Are all towns the same?/ Development Hell?

Spoonwood · 2019-06-18 23:57:39

Joseph Stalin wrote:

no I thought Jason buffed it to like 13x13 but maybe that was for an old update

No, that's the airspace, not the interior area of a room. There's a thread started by Dodge, where Jason confims that the maximum interior room space is 6x6.

Bob 101 · 2019-06-19 03:04:22

jasonrohrer wrote:

There's a reason that I'm not just piling on more content right now.
There's currently enough of it to go around.... 2000+ unique objects. I'm not sure of the exact numbers, but this is like 3x Minecraft or something already.
Don't Starve has 718 items, for comparison.

Yes, the goal is 10,000 (and I may not get there, but I'll get a good way there for sure). But more content doesn't necessarily make a good game. The heart of the game needs work. If the heart is working better, then we have a more firm foundation upon which to add more content.

Unsolved issues that affect the heart of the game:
--The meaning of your current life and your current family: How much do you care whether you live or die? How much do you care whether your children live or die? The last surviving girl in a village is certainly treated like royalty, but beyond that, life and death feels mostly cheap and meaningless. Why should you care about the fate of your family or village when you're not coming back anyway? You currently shrug your shoulders when your baby dies. Eventually, you should literally scream NOOO! out loud when that happens, and do everything in your power to keep them alive. Given the circumstances that you find yourself in, this kind of desperation for family survival will create a large variety of different family stories that we currently don't see in the game.
--Interactions between villages: what's the purpose of interacting? Is there any mutual benefit? Do you need to care about what a nearby village is doing? Do you depend on them in some way? Is there any contention for resources, or trade, or migration, or necessary conquest/war? Currently, interacting with another village is mostly done on a whim. It should eventually be a core part of the game.
--Overall arc of the game: do we just keep sprialing out into new an infinite wild territory forever? Does nature keep reclaiming abandoned sections of the map? Do players have a permanent, lasting effect on the map? Do resources become permanently scarce? How does the game evolve over the course of a week or a month, and is there an end? And if the map is more permanent and centralized, how do new families spawn in the midst of it? Currently, the game is constantly reverting to a kind of steady state, day after day. If you play in three days, you won't have a different experience from today. It should eventually be evolving over several days in some way, giving you a fundamentally different experience each day. Balancing this potential variability against a consistent new player experience is especially difficult.
--How the heck do people learn this game? 2000 objects is already super-daunting, and it's only going to get worse.

I have spent many weeks in the past piling on content. While the existing players enjoyed the new content for a short time, the novelty kept wearing off in short order, and I was noticing that the playerbase was not growing as a result of these constant content additions. It was kindof a steady state regardless of the amount of content added.
With all the new players joining the game every week, the lack of growth meant that our attrition rate was too great. Essentially, the game is just not good enough yet. People get frustrated, or bored, or something else and leave.... many of them LONG before they ever exhaust the 2000+ objects in the game.
Adding more content isn't going to change that. Making the game better will change that.

I would just like to point out that alot of the content is not used by players.

1. Dogs, Served zero perpose and today breeding them is considered griefing.

2. Pigs and pork related recipe. Sure pork tacos are occasionally uses for yum. But nobody is rushing to make pig pens.

3. Cars and Airplanes. Good intentions but the lower tech horse-cart is still favored over them.

4. Radios. More good intentions but sadly still mostly unused to this day.

5. Rail Carts. Useless.

6. Fences and Gates, Pretty much unused content.

7. Locks and Keys. Only for griefers

8. Property Fences. It does get used more then others on this list. But they are still overall hated and ignored by players.

8. Plaster Adobe and Paint. No one makes coloured houses.

9. Pine Structures. Was in the game from the start I think?

Either way it's the OG useless content.

10. Fishing

11. Camera. I could be wrong, I'll check recent pics after this. But I have not seen this in awhile.

12. Alot of the foods like potatoes, Salsa, Ice Cream, Butter. Obscure foods only see use by pro yummers and not the average player.

Gee Jason, That's like a month worth of useless content just off the top of my head. Then obviously countless weeks of tweaks and bugfixes.

I'm okay with the occasional bug fix update or tweak. Just not when alot of the issues where added by You in previous weeks.

Jojigirl · 2019-06-19 04:07:10

He's damned if he does and damned if he don't.

Games get boring. Especially games in this genre. Have you ever played The Sims? After so many of hours of game play, that game gets boring. You step away from it for awhile, then one day you just feel like playing the game again.

The one thing that sets OHOL apart is that you are playing with other people. The people who RP make it fun for them by RP'ing. However, that means a lot of the time they are not helping much around camp. Their life before though could have been a total different one where all they did was work.. Switch up YOUR game play some, if you go in doing the same things that you do every other life, you're just playing the same hour over and over again. I can see how that would get boring quick. I think a game like this calls for some imagination on your part. Come up with different build designs, as is now all the towns looks pretty much the same because everyone is mostly using the same blueprint. Take a little bit of time to chat with others for a few minutes, do a little RP'ing too. Your one hour is pretty much what you make of it.

Last edited by Jojigirl (2019-06-19 04:11:09)

Lily · 2019-06-19 05:41:26

I wonder if we should make it so that people are always born into the same family if possible, or have recently family lines have a higher priority of being born into it. That means that you have reason to help your family, because you will be reborn into it. There is a much stronger attachment. Also if someone dies they will just come back but as a useless baby rather than a useful adult. So you want to avoid having people die. Also it motives you to work hard, because you also can improve your own location, then reap the rewards when you are reborn to the family later on.

Actually when I think about it, being immediately reborn might be too quick. However, if there is like an hour delay, then you get reborn into the same family, that would work I think. If you are reborn in the same family after an hour then no person who was alive when you died would still be living. So you get a fresh start with all new people but you can still see the after effects of your life and their life. I think this is even more impactful when you log on like maybe a few days later and the same family is still alive.

Also if there is an hour limit, before they can be reborn into the family again, that makes the death more impactful as well. Because your friend you made won't be back until after you have died. However, you might meet them again later down the line if the family goes well. So that is motivation to do good.

I know this idea kind of runs counter to the basic game premise but I don't think we need to be so strict. People can already be reborn into the same area, and it wasn't really a problem, in fact people like it when it happens most of the time. If we tweaked it so it happened a little more often and was related to families, I think that would solve some of those issues. And if everyone who was with you died already and it is all new people, it is a fresh life still. Also when you get reborn into the same area, there is a sense of progression. Since each time you log into the same family, it should be further along than it was last time.

Actually, it would be kind of neat if you had to be reborn to the same family all the time and if you don't have a current family you are an Eve or born to an Eve. That way you have to play an Eve or early family and that family has to survive an hour after you leave otherwise you will never escape early life. Only if the family succeeds can you then be reborn into a more advanced family. However, that isn't practical as one family wouldn't be enough...Unless there was like marriages and when characters got married their families join together.

In that case you would have to marry people outside the family to bring them into the clan, so it grows bigger and there are more population and more players who can play in that family. Early on it would be rough but if you expand and get many new families to join it would soon work out. That would require people to spawn fairly close to each other though, so they can find each other and join up. That might be getting really complicated but I kind of like those ideas.

Tarr · 2019-06-19 06:35:01

Joseph Stalin wrote:

no I thought Jason buffed it to like 13x13 but maybe that was for an old update

Pretty sure with 99.9% certainty that the buff only really did something for small rooms. Big rooms will still have cold spots (aka bigger than the 7x7 or 6x6) so there's no real reason to make them any bigger than that.

Starknight_One · 2019-06-19 11:13:56

Tarr wrote:

Joseph Stalin wrote:
no I thought Jason buffed it to like 13x13 but maybe that was for an old update
Pretty sure with 99.9% certainty that the buff only really did something for small rooms. Big rooms will still have cold spots (aka bigger than the 7x7 or 6x6) so there's no real reason to make them any bigger than that.

This is correct. The sampling space around you is 13x13, but if the walls of the room do not fall within that space, you gain no building benefit. This means that you only gain the buff at the very center of a room with 11x11 interior space... but not in any of the other squares, since 2 sides of your airspace will not be touching walls. As the room gets smaller, more and more of the interior spaces become usable, but a 6x6 interior space is the largest room within which all walls will be inside your airspace no matter where you are in the room.

Ugh. Can't English well at this time of the morning.

One Hour One Life Forums

#26 2019-06-18 23:57:39

Re: Are all towns the same?/ Development Hell?

#27 2019-06-19 03:04:22

Re: Are all towns the same?/ Development Hell?

#28 2019-06-19 04:07:10

Re: Are all towns the same?/ Development Hell?

#29 2019-06-19 05:41:26

Re: Are all towns the same?/ Development Hell?

#30 2019-06-19 06:35:01

Re: Are all towns the same?/ Development Hell?

#31 2019-06-19 11:13:56

Re: Are all towns the same?/ Development Hell?

Board footer