Thanks Jason.

QuirkySmirkyIan · 2020-09-24 00:15:00

Thank you Jason for adding many features that the community wants, this is amazing and I think this is the best option for the future of the game.

Last edited by QuirkySmirkyIan (2020-09-24 00:16:02)

JonySky · 2020-09-24 07:11:06

Has he re-activated the tool slots?

Tea · 2020-09-24 07:48:28

Shush, keep it down. If we don't talk about it he will forget to re-active it and we can finally play this game with less frustration

gamatron332 · 2020-09-24 15:13:25

Tea wrote:

Shush, keep it down. If we don't talk about it he will forget to re-active it and we can finally play this game with less frustration

This man is now town leader

Spoonwood · 2020-09-24 15:52:40

JonySky wrote:

Has he re-activated the tool slots?

Richard Garfield, who I think is the same Richard Garfield who created Magic: The Gathering did play OHOL. Precursors to tool slots suggested by players were suggested here also: https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=8181, though I don't recall reading those threads, if I read them. There did exist a fair amount of enthusiasm, but also some strong dissent.

For anyone reading JonySky's question as a serious one, tool slots require 100000 players on a server to be active.

Arcurus · 2020-09-24 17:47:44

Spoonwood wrote:

JonySky wrote:
Has he re-activated the tool slots?
Richard Garfield, who I think is the same Richard Garfield who created Magic: The Gathering did play OHOL. Precursors to tool slots suggested by players were suggested here also: https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=8181, though I don't recall reading those threads, if I read them. There did exist a fair amount of enthusiasm, but also some strong dissent.
For anyone reading JonySky's question as a serious one, tool slots require 100000 players on a server to be active.

so they are not yet fully gone, they are only postponed until we reach 100000 players

jasonrohrer wrote:

Why:
To give you rich, interesting, and weighty choices to make in each life.
To ensure that each life really is different.
To force you to study and understand the most pressing problems facing your village now, and the problems it will likely be facing in the near future.
To enrich player interaction, communication, and cooperation, and short-circuit the tendency to "just do it all yourself" instead of coordinating your efforts with others.
To encourage trade between players.
To increase the importance of communication between village adults and incoming children.
To add an additional constraint to the game, because constraints are generally good. More constraints leads to more meaningful choices.
...
Anticipated basic interactions:
Taking stock of established tool knowledge held by other players to avoid wasteful overlap.
Giving your newborn baby a necessary tour of the village and firm direction about what tools they should learn when they get older.
We really need a Lathe operator, baby. Oh, you don't know how to use the Lathe? My old fingers aren't so nimble, so I can't do it myself, but I can teach you how to use it.
Saving some of your precious tool slots until later in life, just in case.
Running around the village looking for someone, anyone, who can chop some damn kindling for you. Hey little boy, can you hold this axe properly? There's a good lad. Now chop this branch.

Pain:
You've been playing the game for 20 months without this constraint.
Adding this new constraint this late in the game is going to really tickle on the way down.
You will certainly be frustrated as you get the hang of managing this new, limited resource, and depending on others to fill in the gaps in your own capabilities.
No pain no gain.

Inspiration:
Richard Garfield suggested something like this to me in an email after he played OHOL a while back. I've been stewing on it ever since.
Noita.
For goodness sake, go play Noita.
Noita is the greatest single-player game of all time.

In reality they came down to ignore them if you are not an vet that makes tech and if you a vet that makes tech, poor vet...

And yes have tons of messages that you dont ever want to read...

They could be implemented in a positive way. Like if you / your close family mastered a tool (100 uses plus). You have more uses on the given tool and you get also a nice matching name like: Master Smith Hans Kelderman. And hungry work cost could be halved and you have a higher change to incarnate to a mother / relatives who mastered your tool.

Last edited by Arcurus (2020-09-25 09:01:39)

Tea · 2020-09-24 23:38:48

Arcurus wrote:

In reality they came down to ignore them if you are not an vet that makes tech and if you a vet that makes tech, poor vet...
And yes have tons of messages that you dont ever want to read...
They could be implemented in a positive way. Like if you / your close family mastered a tool (100 uses plus). You have more uses on the given tool and you get also a nice matching name like: Master Smith Hans Kelderman. And hungry work cost could be halved and you have a higher change to incarnate to a mother / relatives who mastered your tool.

Please. We all know that it would be Herbert Kelderman the Master Smith.

jasonrohrer · 2020-09-25 05:44:01

Yeah, this is a weird one.

When I go back and read that initial post, I still wish the game was more like what that post was trying to achieve. Difficult decisions, agonizing trade-offs, etc. Carefully planning out and optimizing your interactions in relation to the interactions of your village-mates.

But tool slots didn't engender this feeling. Yes, lots of annoying DING messages to explain what was going on, as you learned things. But also, I think that people's general annoyance with them led me to weaken them to the point where they had no impact. By weaken, I mean, "Give you so many slots that you don't usually need to think about them."

I mean, if there were 10 people in your village, and you each only got 3 tool slots, that you would really have to specialize and work together. But then there's the question of whether this kind of specialization is interesting, and also the tedium that the communication and coordination would entail. Finding the guy who can use the knife. Over and over and over.

Furthermore, deciding which tool to learn isn't actually an agonizing decision. It's an information problem. If you had a god's eye view of the village, you could easily pick which tool to learn. So it is possible to make an informed decision, but the process of informing yourself is itself tedious (running around the village asking people what tools need learning). It's not an agonizing decision, because there is a correct answer available, with enough legwork. So it's either busy work or random guess. Most people just randomly guessed (or ignored it entirely until they ran out of slots, and then said, "now what?")

If you have four great wands but only three slots in Noita, the decision is agonizing, but that's not just because of the limited slots. It's also because measuring which wand is better, in an absolute sense, might actually be impossible. So you're forced to do your best, using your intuition.

Grim_Arbiter · 2020-09-25 08:17:01

jasonrohrer wrote:

Yeah, this is a weird one.
When I go back and read that initial post, I still wish the game was more like what that post was trying to achieve. Difficult decisions, agonizing trade-offs, etc. Carefully planning out and optimizing your interactions in relation to the interactions of your village-mates.
But tool slots didn't engender this feeling. Yes, lots of annoying DING messages to explain what was going on, as you learned things. But also, I think that people's general annoyance with them led me to weaken them to the point where they had no impact. By weaken, I mean, "Give you so many slots that you don't usually need to think about them."
I mean, if there were 10 people in your village, and you each only got 3 tool slots, that you would really have to specialize and work together. But then there's the question of whether this kind of specialization is interesting, and also the tedium that the communication and coordination would entail. Finding the guy who can use the knife. Over and over and over.
Furthermore, deciding which tool to learn isn't actually an agonizing decision. It's an information problem. If you had a god's eye view of the village, you could easily pick which tool to learn. So it is possible to make an informed decision, but the process of informing yourself is itself tedious (running around the village asking people what tools need learning). It's not an agonizing decision, because there is a correct answer available, with enough legwork. So it's either busy work or random guess. Most people just randomly guessed (or ignored it entirely until they ran out of slots, and then said, "now what?")
If you have four great wands but only three slots in Noita, the decision is agonizing, but that's not just because of the limited slots. It's also because measuring which wand is better, in an absolute sense, might actually be impossible. So you're forced to do your best, using your intuition.

I hadn't played noita when I first read your post describing tool slots and their intented feel, but after playing it I think I understand what you were going for a lot better now.

A little caveat about noita after the fact though. It's fun, but it's hard as shit Jason and completely luck based. Like less than 15% of the people who have that game have beat it and gotten the achievement on steam. Personally I have like 40 to 60 hours if remembering right, and while I'll probably go back to it, I doubt I'll ever beat it.

While OHOL cant be "won" obviously I guess I'm just saying keep an eye out for those pitfalls that come with grinding for a gameplay impact. Certain things should be hard and have to require planning, but there needs to be a natural less restricted flow state as well.

Tea · 2020-09-25 08:22:48

Running after someone who has the knife so he can finally cut more sheep for meat, my bread and turkey isn't fun either. And I can't make a new one, because I don't have any slots left. Oh and asking someone else to make me one will be also annoying since chances are, I'm the only one in the town who knows how to smith and teaching someone would take too long because I need to keep cooking to keep the town fed and preventing people from munching the berry farm empty.

Even if I had a god's eye for the tools needed in town, there will still be unpredictable events in town. Bears appears in town, biting 3 females. I have no tools left to either kill it, make new or clean existing pads or even use them or the thread to heal the wounded one. If I learn pads and thread in the very beginning at each life, I lose 2 and 1/2 tool slots (pads, thread and hot coals).

Tool slots, in my opinion, isn't really a character skills. How would I be restricted to use a certain number of tools ? In real live I can use any tool in my house without any restrictions. Would I be good at using some of them ? Definitely not. But since I love cooking and tending my little garden, my knife and hoe skills are better than my ax skill. So why not implement this idea in the game ?

A baker, who spends his time making pies, cutting bread and turkey, making broth and stew should have better cooking skills than the 3 year old sitting at the fire and deciding to cook for a bit. He should be able to make better quality food. And while we are at it, professions would great so others can see who the town baker, town smith, town tailor, town hunter, town shephard, etc ... is and see what the town still need as a profession.

Basically, give everyone the possibility to try and use every tool but they can specialize in just one or two.

Arcurus · 2020-09-25 08:34:25

Tea wrote:

Tool slots, in my opinion, isn't really a character skills. How would I be restricted to use a certain number of tools ? In real live I can use any tool in my house without any restrictions. Would I be good at using some of them ? Definitely not. But since I love cooking and tending my little garden, my knife and hoe skills are better than my ax skill. So why not implement this idea in the game ?
A baker, who spends his time making pies, cutting bread and turkey, making broth and stew should have better cooking skills than the 3 year old sitting at the fire and deciding to cook for a bit. He should be able to make better quality food. And while we are at it, professions would great so others can see who the town baker, town smith, town tailor, town hunter, town shephard, etc ... is and see what the town still need as a profession.
Basically, give everyone the possibility to try and use every tool but they can specialize in just one or two.

yea that would be interesting...

In away also currently people specialize. Its quite time consuming to learn how to craft all the stuff and to do it in an efficient way needs some practice.

So i guess most people actually specialize in their life. For sure there are some hardcore vets that can do everything super efficient, but they are quite rare and also they limit their time to the stuff they want to do or need to do.

It would be interesting to just give an extra name like Baker / Master baker to your top used tool once you reached 100 / 1000 uses or so.

The master griefers who have been exiled the most can get the title Master griefer or something

Last edited by Arcurus (2020-09-25 08:35:28)

Arcurus · 2020-09-25 09:03:54

Tea wrote:

Arcurus wrote:
In reality they came down to ignore them if you are not an vet that makes tech and if you a vet that makes tech, poor vet...
And yes have tons of messages that you dont ever want to read...
They could be implemented in a positive way. Like if you / your close family mastered a tool (100 uses plus). You have more uses on the given tool and you get also a nice matching name like: Master Smith Hans Kelderman. And hungry work cost could be halved and you have a higher change to incarnate to a mother / relatives who mastered your tool.

Please. We all know that it would be Herbert Kelderman the Master Smith.

sorry my mind tricked me how could i forget

By the way, when i think about it i like the idea of giving the title Master Griefer. You should get it already as baby, so people would know who comes to them

Last edited by Arcurus (2020-09-25 20:07:39)

jasonrohrer · 2020-09-25 19:53:37

Grim, Noita currently has 800+ players.

https://steamcharts.com/app/881100

So I don't think the hardness is scaring people off. And having only 4 wand slots isn't what makes it hard, anyway.... There are other reasons why OHOL isn't a "sticky game" that keeps lots of people playing and playing, the main one being that your play experience is interrupted every hour. The end of a each life is a great "stopping point," and the startup cost for the next life is high, and the duration of the next life is known (a whole hour?). So there's no tendency to say, "It's late, but I'll just play one more quick game." In Noita, that tendency is there in spades, and "one more quick game" often lasts 30 or 40 minutes if you end up having a good run.... and then you look at the clock, yikes! OHOL never tricks you in that way.

In fact, there are a number of people (I've spoken to some) who literally only played ONE OHOL life. They LOVED it, had a great mother, had children, took care of them, experienced an amazing story, and died of old age in their first life. They quit at that point, having something else to do instead of playing another hour, and never came back. I'll get some hard stats about that in a second. How many people played one life and have 50+ minutes of total playtime (tutorial doesn't count).

Regarding character skills in OHOL:

Yeah, there's also the problem of fitting whatever "skills" system into the existing way that crafting works in the game.

There currently aren't better or worse pies, or better or worse kindling. So how does being an "expert" in pie-making or kindling chopping manifest itself?

The current A + B = C crafting logic doesn't have room in it for "better or worse". It just wasn't designed that way.

One obvious answer is "speed"... the non-expert makes pies or kindling slower. But how would that manifest itself? Standing there bouncing for 2 seconds per non-expert action? That would really suck.

jasonrohrer · 2020-09-25 20:00:50

Okay, some stats about the one-life players:

6,239 people played only one life, out of 88,033 who got past the tutorial and at least played a life. So 7% played only one life.

708 people who only lived one life lived to 50.

304 people lived to 60 on their first life and then never played again.

Can you imagine that?

On the other hand, 2,551 people lived only one life and died younger than 10.

1,147 lived only one life and died younger than 5.

What a waste of $20 for these people, wow.

Anyway, the point is that even for the 708 people who had what was probably an "excellent" first life, they weren't compelled to play again.

With this many people in the pool, this might just be statistical noise.... you know, the 708 people who had their computer break after their first game or whatever other event that intervened and made them forget about OHOL.

Dodge · 2020-09-25 20:12:43

Living old doesn't mean you had an "excellent" life, they probably struggled to learn how to do stuff while eating all the available food in the village and maybe finally learned how to make pies and did that for the rest of their life.

If it was really that "excellent" they would have kept playing...

Those rose-colored glasses really have a hard time coming off sometimes.

Real important stats are eventually how many people play the game, how many people stick in the long run and from what i've seen it always seem to drop to the 40 range eventually, not really something to be optimistic about.

Arcurus · 2020-09-25 20:25:46

jasonrohrer wrote:

Regarding character skills in OHOL:
Yeah, there's also the problem of fitting whatever "skills" system into the existing way that crafting works in the game.
There currently aren't better or worse pies, or better or worse kindling. So how does being an "expert" in pie-making or kindling chopping manifest itself?
The current A + B = C crafting logic doesn't have room in it for "better or worse". It just wasn't designed that way.
One obvious answer is "speed"... the non-expert makes pies or kindling slower. But how would that manifest itself? Standing there bouncing for 2 seconds per non-expert action? That would really suck.

First of all, getting a nice Tile already would be great if you need to work on it. If it counts not only this life, than this would give you lot more trust.

Second: For the hard work stuff, hard work food cost could be reduced. Tool use could be reduced.

For items it depends how difficult it would be to implement:

An item could get an value that represents their quality. Better quality changes the name and the food value / tool use, otherwise its technically the same.

If this is too difficult implement to start with making one pie could have a 50% chance that you made another pie same for other tools / stuff you craft.

Also there could be general a low food cost of maybe 1 or 2 pip if you are not skilled in it. I dont know if this would be good to have, since it would nerf stuff, but it would be realistic, that you need more effort to do it if you are not skilled in it without needing to have an artificial slow down.

Third option would be to add something like stamina. If you do a lot of work you get exhausted and cannot do hard work anymore. The good thing with this, compared to hard work is it would give all players a kind of regrowing resource, so players are actual per se useful as a resource.

Dodge · 2020-09-25 20:46:44

In my opinion the main issue with the tool system it's that it's way too complicated and by that i mean that you have too many different options to choose.

It should be much more simpler, you decide to become smith and you become the smith and are able to use all the tools related to smithing.

Then if players want tools they come to you, instead of having to find the "fire guy" then the "kiln guy" then the "hammer guy" etc.

But most importantly in the current game it makes absolutly no sense to have separated skills and professions etc, at the moment it's a crafting game with a parenting twist, all the elements of having complex interactions, trading between profession etc make absolutly no sense currently.

And just dropping professions in a game revolving around crafting only means that you can craft less so instead of adding to the game it removes from it.

First you need an environment that makes sense for having these professions and then adding them adds to the gameplay instead of the opposite.

But right now it's pretty much build town, town dies, wash rince repeat, there's no long term or world history, the families get forgotten and frankly if they die it doesn't even matter since they will get replaced without it having any long term impact or consequences on the ongoing world or history.

BlueCramberry64 · 2020-09-25 22:19:34

jasonrohrer wrote:

Okay, some stats about the one-life players:
304 people lived to 60 on their first life and then never played again.

Can you imagine that?

One of them was my boyfriend I had been trying to get him to play OHOL with me for a long time. We twined and made a mexican restaurant together. He never played again lol. He said it was a nice game thou.

jasonrohrer wrote:

So there's no tendency to say, "It's late, but I'll just play one more quick game." In Noita, that tendency is there in spades, and "one more quick game" often lasts 30 or 40 minutes if you end up having a good run.... and then you look at the clock, yikes! OHOL never tricks you in that way.

It does to me. An hour goes by fast, before I know it I haven't moved for like 6 hours.

Coconut Fruit · 2020-09-26 00:43:15

jasonrohrer wrote:

On the other hand, 2,551 people lived only one life and died younger than 10.
1,147 lived only one life and died younger than 5.
What a waste of $20 for these people, wow.

It almost ended the same way to me. First games really suck in OHOL. It's too overwhelming, especially with that little view size.

Grim_Arbiter · 2020-09-26 01:35:28

jasonrohrer wrote:

Grim, Noita currently has 800+ players.
https://steamcharts.com/app/881100
So I don't think the hardness is scaring people off. And having only 4 wand slots isn't what makes it hard, anyway.... There are other reasons why OHOL isn't a "sticky game" that keeps lots of people playing and playing, the main one being that your play experience is interrupted every hour. The end of a each life is a great "stopping point," and the startup cost for the next life is high, and the duration of the next life is known (a whole hour?). So there's no tendency to say, "It's late, but I'll just play one more quick game." In Noita, that tendency is there in spades, and "one more quick game" often lasts 30 or 40 minutes if you end up having a good run.... and then you look at the clock, yikes! OHOL never tricks you in that way.

Definitely agree for the most part.

There's always outliers like morti and bluecram, who tend to play in a large streak at a time, but most of my time playing (and I'd imagine most others) is spent on one or two lives a day.

I've always called this game a great pallet cleanser.

It's the kind of game where after playing 5 straight hours of a survival shooter, you can unwind with a life in OHOL. I did that with this game for over a year straight.

So I'd say its still a sticky game, its just a different kind of sticky. Long haul slow burn potential sticky.

Also I can see now that might be part of why people wanted you to try SS13. I still haven't even played it myself, but I have seen actual full streams of rounds in it now.

It's in the same camp in terms of that interruption and time element, and same worth in risk for a play attempt. You generally know how long a round (life in OHOL for comparison) is going to last, but things can interrupt it and cut it short (non old age death in OHOL).

Last edited by Grim_Arbiter (2020-09-26 02:09:36)

Spoonwood · 2020-09-26 04:10:19

Jason, your new "tutorial" involves no tutoring whatsoever. I watched someone play it on a Twitch stream, but don't know how to get there myself.

One of your stones teaches in the revised tutorial teaches wild onion munching. Any advice which encourages munching on food is a new player trap, unless they understand such as a fall back plan for eating. I got brown on bigserver2 in the tutorial. One of your stones says that your tutorial works just like the real game in that a player can die. I carried a basket through the tundra and the desert. I started it again, got white, and again carried a basket through the tundra and the desert. That's not how the bigserver2 game works. I do not find it inconceivable that a new player can carry a basket with food, drop it in a tundra or desert, and get confused about why they can't pick it up, and then they are dead.

I did like seeing wild garlic in there.

Last edited by Spoonwood (2020-09-26 04:14:10)

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2020-09-24 00:15:00

Thanks Jason.

#2 2020-09-24 07:11:06

Re: Thanks Jason.

#3 2020-09-24 07:48:28

Re: Thanks Jason.

#4 2020-09-24 15:13:25

Re: Thanks Jason.

#5 2020-09-24 15:52:40

Re: Thanks Jason.

#6 2020-09-24 17:47:44

Re: Thanks Jason.

#7 2020-09-24 23:38:48

Re: Thanks Jason.

#8 2020-09-25 05:44:01

Re: Thanks Jason.

#9 2020-09-25 08:17:01

Re: Thanks Jason.

#10 2020-09-25 08:22:48

Re: Thanks Jason.

#11 2020-09-25 08:34:25

Re: Thanks Jason.

#12 2020-09-25 09:03:54

Re: Thanks Jason.

#13 2020-09-25 19:53:37

Re: Thanks Jason.

#14 2020-09-25 20:00:50

Re: Thanks Jason.

#15 2020-09-25 20:12:43

Re: Thanks Jason.

#16 2020-09-25 20:25:46

Re: Thanks Jason.

#17 2020-09-25 20:46:44

Re: Thanks Jason.

#18 2020-09-25 22:19:34

Re: Thanks Jason.

#19 2020-09-26 00:43:15

Re: Thanks Jason.

#20 2020-09-26 01:35:28

Re: Thanks Jason.

#21 2020-09-26 04:10:19

Re: Thanks Jason.

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