a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building
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There are two axioms that I think we can all agree on.
1. Yum is always better than meh.
2. Some foods are better than others.
Edit: to clarify point 2: better in the sense of providing much more food relative to the cost in time, resources and most importantly water. Think mutton pie, skim milk, baked potato, stew etc.
Yumming is good. Good foods are also good. Ideally, you want to yum while eating mostly good foods. That's the point Destiny is making here. Omelettes are yummy- they're also free. Turkey is yummy- it's also free.
That piece of corn could be eaten raw or made into popcorn and that would be yummy- BUT, it would also be wasteful when it could be used as animal feed instead, multiplying its value. Compare a bowl of popcorn to a bucket of milk and it's no contest. Skim milk. Whole milk. Butter for your bread. Piglets you could turn into pork tacos or carnitas. All better uses of that corn.
You want to eat raw tomato and onion? That's fine. Salsa and ketchup are yummy, but the base chips and fries to go with them are expensive and time consuming. The point is, think before you yum. A carrot might be yummy, but what else could you do with it that would make a better food? You could bake it into a yummy pie, multiplying the value. You could feed a sheep and make five yummy mutton. See?
Have your first berry, then a berry from a bowl. A tomato, an onion. If some goofball made popcorn take a nibble, but don't make it yourself. Hunt turkey, make omelette, roast rabbits and bake them into pies. Eat wild yums while you're out of town hunting and gathering.
Everyone's guilty of lazy yumming sometimes and that's fine.
It's better to eat good food if you can though.
Give a little bit of thought to what you eat, it's not even that hard.
So this is intended to make it more difficult for griefers to murder- which was never really a problem outside of rare outside coordination over a third party platform.
It also greatly empowers non-lethal griefing, which was always the biggest issue. Someone stealing that precious tank of kerosene and hiding it far outside of town. Taking vital tools like bellows or knitting needles so that productive work grinds to a halt while someone makes a new one, only for it to get stolen again a minute later. The type of griefing that happens offscreen and leaves a mystery as to who the culprit was. Even if you manage to pin the crime on someone good luck making it stick. Most people in this game are oblivious. They don't know how to smith or knit, let alone how annoying it can be to make the items involved. I mean, to begin with seeing is believing and very few people use the zoom mod to see anything outside of their immediate area. Heck even with the zoom mod it's very easy to miss little stuff like this.
A lot of times it was worth it to kill a griefer even if it meant some idiot stabbed or cursed me in revenge. Now even that kind of martyr's gambit is impossible. It's just bad.
This approach completely eliminates the possibility of self-defense while empowering liars and bloodthirsty mothers gossiping around the fire. In a sense, it enables griefers to more directly commit violence by straight-up murdering people while hiding behind a group of helpful idiots. Previously, somebody that murdered became very suspicious. Now they become the leader of a violent mob. Anyone that tries to stop the murder party becomes an enemy of the mob and is killed, helpless to defend themselves.
Players are not as observant or reasonable as you seem to think. A little bit of slander to stir up self-righteous indignation and they'll happily commit murder against an innocent nonviolent person, feeling completely justified in doing so. You're completely ignoring the social aspects of violence.
I'm glad that I'm not european in this thread.
This morning before heading out for the day I sat down to live a life. Just one hour of fun before getting my oil changed and some other boring errands. It was one of the more entertaining lives that I've had.
I was born in the holy land of Zucc, to my mother Maleeyah Quant. We were the translator family, which ended up working out great in the multicultural bell town. A ginger man asked to name me and she let him. You are Satchel Quant, he said. It was one of those placeholder names you see sometimes, like Newana or Stuthi. He just tried to name me Satan. Roleplay is like improv comedy, it involves a lot of participation. Someone sets you up and you go along with it. So today, I was Satan.
Wearing my devil mask, I managed to put together an all-red outfit complete with a devilish red cloak. Spreading masks to my followers, they began to dress in red as well. Quickly, a satanic cult established itself. My mother and younger brother were ensnared by my charisma, and cries of "HAIL SATAN!" resounded. My mother's last word before dying of old age- "Hail!" What a nice woman. With my serpent's tongue and powers of translation the cult quickly spread to members of the ginger and jungle families as well.
While I slowly grew in power, a child was born to the ginger Mensink family. Jesus Mensink. My sworn foe. Named by his uncle Hank, the same man that had named me before. I told that man, "I follow you."
Some people were not happy to see our cult growing in power, and we were quickly targeted. A ginger woman wearing a crown, flashing a knife and warning me not to try anything. A black woman stealing masks and red clothing to hide in the desert. I was attacked and run out of town by a posse, leaving a pithy remark before escaping. When I returned, lies were already spreading between the people. They were quick to hate the devil- though I'd done nothing wrong. Fooolish mortals. How so very... evil of them.
These attacks were repeated, and eventually I was touched by a blade. It was in that moment when a young man came to my aid... Jesus Mensink, dressed in pure white. He healed me, the devil, and I escaped once more in the confusion. I returned to find that the woman who'd been stealing my masks had stabbed him- the savior- as revenge for healing me. I was torn. In an act of mercy he had saved me, his mortal enemy. Could I turn my back? No; I had to save him. So I rushed headlong back into the den of tigers. I healed him and shouted, run! We ran north and he escaped on horseback even as angry calls sounded around us.
I made no move to hide, proud as I was. I stood plain to see in my devil's mask, rebuking the townsfolk as sinners. What fools they were, how black their hearts must be. No matter how I was pursued I always returned again and again to spit vemon in their faces. Slowly, something within me began to change. A moment came, something that I could never have expected. A sudden realization came upon me as I faced my attackers. Your Lord Hank Mensink has died. You now follow Jesus Mensink. The words came unbidden to my lips and I repeated them aloud: "I follow Lord Jesus Mensink."
I stepped out of my exile in the desert and fell upon a knife. A man watching from a distance stepped forward and removed the hood that had been covering his face. There he was, Jesus Mensink. Returned and hiding among the people. With one last searching look he ran to fetch help.
My devil's mask remained firmly fixed. I could no longer remove it.
It played like a fun little parable about the true nature of good & evil, and how our own perceptions play into that. It was also pretty funny. Jesus Mensink, if you're on the forums. Thanks for playing along. It was fun!
In most towns there is at least one person marked as cursed when I'm born. Sometimes there are two. Often, someone will wander into town with black text. About half the time they're griefing. A quarter of the time they're just stupid and probably got manipulated into killing the good guy so I cursed the idiot to get away from them. The remaining quarter are acting normal in the current life but I know they did something worth cursing in the past.
It's not really helping, just highlighting how many griefers there are in this game. There's at least one in every town. Before you just noticed it less.
Combined with the current combat mechanics it creates a really frustrating experience. They're evil, you know they're evil, you've seen them doing evil in this current life. There's nothing you can do about it. Unless they're a complete dope it's 100% impossible to stop them alone, and there are so many clueless idiots that gathering support is impossible.
Some man is lingering in the nursery snatching up babies. I watch him kidnap three children. You are Gay, you are Stuthi, you are Dumas. Giving them rude names and trying to starve them of their two pips before they can jump from his arms. I curse him then flash a knife and make murder mouth so he'll leave. A crowd gathers and I explain what's happening. Most of them even speak the language so they can understand me. He keeps coming back and trying to kidnap. I grab a bow and start hunting- it's easy because he keeps going back to the nursery over. And over. And over.
Eventually I get him and some idiot stabs me. Next life I'm born there again and I curse the woman that stabbed me. It doesn't help. Nothing helps. There are griefers in every town and gullible idiots that go along with them. Some guy is kidnapping babies in the middle of a crowded nursery and nobody cares. I tell them and they see it happening. Nobody cares. It's so stupid. Do I have to lie to get support like they do, is that the only way? It's wrong but it's just SO much more effective when gathering a posse is the only option. Gullible idiots will always believe a good lie over the honest truth.
I had one interesting life where my mother named me "King" and the current elderly king gave me his crown. He followed me and asked everyone else to follow me as well. For the most part, people cooperated or followed voluntarily without me asking. I never asked anyone for anything personally, no clothes or items or follows. Spent my childhood working hard to make a set of nice clothes. Mediated a dispute that could have led to murder. Saved someone's life with pads in the nursery. Basically just playing normally and living right.
When I got older and could form longer sentences I actually started ruling. I'd taken a good look at our town and what it needed in the big picture. Order, if you know how to doctor please come to nursery. They put on a medic vest, loaded up on pads and thread and promised to make more medicine. Order, if you know how to tame horses please report to sheep pen. I gave them a lasso I made from farming milkweed and asked them to get horses for our town. We were a mostly black village and needed rubber for newcomen, not to mention that horses are just great in general. Order, please chop kindling and drop it in the smithy. I knew the smith was a good player from seeing him around and I'd asked him to work on building an engine and oil pumpjack. We had gingers in town that could put the infrastructure in place for oil.
Most big picture stuff deals with long-term goals and survival so I never really got to see how it turned out in the end, but at the very least I was able to coordinate a few key players in advancing our survival. When I finally died we had a handful of new horses, a few buckets of latex and the smithy was furiously firing his newcomen. All of my family members survived to old age that life.
Taken to a logical extreme it results in human extinction. Taken to a personal extreme it results in relatively fit people failing to reproduce. Considering that poorer and less developed people statistically reproduce more and don't care about the resulting suffering. A realistic approach is to support planned parenthood and adoption when parents are less fit. Logically even the wealthy and genetically blessed suffer and so would be better off never being born, but realistically that's the best case scenario. Typing that out now it's a sort of eugenics in a sense.
Unless you're really bitter and committed enough to a doomed philosophy ultimately advocating for human extinction.
It's a tantrum.
Never take sides at first and especially don't target healers if you don't know for sure. Griefers only benefit from pandemonium and confusion. With no healers and a little uncertainty one guy with a knife can kill half the town in the name of justice. I had the past-curse warning and I still second guessed it.
With a first aid kit you can save a minimum of 3 people. I saved 2, then the 3rd died because our fire went out in the melee and I couldn't perform surgery on an arrow wound. The medic vest makes you a target but if you're canny and the griefer is too obvious it doesn't matter. They end up trapped in hostile biomes to starve.
Zucc is especially vulnerable here though you're right, especially without all four families.
The change to hierarchy mechanics is nice, but it would be less confusing if parents and grandparents had the appropriate title applied. It can be misleading when every mother is a Lady or Baroness and grandma is Supreme Empress.
I request a charcoal mixture that can be used to give a player sprite temporary blackface.
I cursed a couple people today. They immediately receive their cursed name.
/happy
If someone griefs a healer, kill them. Easy as that.
I am also an antinatalist. Having children is ALWAYS an evil act. All parents are bad people.
I've been on the other end of this. Gene score means you side with your family always. Even when they're evil, and especially when it's a multicultural town where you have no clue what that ginger idiot with the knife is saying. Heal everyone, always. If they're smart they'll leave town. If not, you'll run out of pads and they'll die.
Killing doctors is ALWAYS evil and worth cursing over.
I'm not a griefer you moron I'm playing devil's advocate.
If anything you're the griefer spending every life as a fertile female alone in the wilderness building roads and letting all your babies starve in the name of autism.
The griefers are already vehemently praising this as a way to identify heroes. Have fun spewing a black F as a baby and being abandoned in the wild, or cursed then murdered. This update really, really only enables more grief, more murder and more chaos. It's a highly antisocial mechanic that sows discord more than anything.
Violating the anonymity of each life is anathemic to the spirit of the game. You're instituting personal identification between lives. Just recently Spoonwood and JasonY were BANNED for this. But you're making it an in game mechanic. What the hell are you thinking?
This was a terrible idea in the original thread and as expected you gravitated toward it right away.
Expect to see a lot more senseless murder in the coming days.
Why are you the bad guy in your story?
For the same reason that unsympathetic people hate police. Ignorance and a general distaste for violence. I don't like violence either, but there's no less-lethal option in OHOL.
Get the town behind you, explain what's going on, and then kill with the law on your side.
There is no law. Mob rule is based on sophistry and hearsay. Making it a contest of who's a better liar only puts honest people at a disadvantage.
if enough people want to kill you, you will die in real life
Yes, but again less-lethal means exist in real life and they're very much skill based. A skilled boxer can beat five men at once and a skilled marksman will always beat just-some-guy with a gun.
not a game about... combat skill, It is... a game about social skill
That attitude is fundamentally wrong and is the root cause behind the all-time most hated changes: tool slots and family specialization.
It harms the doers that actually build and maintain civilization while sheltering the talkers that gossip without contributing. There's no real incentive to work hard in improving your town if it's all undone when one liar rallies a mob of idiots to kill you. That's the sort of experience that causes people to -actually- grief.
It would be nice if:
1: Combat was more skill based.
and
2: Nonlethal measures existed.
Right now if someone wants to kill you the only real options are to either leave town or kill them first. It's entirely intention based. Even the posse mechanic is an extension of personal killing intent. Again, mob rule is a bad idea. Mob rule killed Socrates. Jason has expressed that he thinks "if enough people want to kill you, you deserve to die." That's just stupid.
It's not uncommon for me to encounter new players trying to kill me. Yesterday a guy came up and wordlessly dropped a knife at my feet. He picked it up and dropped it again. Oh, he's trying to stab me. I left and came back later. He had a bow and arrow. He ran up and dropped it at my feet. Oh, he's trying to shoot me. I found him with a sword. He dropped it at my feet. He had two knives and an arrow in his backpack. Clearly a new player trying to murder for no reason. What should I do in that situation? Just stand there while he tries to kill me? I took out a knife and made murdermouth to scare him off. Standing perfectly still and telling him to stop. He runs into my knife and dies. Somehow, I'm the bad guy. Standing there in front of the sword he dropped when he charged me.
I wish there was some way for a skilled player to disarm or disable a less skilled player without killing them. Skill based combat is vital because it allows people to properly defend themselves. Intention based combat only favors griefers. With the same tools and no skill involved a griefer can use them to harm just as well as another player could to help- like with medicine and twins healing each other. When it's skill based it could favor a skilled griefer, but then at least it also empowers skilled townies to stop them.
There's no real skill involved in combat right now and that's a problem.
Edit: by nonlethal measures I mean something like empty handed skills. Throwing snowballs and dribbling items. Closing a door in someone's face. Trampling them with a horse. A right click at the moment of contact to disarm. Something like that.
Consider starting construction on secondary bell towers in punkytown. Zucc world currently has three and they ring constantly, four if you include the sister bell town to the northeast of zucc. They really drown out punkytown's rare bong.
The radios help to encourage recruitment between towns but those are easily sabotaged and difficult to repair. More importantly, even if someone wanted to come from zucc to punkytown they'd find it difficult without a marker.
make some random ass story up to support my side of the argument.
Go play a few lives in zucc world or the northern bell town. Bell towns are usually murder capitals and it's twice as bad as usual today. I was born and my shirtless uncle says to my mother, "I'm going to kill someone." She asks why. He says he's bored. The town needs drama. There are a LOT of bored people killing. A lot of noobs that don't know what's happening and just go along with it. Today it's a battle royale.
Do you ever wear medical aprons? I wear them almost every life. Apparently it's not just a target for griefers, but for people fighting griefers too. I'm a good person getting targeted by evil people and suspected by other good people. When I run up to the scene and someone just got stabbed, am I there to heal a griefer? Are we working together so that after I heal them they can stab their attacker during cooldown?
People are bored and stupid and they love to kill. Nobody knows what's happening and they're all very happy to go along with whoever's pointing a finger. A griefer sees me putting pads in my vest so they can't be dirtied and suddenly hey! That guy's stealing pads! He's a griefer, get him! His twin in the only other medical vest joins him and I can't escape. Even if the liar gets stabbed in revenge his friend can heal him and kill that avenger in turn.
Putting PVP in the hands of mob rule is a bad idea. Full stop. The game has devolved into a battle royale. There is no chance for cooperation. Civilization has broken down. Today I was murdered three times consecutively. Just while hanging out, cooking, making clothes, farming. I stood by a fire for half a minute while I sent a text message; someone attacked me. I ran to my specialty biome. More people came. A posse formed, some girl ran up with a bow. Nobody said anything about who or why, they just joined in on a senseless attack for no reason. I fled town and returned to my hometown. I arrived to someone being stabbed and as a doctor I run up to see why. "He killed a sheep" was the explanation. Then, a boy randomly attacked me- a bystander. I didn't even heal anyone. I escaped, disguised myself in another outfit and returned to witness another murder. Again, someone randomly attacked me. A posse formed instantly and I couldn't escape. It's completely senseless and stupid.