Ebony and Ivory - A solution for racial harmony

DestinyCall · 2020-02-28 21:14:15

Merge the races from four distinct races to TWO races - dark and light.

Dark people can have black babies OR brown babies. Light people can have white babies OR ginger babies. Dark people have horses and rubber. Light people have bells and universal translation. The two kinds of village have a reason to trade AND they can find each other more reasonably, so they do not need to merge together into a melting pot. We can have big towns and small towns, bell towns and horse towns.

There you go. Racial restrictions can continue to exist, without crippling the game.

Easy fix, problem solved.

Last edited by DestinyCall (2020-02-29 05:18:10)

Spoonwood · 2020-02-28 21:28:18

The gold for a bell can get made by trying to make silver nitrate solution: https://onetech.info/3015-Gold-in-Silve … e-Solution None of the necessary materials come from a tundra.

Saolin · 2020-02-28 21:28:29

Even though it's not particularly exciting, it would probably be an improvement.

Kinrany · 2020-02-28 22:59:32

Improvement in culture war ammunition stockpiles, you mean

QuirkySmirkyIan · 2020-02-28 23:54:48

+1

Saolin · 2020-02-29 00:52:58

Kinrany wrote:

Improvement in culture war ammunition stockpiles, you mean

It would still be more beneficial for everyone to move to one town and work together, it would just be easier to get a town started. We'd probably see a larger number of active towns, and more players willing to work on building a new town.

DestinyCall · 2020-02-29 01:32:17

And just to clarify, when I say that the races are "merged" I mean that all dark babies have access to both hot biomes and all light babies have access to cold tundra as well as the gift of universal translation. My brother might be black and I'm brown, but we are both dark and share the same race abilities. The different character models would add more variety to your family tree, which I would like to see.

This would create a situation where dark people can develop their town rapidly with the aide of horses and rubber, while light people are a slower burn. Less mobile but able to communicate freely with other families when they find them or get found by them. Two dark families would struggle to communicate, since they lack that skill.

Light families will have a harder start without fast horse carts and will need to find a dark family eventually to gain access to rubber. But they will be the only ones who are able to harvest oil, so they are important for the long game. I will not go so far as to say this will actually lead to trade ... but at least it creates the potential for neighboring villages to establish longterm relationships and help each other over generations. Due to universal translation, living together isn't necessary for easy communication. You wouldn't need to abandon your home village to travel long distances through dangerous terrain as a young woman to populate a bell town, since it would be easier to send a guy with a horse cart full of rubber.

It is also a simpler system, since you don't have just a 1/4 chance for finding the right color when you are needing a specific item. The odds of your closest neighbor being the color you need is quite high. And you will either have horses to go looking or bells to draw people to you. When you find each other, trade should be possible, since you know what the other town can't produce on its own and they can easily guess what you want even before you arrive.

Hybrid towns will still develop, but living in a single family village is no longer a death sentence, so the pressure to form or join a multi-family town is reduced. You have options for how you can find or bring people to your town when you need them to advance. And you could also have neighboring families of the SAME color but different lineage, which creates more opportunities for war/peace and competition for shared resources.

I'd still rather throw out the whole system, but I think I would be able to tolerate a binary system. Especially since it would allow more small towns and distinct lineages to exist far away from each other.

Last edited by DestinyCall (2020-02-29 08:12:02)

ninjanick · 2020-02-29 02:08:29

The language system gets thrown out of whack here. Can mothers give birth to babies that don't understand them? Or is there a 'dark' language and a 'light' language, which is invalidated by lights' universal language? The universal thing would probably just need to go away completely.

DestinyCall · 2020-02-29 02:22:03

Languages are based on lineage. Regardless of race, you can always understand anyone in your lineage.

The universal translator perk would allow light skinned people to communicate with other families of light skinned people and dark people. But dark people from one family would not be able to freely converse with dark people of a different family. Language would still be part of the game, just not a big part. And quite frankly, I don't see it playing a big part right now, other than encouraging families to live together to gain easy language acquisition for babies.

...

Personally, I think it would be really cool if there was a SINGLE light language and a SINGLE dark language, shared by all of the light/dark families, with no universal translation or baby language acquisition to remove the barrier completely. It would mean that we have to go out and learn basic words to interact and maybe trade or whatever. When languages were first introduced, I did this a few times and it was quite fun!

But that is very much NOT how languages work in OHOL right now. It would require significant code changes and might not even be possible.

...

My main goal with this post was to find the dirt simplest way to make race restrictions more tolerable to the masses, since it is clear that Jason does not plan on removing them any time soon.

I don't want to overcomplicate the idea with anything that might require extra effort, like new content for special biomes or resource distribution balancing or the like.

Last edited by DestinyCall (2020-02-29 05:16:30)

Saolin · 2020-02-29 02:49:21

DestinyCall wrote:

I'd still rather throw out the whole system

I agree!

TheRubyCart · 2020-02-29 04:09:18

DestinyCall wrote:

And just to clarify, when I say that the races are "merged" I mean that all dark babies have access to both hot biomes and all light babies have access to cold tundra as well as the gift of universal translation. The double skin tones would add more variety to character models in your family tree, which I would like to see.
This would create a situation where dark people can develop their town rapidly with the aide of horses and rubber, while light people are a slower burn. Less mobile but able to communicate freely with other families when they find them or get found by them. Two dark families would struggle to communicate, since they lack that skill.
Light families will have a harder start without fast horse carts and will need to find a dark family eventually to gain access to rubber. But they will be the only ones who are able to harvest oil, so they are important for the long game. I will not go so far as to say this will actually lead to trade ... but at least it creates the potential for neighboring villages to establish longterm relationships and help each other over generations. Due to universal translation, living together isn't necessary for easy communication. You wouldn't need to abandon your home village to travel long distances through dangerous terrain as a young woman to populate a bell town, since it would be easier to send a guy with a horse cart full of rubber.
It is also a simpler system, since you don't have just a 1/4 chance for finding the right color when you are needing a specific item. The odds of your closest neighbor being the color you need is quite high. And you will either have horses to go looking or bells to draw people to you. When you find each other, trade should be possible, since you know what the other town can't produce on its own and they can easily guess what you want even before you arrive.
Hybrid towns will still develop, but living in a single family village is no longer a death sentence, so the pressure to form or join a multi-family town is reduced. You have options for how you can find or bring people to your town when you need them to advance. And you could also have neighboring families of the SAME color but different lineage, which creates more opportunities for war/peace and competition for shared resources.
I'd still rather throw out the whole system, but I think I would be able to tolerate a binary system. Especially since it would allow more small towns and distinct lineages to exist far away from each other.

so basically races when game was released but with racial update

pein · 2020-02-29 04:22:53

just sons, so they won't go down in genetics

DestinyCall · 2020-02-29 04:45:54

TheRubyCart wrote:

so basically races when game was released but with racial update

The classics never go out of style.

PopcornFireworks · 2020-02-29 06:33:55

I like most of this idea, but one of the major issues I have with the racial specializations as they exist now is that white people have universal communication and not one of the other races. Like IRL English is spoken in a lot of the world because of a history of colonialism and imperialism, so it feels uncomfortable to have that reflected into a game where (afaik) those things don't exist. So as long as we're talking about changing race restrictions, why not have the dark group be the universal translators?

(although what would white people do then lol)

ETA: honestly though the whole race restrictions system feels like an reflection of IRL societal biases into a world where it doesn't make sense for them to exist. Like yes players will bring their own biases in with them, but why entrench them into the fabric of the game?

Last edited by PopcornFireworks (2020-02-29 06:42:27)

DestinyCall · 2020-02-29 07:20:08

Are the race restrictions actually a reflection of real life societal bias in the game world ... or are they a reflection of your own internalized racial stereotypes?

If you juggled around the superpowers, so vanillas lived in the jungle and chocolates lived in the tundra or if gingers lived in the desert and coffees could understand every language, is that really any more or less racist than the current configuration? I suspect that it wouldn't matter which flavor of humanity ended up with which abilities ... people would find a way to be upset and disappointed and offended. It is inevitable. When race is involved, people bring a lot of their own emotional and cultural baggage along for the ride.

I think that the way Jason chose to implement "family specializations" in the game is distasteful and racial insensitive. But I don't think he is intentionally pushing any sort of political or social agenda. I do wish he had chosen a more tactful way to implement races, instead of just pretending like it doesn't matter and ignoring the ramifications. That was never going to work.

Honestly, the thing that bothers me the most about the racial restrictions is that the core idea could have been implemented in a much better way, both from a social standpoint AND from a gameplay standpoint, simply by shifting the framing. This could have been the "family diversity" update, encouraging different skintones to develop their own unique style of village in different start zones - new plants, animals, and resources to scratch our itch for new content, unique craftable items available only to snow villages or jungle villages, different clothing for living in a hot and humid jungle or a dry desert or a freezing tundra. I don't hate the race restrictions because they are offensive to my fragile sensibilities ... I hate them for the lost potential and the complete lack of fun provided by a concept that had so much potential for more.

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#1 2020-02-28 21:14:15

Ebony and Ivory - A solution for racial harmony

#2 2020-02-28 21:28:18

Re: Ebony and Ivory - A solution for racial harmony

#3 2020-02-28 21:28:29

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#4 2020-02-28 22:59:32

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#5 2020-02-28 23:54:48

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#6 2020-02-29 00:52:58

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#7 2020-02-29 01:32:17

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#9 2020-02-29 02:22:03

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#10 2020-02-29 02:49:21

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#11 2020-02-29 04:09:18

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#12 2020-02-29 04:22:53

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