like a goof ball.

If infected with yellow fever - Go stand on an object just like you would with any other animal trying to attack. You just stand on the item and wait out the fever then return to whatever you were just doing before the bite. Once you know how to deal with yellow fever you'll realize that it's incredibly weak.

Neither the food drain nor the fever raise your temp to any sort of dangerous levels while in the jungle. It's more comparable to being naked in the middle of any of the normal biomes which isn't harsh at all. The only time you should die of yellow fever is if you kept your food bars super low which is just silly since there's so much food in the jungle.

Once players learn how to deal with yellow fever the deaths will become rarer as you shouldn't be dying to it in the first place.

The other idea I had for villages and towns... as mum in my fertile ages I often rarely get to do anything but raise my children... give them a tour... only to later see them to have died soon after in the family tree (I am a bad mum?) Most times one of them gives a short second generation.

Tramax wrote:

I like the idea but it would ultimately lead to more kids being born to mums who are on the cusp of menopause. Wouldn't it be better if the 50th percentile of ages that are fertile have the highest priority?

IMO the menopause just shouldn't immediately go hand in hand with the inability to breastfeed. Have that go 5 years later and it be fine.

Regarding standing on a corn kernel to ward off a bear, that is correct, and it is really dumb.

How many players can dance on the head of a pin, though?

Some subtle cheating on the odds would be nice, so that it still feels like 50/50 but in practice gives you a better shot at preserving the lineage. A "safety net" as Tarr put it. Start at 50/50, but for every boy you've had shift the odds 10% towards girls, and vice versa. This would increase the chances of having an evenly split mix of children - which is not what the actual probability would result in, but it's what most people think should happen (since people are generally ignorant of probability), so it won't ever feel like it's wrong.

Everyone complains when they're a statistical outlier (seven boys!) but nobody ever notices or cares if they never become a statistical outlier. Nobody will ever say "Gee, in all of my games so far I've never had seven boys, even though that should happen once every 128 times... something's wrong!"

So we might as well just reduce the chances of being a statistical outlier in the first place.

Sometimes you roll real unlucky on your births. I've personally had a lineage killed at Gen 2 multiple times where all my children were just boys. It didn't matter how good or bad the camp was, how many children I kept, or how mismanaged everything was. The camp was doomed from the time I hit forty because of seven children every single one of them were male.

Bad rng is bad rng but it does happen. All these times where I get super unlucky end up sticking hard instead of those times where I got all girls or nearly got all girls. There probably should be some sort of safety net for mothers and especially Eves to not just get a doomed lineage from just bad luck.

Floofy wrote:

CrazyEddie wrote:

I like the 50/50 ratio; anything else seems like it would be an artificial and arbitrary decision not in keeping with the game's aesthetic.

I like the idea of lineage-conscious players developing norms around protecting females and risking males. That's part of the emerging-gameplay / social-experiment side of the game.

I'm not crazy about the fact that the norms that have emerged include "abandon male babies".

If you look at my example, there was no abandonning of any males. They managed to keep almost all babies ( 6/9 ). But their lines still ended because they got unlucky to have so few babies, and them being all males.

50/50 would be fine if there is enough babies being born. The game shouldn't be a lottery to know if the lone baby you get is a male (end of your line) or a women.

This is a probability issue. Just because the odds are 50/50, you won't wind up with an even mix; it all depends upon the random rolls. If I flip a coin 10 times, I'm not guaranteed any heads, but the odds are good I'll get some.