Where did the coordinates go?

Naeght · 2018-05-09 13:13:21

I like what someone said about abandonment not counting towards the lineage ban. It would be a shame to be reborn eventually and lose the opportunity to check out the developed village (especially after the timer goes up to 24 hours).
Someone (for another reason) say we could consider babies that died unfeed, could coun't as abandoment. In that case it doesn't ban the lineage. Dont know if it's possible, but something along those lines would be nice. I enjoy the direction the game is going, but beeing reborn into your own village shouldn't be almost impossible.

pein · 2018-05-09 15:12:15

well just reborn to city from 3 hours ago where i was killed
was 39th age kid with one feeding, between a few thousand other babies, i figured i can make backpack on my own. so terrible lag i had to eat at 5 bars to stay alive,went out to get the load off the farm
when i return, still no food lady ate the two last berries from near the camp brushes when i was trying to take it, both, so i ran to desert, found two cactuses, never even close to the snake, but i died to a snake somehow

thats about it, your legacy, a stressed run 3 hours later where nobody did anything special in last 2 hours later, no extra walls, no extra tools, just carrot mongering, and ofc i barely survive just to run around in wild starving, now 3 more hours to see it

Last edited by pein (2018-05-09 15:14:07)

Joriom · 2018-05-09 16:57:40

Telafiesta wrote:

This limits game-play again, what you describe as the more intriguing and interesting version of the game got old to me 200 lives in. Returning to builds is really all I had left without cord's, me and several of the longest playing people now play less than ever... I hardly join the forums you mostly find me on discord, but this update disappointed me.

Welp, I think most of people responding here on forums miss the point of this game completly.
On the other hand, Jasons is missinng the point of "fun gameplay" with his game design and vision - thats true too but not important.

As for game:
OHOL is not Minecraft. If you want to spend real time weeks or months building that castle out of dirt - you know what to play.
OHOL is not Counterstrike. You can't brag about 10 headshots in a row. Instead of being impressed - people will hate you.
OHOL is not Sims. If you want to see famili acumulating wealth, having kids and seeing every single one of them grow and interact with the neighbourhood - if you want any kind of long lasting attachment - its NOT for you.
OHOL is not Age of Empires nor Settlers. You're not here to design the perfect town and craft strategies for ages to come.

OHOL is almost an MMO. But every hour you get hard reset of your character stats and try to go as far as you can with stuff you find on the way. The more stuff WE AS PLAYERS make, the more you can hope to find in your next life.

OHOL was never meant to let you continue your builds. The idea was to throw you to a random location with random people where you need to learn everything from ground up over and over again and NOT CARE about what happens to it later on. Is it a good game design? No. It it unplayable? No.

What we did with coordinates spoofing and some players with focusing on PvP so much - we made this game stray out of its way. We're forcing Jason to limit us more and more just so we play the game HE wants us to play. It forcing playstyle on a player a good thing? No. Does it make game unplayable? No.

We had to much freedom in game and we didn't have enouch players for game to take it's form it was menant to achieve. Because of that we started bending our ideas of how game SHOULD look like to our own likings - forgetting what game WAS SUPPOSED to look like in game developers mind. Is his idea popular? No. Was it meant to be very popular? No.

I believe OHOL will never follow the "mainstream" opinion of how it "should look like". If you don't like it now, you probably won't like it even more in the future and you managed to convince yourself its something its not.

As for Jason:
As Jason already stated, he does not want to be next Notch and OHOL to be next Minecraft. Its his fun project he wants to see finished and possibly giving some profits.
It will never become a hit like League of Legends or PUBG. OHOL will probably never go into tens of milions of copies sold - it has terrible flaws in the game design. It's basically NOT FUN and will never be for the majority of gamers. Mundane, repetitive work in hardcore mode. Only for connoisseurs of this specific playstyle.
It caters more to a niche of players. And as far as I understand - Jason is fine with that, right?

P.S.
Spending 2 hours on single forum post, double and triple thinking over every word has a downside - you forget some of the things you wanted to say and examples you wanted to use. Sorry. I tried.

Telafiesta · 2018-05-09 21:46:01

this is all true and you are not wrong and can't say Jason vision is wrong. I still enjoy the game just less, I also feel like I pvp more now that I play one server one its in self defense or "town defense" and i have see at a pace of one build per day be trolled by a member or another welling off a door etc. but I don't think the player base is big enough that this is a problem yet. every towns like a saloon ready to ready to explode when they hit x knifes.

Roolstar · 2018-05-10 14:39:15

FeignedSanity wrote:

I have to disagree with you Roolstar. Yes, it helped fix the repeat griefer problem, but that was more of a bonus in my opinion. It really gave the game some much needed direction and impact in my opinion. Now your city is much more important considering you can't just suicide and boringly trek your way back. It gives the bell a purpose other than being a major annoyance. I think it is short sighted to say that this was only focused on solving the repeat griefing problem. This, along with the lineage cool-down are very welcomed additions.
And as far as the mentality of, who cares what happens to the city cause I probably wont be back to see it, is entirely lost on me. I don't spend an hour tending the carrot farm just so I can have food when I come back, I don't forge a plethora of tools and risk someone getting nervious about the steel file I'm making just so I we can have mutton pies and wool clothes when I come back. I've recently started playing the game more with others and respawning back repeated, and I can see the appeal. But that's not what shines about this game to me, that's just a kind of nifty feature.

I agree totally. That's the game I signed up for a s well.

I have never been the player who would suicide to get back to "my" colony (back when I played on the main server), because that's how I like this game to be; a new genre, not another Minecraft or Don't Starve type, where you experience "selfless contribution" to a community whether you ever see it back again or not. I've always defended Jason's philosophy behind this.

But even more important for me was Jason's past opposition to "implementing server side solutions to problems that the community should fix by themselves" (not an exact quote). Like disabling killing other players as a game feature, or moderators banning repeat offenders, or distinguishing between new and experienced players... All ideas suggested in the past and rightfully rejected based on the core philosophy behind this game.

I always admired, and sometimes defended, his stance on this and his statements that "this game would be shaped by the decision of the players, design and restrictions should be minimal, and system intervention should be ideally non existent" (not an exact quote)

But today however, I see a Jason "forced" to start bending core principles to deal with repeat griefers (of all things).

Ideas like making it impossible to find a previous colony by coordinates, and implementing a cooldown to spawn back into a previous lineage were surely one of the first things any designer of such a game would've had to consider withing the 3 years of development. And in my opinion, they were dismissed based on the principles stated above.

That's why in my precious post, I considered that OP's reasons behind implementing them today to be "rationalizations" and not the real reason behind them. I find that griefers pressure finally got to him. And this worries me.

Someone likes to find their old colony using coordinates or whatever else should remain their choice to make.
You want to be born somewhere, wait to be old enough, gather or make resources and tools needed for the journey, then set out on a long journey to find your long lost colony, should remain a choice that some players want to make, and an experience some would find fulfilling.
Even repeat suicide to get there should be as well.

But now both those "decisions" are impossible to make by "game design". This is making the game less and less a experience shaped by players like it promised to be, and we will see more and more of those restrictions in the future.

Just to be clear: those 2 changes are perfectly fine for the way "I" like to play the game, and they may even solve the problems they set out to solve; but I will always defend other players preferred play style even griefers.

Even though I share your mentality in tending the carrot farm and crafting tools for "others" to use and not for me to come back to find them, now I can't feel proud/fulfilled/ashamed/guilty for having that mentality, since now the server is making the decision for me.

I was hoping to one day start seeing posts on this forum with titles like "Playing this game changed me: from griefer, to selfish player, to selfless contributor" or even the opposite. And I honestly think Jason cares about this even more than I do.

But now there's less ownership of your in-game actions and less credit for playing a certain way versus the other: now everyone is "forced" to contribute to a community they might not see again. And the only choice we'll eventually have is to either play this game or not; just like any other game.

Although this makes me sad, but it also interests me: players are not the only one evolving and changing because of OHOL, Jason is as well.
He is learning to become a "god" as I call it; and I don't mean that in an insulting kind of way. But he really has some tough choices to make concerning his "creation", and I sincerely wish him the best of luck.

My signature holds both a description of my view, and a prediction for the future. I'm certain I'm right about the former, and I hope I'm wrong about the latter.

Sorry for the long post, but I'm sure you know by now what a rambler I am

Last edited by Roolstar (2018-05-10 14:44:40)

jasonrohrer · 2018-05-10 15:19:32

I don't want to prevent you from ever finding your old colony.

However, I want it to be HARD to do this.

Coordinate hacks were never "part of the design" or something that I intended to "leave up to the players." It was a simple oversight on my part.

Here's another oversight on my part: Through hacking the client, you can currently figure out which lock is which, because that info isn't hidden in the protocol. I have plans to deal with this and fix it, but I'm not leaving it up to the players to exploit. It's just a bug. Coordinate hacks were a bug.

Why is discovering your village interesting or rewarding if you can do it automatically through coordinate hacks? What kind of "story" is that? I was born, I grew up, and then I bee-lined through the wilderness for 15 minutes until....

And baby suicide is the same thing. What kind of story is that? It's just one weird, game-breaking trick to auto-find your old colony. And it makes for a terrible story.

Compare this to bell towers in a game without coordinates. It rings.... whoa, what was that? Even hearing it can be special. Then following the home arrow that it gives you will lead you where? Who knows? It's a great adventure and mystery. You may die along the way. The journey may be too long to complete in one lifetime. But if you get there, it's a magical moment. You will probably cheer out loud when you finally see that town.... And that is a great story. And you may go through other lifetimes without ever hearing a bell at all.

This is NOT a game that is supposed to be interesting for 100s or 1000s of lives.

However, it IS supposed to be a game that will give you an experience that no other game gives you. I'm sure all of you have had these experiences. I certainly have.

This game solves one of the age-old problems of video game design: how can we have meaningful, emotionally-impactful, emergent stories about human beings inside a video game?

Have you ever loved anyone in a video game before? I've seen so many people saying, "I love you" at the end of their lives before they die, and I don't think they are just role playing.

My job is to keep turning that knob up until it finally breaks off.

Now, as for whether this experience of relationships inside a game is "fun," well, I don't know. It's certainly compelling. Sometimes overwhelmingly so. But it's worth experiencing, if you care about video games as a medium. And I think it's worth $20.

But if you do it over and over and over, hundreds of times.... well, you rub that spot raw, I suppose, and feel nothing at the end of your life anymore. If you want to keep playing after that, what are you going to get out of the game? That part will get better over time, as I add more and more stuff to the game, because it will take many lifetimes to see everything. That is already the case.... I'd say there are probably 5-10 lifetimes worth of stuff to see and do in the game for the average player. That's worth the cost of admission right there. But once I hit 10K objects, it will be more like 50-100 lifetimes worth of stuff to see and do.

I said I'm not making Minecraft. But I didn't say that I didn't want to make a hit game. OHOL is already a minor hit, and the biggest financial success of my 15-year career so far. I think it could be pretty popular. But popular BECAUSE it does these things that no other game does, not because it copies Minecraft.

Making a family tree browser is an example of me continuing to push the game in this unique direction.

And for everyone referencing Don't Starve..... that game is a permadeath game where you routinely lose EVERYTHING when you die.... my game at least gives you a rare chance of seeing your village again, either through bell-tower pilgrimage or eventual rebirth there.

But permadeath is the lineage that this game grows out of, as a design tool that amps up the meaning and emotional impact of each experience. The original idea for OHOL was that everyone would get to play a single life, and that was it. You pay $5 for this insanely amazing hour that you will never forget, and then at the end of it, you say goodbye forever. Literally ONE LIFE, and only one life.... imagine that game for a minute...

And yes, "permadeath games get old." But every game gets old. Some linear game gets old as soon as you beat it. But you don't think of it that way, because you know when to stop playing.

An endless game has a problem: you don't stop until you get sick of it. That means that everyone always leaves the game with a bad taste in their mouth.

But along the way, before you get sick of them, those permadeath games can be some of the greatest game experiences imaginable....

FeignedSanity · 2018-05-10 16:11:04

Roolstar wrote:

Sorry for the long post, but I'm sure you know by now what a rambler I am

That's quite alright Roolstar, and I've never actually taken you for a rambler. You seem more like a "say something when I have a reason to say it" kind of person. I think your points are valid and I'd like to make counter arguments, but it seems Jason has already covered most of what I was going to say. Although some of the things he's said has me a bit concerned now LMAO. However, I still don't think any of the decisions made so far force you to play a certain way. If you want to be an dick and just live to ruin other peoples lives and experiences, you still very well can. And that makes the people that actually decide on the alternative still feel a sense of agency. I just don't think anything productive can come from complete anarchy.

I do agree that it is very interesting to see how this game changes and grows. I guess we'll both be enjoying the show

FeignedSanity · 2018-05-10 16:30:42

jasonrohrer wrote:

This is NOT a game that is supposed to be interesting for 100s or 1000s of lives.

The original idea for OHOL was that everyone would get to play a single life, and that was it. You pay $5 for this insanely amazing hour that you will never forget, and then at the end of it, you say goodbye forever. Literally ONE LIFE, and only one life.... imagine that game for a minute...

Wait...so I wasn't meant to sink over 100 hours into this game so far? So it's not your intention to make a game you could enjoy over and over? That kind of has me concerned for where the future might go, but I'm definitely still interested.

And that would be a very interesting game, but I'd probably stay away from it because I feel like it'd just frustrate me and bum me out lol. It would be like the really awesome show you watched and wanted a second season of, but it never came. I definitely get things needing an ending, and you not wanting people to get bored, but isn't that what continual updates are for? To keep the game fresh and interesting? I guess it's an age old debate of either having too much and getting sick of it, or not getting enough and be left wanting more.

TLDR: I'm glad you decided to change game direction. Philosophical thoughts. I think every story being different keeps repeat hours from ever getting boring.

YAHG · 2018-05-10 16:36:26

jasonrohrer wrote:

he original idea for OHOL was that everyone would get to play a single life, and that was it. You pay $5 for this insanely amazing hour that you will never forget, and then at the end of it, you say goodbye forever. Literally ONE LIFE, and only one life.... imagine that game for a minute...

I DESPISE subscription based games like that, never buy anything like that. Also imagine how pissed off people would be when starved as a baby..

Turnipseed · 2018-05-10 16:49:38

YAHG wrote:

jasonrohrer wrote:
he original idea for OHOL was that everyone would get to play a single life, and that was it. You pay $5 for this insanely amazing hour that you will never forget, and then at the end of it, you say goodbye forever. Literally ONE LIFE, and only one life.... imagine that game for a minute...
I DESPISE subscription based games like that, never buy anything like that. Also imagine how pissed off people would be when starved as a baby..

Yeah glad you didn't go this way i woulda never played... probably why you decided against it...

Izzytok · 2018-05-10 17:06:00

YAHG wrote:

jasonrohrer wrote:
he original idea for OHOL was that everyone would get to play a single life, and that was it. You pay $5 for this insanely amazing hour that you will never forget, and then at the end of it, you say goodbye forever. Literally ONE LIFE, and only one life.... imagine that game for a minute...
I DESPISE subscription based games like that, never buy anything like that. Also imagine how pissed off people would be when starved as a baby..

It would give every life meaning, and I'm guessing people would take way better care of eachother. On the other hand such a game would in my opinion never reach critical mass. I certainly wouldn't buy that game lol.

Also it wouldn't really be subscription based if you only payed once... Is a burger a subscription based food? No you just buy it once, eat it, then if you really want another you have to buy a new one. A completely different burger. You can't keep eating the same burger if you only keep paying for it.

Anyhow I think this update is a step in the right direction. Baby suicide and people running off to their old bases shouldn't be a thing. Imagine a kid in real life do that; suiciding because he doesn't like you or the situation he was born in; or a kid desperately gathering supplies like a madman as soon as he can walk, just so he can walk in a straight line for 15 years to his previous life. That would be crazy as shit. I wasn't sold on this game because I wanted to build a base over the course of a few lifetimes. I like that every life is different, and that I don't know the people I play with. The lineage browser Jason is promising is really the only thing I want in this game (appart from tech tree upgrades lol). I'd like to see what happened to the place I helped build. I want to see what happened there without my interference.

Last edited by Izzytok (2018-05-10 17:06:54)

bobito2000 · 2018-05-10 17:27:40

I love this update, I never used coordinates, but I was starting to think I should because I saw so many people coming back to villages and picking up old projects. If I wanted this kind of experience, I would play another game.

I love the idea of having to make this hour matter, trying to get the most of it. When you're about to die and you know there's no coming back to this village, it is sometimes genuinly emotional.

I remember the time where I spend most of my life with my brother hunting and making clothes... after a while we both got really old and just stopped working to talk a bit and reflect on what we did and say goodbye. I never truly had this in other games, because we would just respawn, or do it until we got bored! Same thing, at some point there was a famine in the village, and it was devastating: everything we worked on would be gone forever! If we could just respawn and "restart" the village, the famine wouldn't matter.

However we do need some kind of way to see what happened after we die. Nothing crazy, but a simple family tree browser would make the trick. If you implement this it would be amazing and we would really feel like what we did matter because people were able to keep on living in the village.

Thanks for this update Jason!

YAHG · 2018-05-10 17:32:39

IF people want coordinates, there are stickied guides on
how to set up your own server...

Afaik server side mods do not require changing your clients,
so you can set it up so you always spawn at your death site
or 0,0 or whatever the fuck you want. Expecting the main server
to be set up the way you want instead of how the person in
charge of them wants is silly people <3.

I have run into plenty of friendly people who would probably help
you set up your own servers if you asked around in the discord etc.

Angel Carrillo · 2018-05-10 20:23:16

bobito2000 wrote:

I love this update, I never used coordinates, but I was starting to think I should because I saw so many people coming back to villages and picking up old projects. If I wanted this kind of experience, I would play another game.
I love the idea of having to make this hour matter, trying to get the most of it. When you're about to die and you know there's no coming back to this village, it is sometimes genuinly emotional.
I remember the time where I spend most of my life with my brother hunting and making clothes... after a while we both got really old and just stopped working to talk a bit and reflect on what we did and say goodbye. I never truly had this in other games, because we would just respawn, or do it until we got bored! Same thing, at some point there was a famine in the village, and it was devastating: everything we worked on would be gone forever! If we could just respawn and "restart" the village, the famine wouldn't matter.
However we do need some kind of way to see what happened after we die. Nothing crazy, but a simple family tree browser would make the trick. If you implement this it would be amazing and we would really feel like what we did matter because people were able to keep on living in the village.
Thanks for this update Jason!

There is a game like that Bobito2000, it's called Nirvana - Game Of Life. You get to see who you were in the previous lives, and you play as a soul just like in this game. Though it has a different intention though.

Joriom · 2018-05-11 08:35:05

Just a quick sidenote...

jasonrohrer wrote:

And for everyone referencing Don't Starve..... that game is a permadeath game where you routinely lose EVERYTHING when you die.... my game at least gives you a rare chance of seeing your village again, either through bell-tower pilgrimage or eventual rebirth there.

Don't Starve is not permadeath anymore. First they added some kind of monuments at which you can revive once per world. The when SOME players were still bitching about how it "sux to loose everything" they added easy mode where you can revive as much as you want.

Natural progression of so many games that cater to masses - make it easier and easier over time and model the game after requests, not game initial designs.

pein · 2018-05-11 12:06:53

limiting suicide it just means that the game becomes less, all you say is possible by suiciding if you get to the same town. it wasnt a high chance to get back by that. yea, coordinates are unfair, but everything looks kinda the same and map is soo huge, you cant really say where you are, my longest journey was one game when i found two places i been before, and this covered like 10 biomes, the other ones were like 4-5 biome. naturally you will never really be able to even tell where you are related to other town, just by experience, even if map stays the same. i would also like a minimap, sometimes i remember the map, but a small colored biome map would make it easier, clearing fog of war is always nice.

my problem is that some of your implementation work in theory but not by the gameplay, its not trully random. repetitiveness comes from the fact, that sometimes there is only one thing to do to advance further, only one way, distance to it is known, its not fun, hunger management its not fun, having a big requirement of branches and no green biome there is not fun. getting born into an empty biome with minimal water and no food is not fun. i can see it when i die in 10 minutes, cause the eve made her farm inside green biome. Not fun. There is no skill based pairing for players. There is no food based spawn rate, there is no solution to get food sometimes. I rather not play 10 minutes to die anyway, its no a fun experience, not a story, or one that you already experienced. adding content is nice, but replayability and randomness would be even better. you can do both. add similar things so people can have a choice. a plant grows faster than the other? "lets plant that so we survive" this is a choice, at least people can make a choice not simulating their own life

Roolstar · 2018-05-11 13:10:09

The hardest part about discussion in forum threads is "projection" based replies.

By that I mean, replying to someone not about what THEY meant by THEIR post, but about what YOU would've meant if YOU had posted what they did.
(me included btw)

What I'm saying is simple, and even naive in its idealistic reasons:

<< The less "choices" players feel they are allowed to make by game mechanics, the less meaningful (and unique) the OHOL experience would become >>

No argument counters that directly, however it may not always be wise to uphold this principle.

That is why I say frequently "Jason has tough choices to make".

I may not agree with his choices sometimes, but I try to never say they are "bad choices", not even in my mind.

Same with players, if you feel that finding your way back through coordinates is "not a meaningful experience", be aware that what you're actually saying is "this is not a meaningful experience TO YOU".

Cause what is "absolutely" meaningful about griefing then? or tending the farm for 60 mn? or bulding a room in the middle of nowhere? Or writing "DICKBUTT" on a sign?

Players decide what's meaningful to them, and they always will. And that is what fascinates me about OHOL really, not the new hot item to craft.

I played OHOL is many different ways, and that's what makes it unique FOR ME. I would've had to play 10 different games to have all the experiences I had with only one!!

Maybe I want to spend 12 play hours today just to go back to the same colony I started by myself; challenging myself to get to sheep and infinite soil ignoring all babies and not having any help. Possibly making me appreciate other's help a lot more as a result!

Maybe I want to spend 10 hours just spawning randomly in colonies and filling the different gaps in them feeling I "saved" them all. Satisfying my God complex or nourrishing my sense of self-worth.

Maybe I want to only be a mom caring for babies today, showing them around the colony, telling them stories, seeing them type L-O-L or X-D and building bonds with them that makes them gather around me before I die telling me they will not forget me (Possibly even reading a story they wrote about me on the forums)

Maybe I want to be the guardian of the "STAR" family today, spawning over and over in that colony and defending it against that pesky griefer who's determined to destroy it. Making my life a challenge to identify him over and over again, then neutralizing him, or dying in the process and coming back to try again.

<< The more choices you eliminate by design, the more evolution opportunities you miss. >>

The only chance for this game to exceed even your expectations, Jason, is for you to let it find its own way. I may refer to you as God as an analogy, but that's a fictitious one, and I don't think you identify with that role.
A role closer to home would be that of a FATHER; who can get so worried about their child that he may become overprotective and over involved in their life.

I'm the guy on the forum telling you, TRUST YOUR CHILD, you raised (coded) him well. He's becoming stronger with each obstacle he's overcoming ALONE. And the more help you provide for him, the less strength he gains from his achievements.

I do love you all

Last edited by Roolstar (2018-05-11 13:24:38)

jasonrohrer · 2018-05-11 15:07:02

Joriom wrote:

Don't Starve is not permadeath anymore. First they added some kind of monuments at which you can revive once per world. The when SOME players were still bitching about how it "sux to loose everything" they added easy mode where you can revive as much as you want.
Natural progression of so many games that cater to masses - make it easier and easier over time and model the game after requests, not game initial designs.

Yeah, and I'm also aware that the multiplayer version of the game is softened in this regard quite a bit.

However, the game became a huge hit long before it was softened in this way.

I'm sure they softened it because they wanted it to be even more of a huge hit than it was.

Anyway, I'm not that kind of designer.... if anything, I tend to make my games harder and harder over time....

jasonrohrer · 2018-05-11 15:51:34

FeignedSanity wrote:

Wait...so I wasn't meant to sink over 100 hours into this game so far? So it's not your intention to make a game you could enjoy over and over? That kind of has me concerned for where the future might go, but I'm definitely still interested.

This is complicated.

The game wasn't designed to support 100 hours of boredom-free play. 100 hours is a lot. I'm not saying it's against my vision or anything, but I didn't set out to make a game with that much depth, and especially not right now, before all the content is in.

However, I've seen that many people have played 100+ hours. I've also heard from a number of those people that they are growing sick of the game. Yeah? Really?

The current record for human (non-bot) play is 411 hours over 39 days. That is over 10 hours a day every single day....

Now, if that person complains to me that the game is getting boring, it's not really my fault, right? I mean, at 4 cents per hour, I think they got their money's worth. The game does what it says on the tin.

What I did set out to do was make a game where anyone could dip into it an experience the most amazing, humanistic, emotional experience that they've ever had in a video game.

And when I look at the other end of the stats----the people with the longest average game time----I see that has this has happened for a few special people.

There are a handful of people who have played the game exactly once for exactly one hour. Getting born, getting taken care of, and living to old age in some village. And then never playing the game again. I guess they feel like they got their money's worth in that one precious hour. I mean, really, that has to be the greatest first hour of video game play ever. Their parents probably taught them stuff and everything. One of these people even wrote a review, even though they never played again after that first life:

My favorite part about this is it forces everyone to work together to survive. People just work together and cities grow out of it.

Anyway, that is the original, real target of this design. How do we make a game that can give you an absolutely amazing experience, even if you don't play it for very long? An hour is do-able for almost everyone. Being born as a baby in someone else's care alleviates the need to slog through a tutorial before you can start playing. You kinda hit the ground running, your parent gives you a job, and then when you grow up, they may even tell you how to take care of your own baby. You get old with some grandkids running around, and then die a peaceful death at old age.

So that is a game that pretty much any human being on the planet would want to play, at least once.

Most people don't play video games beyond Candy Crush. They understand that "real" video games demand dozens of hours of their time, and they don't have or want to give that amount of time or dedication to a game.

But an hour for an amazing experience? That's doable.

So that's the real target market: everyone.

That said, the game can't reach everyone unless it picks up steam through regular game players first. And I get that regular game players measure value in terms of the number of hours spent in a game.

Also, I'm not making some kind of casual, throw-away game. I guess what I'm trying to do is make a hardcore game for everyone. Most people, even if (and especially if) they have an amazing first hour, will play more than one life. Let's say they play 5-10 hours.

But once you pass about 40 hours.... I'm pretty sure it's all kindof the same. Is a 400-hour game better than a 120-hour game?

Also, here's the overall average across the playerbase:

Average: 12.6 hours spent in 89.8720 games

Joriom · 2018-05-11 16:42:29

jasonrohrer wrote:

However, I've seen that many people have played 100+ hours.
I've also heard from a number of those people that they are growing sick of the game. Yeah? Really?

And I believe those are people who will be the most vocal part of the community seeing how they actualy spend their time in game or "around" the game (streams, youtube videos, discord, forums). Thats the group that will develope tools, post ideas, suggestions, test new features, wite guides but also throw hate, get salty about updates (hello), grief, get bored...

Those are people who know what they are doing most of the time - they keep towns alive or ruin them. Without them what you would see most of the time would be Eves running around and starving kids.

jasonrohrer wrote:

The current record for human (non-bot) play is 411 hours over 39 days. That is over 10 hours a day every single day....

I'm really sorry.... but if you think there was only one person using "this" strategy - you might reconsider this statement. There was only one bot. Possible, but not guaranteed. There was only one obvious bot. More like it. Thats besides the point. I personaly know at least 3 other people doing "that" without 3rd party software. Will not disclose identities though.

jasonrohrer wrote:

There are a handful of people who have played the game exactly once for exactly one hour. Getting born, getting taken care of, and living to old age in some village. And then never playing the game again. I guess they feel like they got their money's worth in that one precious hour. I mean, really, that has to be the greatest first hour of video game play ever. Their parents probably taught them stuff and everything. One of these people even wrote a review, even though they never played again after that first life:
My favorite part about this is it forces everyone to work together to survive. People just work together and cities grow out of it.
Anyway, that is the original, real target of this design. How do we make a game that can give you an absolutely amazing experience, even if you don't play it for very long? An hour is do-able for almost everyone. Being born as a baby in someone else's care alleviates the need to slog through a tutorial before you can start playing. You kinda hit the ground running, your parent gives you a job, and then when you grow up, they may even tell you how to take care of your own baby. You get old with some grandkids running around, and then die a peaceful death at old age.

I've spent over 100 hours watching OHOL streamers on Twitch. Some of them were first timers - those I like the most, lookint at them failig, dying over and over again. I sit there looking at their experiences and reactions, throwing advices if they ask for that or I even start on my own - asking if they would still enjoy game with that.
I don't think I've ever seen someone who would not die out of hunger straight away in his 5-10 first lives. I don't think I've seen someone who would even get what milkweed is and how to use it in his first hour if he didn't previously watch youtube or get clear information from twitch chat.

The best comparision for OHOL first hour I can come up with is.... putting a teenager behind the stere of boeing 737.
If you're lucky - the autopilot is on and you can at least live untill fuel is depleted (kid raised by mother that feeds him perfectly).
Most of the time though, you will need to try doing something to land (live longer, interact with items, craft stuff). And you will fail and crash in next few minutes if you're not born a prodigy (gamer with perfect intuition, HC player who knows his shit).
And you will fail over and over and over again... Getting frustrated you don't get how things work... getting beat up by enviroment... starting over and over again every 5 minutes...

First hour of OHOL is like...
Running around in counterstrike trying to interact with walls and looking for crafting menu...
You don't even get the point of the game in your first hour... Are you sure you want to use THAT as your base Jason? People who play game for 30-60 minutes and never run it again... basically tried but can't care less now? I... don't get it...

If you try to cater to people like that over other groups - we can forget about civilization, because those people will not even know how game is capable of, forget doing it on their own.

After 15 minutes in OHOL - I personally gave up playing at all. I spent 2 full days reading every single wiki article, reading a lot on forums, watching youtube videos (as few as there were back then). To get SET UP for gaming experience. Otherwise it would be unplayable for me. And yet - i put strong emphasis on "me" - thats my personal opinion.

But it might be just me...
With over 4000 hours in single MMO...
With over 2000 hours in League of Legends...
Over 1500 in Minecraft...
Over 1000 hours in Factorio...

Go! Bwah! · 2018-05-11 19:14:40

jasonrohrer wrote:

This is complicated.

This post got me to switch my review to "recommended". Even in its current state of "initial burst of excitement followed by occasional checkins" it's probably worth the money to anybody interested in the concept. It's not good for indefinite enjoyment right now, but few games are.

As an aside, my best model for an "indefinite enjoyment" game is Nethack, which is also difficult... and loaded with varied content. OHOL doesn't approach it on the content front yet, but it's moving.

FeignedSanity · 2018-05-11 19:30:38

jasonrohrer wrote:

The game wasn't designed to support 100 hours of boredom-free play. 100 hours is a lot. I'm not saying it's against my vision or anything, but I didn't set out to make a game with that much depth, and especially not right now, before all the content is in.
However, I've seen that many people have played 100+ hours. I've also heard from a number of those people that they are growing sick of the game. Yeah? Really?

Well here's the thing about that, it doesn't have 100 hours of gameplay in the content. I already know how to craft and do everything. Tell me to make something, and I can make it, or at least reasonably get it done without consulting a wiki (looking at letters). The depth of this game doesn't lie in the crafting, or the items you can make. It's the stories and personal interactions. This game isn't like most story driven games. They're like a book. You read, then maybe read again, but it's always the same story. This game is a library. You don't know what you're going to pull off the shelf, but you load up the game, and open the pages. Some stories leave me feeling terrible, and sometimes I don't even bother finishing the book (logging off, suicide). But that makes the good ones all that more special.

That is what keeps me playing the game. The survival and crafting just offer a goal, something to work towards so you're not just wandering an empty field talking to strangers about nothing. It's just the vehicle, it's not the journey. That's why I can't say I could ever find myself growing sick of this game. Now does the car need some work and fine tuning? Most definitely. But it's ultimately meant to serve the journey. I think most people are focusing too much on the car, and not enough on the journey.

I will say it's nice to see that it's not against your vision to make a game you can enjoy for hours, I was kind of concerned for a minute. But like I said, still very much interested to see what this game becomes.

@Joriom

Sorry I haven't taken the time to read most of what you've said, but I only have so many hours in a day XD. I will say that I think "good game design" is, more often than not, subjective. I don't think it's bad game design to throw you into a random location with random people as long as you have something to work towards and you can deal with the possible problem of repetition. I do however, think it's unconventional. And you do not "learn everything from the ground up over and over again" you take your knowledge and experiences into the next life. And just because you can't see what happens later on doesn't mean you don't care about it. Maybe some people think that way, but I see that as a fallacy.

Nor do I think "forcing playstyle on a player is a bad thing" is necessarily a bad thing. Total freedom quite often obfuscates the experience. As one of my favorite game reviewers said, "a game where a player can do anything, focuses on nothing". There is something to be said for direction. Now I don't think anyone is being "forced", I just think people are being "limited". Which are two very different things. Which I knew you alluded to, but I still felt like you might be implying Jason was FORCING us to play HIS game.

Anyway, that's all I have time for. As I'm sure you know, these can take a while when you're carefully articulating and double checking everything for accuracy and clarity.

Last edited by FeignedSanity (2018-05-11 19:34:44)

jasonrohrer · 2018-05-11 19:51:11

Well, I don't think this 411 person is using a bot, but maybe I'm wrong.

And I know that the initial OHOL experience sucks for many people. I don't really know how to fix that in general.

But I was pointing out that it sometimes can be amazing, because there were a few people who lived to old age on their very first life.

I think I can push the game towards the initial experience being better by making everything matter more, which means that players will take care of their babies more and communicate more, which means you are more likely to have a better first-life experience.

I think the game got worse for new players in recent weeks, with all the baby suicide and inner-circle stuff (only playing with friends, going back to the same village over and over, etc.), and also emergent fertility control ("too many mouths, sorry," is terrible when you keep getting born to the same family over and over).

Family tree browser gives every Eve a reason to care. In fact, Eve becomes the coolest role in the game now, setting the tone for a family line to come, and checking back periodically like an ancestral ghost, her photograph fading with the passing decades.

Anyway, the point is, if everyone is thrown into the same situation (born to strangers, a different story each time, etc.), then the game is at least the same for everyone, both new and old players, and I can work on tuning it to be better for everyone. And as I make it better for everyone, it gets better for new players.

Finally, coming back on topic to coordinates:

I WANT you to find your old village. In fact, that might be your main goal in the game. I just don't want it to be automatic or done through a hack. I want it to be special and hard won.

As an example, I'm going to make more monuments with different sounds (maybe different sized bells with different tones, stuff like that). So you can teach your children a special ring pattern, and tell them to summon you in your next life. I want you to figure out how to do this stuff inside the game, not by working around the game. Stories, people!

Roolstar · 2018-05-11 21:59:13

jasonrohrer wrote:

There are a handful of people who have played the game exactly once for exactly one hour. Getting born, getting taken care of, and living to old age in some village. And then never playing the game again. I guess they feel like they got their money's worth in that one precious hour. I mean, really, that has to be the greatest first hour of video game play ever. Their parents probably taught them stuff and everything. One of these people even wrote a review, even though they never played again after that first life:
My favorite part about this is it forces everyone to work together to survive. People just work together and cities grow out of it.

But... But... You're saying that for those people's "first hour" playing the game, they would be "lucky" if it wasn't their mom's first hour playing the game. That it would probably be their best hour of gameplay. Right? I mean is there something I'm not getting here?

And that's the core of it, you want the best "first (and only) hour experience game", you have to have servers filled with decent seasoned players filling the colonies and new players popping in and being catered to.

I call it catered to, because at this state of the game, you'd have to be saved multiple times from death on your first run almost 100% of the time, and way after growing hair.

And if you do survive just staying next to farm eating carrots from baskets, you'd still die from starvation somewhere between 57 and 59 once the alarm stops ringing "for no apparent reason"

This great first hour experience provided by seasoned players maintaining and developing colonies is what's keeping most people coming back, and very few leaving an awesome review and then never coming back again.

Focusing on those people who "claim" that was the best experience they've ever had ever to then never even attempting to live it again, and wanting your game to aim for that is very weird to me. Interesting, but weird.

Last edited by Roolstar (2018-05-11 22:02:34)

jasonrohrer · 2018-05-11 23:27:28

Yes, I get the chicken-and-egg problem that you're pointing out here. Don't we need the players who have sunk 100s of hours into learning the game's intricacies in order to keep the thing afloat?

However, something else is possible.

Imagine the hypothetical version of the game where each person only played the game once.

Would the game be stuck in the stone age forever?

Not necessarily. After all, as soon as one person has a little success in life, maybe through random chance and trial/error, their offspring can learn from them, and be better off than them. Then their offspring can learn even more. It can theoretically work in this kind of incremental daisy chain, with no outside knowledge or trans-life knowledge.

That is the underlying theory of the game. That's it's ideal form. You play one tiny part in a much larger story. It doesn't matter if you play one hour or 100 hours, because you learn from your parents and make your little contribution before dying.

Obviously, the game is not tuned well for this ideal form. I mean, if each person really did play only once, I have a feeling the game would be forever stuck in the stone age.

But that doesn't mean that it's impossible to make that game.

Also, the ideal form still would ups and downs along the way. Progress would be fragile. But given enough time, I think it could be possible for single-hour players to make it all the way through the tech tree.

After all, in real life, we are all single-hour players..... and yes, there were ups and downs along the way.

Anyway, this is the game that I aimed to make. I didn't aim to make a game that required 100+ hour players to keep it afloat.

Even financially, it would be foolish for me to make a game for those 100+ hour players. There are currently only 300 of them, making up about 2% of the people who have played the game.

If I made a game that only appealed to them, I'd be sitting here with $6000 and my life in financial ruins.

On the other hand, those people are the most passionate about the game and the most likely to spread the word about the game.

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