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Rather than resources having a hard limit, I think it would be better if there were instead diminishing returns.
My reasoning is simple:
If I know that a resource will run out no matter how careful I am with it, I will use it liberally without a second thought.
There is no tough decision like Jason intends. After all, if two paths lead to the same outcome(total exhaustion of resource) I will take the path that is easiest for me(using resource liberally to make life easy/enjoyable)
We can kind of see that right now with oil; no one really speaks out against wastes of iron/water/oil like eating tons of domestic berries, making locks, or riding around town in a car anymore because oil is so plentiful(until it isn't).
Jason says resources should become exhausted like they do in real life, but the truth is resources don't really run out as far as I am aware.
For example; an 'exhausted' iron mine. An iron mine becomes exhausted once the inputs cost more than the value of the output. ex: if it costs $110 worth of time, money, resources, etc to produce $100 worth of iron the mine will be closed down.
You could still go to the mine and presumably find a large amount of ore, but all the rich ore is long gone, all that's left is the poor quality ore that requires much more processing.
Oil is the same way. Oil companies don't stop pumping oil once they have the last drop; they stop once it costs more to extract than what they can get for it.
Why I think diminishing returns is better;
Choices would become more meaningful because rather than me thinking 'well, it's going to run out one day anyway' I will think 'I am making extracting this resource harder for future generations, maybe I should only take what I need'
This would also make really old areas of the map at the very least livable. Sure, maybe it takes a whole hour to extract one tank of crude oil and will take longer to extract another, but at least we aren't forced to leave our beloved town full of rich history just because all the oil is exhausted within a few mile radius. Oil would be theoretically infinite, but eventually people are going to say to themselves 'okay everyone, it isn't worth it to spend 100 years pumping another tank of crude oil. Pack up the horses and get ready to ride'
I also like the idea of an oil rig/iron mine not being touched for many years because it's cheaper to import from elsewhere, then it becoming open again because imports have become too expensive.
But yeah, to reiterate right now people use oil like it will never run out precisely because there is no incentive to conserve, it's going to run out regardless of what you do. The pain of your wastefulness will only be small and will only be felt for a short period.
But with resources with diminishing returns, that wastefulness could potentially have negative effects for a much longer period of time, and you'll feel the difficulty increase with each tank of crude oil extracted. First the oil gushes out, super easy to collect. Later, it slows to a stream, then an occasional drip, etc.
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Good thinking here!
It would certainly be more realistic.
I'm not sure it would change the wasteful behavior early on, though.
I do think it's a bit of a tragedy of the commons situation, or "let the future generations deal with it" kinda thing. It's available NOW. It won't be available later (or will be more slow-flowing later, in your suggestion), but that won't affect ME, 'cause I'll be dead later.
I do think that people want the stuff that they build to last as long as possible, though, right? So wastefulness will make the stuff they build get abandoned sooner...
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I do think that people want the stuff that they build to last as long as possible, though, right?
Yes, but I suppose that depends on how long the arcs last.
The arc ending is inevitable. So does it matter if your builds last ten hours longer when they'll vanish in a day or two anyway? Maybe it's better for the players to optimize for fun by using as much resources as they can, let the arc end quickly and open a new Eve window?
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Yes exhausted oil rigs could give one barrel per x time then it's up to the players to be able to survive with that ammount and not waste it.
Or more interesting it could require an upgrade that needs a lot of iron in order to get to the next level of oil tech.
Tech would go from upgrading water to upgrading oil.
Maybe better a mix of both:
Exhausted oil rig gives one barrel per x time, then when you upgrade it you have access to another x number of barrels before it exhaust, but the exhausted upgraded oil rig would give 2 barrels per x time.
It could be the next step in tech.
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The arc ending is inevitable.
This is something that I'm still struggling to understand. I see that it usually lasts about 2 days, but why?
There was still plenty of oil on the map.
Looks like the last family eventually just got unlucky with people dying young and some of them got murdered?
So it's not inevitable.... it is, in part, player-chosen. Or griefer chosen, perhaps.
Perhaps players just start getting bored after 2 days, and half the population wants it to end?
Maybe this is because resources don't run out fast enough to keep it interesting.
In general, I want an endless arc to be possible in theory. Obviously, inside the rift, it's currently not possible.... well, maybe it is, on wild berries and cactus fruit in the end. Not sure.
But definitely a 5+ day arc is possible. Maybe 10.
So I like this idea: The arc COULD last forever, if you all play well enough and make the right decisions at the right time. It generally doesn't last very long, though, because of player choice and folly.
If it really isn't player-chosen, and it's just a random fluke each time..... then boy oh boy, all that code that I've put in there to "prop up" struggling families really isn't working.
It's like, no matter what I do, these fams are going to die out, no matter how many girl babies I send their way. Maybe it's one bad generation of moms who lets all the BB die. Okay... well... then what?
Re-open the Eve window periodically to keep propping up the arc with fresh fams?
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Here's the graph:
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Re-open the Eve window periodically to keep propping up the arc with fresh fams?
Change the end condition.
Family based end condition is bad, since it goes against a mechanic that you added, war.
"My family needs that oil from the other family and they dont want to give it" "but if we go at war with them the world could end"
Does the second part seem to make sense?
Killing a family can end the world?
It's contradicting with (some) interactions that you expect from players.
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CatX wrote:The arc ending is inevitable.
This is something that I'm still struggling to understand. I see that it usually lasts about 2 days, but why?
Just out of curiosity... on what days does the ark usually end on?
"hear how the wind begins to whisper, but now it screams at me" said ashe
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Mabye familys dieing out isn't the right end condition.
How about letting dark nosaj reset and use this as end condition. No eve window
There would be a true battle (end vs keep)
I mean it's worth a try what is there to loose
Last edited by StrongForce (2019-10-28 17:23:51)
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Yeahbut.... when we get down to only one family, a large number of interesting systems stop functioning. Language, war/peace, people looking different, "my family owns this," etc.
I really want a vibrant world, not one that has stagnated with just one family left.
So that end condition is in place not because it's a good one, but because it's necessary to keep the world from going totally stale.
I hear you, Dodge, that it fights the desire to help your family at all costs.
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Yeahbut.... when we get down to only one family, a large number of interesting systems stop functioning. Language, war/peace, people looking different, "my family owns this," etc.
I really want a vibrant world, not one that has stagnated with just one family left.
So that end condition is in place not because it's a good one, but because it's necessary to keep the world from going totally stale.
I hear you, Dodge, that it fights the desire to help your family at all costs.
Why should it be family Vs family though?
If members of the same family live in a completely different village and havent talked in years are they still considered being part of the same group?
Not sure what you want to see in the long run, with private properties and all.
But should members of the same family not be able to go at war just because they are members of the same family?
I know it involves a lot of change (or maybe not) but maybe in the long run , we could go back to having a rare chance to give birth to slightly different skin tone and "my family owns this" could become "my group/clan owns this".
Elders could create groups with agreeing people.
"my family owns this" would not work anymore on group members, it would be like a conscious decision to detach from the lineage and be part of a separate group.
And war would be between groups/civilizations.
As for language it could be proximity based and living far appart would make you speak a different language over the years like a dialect that slowly turns into a totally different language.
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If members of the same family live in a completely different village and havent talked in years are they still considered being part of the same group?
Wasn't this more with the original vision - one eve to bootstrap things, and then humanity spreading out over the world, intermittently diversifying and coming back together?
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Yeah! Original vision was everyone spreading from one Eve, and there was skin-tone "drift" over time.
It's hard to have everything, though.
Having another family is pretty interesting. Having them look visually distinct is solid. It's pretty striking when you first encounter them. Whoa! Red heads! Or whatever.
There has been much talk of ways to create new families without Eves, through weddings or whatever.
Though there is also something interesting about the saga of fixed family lines in the Arc. We can make a graph, etc. We can reason about them very cleanly, and talk about their stories.
If the fams start branching into other fams with other names, it's much harder to talk about one line and track its success and spread.
Think of the legend of the Boots line....
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Perhaps players just start getting bored after 2 days, and half the population wants it to end?
Maybe this is because resources don't run out fast enough to keep it interesting.
...
Re-open the Eve window periodically to keep propping up the arc with fresh fams?
Playing as Eve or in an early village surrounded by abundant nature is very different from playing in an society based on agriculture and technology. It would not surprise me if some choose to end the arc on purpose for that reason.
Even if you re-open the Eve window, the experience is not the same as starting out in "virgin" land.
And I assume that no matter how much lack of resources you introduce, no matter how much struggle and war, the tasks in post-Eve societies still remain the same: Pick berries, pick carrot, feed sheep, make compost...
Is it possible to create a new kind of experience for late towns that makes it different than other "post Eve" villages somehow? To give the players something to yearn for and work towards?
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Yeah, this is a tough one.
I've been stuck on this general problem for a long time....
Starting out on virgin land is interesting. It always will be. Everyone wants to be a founder.
But if the game allows everyone to do that all the time, "founding" becomes meaningless, because nothing founded ever goes anywhere. For there to be founders, there have to be followers who live in that founded place later on.
It's kinda like making a multiplayer game about politics... everyone would want to be president, right?
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"Which is another way of saying no one is."
Yes, that's an extreme take on the problem. Everyone can't be Eve. But couldn't we have more Eve than we currently have? Surely we could have a little teeny tiny bit more Eve.
Unfortunately, this problem goes all the way down.
Because "having more Eve" means "having more virgin land." And where's the virgin land? It has to be put somewhere. So then you either have to get farther and farther away to find more and more land for this "Eve stream," or you have to start wiping nearby sections to make fresh virgin land there.
In other words, in a persistent world, you're always running out of room. Stuff fills up over time.
In other words, for each new Eve that you allow, if she's successful, that means some existing village MUST be lost. Either it has become too far away to find, or it gets wiped to make room. Effectively, new village in, old village out. There are only so many players to get born in these places, and only so much physical space to go around. Something's gotta give.
As a corollary, if you played this game and found yourself Eve-ing constantly, you might start to wonder.... "I'm founding all these villages, but who's actually living in them after me?" You'd take a look at the family tree and realize that every village you founded died out shortly after. If I'm Eve all the time.... then other people must be too... which means there aren't very many non-Eve babies around....
Okay, so keeping the game interesting by returning to the bottom WORKS to keep the game interesting, but it undercuts the promise of actually building civilization. It's not a civilization STARTING game, right? You can keep players on that treadmill, but I think they'll eventually realize that they're not getting anywhere.
So then we can think about making the top more interesting.
As you say, something to yearn for.
But what can this be? It can't be accomplished quickly, or else it's meaningless.
So we can have:
1. Accomplishments gated by rare resources. I tried this long ago with an apocalypse triggered by some pretty large quantity of rare gold. But motivated players can find rare resources pretty darn fast (as is searching for really really rare things interesting? Probably not.)
2. Accomplishments gated by time. The bell tower and apocalypse tower currently work this way. They have to "settle" for some fixed time before the next step can be executed. This is cool and all, but also feels a little cheap to me. I can't imagine the game being satisfying if there were loads and loads of things that worked this way, or even more long-term projects than the bell tower. At some point, it's like, "What's the point?" Just to build it, for the sake of building it?
There are currently a bunch of hard-to-make things that require a lot of steps and time, and we don't see examples of these being made in the game very often. Blue roses, anyone? They are vanity projects that players might attempt once, just to prove that they can do it. But they're not long-term interesting.
Ringing that bell the first time and sending that sound across the entire planet is amazing. Ringing it the 100th time feels hollow.
This reminds me of a recent change to Noita with the lava lake. In a recent update, crossing the lava because 100% doable in each run, with appropriate effort. It used to be a rare feat that I would do whenever I had the rare opportunity to do it. Now it has become busy work, so I skip it every time.
So we come to a fundamental question: WHY?
Why build a car or a plane or a radio? What's the point? What does it permit you to accomplish? What's the next step? There can be no end goal. Everything has to lead to something else.
But obviously, that itself is impossible.... everything can't be a stepping stone to something else...
At least not in this kind of game!
You can go play Inside a Star-filled Sky if you want the full realization of everything being a stepping stone forever.... but even that rings hollow in the end....
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I mean some of the issue is people want their own surnames for whatever reason. Some players want to start their own families and go from there (this is obviously a problem because we can't have 20 Eves with a game population of like 50.) Then of course there's how late game plays vs early game.
Early game is about rushing things and always needing to do the next thing quick, quick, quick. You need to set up your first farms for the population to start growing, you need sheep so you can make compost and pies, you need tools so you can move up. Early game is really well refined at the moment where there's almost always something that needs doing.
Compare it to late game: You're still farming the same crops, you're still smithing the same way, and you're still doing all the early game stuff but just doing it to keep things going. The only things that change are how you get water and how you get iron. Running out resources honestly wouldn't make late game anymore fun in my opinion because instead of things being a murderfest you'd probably have a bunch of nomads wandering around until there just isn't anymore easy food.
Until late game tech is actually useful and refined (diesel engine is a forced thing vs a loom which is actively useful but not needed) you're going to see a bunch of bored people just stabbing each other. There's no real difficulty in late game because a good player will always outproduce what they need thus the games only real difficulty comes to seeing how long it takes before the general masses get bored enough to start killing each other.
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Though there is also something interesting about the saga of fixed family lines in the Arc. We can make a graph, etc. We can reason about them very cleanly, and talk about their stories.
Yeah but it's pretty two dimensionnal right now, a family cant have a richer longer history like inner conflict that ends in separation and such since they cant separate themselves from the lineage.
Giving them the possibility to separate from the main branch by creating a group/civilisation would still allow for statistics but even add another layer, "this lineage decided to split at some point and make their own civilisation", statistics would still show same lineage but would have added data for groups/civilisations. So you would even know more details about the lineage.
Did they decide to split up, at which point, for which reasons, where did they go, did they declare war etc.
This would allow to change the end condition to something that makes much more sense and doesn't go against game mechanics.
Then players could decide to use specific clothes/color clothes/secret symbols/signals or wathever to differentiate from other groups if they want to, instead of race/type like currently.
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Early game is about rushing things and always needing to do the next thing quick, quick, quick.
Yeah imo the rythm of the game needs to be changed, now that we have skills it could change to communication based challenge instead of rushing everything like (still) currently.
Basically you would progress much slower since it would require much more organization and structures, but the food drain would also be slower, so that time where you dont constantly have to eat would be used to try to create a working society where everyone communicates with each other to get stuff done.
Think private properties, houses and branches of the families communicating with each other to trade goods to benefit their own smaller family and society overall.
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There have been many ideas in these forums on how to make late game more interesting. I'm unsure if it's possible to get there just by removing elements or limiting the present day game, however.
Ideas include
- Farming update and irrigation. Right now, once a village is established, everything runs on the compost cycle. As new tech is invented, the basic chores should change drastically. Don't pick berries one by one, use a tool to pick six berries at once. Don't water bushes one by one, use tech to water several at once. Etc. This would make food production easier and free up time, potentially making people more bored, but for different reasons. Balance this with other important activities that can only be done in late towns.
- Ovens and forges that run on electricity. A late game activity could be building power lines to or around town. Infrastructure.
- Explore the world beyond the rift. What if you could leave the rift by plane, hunt for exotic animals, and bring back backpacks made of crocodile skin? Or if you could leave the rift by plane and mine for some sort of mineral that enabled building computers or robots?
- Seasons - What if after a reset you were guaranteed summer for two whole days, but everybody better be prepared for winter once it sets in? If no compost could be made and no plants tended during winter, a different play style would have to develop. If not enough grain in granaries, perhaps the village would have to depend on hunting.
- Natural disasters. If you build your house of sticks, the winds will sooner or later blow it down... The world could become more imbalanced and harder to survive in as the days pass. Consider a town dependent on electricity to keep the babies warm and the food production going - and then a storm destroys all the power lines. Suddenly people would have to resort to older age tech to survive until the infrastructure is back up.
- Marriage, new lines. There's no real reason why Eves should be remembered forever. It's more natural that they are forgotten by time, and that new families form.
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- Seasons - What if after a reset you were guaranteed summer for two whole days, but everybody better be prepared for winter once it sets in? If no compost could be made and no plants tended during winter, a different play style would have to develop. If not enough grain in granaries, perhaps the village would have to depend on hunting.
Seems like some people were practicing for winter last arc
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Seems like some people were practicing for winter last arc
Wow.
What is that top middle, a combined sheep and bear pen?
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Yeah, Cat, I'm aware of all of these suggestions (and more), but I fear that they don't change the fundamental problem. The WHY problem.
First of all, if people don't NEED to upgrade to electric ovens or berry-picking machines or whatever, they won't. Just because it's possible doesn't mean people will do it, beyond the first time they do it for the sake of novelty.
If they need to do it, and they do, then we're back to the fundamental question again: now what? We've just kicked the ball further down the field. It would be like adding another water tier above diesel pumps. That would give the people who have already built the diesel pump something to do with their time (build the nuclear pump or whatever). But we still have the same fundamental problem.
And doing this for more systems (beyond the central water "spine" in the game) just replicates this same problem in more places, in parallel.
Now, it might be argued that we could give people stuff that they don't necessarily need, but that still makes life more convenient. Like, imagine automated farming. That would free up time. But free up time for what other activity, exactly?
Natural disasters are a more elaborate form of decay. I.e., the stuff you build breaks down over time, and you need to repair it or upgrade it endlessly. You're still kinda doing the same thing over and over though, right?
I feel like this kind of thing is the "pile more stuff on, it will eventually be really interesting" approach that has already run aground. Adding more facets does make a multi-faceted game that lasts longer.... it will last until you've seen every facet at least once.
I think there's another possibility here, where there's a fundamental interest in emergent, challenging situations....
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If they need to do it, and they do, then we're back to the fundamental question again: now what? We've just kicked the ball further down the field.
I think that if a task is imperative for survival, like compost, and if it is boring enough (and it is), people will upgrade it.
I say this as having spent hours upon hours in Stardew Valley. Every time I could upgrade something, I would. Not so much in order to make something fancy but to make the work itself easier. And every single upgrade felt valuable, because life became simpler.
But yeah, once the farm was running with the best tech and I felt rich beyond measure, I lost interest in playing. (But to be fair, that game is really tweaked around an ingame period of two years, even though it allows you to continue playing after that point.)
As for natural disasters being sort of "soft resets" or not unlike natural decay, yes, but with added drama. Can you save the city? If the city is saved, is it worth staying or is it beyond repair? It offers different opportunities for meaningful choices, survival, and being a hero.
I think there's another possibility here, where there's a fundamental interest in emergent, challenging situations....
The big cycle the game offers right now is: Beginning (Eve), Mid game (town life), End (A time of lack where everything is doomed to be destroyed)
I think there are other big cycles the game could offer. As well as smaller cycles within the big one. And depending on the rules of the game, those cycles might feel more rewarding for the players and motivate different choices than the present one.
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in my opinion, there are 3 kinds of camps:
badly optimized
roleplayer cities
good optimization
a lot of good players tend to quit the first if they can
lot of players are not really fond of working, they just want to talk and make drama about their clothes, paper, dogs and dumb stuff
i see a lot of times that i need to do solo camp until people move in and eventually others come back all the time to make the city i started better and better, so far every time when i set up a city all alone, ends up in the endgame and often times the family there survives the arc
but there is the issue of no goals, no true belonging
obviously everyone can't be Eve, and that was always big, you could do the best camps but all kids suicided to become eves and force others to live in their crappy camps
so even if you are against it, skill matters
the eve token idea is the best, people should do things to become eve, hard capping isn't a good solution
should be a soft cap with a cost of starting a new family
there could be also a different scenario, instead of families, should be grouped.
That could be grouped on the race.
So if you are ginger then all gingers are friendly. You could still have mixed families, but you rather mix with other blacks if you are black than whites who are neutral and can backstab you. Then we could have more Eves and more family names.
Also, that would be a nice way to lock people to certain groups. For example, you could choose a race, all day you born there if you aren't cursed or killed, and maybe some reward for doing so. This grouping should be a bit dynamic, like joining the weaker races would give you more points, so there would be more rewards for underdogs.
Sure, instead of races we could have clans or countries or quadrants. Like a belt for each person, so you see that red belt is your team, a green belt can be an enemy.
Once the town has everything, some people just go murdering others for the lullz or griefing the camp which is kinda sad. if I planted the trees or made the pen im emotionally invested and they don't care, they already at an advantage so that's why I hate the current killing system.
The goal should be to make a monument, fight in arenas, play some sport, non-deadly combat, achieve something, win the arc. Surviving can't be the only goal, we need to win the arc, not to delay or demise. When the map gets ruined, old, crappy-looking towns in mess, endless food supplies, no wood, no resources to build, no spots to make new camps, people get bored.
So that's why i don't like limited wells, people should be able to move around. When everything runs out, struggling is not fun, I need to keep gathering firewood or they cut the good trees? we got no iron so i need to collect knives and swords to scrap it?
One solution would be upkeep and limited land for cities. This is the duality of the map. I do want good cities to survive but no one wants to see a crappy one kiln spot to be there forever.
Rust did similar I think, you need to stuff resources into your place, pay the upkeep, or it will start decay and disappear.
This means that you either return and follow up or the camp is good enough that people want to keep alive.
And land-based currency is pretty good I think. Here are 80 square tiles, you can live here if you pay the rent. How to pay the rent? Do work, sell your pies to AI marker, pay off your rent, or move out. Extend your city and get it better ad better. I still think that pre-defined borders would work better, cause i hate the fence systems people do. You should make a proper straight fence or nothing at all.
IF we would have a pre-defined border, we could have different mechanics linked to it. The best example was Mount and blade where you had a city or a castle and villages belonging to it. The cities had market and shops, the villages produced products and sold it to cities, the castles could defend the villages. Who owned the castle, owned the villages.
Of course, ohol is different, not a single-player campaign against AI. But i think it could work that the walls and gates are set, and others can challenge our fort/castle, then a siege minigame decides who owns the land.
I mean it's kinda meta long ago if you got everything, you want to have fun, risk it, fight. Why would you want to farm forever? sure, jason could nerf that food decays, and I would even understand that then fight that off with preservation of food. But even then you got the burning question: why produce more when you can't do anything with it?
So i think that belonging somewhere and competing with others is the key to go forward.
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This is something that I'm still struggling to understand. I see that it usually lasts about 2 days, but why?
There was still plenty of oil on the map.
Getting oil isn't an enjoyable thing to do, especially if nobody is helping.
So even when kerosine ends, people often don't try to get more.
Working together makes things enjoyable, but working together isn't a common thing in this game, it's more about luck if you meet a person that actually wants to do the same thing as you do.
Chat box would fix this issue
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