Starting to hate the game

Floofy · 2018-12-13 17:44:31

http://lineage.onehouronelife.com/serve … id=2366476

I spawned in the wild as Eve. My first kid was a black boy. Took him in my arms. I quickly got a second boy and decided to abandon him since we didn't even set up our base yet. 2 minutes later, at age around 18, i find an old abandonned town.

It was very advanced. Already had a pen with sheeps. Every tools we could dream of. The new advanced wells, tons of berries, tons of pies. I was kinda excited to spawn there as Eve. Once my black boy was 4, i decide to let him go since there was food for days everywhere in the town. He quickly starved for unknown reasons (there wasn't even any reasons to leave the town, we had everything we needed. There wasn't mosquitoes, 0 threats). A bit later, i get sudden infant death of a boy, which is arguably a good thing.

Then... i get a girl. I decide to baby sit her hard, until she runs away from me to die some to far away bear, again for unknown reasons since we didn't need anything.
Then... i believe i was around 26 at the time... no kids. Had to leave that beautiful town.

40 minutes wasted.

I really hope Jason finds a solution for this.

Dodge · 2018-12-13 17:59:02

"I really hope Jason finds a solution for this."

Yeah dont worry up in the tech tree we will have baby incubators that feed you until you're 4, stack a room full of these and you have a baby farm

MultiLife · 2018-12-13 18:05:01

Could've popped down a home marker and died to 60, get back with a small chance and try again with better luck. Now you'll miss that chance.

I watched new people and newish people play OHOL by binging through some YT videos. It was a learning experience. A player playing a small girl, only girl in the camp, just decided that he just has to go and create a civilization on his own even though he had never done it before. He took a basket and a berry and ran off nearly instantly. He ignored all texts around him, he asked nothing from the better players, he just decided "this is what I will do" and he did. Died to like the first snake. And that's the thing. They will always have the freedom to die in stupid ways and leave you behind, with no girls. It's a fact and it will and always can happen. Like losing in gambling. You can always lose. And you will, a lot. Your chances rely on other online people and I still find it ridiculous to hang your enjoyment upon others completely. If you can't enjoy the game without a gen 8 line then what? Why can't you? Why must it continue? Why can't you play for the sakes of you and enjoy the side effect which is sometimes a long lineage? Why must the lineage be first? Before, people didn't even have names or family trees; now that they have that, the priority of a gen 35 lineage high score "sweet victory" is so strong it's crazy. Playing a small part in a big story doesn't imo mean a small part in a big lineage but a part in an epic experience consisting of unique, small stories, no matter how short or long the lineage was.

I don't think there will ever be a solution for the child "crisis". Every player we add to our population also adds to them spreading people across lineages. Even with 6 million active players, lineages and towns would die left and right. There is never enough because every addition adds to spread. You can thin down the spread by making Eveing less common, but so many enjoy Eve lives they'll /die until they get it, so there will always be some spread. And that is needed, because when Eve hell happens, we want spread, we want many Eves, we can't drown all existing Eves with twenty babies. Whatever the Eve to Baby ratio is, it can be tweaked, but it won't fix the "issue" (this is not an issue to me, just a fact in my books; a thing that WILL occur and is not fixable).

Welp, I'll still repeat my view and attitude towards OHOL: kids or not, a lineage is doomed. Another Boots gen won't happen. Jason doesn't seem to want it anyways, he wants drama; he wants to kill towns, cities, lineages, he wants people to start anew, even with lineages. I don't know if it is possible but I still recommend adopting an attitude of "doomed or not, I'll enjoy my time playing even if nobody is spawned from me". Another Eve might've popped in when you'd have hit 50, and she might've pushed out kids for you, now you don't know 'cause you gave up instantly after your spawn was gone. If you had stayed, done a project or two, died, maybe seen another Eve or not, you could've used your time in a positive way and have a chance to get back again. You'd have left your mark and inevitably another Eve, or you, would have arrived there and took it from there. Now you may not spawn there again.

When Weed family was dying out in One Pond Town, Eve Summer arrived during Weed lineage's existence and pumped in fresh blood, giving a new boost to the town. Ofc that town was so bad even Summer family couldn't keep it up long, but that happens. Eve Weed and Summer could now spawn in there, given both lived to 60. They could keep popping back in and restarting the place back to back.

Last edited by MultiLife (2018-12-13 18:09:06)

Floofy · 2018-12-13 18:08:25

Dodge wrote:

"I really hope Jason finds a solution for this."
Yeah dont worry up in the tech tree we will have baby incubators that feed you until you're 4, stack a room full of these and you have a baby farm

That's not the issue. I don't fail to fed my kids for as long as needed. The issue is when they just don't appear, and the only girl that does appear suicides.

lionon · 2018-12-13 18:11:36

Maybe we could have "guilds" or "friendship circles"... so when you get born and one of your friends is online and fertile you will become their kid. Also as option set it you will only birth friends...

So we'd have "random" lineages of random people and lineages that would only consist of a friends-circle. Advantage, have only players you trust, disadvantage less players more likely to wipe if your circle goes altogether offline.

Floofy · 2018-12-13 18:32:44

MultiLife wrote:

If you can't enjoy the game without a gen 8 line then what? Why can't you? Why must it continue? Why can't you play for the sakes of you and enjoy the side effect which is sometimes a long lineage? Why must the lineage be first? Before, people didn't even have names or family trees; now that they have that, the priority of a gen 35 lineage high score "sweet victory" is so strong it's crazy. Playing a small part in a big story doesn't imo mean a small part in a big lineage but a part in an epic experience consisting of unique, small stories, no matter how short or long the lineage was.

People don't all have the same interest in video games. Its possible you love playing by yourself and die of old age by yourself and leave nobody behind. Personally, having no kids at all makes the game completely pointless to me. I never play single player games and don't have interest in them. And if i did play single player games, OHOL wouldn't be my first choice. I do like to do a really good job and leave a better future for the next players playing in that town... but in that game... there was no "next players", so it felt pointless. I also enjoy teamwork with other people who are actually trying to do well.

MultiLife wrote:

Even with 6 million active players, lineages and towns would die left and right. There is never enough because every addition adds to spread. You can thin down the spread by making Eveing less common, but so many enjoy Eve lives they'll /die until they get it, so there will always be some spread. And that is needed, because when Eve hell happens, we want spread, we want many Eves, we can't drown all existing Eves with twenty babies. Whatever the Eve to Baby ratio is, it can be tweaked, but it won't fix the "issue" (this is not an issue to me, just a fact in my books; a thing that WILL occur and is not fixable).

In my opinion, there is a few things that could help the problem:

* Increase the girl spawn rate, especially with moms who have no girls yet.

* Reduce Eve spawn rate when there is already many existing lines on a server. For example, in a 30 player server with 10 already existing lines, spawn no more Eves. Sure, i understand many players love to be Eve (i am one of them), but they won't love it as much once they realize they get 0 babies. Like myself yesterday, I'd have chosen not to be Eve if i knew i was gonna play by myself.

* Make the baby distribution more fair. If a lineage already has 3-4 girls, and another lineage has none, prioritize babies in the girless lineage.

MultiLife wrote:

Another Boots gen won't happen.

Boots line is the proof the game actually is too easy in the late game, when the "no girl" issue doesn't happen. The game DOES need to get harder as the gens go on. Imo, getting to gen 50 or something should be pretty hard, and not because of the "no girl" issue. But let's do things in order. First fix the no girl issue, and then if lines last too long, i'm sure Jason will find ways to increase the difficulty in the RIGHT way.

Last edited by Floofy (2018-12-13 18:47:19)

Floofy · 2018-12-13 18:35:07

lionon wrote:

Maybe we could have "guilds" or "friendship circles"... so when you get born and one of your friends is online and fertile you will become their kid. Also as option set it you will only birth friends...
So we'd have "random" lineages of random people and lineages that would only consist of a friends-circle. Advantage, have only players you trust, disadvantage less players more likely to wipe if your circle goes altogether offline.

Not a bad idea, i like this Maybe also give the option of adding people to friends, and there could be some sort of indication that someone is your friend, and so you are less likely to /die if you meet your friend.

CrazyEddie · 2018-12-13 19:01:08

"No girls" is simply a side effect of "not many children". Even if the male-female ratio were changed to NO boys and ALL girls, that would merely postpone the demise of a lineage, not prevent it.

The population in the game has short-run rises and falls due to the real-world day and night cycle. This will never change. When it is rising, more lineages will be created (i.e. more Eves). When it is falling, more lineages will die. This will never change.

I believe that the only solution to this is what Jason has already done recently: he moved the Eve spawns closer to each other, so that new lineages have a greater chance of coming across an old, dead town and bringing it back to life. Lineages will die off and that can't be prevented, but civilizations can thrive even after a lineage dies because the infrastructure you leave behind will be rediscovered and reused by someone else - just not by your own descendants.

lionon · 2018-12-13 19:09:48

CrazyEddie wrote:

The population in the game has short-run rises and falls due to the real-world day and night cycle. This will never change. When it is rising, more lineages will be created (i.e. more Eves). When it is falling, more lineages will die. This will never change.

Weeeell it depends on how the population per lineage factor is changed or kept.

Instead of spawning lots of new lineages it would also be possible to allow existing lineages to grow and shrink in numbers instead of creating lineages and wiping.

Also I'd wish in case lineages have to get removed as player numbers shrink there would be some mechanism to have the more successful or the more circumspect survive (i.e. getting the valuable new births). Right now its more or less pure RNG...

Floofy · 2018-12-13 19:11:23

CrazyEddie wrote:

"No girls" is simply a side effect of "not many children". Even if the male-female ratio were changed to NO boys and ALL girls, that would merely postpone the demise of a lineage, not prevent it.

Now that i think about it, you are actually right. As an example, the example provided in the OP, even if they were all girls, it still would have happened.

CrazyEddie wrote:

The population in the game has short-run rises and falls due to the real-world day and night cycle. This will never change. When it is rising, more lineages will be created (i.e. more Eves). When it is falling, more lineages will die. This will never change.

I am not sure why, but i noticed the populations of the servers tends to be very split. Maybe if we make more players together, the issue of very few people on a server won't happen as much.

CrazyEddie wrote:

I believe that the only solution to this is what Jason has already done recently: he moved the Eve spawns closer to each other, so that new lineages have a greater chance of coming across an old, dead town and bringing it back to life. Lineages will die off and that can't be prevented, but civilizations can thrive even after a lineage dies because the infrastructure you leave behind will be rediscovered and reused by someone else - just not by your own descendants.

That doesn't really solve anything. I actually DID spawn in a old civilisation, but that was actually more boring than building an eve camp imo. I was essentially just waiting there for babies, surrounded by food everywhere.

After reading your post, i think something like this could help:

* Make sure server 1 is almost always at 100+

* Only force people who tend to suicide a lot, or people with curses, to play on the lower population server (if needed).

* Have a max number of lineage per server. Around 10% of the players on server (so a server with 60 players can't have more than 6 lines).

* try to make it so that stupid people/suiciders/griefers tends to be born to each others. People with high long life % born to each others. Heredity, just like in real life.

Floofy · 2018-12-13 19:12:43

lionon wrote:

CrazyEddie wrote:
The population in the game has short-run rises and falls due to the real-world day and night cycle. This will never change. When it is rising, more lineages will be created (i.e. more Eves). When it is falling, more lineages will die. This will never change.
Weeeell it depends on how the population per lineage factor is changed or kept.
Instead of spawning lots of new lineages it would also be possible to allow existing lineages to grow and shrink in numbers instead of creating lineages and wiping.
Also I'd wish in case lineages have to get removed as player numbers shrink there would be some mechanism to have the more successful or the more circumspect survive (i.e. getting the valuable new births). Right now its more or less pure RNG...

Very much agree with this.

Again, i do understand the fun of being an Eve. But if i'm gonna be Eve and get no childs at all, i rather have the game force me to be born to a mother.

Lotus · 2018-12-13 19:20:47

This is unfortunate, but it happens to everyone. Had multiple Eve runs with no children at all. But I guess it makes the game what it is. It isn’t a reason to hate on the game because of unfortunate luck. It’s a great game, and I’m sorry your experience was hindered.

mikekchar · 2018-12-13 19:21:02

I really think that Floofy's main issue could be addressed by starting a private server with like minded players. It might be hard to get enough players, but if you had an invitation only (or at least friend of a friend) server with house rules I think it could be quite popular. As Gus has pointed out in other threads, a $5/month Linode server is more than enough to run OHOL. I think the main sticking point is that starting up and running a private server takes a bit more technical knowledge than most people have (even though it's not *that* hard to do, or to learn). It's one of the things I was kind of hoping would develop in the community because clash of playing styles seems to be the largest hurdle for the game by a large margin. I think people will always want to play on the main server, but there are times when you want to do different things and I think that choosing different servers that caters for those interests is the easiest way to manage it.

Floofy · 2018-12-13 19:28:21

mikekchar wrote:

I really think that Floofy's main issue could be addressed by starting a private server with like minded players. It might be hard to get enough players, but if you had an invitation only (or at least friend of a friend) server with house rules I think it could be quite popular. As Gus has pointed out in other threads, a $5/month Linode server is more than enough to run OHOL. I think the main sticking point is that starting up and running a private server takes a bit more technical knowledge than most people have (even though it's not *that* hard to do, or to learn). It's one of the things I was kind of hoping would develop in the community because clash of playing styles seems to be the largest hurdle for the game by a large margin. I think people will always want to play on the main server, but there are times when you want to do different things and I think that choosing different servers that caters for those interests is the easiest way to manage it.

Maybe an easier way to do this is either the friends idea of lion, or my idea of "heredity". The game could kinda recognize who the idiots who die at 5 of starvation are, and have them be born to each others.

Your idea is good, but it would require a lot of people to be in. Also, i am not against having some newer people in my town. I just ask of them to eat the food we produce for them and not purposely go far away to die to wild animals.

Last edited by Floofy (2018-12-13 19:34:31)

CrazyEddie · 2018-12-13 19:55:37

I am not sure why, but i noticed the populations of the servers tends to be very split. Maybe if we make more players together, the issue of very few people on a server won't happen as much.

The distribution of people across servers doesn't matter. If population across the entire server farm is falling, lineages will die.

Furthermore, the server balancing algorithm ensures, roughly, that as population is falling across the farm it falls somewhat evenly across all servers, which means that lineages will die no matter which server they are on. Higher-numbered servers will have their last lineage die before lower-numbered servers do, but all servers will have lineages die at roughly equal rates, regardless of how many players are currently on that server.

CrazyEddie · 2018-12-13 20:08:40

lionon wrote:

Instead of spawning lots of new lineages it would also be possible to allow existing lineages to grow and shrink in numbers instead of creating lineages and wiping.

This is already the case. Lineages have an effective size range. The maximum is the number of people resulting from every woman having as many births as possible, limited only by the birth cooldown (which is on average one birth every 2.5 minutes). The minimum is two births per woman on average, which results in one girl per woman on average, which results in the lineage just barely continuing (assuming everyone survives to adulthood).

When the game population is growing, lineages grow to the maximum population (as many births as possible, limited by the cooldown) and then beyond that maximum Eves start spawning.

When the game population is shrinking, births become less frequent and the lineages get smaller. One by one each lineage reaches the minimum population, then goes below that minimum and dies. Each lineage that dies means that the remaining lineages will get more births and thereby postpone dying out... but if the population keeps shrinking, the births will keep falling and the lineages will keep shrinking and then dying out one by one.

Also I'd wish in case lineages have to get removed as player numbers shrink there would be some mechanism to have the more successful or the more circumspect survive (i.e. getting the valuable new births). Right now its more or less pure RNG...

This is also the case already. The most successful lineages will be the largest, which means they have the most women, which means they have the most births, because births are evenly distributed across all women.

In other words, the more successful you are already, the longer you will last before dying out when the population is shrinking. If you're big enough, you can outlast the nightime's population drop and make it through to the next day's population growth.

MultiLife · 2018-12-13 20:11:33

Floofy wrote:

People don't all have the same interest in video games. Its possible you love playing by yourself and die of old age by yourself and leave nobody behind. Personally, having no kids at all makes the game completely pointless to me. I never play single player games and don't have interest in them. And if i did play single player games, OHOL wouldn't be my first choice. I do like to do a really good job and leave a better future for the next players playing in that town... but in that game... there was no "next players", so it felt pointless. I also enjoy teamwork with other people who are actually trying to do well.

Eves share cities and community shares the players we have. We won't always have enough babies to go around especially if people are stuck as fertile females. I guess men would start killing themselves in order to become Hope V somewhere else. That'd suck. Men would be so useless. There are lineages to save everywhere all the time and people would feel bad about sitting in one lineage for an hour as a male and not being reborn as Hope XVI of the dwindling Dick Lineage.

Can't we accept that we are a community building non-lasting civilizations and we share our creations as a community and not focus on just one lineage but the whole picture?
Our teamwork is in a much grander scale than you want to look at it from. We share our dead towns as Eves and revive them for each other all the time.

Why does it feel pointless when the reality is that Eves land in your towns all the time? Just because your daughter died in this lineage doesn't mean everything was in vain: your next round in your town is a retry just as another daughter in old lineage would've been. It can happen so why isn't that enough? Why must daughters happen on first lineage, on first try, why can't we just be satisfied with Eve retries? I am? Especially with the limitless amount of Eve retries due to others adding up the chances, joining in my towns that were cut short on girls on my runs.

And you don't know if there will be next players because you don't see what happens when your screen turns black. Sure they weren't there RIGHT THEN but Eves will end there especially if you yourself help by living to 60 with marker set.

Floofy wrote:

In my opinion, there is a few things that could help the problem:
* Increase the girl spawn rate, especially with moms who have no girls yet.
* Reduce Eve spawn rate when there is already many existing lines on a server. For example, in a 30 player server with 10 already existing lines, spawn no more Eves. Sure, i understand many players love to be Eve (i am one of them), but they won't love it as much once they realize they get 0 babies. Like myself yesterday, I'd have chosen not to be Eve if i knew i was gonna play by myself.
* Make the baby distribution more fair. If a lineage already has 3-4 girls, and another lineage has none, prioritize babies in the girless lineage.

- yes for baby distribution logic, I'm tired of being octomom plus
- yes for prioritizing older, childless women (even though I'm sometimes super happy to be a childless woman)
but
~ maybe not tweaking the gender ratio after all.
~ no making Eveing rarer (people have a right to choose to Eve and suicide their way to that and lineages should start and die continuously imo)

Floofy wrote:

Boots line is the proof the game actually is too easy in the late game, when the "no girl" issue doesn't happen. The game DOES need to get harder as the gens go on. Imo, getting to gen 50 or something should be pretty hard, and not because of the "no girl" issue. But let's do things in order. First fix the no girl issue, and then if lines last too long, i'm sure Jason will find ways to increase the difficulty in the RIGHT way.

K. I'm getting really hesitant over the favoring girls thing in odds though. Man, I wish there was another way for reproduction to work in this game. I don't want to have a bigger odd to be a girl upon birth. I want 50% girl lives, no more. I don't want more of them even if I am someone's Hope V.

I just feel like sprinkling girl babies to old women is a big handicap. The only things keeping me neutral and not against is the asexual reproduction thing and the wildly varying amount of children per women. But I'm not interested in even 55% of female lives shift over males. I want 1:1 from my lives, at least upon birth. It's a vacation to be a male right now, to me, and as a thanks I will work hard for the woman who kept me.

Anyways.
Would you be okay with the game if you always got 3 girls but all died anyways? Would that be a fair amount or should it be 5? What would be the balance? Should the baby spawning system read Sudden Deaths? Does that add prio? I feel like we would end up with high prios for all fertile women around the place really quickly and we'd run out of babies at some point, even high prio women will be left without and then they curse the system not granting them their "handicap girl" even when they were "high prio woman".

Last edited by MultiLife (2018-12-14 10:31:18)

Azrael · 2018-12-13 20:51:56

Im not even gonna rant right now

But you do realize people that run to bear suicide cause they dont wanna be in that civ. They wanna be somewhere else, it may actually be because youre so advanced but really you feeding your kids has no correlation to why they suicide.

We cant make more players disappear magically. You have less kids cause less people play simple as that, nothing special to it.

If you wanna quit im not stopping you and neither is anyone else.

Floofy · 2018-12-13 21:45:49

Azrael wrote:

Im not even gonna rant right now
But you do realize people that run to bear suicide cause they dont wanna be in that civ. They wanna be somewhere else, it may actually be because youre so advanced but really you feeding your kids has no correlation to why they suicide.
We cant make more players disappear magically. You have less kids cause less people play simple as that, nothing special to it.
If you wanna quit im not stopping you and neither is anyone else.

Its entirely possible you are right about the bear thing. But why not just instant death instead of waiting to be 8 year old? When i spawn in a town i don't wanna be in, i just sudden death.

thundersen · 2018-12-13 23:20:36

CrazyEddie wrote:

The distribution of people across servers doesn't matter. If population across the entire server farm is falling, lineages will die.
Furthermore, the server balancing algorithm ensures, roughly, that as population is falling across the farm it falls somewhat evenly across all servers, which means that lineages will die no matter which server they are on. Higher-numbered servers will have their last lineage die before lower-numbered servers do, but all servers will have lineages die at roughly equal rates, regardless of how many players are currently on that server.

Are you sure about this? I'm playing around with tracking the number of players over time (sick at home...). This is fresh data from today. Timestamps are in UTC. Note how the rise of server 3 around 5pm correlates with a steep decline on server 2. I wonder how that felt for lineages on server 2 at that time.

PS: Sorry for the sloppy time labels. I'm too tired to fiddle around with that any more.

Last edited by thundersen (2018-12-13 23:21:58)

CrazyEddie · 2018-12-14 00:13:45

thundersen wrote:

Are you sure about this?

Nope! It's just what I assumed based on something Jason posted once about the Linode server reflector.

I'm playing around with tracking the number of players over time (sick at home...).

Cool!

... the tracking part, not the sick part. Sorry to hear that.

The chart looks compatible with what I assume the balancing is: there is a pool with active servers; new connections are evenly distributed between servers in the pool; when there are more than X connections to each current server, a new server is added to the pool. And at some point when there are fewer than Y connections to each current server, the highest-numbered server is removed from the pool and receives no new connections.

The chart doesn't show a perfect balance across the servers, but you'd expect some variation, I think, due to people dying at different rates and times on the different servers. If one server has a lot of Eve camps with people dying early and another server has a lot of high-tech towns with people dying of old age, but each server gets roughly the same number of new connections (i.e. births) then the early-death server will have fewer people on it.

Plus maybe some people made manual connections to specific servers? E.g. Server 3 from before it was added to the pool at 4:48.

Note how the rise of server 3 around 5pm correlates with a steep decline on server 2. I wonder how that felt for lineages on server 2 at that time.

That makes sense, if the balancing works the way I think it does. When a server gets added to the pool, the spawn rate will drop on the rest of the servers while their death rate stays the same. That means a drop in population, a drop in fertility, and an increase in lineage collapse due to infertility on the existing servers. Meanwhile, there's a population explosion on the new server.

The opposite will happen when overall population is falling and a server is removed from the pool. The other servers will see a surge in births while the removed server is rendered sterile.

But those are one-time events as servers are added and removed from the pool. During the course of a day, a rising trend will boost population evenly across all the servers in the pool, and a falling trend will kill off lineages evenly across all the servers in the pool. It's only when the server-count thresholds are crossed that the number of servers in the pool changes, thereby temporarily imbalancing the populations.

Things get roughly equalized within a generation, after which each server has about the same population (and hence about the same death rate) to match their equally-distributed birth rates. You can see that on the chart as well: after about an hour of skyrocketing population, Server 3 has a roughly stable population and is roughly equal in pop to the other two servers. Roughly. Ish. More or less.

This is all guessing on my part, but here's what Jason has said: https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewt … p?id=6&p=2

Here's the deal with scaling: I think the server, given the bandwidth available, can currently support about 200 simultaneous players. I'm using Linode to spin up overflow servers, though. When 100 players are on the main server, the reflector automatically starts sending half of newly joining players to a second server. When that second server has 100 players on it, a third server will start getting used, etc.

Jadelink · 2018-12-14 05:27:49

Dodge wrote:

"I really hope Jason finds a solution for this."
Yeah dont worry up in the tech tree we will have baby incubators that feed you until you're 4, stack a room full of these and you have a baby farm

We have those now, they're called 'afk females'. Insert food to keep alive, and they pop them out. They do keep holding babies that were held when they afked, we just need a means to insert the new spawn onto those teats and we're good.

betame · 2018-12-15 07:00:05

I found a more detailed explanation of the server choice algorithm here, and those discussions got me thinking.
I believe the major design choice is between having the nocturnal infertility fall a small group, or sharing the burden between everyone. Currently, its the former choice, which leaves the burden on an unfortunate few.

thundersen wrote:

I'm playing around with tracking the number of players over time (sick at home...). This is fresh data from today. Timestamps are in UTC. Note how the rise of server 3 around 5pm correlates with a steep decline on server 2. I wonder how that felt for lineages on server 2 at that time.

Cool to see the data tracked and graphed out! Thanks!
Intersted in seeing a 1-2 week graph (the holidays may make it irregular though)

Psykout · 2018-12-15 09:49:11

Floofy wrote:

Boots line is the proof the game actually is too easy in the late game, when the "no girl" issue doesn't happen. The game DOES need to get harder as the gens go on. Imo, getting to gen 50 or something should be pretty hard, and not because of the "no girl" issue. But let's do things in order. First fix the no girl issue, and then if lines last too long, i'm sure Jason will find ways to increase the difficulty in the RIGHT way.

In my opinion the difficulty is higher tech to spend resources on, and time on. When you reach the end of the current tech, which isn't hard to do, you just end up adding to surplus which gives you a cushion for when something like the compost cycle breaks down for 5 minutes. Rather than dying out, stocks just get low for a second and then come back up because there is nothing to do but make food and roads. So when there was limited things to do, the thing to do was to have a lineage go on forever.

Take the early blacksmith for example. If they are also the source of gathered iron just furthers the point. While they are scouting/gathering iron, hauling it back and then either smelting or going back out, they aren't producing food. You as a civilization are funding that person via food to get this for the village. If they complete this task and there is no further task, they just move into to producing more food than they can consume, to the surplus.

To completely eliminate this I actually don't think is possible, or should even be done, because its the true end game. At some point it should be easy, and generations of kids should be able to do whatever they want for their whole life because of the hard work done by those that came before them. Sounds little too familiar eh? Is it too easy to get to this point right now? Sure. Is it something that needs to be addressed? No, it will naturally evaporate as it becomes more complex to get to the next resting point.

CrazyEddie · 2018-12-15 10:01:31

Thanks for finding that detailed post! Very interesting.

betame wrote:

I believe the major design choice is between having the nocturnal infertility fall a small group, or sharing the burden between everyone. Currently, its the former choice, which leaves the burden on an unfortunate few.

No, the decline hits everyone evenly, regardless of the server you're on and regardless of the number of servers currently active. If total population (number of people playing) is declining at, say, 20% per hour (i.e. there are 500 players now but the number is falling at a rate of 100 per hour or 1.66 per minute) then every fertile woman is going to have (on average) 20% fewer births per hour than they do when the population is holding steady.

This only changes when one server drops below the 20-player threshold. At that point, the server downstream of it (which will have approximately the same number of players, i.e. roughly twenty) stops receiving new players and everyone on that server becomes infertile, while the first of those two servers doubles its population and thus spawns some additional lineages. After that, as the player count continues to fall the decline is once again spread evenly among all fertile women on all active servers, until the next server drops below the 20-player threshold.

Edit:

Actually, you're correct, in this respect: While all females and lineages have to face a birth slowdown, and they all face the same birth slowdown, and while that slowdown could cause some lineages (especially the smaller and more vulnerables ones) to die off regardless of which server they are on... In addition to that slowdown, there is also a devastation which will be visited upon the inhabitants of the highest-numbered servers. They are doomed to extinction, stricken by mandatory sterility which knows no escape. They may actually be doing an outstanding job of weathering the universal storm (the across-the-board decline in fertility rates); they may be among the more successful of lineages across the server farm. But even if so, it is of no use; even if they are thriving while others are failing, they shall at some point suddenly receive a great curse, and their line shall continue no more.

This does seem a little unfair.

Jason could alter the reflector algorithm so that a server continued to receive its same share of new connections until its population reached zero. He'd have to make the algorithm more complicated, because right now whether a server keeps getting new spawns depends not on its own population, but on the population of its upstream peer. That would probably be annoying for him to implement.

Last edited by CrazyEddie (2018-12-15 18:43:32)

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