a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building
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Find me a successful game where major design decisions are delegated to the players which isn't some superficial fluff like 8bit mmo.
Counterpoint, space station 13 is mostly designed by coders coding cool stuff and players migrating to the servers where the new cool stuff doesn't break gameplay
(I agree though)
What happens when a family gets split?
1 life/hour would be pretty awesome... I'd be into that. Sadly most players would not and it would majorly throttle spawns even if they were and it's pretty low population already
Yeah. It's an obvious solution to prevent "/die" from being a way to change to a new life.
The punishment must be the same for both using "/die" and suicide by bear. Accidents are indistinguishable from suicide, so this punishment should cover all deaths. "/die" should be a shortcut to instant starvation and not special in any other way.
But whatever the punishment for deaths is, it shouldn't depopulate the server and it shouldn't make people quit.
We want people to be born in random situations, but we don't want them to be born in situations where they'll just "/die".
I'm aware of two reasons people "/die":
1. They want a specific tech level. E.g. being an Eve, or being able to build a car.
2. They don't want a dying town.
Maybe we can find a way to match people with villages that will be acceptable for them.
But this shouldn't make childbirth too much of a popularity contest between villages.
The life token system could be changed to have six tokens per hour. If you die six times in a row, too bad. Just saying...
It's kind of a problem that there are no other activities.
Maybe an observer mode would help.
Do people from other families see the bad player marks?
Would you like to support numbers? They could be encoded with letters, with a prefix to distinguish them from text.
There's no disconnect between text on the screen and it's supposed meaning, so there's nothing to game. You can't buy it the same way you can't buy money.
You can trick people into trusting you personally, of course. That's an orthogonal problem. But you can't trick people into believing that someone they trust, trusts you, unless the third person already betrayed you.
If the goal is simply to help people keep track of trusted PLAYERS, it sounds like we need some kind of blessing system.
No, it's not just about keeping track of trust. It's a way to trust people you never met before.
Karma is too easy to abuse. As soon as being a Trusted becomes a marginally good thing, people will game the system.
but this mechanic is exactly designed to not be able to vandalise.
I mean, what I'm saying is that IRL notice boards, or whatever the replacement is, also don't suffer from vandalism too much. I wonder why. That mechanism would probably be useful for other things too.
Maybe we need some kind of debt system, but I have no idea how to make it work without prices.
If the whole point of this is to facilitate communication and not to diversify social structures of towns... can't we just have people learn to speak with 60-character bubbles by the age of 16?
That would double the speed at best, even assuming that people can read that fast
Cutting down on the amount of people you need to talk to to establish trust is an order of magnitude improvement. Or, to be more precise, you'll need to talk to one person instead of talking to the whole village.
The question also seems kind of strange, since we don't know that they were even living in town.
You're right. A family is not a culture is not a village.
How do people solve this problem irl, I wonder? A notice board is just as vulnerable to vandalism there.
What are some real life examples of this?
Wait. Can we just have social networks?
"I TRUST ALICE", plus more sane defaults?
Would there be a difference between a social network and a rigid hierarchy?
I guess a social network is not a tree, so it's not as simple.
Yeah, the most immediate problem is that these networks may be falling apart faster than they form.
Jason already chose to include one fix: you follow your mother's leader. This makes sense as the default because someone who is a leader is a little bit more trustworthy than average.
The other critical point is what happens when a leader dies.
The dead guy's leader should probably inherit his followers. This way the network simply loses an intermediate link.
Then a king can just follow a duke before his death as a way to name the successor.
Sometimes a king will die without naming a successor. The dukes then need to find each other and negotiate a way to merge the networks. Not sure how much time this would waste in practice.
You could say that the function of these networks is to centralize trust. The total effort becomes N instead of N^2. And the network can use this trust for self-healing.
Is your title symbolic or is it something more?
It's purely symbolic. It's a way for the leader to communicate to his followers that he disapproves of the exiled player.
The code-less alternative is to tell each follower individually, and that takes a lot of time.
The exact meaning of this "disapproval" is up to the players who use this system. The most obvious meaning is that the exiled player is a griefer.
Btw, thanks for the questions. I think I understand it better now myself!
In post #9 Jason says:
Right. So you're not inheriting followers. You're inheriting leaders. Bob didn't get a follower because his uncle died or something. He got a second follower because he already had a follower.
Bosses can unilaterally exile people under your proposal as I understand it.
Yes, but this doesn't kill them instantly. If the king really hates you personally for some reason - yeah, you're dead. But if they're just an ass and keep exiling people for no reason, they'll get overthrown.
If your boss is an ass, but not the king, you can go to your boss's boss and be their follower instead.
And it's simply not possible to only put such a system in the hands of the right players, so to speak.
I agree. I don't think a perfect system of governance is at all possible.
But I expect real tyranny to be rare and also more fun than starvation.
Sounds like more 'battles', in as much as that term can get said to apply accurately, to become royalty would exist.
I think actual battles will be rare. A battle means that both sides think they can win. A violent king would surely try to crush the rebels in advance. In which case the rebels won't show themselves until the king is dead.
How do you know the villages wouldn't die of starvation anyway?
Remember, Jason talked about such rank getting inherited.
Where, exactly?
DestinyCall, you're not expected to follow your boss's orders just because they're your boss. You can do whatever you want, the game won't force you. But your boss didn't get her authority from some watery tart. Your boss is your boss because you didn't choose to be free or to have someone else as your boss. There must have been a good reason for you to choose her, it's not just ridiculous arbitrary expectations, not just roleplay.
Right now being a king is the game is mostly roleplay. Your power is that of a delusional person who believes himself to be the empreror and is humored by other people. People will bow to you and greet you with a long title, but you can't raise the tax.
But suppose being a king actually gave you power. It wouldn't be just a matter of roleplay anymore. Everyone would want to be the king, not only people who want vanity points. Not everyone would actively try to become the king, but it would be way more competitive. Being interested in the role and slightly talkative wouldn't be enough anymore.
Jason, you could also write the raw number of followers next to the title. I think this is more useful than the depth of the tree.
Mechanic:
My people USE this gives Access to your subordinates
My Duke, Kind, etc own this, gives Access to your current duke king, etcwe transfer Access, not ownership!
if a king exiles a duke. this Duke and all his subordinates lose access.
A Duke exiles a king , the king will lose access to gates owned by this Duke.
A Duke leaving would mean that he and his followers would lose access.
Borrowed vs owned power! :0
Time to plug Samo Burja's excellent posts. That's where half this thread came from. I really like How to use Bureaucracies.
DestinyCall, wouldn't you say the same about the real world? Most people hate politicians, while great teachers are underpaid!
Yet we somehow have billions of people on this planet.
My not very confident guess is that even a clueless leader does better than anarchy as long as she listens to experts and makes >50% good decisions.
The interesting thing is that you won't see your own black speech bubble (only people who have you exiled will see it).
Hm, it could be confusing if Alice sees Bob as an exile, but Charlie doesn't.
I guess there's no way around it. But maybe there's a way to make it clear that the EXILE status is also relative.
Maybe it's not a problem: this does happen IRL. Alice and Charlie are friends, Charlie and Bob are friends, but Alice and Bob are in different social groups and hate each other. And it blows up at Charlie's birthday party or something.
Teacher-student hierarchies are not artificial either.
Um, what? Most schools are basically prisons for children. Teachers are appointed by schools. A student can't become a teacher even if she knows the subject better.
If you seriously think that, you haven't understood a single sentence I've posed in this thread.
That's probably it, sorry.
Do hierarchies have to be an actual game mechanic??? Why can't they be implemented in a RP sense if people want? It's bad enough we have a forced game mechanic preventing players from obtaining resources.
If players decide not to use this, this mechanic will have absolutely zero effect on the game. It doesn't actually do anything except keep track of your relations with other people.
Players can't implement it themselves because communication in the game is super hard. Its primary value proposition is the ability to trust other people more. If this system was run by people, you'd also have to trust the very people that run the system.
Like a rocket: mass -> fuel -> more mass -> more fuel.
When Queen Alice exiles Bob, all of her followers learn that instantly. Without the system Alice would have to send messengers to tell everyone that Bob is exiled. But she'd have to find the messengers first, or even keep them by her side all the time. And this applies to every leader in the hierarchy.
You'd probably need more messengers than you have people. Certainly you'd have more messengers than actual workers. And this even ignores the issue of trusting the messengers.
I don't see how it will work exactly, a leader should be aware what town needs and also there should be a force to execute leaders orders, right? I don't get the point yet, maybe someone can clarify it for me?
Not all useful work is easy to notice, yes. There's no fairy that will reward best players with titles. Proving your worth would indeed be your own job. By convincing other people, showing off your skills, or killing opposition.
About Alec. Note that Alec's most important skill in this case was noticing that the town needs more milkweed. Collecting milkweed is easier. Alec would create several times more value if there were followers that could be given the job of milkweed collectors by someone with authority.
Hmm, I'd prefer to make sure that the minimal implementation will be beneficial as a tool against griefing, at least in theory. This was a fundamental assumption behind the whole idea. (As a consequence, being a follower is beneficial.)
Would you also see a FRIEND status when you and the other person have the same root?
Another question: If your Duke dies, what is your relationship to the King? You are suddenly Dukeless.
A couple options:
1. Name a successor. Your followers will become their followers. Can be a problem if you name someone who isn't in the same tree at all.
2. Your followers become your leader's followers.
Edit: I might have misunderstood the question...
Another, completely out there idea is that you could in theory loan your followers to your other followers, and be able to get them back. Borrowed vs owned power.
Green mark.... this is a point where I struggle. I'm trying to keep the UI in the game from looking too UI-ish, with things hovering over people's heads and stuff. It's supposed to look like a cohesive cartoon.
Mousing over someone to see their Friend or Exile or nobility status is easy enough.
But that doesn't give you an at-a-glance assessment of someone.
Maybe just the exile status needs to stand out visually, because that will be more rare? Could be as simple as a black X on their body or clothing.
Colored speech bubbles? Red for exiles, white for neutrals, green for friends, yellow for leaders, blue for followers?
Also, I think there's a difference between being exiled and not following someone. A visitor from a different land isn't exiled, yet.
Yes, exiled and neutral should definitely be different. Players should know if they can recruit someone.
So if you say, "I FOLLOW MYSELF," then you have no leader, but you're not exiled. You could still get exiled by one more more people, though.
This would allow becoming free every time people with knives leave, without leaving any trace. I think instead you should have to talk to the leader and ask them to free you. Or to ask their leader to become their follower, etc.
I'm also thinking about rankings, like these:
Maybe the rank should depend on the total number of people under you, and not just on it's depth? This would also prevent grandmothers from automatically being Countesses. (Although I think it makes sense for old people to get titles by default. That's basically elders, right?)
In this case wouldn't the best thing to do is change who you serve to be the oldest person around?
Changing the leader to someone who isn't your leader's leader should probably be prohibited too, for the same reason
That would maybe help to keep the flow of the game "Tribal" in the early sequence, and slowly transforms into "monarchic" in the sense that has been discussed in this Topic so far.
Well, even the most primitive tribes have hierarchy. I think this transition will happen naturally: the true king will always wear the crown because he can.
Any experienced player will get penalized thus by some ignorant 1st or 2nd game player who just likes bossing people around. It's certainly not meritocratic with inheritance.
Any experienced player will kill the noob king and the guard, take the crown and force the dukes to pledge their allegiance.
I think you're trying to convince Jason that this thread is a good idea because that's the only way tyranny will possibly work
Are these relationships mutually agreed upon, or can they get imposed on people?
It's probably more convenient to already have a leader when you're born. (Also makes it easier to bootstrap.) But you can change your leader or exile yourself anytime. And with the way exiling would work that Jason described, being exiled by a nobody with no followers wouldn't matter at all.