One Hour One Life Forums

DestinyCall

Member

Registered: 2018-12-08

Posts: 4,563

Re: On "Nintendo Hard" Garbage

This is pure bullshit, Spoon.    In order to understand what is means to survive, you MUST have some understanding of what it means to die.     The two concepts are intrinsically linked.

sur·viv·al  -  "the state or fact of continuing to live or exist, typically in spite of an accident, ordeal, or difficult circumstances."

There is nothing in that definition about death or ceasing to exist.  There is no implication of anything about death in that concept also.  So, there is no intrinsic link.

Where is the error in this quote?

What is the opposite of CONTINUING to exist?  What happens when you DO NOT survive? 

Yes, that is right ... you die.  Death is waiting for you on the other side of survival.  It is always waiting.   That is what it means to really survive.  At its core, survival is overcoming death.

That does not mean you must cheat death forever, of course.   Nobody plays the game of Life to the very end and walks away still breathing.  Nobody survives forever.  There is One Death at the end of every One Life.  And understanding that is important to understanding what it means to SURVIVE. 

The two concepts are linked because survival is not the same as living.  It is not mere existence.   It is continuing to exist in the face of death.   It is overcoming or enduring adversity and continuing to live.   Life is a struggle.  Survivors have endured and carried on.   Those who do not survive are dead. 

No exceptions.

(Excluding zombies, of course)

If there was no death in OHOL, so you just existed for 60 minutes and then got a "you died of old age" screen at the end of your life, it would be a really shitty "survival" game.

Absolutely not.  Such would involve survival.  It would be a survival game, because there existed survival instead of death.  A survival game is one where there exists survival.  The more death gets emphasized in a game, the less of a survival game it is.

Can you really consider it "surviving" for sixty minutes, if there was no possibility of failure?

Yes.  Your own definition says that survival involves continuing to live or to exist.  That's all.  Whether it is typical or not, is no matter whatsoever for whether such fits the definition.  2 is a prime number.  It is atypical, since it is an even prime number.  But it is still a prime number.  A game where players played for sixty minutes without having the possibility of death, would still be a game of surviving, since they still would exist inside of the game.

No.  It would not be a game about survival at that point.   It would be a game about existence.  I've played a game like this.  It is called "The Stillness of the Wind".  You are a old woman, living alone on an isolated farm. You gather eggs, milk goats, listen to the wind, and read letters from your distant relatives while the days slowly pass and you get older.  It is a very good game.  Well-designed.  Very thoughtful and meditative.  But it is not a survival game.   

  I don't think so.  You didn't survive.  You just existed for a length of time, then stopped existing.

Again, your own definition says: "the state or fact of continuing to live or exist".  So, existing for a length of time is a form of survival.  So, your statement "you didn't survive" is wrong.  THE PLAYER DID SURVIVE SINCE THEY CONTINUED TO EXIST.  I don't know how you don't see this.  Or this is one of your protracted jokes.

Not a joke.   You are confusing the two concepts.   Survival is different from existence.  You need to keep existing to be a survivor but existence alone is not enough.    Survival implies more than just being alive.

A person can survive a plane crash or survive cancer or survive for twenty years on a deserted island.

But if you say "I survived twenty years", I would not think "this person must be twenty years old.".   I would think "you survived twenty years of what?"   Likewise, if you clarified by adding "I survived twenty years of marriage with that woman", I would not say "Congratulations!  You must have been so happy."  I would ask how you are enjoying the divorce.   

Survival and continued existence are very similar concepts, but the concept of survival includes additional implications that should not be overlooked. 

"the state or fact of continuing to live or exist, typically in spite of an accident, ordeal, or difficult circumstances."

The second half of that definition is as important as the first half.

Using your example of someone else feeding a character after the human player left the screen after 10 minutes, say to age 40, that character lived for 40 minutes.  It *also* lived for exactly 10 minutes.  That follows the same pattern as I had above Destiny.  Funny how I can use the same logic to support my position that you believed, or joked, as if you thought you refuted my position.

This was a joke.   Mostly because I felt you missed the point so hard it wasn't worth the effort of responding seriously.  But I enjoy tilting at windmills, so here goes ....

Death is implicit the moment you talk about survival.

A player who plays for 10 minutes and then leaves survives for 10 minutes.  A player that players for 60 minutes ALSO survived for 10 minutes.  A player who is in game still alive can talk about how long they have survived.  I'm more than 10 years old right now in real life and less than 70 years old, and thus it's clear that I've survived 20 years.  So, absolutely not, death is not the implicit moment that I talk about survival, and my previous comments weren't that way.  Death is the moment when we can *measure* the maximum life of the being in question lasted.  But a man who lives for 70 years also lived for 60 years.  He also lived for 40 years.  And an OHOL player whose character lives for 60 years also lived for 50 years, and also lived for 30 years.  So, I don't understand why you've emphasized death like this.  It does not do much at all for understanding survival.

You are trying so hard to talk about survival without acknowledging the importance of death that it hurts to read this nonsense.    What are you even trying to prove with these examples?

Death is indeed the "moment we can measure the maximum life of the being in question".   It is also the point where survival ends.   While you are surviving, you are alive.  And yes, you can be alive for different amounts of time.   You can survive many different things - being stabbed by a griefer, catching yellow fever, being abandoned as a baby - and as long as you do not die, your life will continue.  You will be a survivor.   But death is implicit the moment you talk about survival because that is where it all ends.  Life.  Existence.  Survival.   In the end, we always die.

Don't fear the Reaper.

Last edited by DestinyCall (2020-11-04 23:54:36)

Spoonwood

Member

Registered: 2019-02-06

Posts: 4,369

Re: On "Nintendo Hard" Garbage

What is the opposite of CONTINUING to exist?  What happens when you DO NOT survive?

Yes, that is right ... you die.  Death is waiting for you on the other side of survival.  It is always waiting.   That is what it means to really survive.  At its core, survival is overcoming death.

At it's core, survival is not overcoming death.  For death is not overcome, as it is inevitable.  Death can only get delayed.  At it's core, survival is continuing to exist. 

That does not mean you must cheat death forever, of course.   Nobody plays the game of Life to the very end and walks away still breathing.  Nobody survives forever.  There is One Death at the end of every One Life.  And understanding that is important to understanding what it means to SURVIVE.

Death is the absence of life after one has already existed.  One does not understand what it means to survive by focusing on the absence of life. One understands what it means to survive by understanding life and how life exists and how lives continue to exist.

The two concepts are linked because survival is not the same as living.  It is not mere existence.

Survival is no more than continuing to exist.  Your own definition above said that Destiny.  Here's Merriam Webster's dictionary:

1a "the act or fact of living or continuing longer than another person or thing"
1b "the continuation of life or existence "

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/survival

It is continuing to exist in the face of death.

Death is not something that has a face.  It cannot even get meaningfully compared to having a face, because death does not have any sort of personality whatsoever.  Death is inevitable.  One does not spite death by continuing to exist.  One only delays death.

It is overcoming or enduring adversity and continuing to live.

Nope.  Those who have easy lives and don't endure adversity STILL survive.

Life is a struggle.

For whom?  Where?  When?  Life is not a struggle for everyone.  Just because someone is not struggling does mean that such a person is any less alive.  A non-struggling person doesn't have less life. 

It would not be a game about survival at that point.   It would be a game about existence.

Survival is just continuing to exist.  Continuing to live.  People who do not experience adversity DO survive.  Survival is not some thing only experienced by those who have endured hardship.  That's just a psychological trick used by some people to intimidate other people into not talking about how they exist.  How they have lived.  Because when one has endured hardship it becomes to difficult to recognize other people and their lives.  Because when one has endured hardship it can be overwhelming.  But, that doesn't change the nature of survival.  Survival is just continuing to exist.

I've played a game like this.  It is called "The Stillness of the Wind".  You are a old woman, living alone on an isolated farm. You gather eggs, milk goats, listen to the wind, and read letters from your distant relatives while the days slowly pass and you get older.  It is a very good game.  Well-designed.  Very thoughtful and meditative.  But it is not a survival game.

The character can be said to be alive, correct?  The character continues to exist with a player playing it, correct?  If so, then the character lives.  The character continues to exist.  So, the character survives.  And it is a survival game, because the character survives in it.

Survival is different from existence.  You need to keep existing to be a survivor but existence alone is not enough.    Survival implies more than just being alive.

If it did, then people who have survived would have a greater state of being than those who are just existing and have not endured hardship.  But that is not the case!  People who just exist have the same amount of being as those who have overcome adversity.  People who overcome adversity are not greater as people with respect to their being than those who have not overcome adversity.  They have the same amount of being.

Continuing to exist is enough for survival.

There is also nothing more than being alive.  There exist different states of being alive, but there isn't a greater state of being than being alive.  There is no greater state than existence of the same type.  How do I know?  Well, I can put things another way.  There is no greater state of being than being (or Being if you prefer) itself.  Thus, when you claim that "survival implies more" as if it survival were something greater, it doesn't make sense.  Being does not have something greater than it.

  "the state or fact of continuing to live or exist, typically in spite of an accident, ordeal, or difficult circumstances."

The second half of that definition is as important as the first half.

The second half isn't part of the definition.  It's a suggestion about how authors often use the word.  Dictionaries often get written that way to provide clues on how to understand texts or authors.  And atypical examples CAN AND DO fall under definitions correctly.  If you imply that only typical examples should fall under definitions, that is to make the mistake of conventionalism, and promotes the stereotyping of concepts instead of thinking them through.

You are trying so hard to talk about survival without acknowledging the importance of death that it hurts to read this nonsense.

Death is not important to survival, because death signals the lack of survival.  Death is not important to survival even given that survival must include adversity, as to overcome adversity one doesn't succeed by focusing too much on that adversity, but by learning how to adapt and live with that adversity or to nullify that adversity or to remove oneself from that adversity while still staying alive.  No one lives with death.  Death is not something people adapt to also.  Death doesn't cause success.  Death doesn't have tips on how to overcome any adversity, nor do thoughts of death have any clues on how to overcome adversity.  If one focuses on death during an adversity, then the result is likely suicidal thought(s) if not actual suicide.  For when things are hard, difficult, emotionally and otherwise overwhelming, and look like they simply cannot get dealt with, and no good things can exist in life, why live at all?  There is no motivation to continue living, and instead there exists motivation to die sooner, which entails that suicide is rational.  Death is thus not important to survival, and a negative, harmful focus during an adversity, since it likely results in people thinking that choosing death is the rational choice instead of choosing to live.

But death is implicit the moment you talk about survival because that is where it all ends.

Even if it were the case that survival also did involve adversity, that adversity is not necessarily death.  Death is not necessarily implicit the moment one talks about survival, because there might not be any thought of, nor recognition of death in one's mind, nor anything about death that follows from one's logic.  And if death is implicit when one talks about real adversity that might not be overcome, well, for what reason should one continue to exist at all?  If there is no good motivation to continue to exist, and there exists motivation to die instead, because living with that adversity isn't worth it, how has focusing on death been useful?  It sure seems to me that focusing on death as you suggest Destiny, for a *real* adversity would just result in more suicide.

Don't fear the Reaper.

There is nothing after death.  Why wouldn't one fear dying, since death means no more possibility for anything?  When it means no more existence?  When it means no more of one's personality?  When it means no more of any interactions with other people?  When it means no more enjoyable experiences?  When it means no more of any of the good things that one has ever known?

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Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.

DestinyCall

Member

Registered: 2018-12-08

Posts: 4,563

Re: On "Nintendo Hard" Garbage

It is continuing to exist in the face of death.

Death is not something that has a face.  It cannot even get meaningfully compared to having a face, because death does not have any sort of personality whatsoever.  Death is inevitable.  One does not spite death by continuing to exist.  One only delays death.

I made a bet that you wouldn't be able to resist treating the "face of death" as literal, rather than recognizing it as a common figure of speech.   I'm afraid you lost the bet.

Now you owe me five bucks.

....

The funny thing is that I agree with your basic premise that this game should not be "Nintendo Hard".   I recognize that quote from Jason very clearly, even though it was almost a year ago, because he was responding to this post by me:

This game wants to be Nintendo hard.   It isn't about having a good time while playing, it is about dying a hundred times on the same jump puzzle.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_hard

That wiki article describes what the expression "Nintendo Hard" means and it has this quote from former Nintendo president Satoru Iwata "Everyone involved in the production would spend all night playing it, and because they made games, they became good at them. So these expert gamers make the games, saying 'This is too easy.'"

I think this is what has happened to OHOL.  It is being played by and developed for "expert gamers".  But this makes it a very hard game to learn.  It has a very steep learning curve, many poorly documented and difficult to understand mechanics.  OHOL is an inaccessible and byzantine game.  More so than any other game I have played, except for Spacestation13.   And anyone who has played Spacestation13, should understand how bad that makes it.

This does give OHOL a weird allure to a certain type of gamer who likes difficult puzzles and self-flaggelation, but it also means a whole lot of potential players bounce right off the game after their first experience.  And not in a "one life is enough. That game was too perfect for a second life" kind of way, like Jason probably fantasizes about.  OHOL is TOO hard and TOO unforgiving for the uninitiated and the unprepared.  There are too many rough edges and unmarked cliffs to stumble off in the dark.

Back when I made that post, biome restrictions, tool slots, limited lives, hungry work, iron changes, posse kills, and other restrictions were all pretty new.   We got out of the rift and immediately got slapped with one limitation after another.  Update after update of new mechanics to up the "challenge", limit the ability of veterans and slow tech progression.   It was a lot to absorb, even if you were learning with each new update.   I couldn't even imagine trying to figure it all out as a new player.

I still can't actually.  It just feels easier to me now, because it has been so long since this game was simpler.   I no longer question many of its weird complexities.   Like how iron works or what to do when you run out of water.   Iron on grids that tap out when you build wells and only gingers can gather oil is perfectly logical, right? 

Just like in real life.  Of course.

Last edited by DestinyCall (2020-11-05 06:45:22)

Spoonwood

Member

Registered: 2019-02-06

Posts: 4,369

Re: On "Nintendo Hard" Garbage

Back when I made that post, biome restrictions, tool slots, limited lives, hungry work, iron changes, posse kills, and other restrictions were all pretty new.

Biomes are not restricted.  The term 'biome restrictions', if intended to describe all of the changes, is not correct in that it doesn't describe all of the changes.  Again, for the non-low pop context, *only whites* got the ability *to understand* all other languages by default.  *Only whites* got a benefit from the new system in comparison to what had existed before.

Also, you made your comments in that thread in December of 2019.  You can check the date on the link in the first post.  The iron changes didn't happen until the end of March 2020: https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=9338.

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Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.

DestinyCall

Member

Registered: 2018-12-08

Posts: 4,563

Re: On "Nintendo Hard" Garbage

Vanillas didn't get a benefit compared to the other races.   They lost access to three biomes instead of two, in exchange for the removal of the language barrier.  They are able to talk to other families, but have nothing to trade.   

That is a poor exchange, in my book.

Biome restrictions hurt all the families and the game as a whole.   It makes me sad to realize they have been a part of this game for so long with almost no change or improvement to the original concept.

Spoonwood

Member

Registered: 2019-02-06

Posts: 4,369

Re: On "Nintendo Hard" Garbage

Vanillas didn't get a benefit compared to the other races.   They lost access to three biomes instead of two, in exchange for the removal of the language barrier.

I would think that for WBSteve, who makes YouTube videos frequently, whites did get a better position than other races.  Also, whites did get *a* benefit compared to other races, in that whites could understand all other languages by default while others could not.

Biome restrictions hurt all the families and the game as a whole.

The biomes were not restricted by the changes.  I am so tired of the lying phrase "biome restrictions".  The ability for *characters* to interact with objects when in certain biomes *on the basis of their race* did change.  You don't want to call them 'race restrictions'?  Then call them 'character restrictions'.  For that's what it means when a character can't pick up a banana in a jungle since they are not tan.  The biome is not restricted.  THE CHARACTERS ARE RESTRICTED.

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Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.

DestinyCall

Member

Registered: 2018-12-08

Posts: 4,563

Re: On "Nintendo Hard" Garbage

Biome restrictions is short of biome access restrictions.

If you want to get technical, I believe they are officially crecognized as "family specializations".   But I think you know what I mean, regardless of what I call them.   They are those annoying things that make horses harder to get.

Also, have you considered that your obsession with the vanillas' translation ability might be because YOU are secretly a vanilla supremacist?    Why are you so convinced that universal translator superpower means they are smarter than everybody.  It is suspicious.

Spoonwood

Member

Registered: 2019-02-06

Posts: 4,369

Re: On "Nintendo Hard" Garbage

Biome restrictions is short of biome access restrictions.

No one became unable to access the biomes by the changes.

If you want to get technical, I believe they are officially crecognized as "family specializations".

But two families having the ability to interact with banana trees sometimes exists.  Two families having the ability to interact with cactus fruits sometimes exist.  Two families having the ability to interact with seals sometimes exists.  There were certainly more Eves than 4 on bigserver2 this past week, if you check the comments on the update.

Why are you so convinced that universal translator superpower means they are smarter than everybody.  It is suspicious.

Understanding and intelligence go together.  When a being can understand more, that being becomes more intelligent.  If a being A can understand more than a distinct being B, then being A is more intelligent than being B.  By default, in other words without language learning, whites can understand more than blacks in the game.  Thus, whites are more intelligent than blacks in game.  Whites can understand more than tans in game.  Thus, whites are more intelligent than tans in game.  Whites can understand more than gingers in game.  Thus, whites are more intelligent than gingers in game.  That covers all the races.  So, whites are smarter than any other race in game.

Last edited by Spoonwood (2020-11-05 17:54:52)

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Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.

DestinyCall

Member

Registered: 2018-12-08

Posts: 4,563

Re: On "Nintendo Hard" Garbage

  So, whites are smarter than any other race in game.

That's exactly how a white supremacist thinks, Spoonwood.  I'm sure you can understand why I am concerned for you.

Spoonwood

Member

Registered: 2019-02-06

Posts: 4,369

Re: On "Nintendo Hard" Garbage

  So, whites are smarter than any other race in game.

That's exactly how a white supremacist thinks, Spoonwood.  I'm sure you can understand why I am concerned for you.

You haven't addressed any of the assumptions, nor any of the inferences of the argument Destiny.  You have nothing which suggests them as wrong other than your shrieking of taking things too far or whatever you said elsewhere.

Also, no, that isn't how a white supremacist thinks.  White supremacists *overgeneralize* some *possibly existing* statistical regularities of races (given that racial groups have relevant meaning) into generalizations about groups of people and then act or talk as if those generalizations had meaning.  They also often make bad generalizations which don't match real world fact.  Jason overgeneralized some statistical regularities of people and then acted as if they had meaning for players.  His notes are very clear that he was intentionally generalizing people:

Players need to be able to easily recognize trading partners for various resources, so appearance consistency is necessary, and there's no sense in deviating from real world expectation about skin tone (gingers do better in colder climates, etc.)".

Gingers doing better near colder climates or blacks doing better near deserts IS a generalization.  And it's an over generalization for people in the real world as soon as one considers mortality rates or life expectancy.  The ginger generalization also doesn't match real world facts, since people with red hair are not common in polar regions.  They end up more common in Ireland and Britain than in other parts of the world, and those climates aren't cold compared to polar regions.

White supremacists also try to make white people the default people.  Jason own notes say this:

Non-specialist people can speak all languages

In other words, they are the default, instead of specialists. 

https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=8377

White supremacists don't recognize those statistical regularities as statistical at best and that there is no real causal relationship on the basis of race.  BS2 OHOL, at least once it has 15 people on it, makes all the race features causal.

If you seriously think that argument in my previous comment was in error, then where is the error?  Where was the inaccuracy?  Where did I make an inaccurate statement?  Where did I overgeneralize?  Where did I get the characters wrong?

Because as far as I can tell it is 100% accurate to claim that without language learning, white characters can understand more than other in game characters for 15+ player ohol.  As far as I can tell, it is 100% accurate to claim that "If a being A can understand more than a distinct being B, then being A is more intelligent than being B. "  So, what exactly was wrong with my argument Destiny?  Or did you respond mostly, if not entirely, on the basis of how you felt?

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Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.

antking:]#

Member

Registered: 2018-12-29

Posts: 579

Re: On "Nintendo Hard" Garbage

Spoonwood we have three 3 special biomes 4 races, no matter how you look at it one race will become obsolete, so instead Jason gave the remainder race the ability to communicate with everyone so they have a chance at survive. If not given this ability the remainder race might not as well existed as it wouldn't be able to get any specialty resources, and would be stuck at a deep well.

If we ever get another special biome guess who will be put in as that biomes family?

---

"hear how the wind begins to whisper, but now it screams at me" said ashe
"I remember it from a Life I never Lived" said Peaches
"Now Chad don't invest in Asian markets" said Chad's Mom
Herry the man who cheated death

DestinyCall

Member

Registered: 2018-12-08

Posts: 4,563

Re: On "Nintendo Hard" Garbage

I don't think we need two white supremacy threads, so I am merging this discussion back to where it belongs.

https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewt … 21#p102921

Feel free to continue talking about Nintendo Hard stuff, if there is anything left to say.

Spoonwood

Member

Registered: 2019-02-06

Posts: 4,369

Re: On "Nintendo Hard" Garbage

Spoonwood we have three 3 special biomes 4 races, no matter how you look at it one race will become obsolete, so instead Jason gave the remainder race the ability to communicate with everyone so they have a chance at survive.

No family has a chance at survival long term.  The family will die.  Also, there is no way to define what survival for a family means, since each family has characters that die, and there is no agreed upon length of time to define family survival.

  If not given this ability the remainder race might not as well existed as it wouldn't be able to get any specialty resources, and would be stuck at a deep well.

There's no good reasons for any of the races to have ever existed as separate from each other.  Every part of the Come Together Disaster is trash.  Warswords were bad for this game.  Racial separation divided families from each other.  Closeness of families wrecked rebuilding from scratch, and rebuilding from scratch is part of what gets advertised.  The language feature is also trash, nay the biggest trash this game has ever known, because it meant that the characters were dumber than before.  And why immerse yourself in a character when the character is dumber than it could be?

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Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.

DestinyCall

Member

Registered: 2018-12-08

Posts: 4,563

Re: On "Nintendo Hard" Garbage

Spoonwood we have three 3 special biomes 4 races, no matter how you look at it one race will become obsolete, so instead Jason gave the remainder race the ability to communicate with everyone so they have a chance at survive.

No family has a chance at survival long term.  The family will die.  Also, there is no way to define what survival for a family means, since each family has characters that die, and there is no agreed upon length of time to define family survival.

I assume what he met by "survival" in this case was that WHITE POWER gives the translator race the chance to advance beyond deep wells, by making it easier for them to negotiate with other races for rubber and oil.  Otherwise, when they reached the point where they needed items from specialty biomes, they would have nothing to offer.

Personally, I think this was a really crappy solution to the problem. 

This main issue was that Jason was trying to fit four sets of character models into three "specialty biomes", so he ended up with one "extra" race.   The simplest solution would have been to let both white AND ginger share the tundra specialization.   Ginger isn't even a "race".   It is a hair color.

But Jason was worried that two families with oil speciality would make oil too easy to get and plentiful (ignoring that the same three people get all the oil, regardless of how many oil experts are on the server).   I suggested merging ginger and whites into a single race to fix that "problem", but the idea was shot down.   I suspect he was already interested in seeing if having a "language expert" race would facilitate trade, so he wasn't willing to abandon the idea without seeing what might develop, but I am only guessing.

Another solution to three biomes/four races would be to simply not use one of the available races until a new biome was ready for release.   Of course, it is over a year later, and there is no indication of new biomes in the near future, so it might have been a long wait before we saw white people again.

Alternatively, a fourth specialty biome could be chosen from the currently available biomes.  The obvious choice would be mountains/badlands.   Mountains could become the "cold zone" equivalent to jungle with a chilly temperature, inhabited by bearded white hillbillies.  But of course, locking iron inside a specialty biome would create obvious problems.   The simplest solution would be to allow iron veins to spawn in all the special biomes, rather than just mountains.   White people would still have sheep and other mountain resources, but everyone would be able to gather iron.     A more complex, but argueably better solution would be to allow the mountain people to have the only direct access to iron, but add a new metal ore - like copper/bronze which would be available in the neutral swamp biome.   Copper tools would be softee and break more easily than steel, but easier to produce at a lower tech level.  Another option would be adding additional stone tools to allow basic farming, hunting, and building without the need for iron tools.   This would change the early to mid game quite a bit, of course.  And it would have taken longer than a couple of days to implement.  Jason was in a bit of hurry when he pushed out "family specializations."   I don't think he could have waited a whole week or two to iron out the kinks.

Lastly, another solution for the three biomes/four colors problem would have been to merge the light colors together and merge the dark colors together.  Then make two special biomes - desert and tundra.  Jungles can be visited by anyone who wants to catch yellow fever.   With this solution, every family has twice as many character models, which would be nice, AND you only need to coordinate trade with one neighbor instead of two or three, so towns could be much further apart without completely breaking the tech tree.   This one is my personal favorite (second only to removing biome restrictions completely).   I also suggested this idea, way back when,  but it was rejected too.  Ironically, the current biome banding brings the game closer to this idea by encouraging brown/black and white/ginger merged towns.

Anyways, my point is that we really didn't NEED to have a biomeless translator race. There were many other options to balance things out that wouldn't leave vanillas as the odd man out.  Honestly, the unevenness bugs me as much as the implied racism.   I crave balance!

OneOfMany

Member

Registered: 2019-06-10

Posts: 125

Re: On "Nintendo Hard" Garbage

New players are not average players, they are "new". No one should expect them to be a seasoned master in their first life. Besides without difficulty, there can be no growth.

Average for a new player is a concept.

  No one should expect them to be a seasoned master in their first life.

I don't think I argued for such.  I think I argued one hour one life... one hour of playing time, one life.

Besides without difficulty, there can be no growth.

There is no growth after death.

So why would you expect perfection on their first play?

I don't see how Spinoza's quote as you used it fits with the design of the game at all.  I also don't see how failure, or in other words dying before 60, has anything to do with excellence.

Okay. Let's talk about it, Spinoza's quote.

All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.

So, all things Excellent.... are difficult and rare. Excellent things like games or perfectly playing a game. Difficult and rare. If it was easy and mundane to get to sixty, how would that be difficult and/or rare? Without failure, can something be difficult or rare?

As far as growth after death...  Do you not expect a player to gain knowledge in the game? While the sprite may die, the player learns for another game. Death is not the end but the beginning of a new game.

My departing message for you Spoonwood, is that even though one can possibly live a full hour, in game, every life, no such certainty exists. Lives can be cut short. So is the way. Without difficulties, things would be neither rare nor excellent, just mundane.

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I am a dirty, dirty roleplayer. I roleplay in the game, sometimes on the forum and if I'm being honest, a bit in real life. I can't help myself. I'm a dirty, dirty roleplayer. Don't hate the player, hate the game.

Cogito

Member

Registered: 2020-03-09

Posts: 192

Re: On "Nintendo Hard" Garbage

An observation, Spoonwood, after reading a few of your recent threads.

You seem intent on trying to view the game from the perspective of the characters we play.

In this thread you talk about how an individual character has no progression, because they die and you can't progress past death.

While that is an interesting thing to think about, particularly in a game so focused around the complete life of each character (One Hour One Life after all), it doesn't make any sense when talking about Nintendo Hard.

Nintendo Hard is all about the players.

There may be a way for you to bridge the argument, but I don't think there is. In OHOL, like all games, the player isn't the character; they control the character. Nintendo Hard is all about the player learning how to control the character well enough to beat the challenges the character faces in the game, and specifically when those challenges are purposefully made hard for experienced players to beat.

The way you know that the two concept are not linked (the experience of the character vs the experience of the player) is that the specific character being played is not relevant to how likely they are to beat the challenge. Of course, the type of character being played changes strategies required, and some types of character may be harder to play then others. In OHOL the 'birthright' of a character is also important, but that is a function of the players you are playing with, or that built the town you are living in, not a function of the characters around you.

[EDIT]
The specific character you play is important in games where the character has skills (RPGs in general), or where you can purchase better gear, things like that. OHOL is not one of those games.

Last edited by Cogito (2020-11-07 10:43:55)

Spoonwood

Member

Registered: 2019-02-06

Posts: 4,369

Re: On "Nintendo Hard" Garbage

If it was easy and mundane to get to sixty, how would that be difficult and/or rare?

It wouldn't, but there exists a lot more to playing OHOL than just living to 60.

Without failure, can something be difficult or rare?

There's plenty of projects in OHOL that one can fail to complete in 60 minutes in one life in OHOL.

Do you not expect a player to gain knowledge in the game? While the sprite may die, the player learns for another game. Death is not the end but the beginning of a new game.

No knowledge in the game is gained from death.  Also, death of one character is not the beginning of a new game.  Some people have had their characters die and never play again.  Also, sometimes people log in with a second account while their first account still runs.  Death is not a new beginning there.

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Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.

Spoonwood

Member

Registered: 2019-02-06

Posts: 4,369

Re: On "Nintendo Hard" Garbage

The specific character you play is important in games where the character has skills (RPGs in general), or where you can purchase better gear, things like that. OHOL is not one of those games.

Clothing is gear in OHOL and what clothing gets handed down to you from your mother or caretaker can sometimes get improved on.  Specifically, clothing can get improved upon with respect to how many items you can carry (apron is better than sealskin in this respect), or how much insulation clothing provides (sealskin is better than an apron in this respect).  Also, if you go on Twitch, OHOL gets explicitly classified as an RPG... see here: https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/On … One%20Life  I agree with that.  Players play *the role* of parents or family members.  Players change their behavior to fulfill a social role.  For example, consider a woman who was farming, and then stops or doesn't farm more or as much, because of her baby.  That player is role-playing.

Also, there's people playing the leader and follower roles.

So, I simply disagree.  OHOL is one of those games.

Last edited by Spoonwood (2020-11-07 14:16:39)

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Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.

Cogito

Member

Registered: 2020-03-09

Posts: 192

Re: On "Nintendo Hard" Garbage

The specific character you play is important in games where the character has skills (RPGs in general), or where you can purchase better gear, things like that. OHOL is not one of those games.

Clothing is gear in OHOL and what clothing gets handed down to you from your mother or caretaker can sometimes get improved on.  Specifically, clothing can get improved upon with respect to how many items you can carry (apron is better than sealskin in this respect), or how much insulation clothing provides (sealskin is better than an apron in this respect).  Also, if you go on Twitch, OHOL gets explicitly classified as an RPG... see here: https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/On … One%20Life  I agree with that.  Players play *the role* of parents or family members.  Players change their behavior to fulfill a social role.  For example, consider a woman who was farming, and then stops or doesn't farm more or as much, because of her baby.  That player is role-playing.

Also, there's people playing the leader and follower roles.

So, I simply disagree.  OHOL is one of those games.

One of what games?

You didn't engage with what I wrote at all.

I said "RPGs in general", as a clarification of the typical types of games where "a character has skills". You can 'role-play' in a trucking simulator, but that has nothing to do with what I am talking about. In case you need it clarified further, I was referencing games in the tradition of Dungeons and Dragons, such as the Boulder's Gate series. Games where the character is long lived, and their chance of beating any given challenge is highly dependent on their skills, not just the player's ability to complete the challenge.

In OHOL you don't level up your character, and you can't buy items for your character. You are born naked and crying with the exacty same skills every single time. I pointed out the things that can set you up better to "beat the challenge" (in this case "don't die"): who you are playing with and what already exists where you are born. That is what I meant by your birthright -

In OHOL the 'birthright' of a character is also important, but that is a function of the players you are playing with, or that built the town you are living in, not a function of the characters around you.

Your character is irrelevant to those things. If you have a good mother, ancestors, strangers, your character is less likely to die. If a player made clothes that your character now wears, your character is less likely to die. If you make clothes for your character, that is you the player helping your character to not die.

OHOL is a game where the player's skill, the skill (and temperament) of the player's around them, and the actions of the players who lived before them, are solely responsible for the character not dying. Throw in a little luck and RNG for good measure.

All of this to say, what on earth does the lived experience of our one-handed characters have to do with Ninendo Hard?

Spoonwood

Member

Registered: 2019-02-06

Posts: 4,369

Re: On "Nintendo Hard" Garbage

One of what games?

It accurately gets classified as one of the games which are role-playing games.

You didn't engage with what I wrote at all.

I would think that making clothing is like 'purchasing gear' in other role-playing games, since money in games like Final Fantasy or Dragon Warrior can get obtained by killing enemies, and often such is or can be larger a matter of time played and knowledge of game mechanics.

I said "RPGs in general", as a clarification of the typical types of games where "a character has skills".

You said "or where you can purchase better gear, things like that".  I view making clothing for oneself in OHOL as similar.

Games where the character is long lived, and their chance of beating any given challenge is highly dependent on their skills, not just the player's ability to complete the challenge.

I would argue that there exist role playing games that don't take much skill.  The original Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest.  Final Fantasy Mystic Quest.  EarthBound (which is a brilliant game).

In OHOL you don't level up your character, and you can't buy items for your character.

But you can change your character's temperature which changed the pip drain rate which makes starvation less likely.

OHOL is a game where the player's skill, the skill (and temperament) of the player's around them, and the actions of the players who lived before them, are solely responsible for the character not dying.

So there has existed spawning from a single spot.  I watched on Twitch the day in 2019 when everyone spawned as an Eve around a single spot.  I don't think what you've claimed here holds true for that day.  Also, all foods for all generations where 1 pip during one day this winter as I understand it.  The pip drain rate has changed, and is different for new accounts than older accounts.  Furthermore, genetic score changes the maximum amount of pips one can have at the end of a life.  So, I don't think what you've claimed there accurate.

All of this to say, what on earth does the lived experience of our one-handed characters have to do with Ninendo Hard?

OHOL characters do have two hands, as can get seen when they walk sometimes, the back arm will swing out.  Sometimes they use the left hand, and sometimes they use the right hand.  They just can't use two hands simultaneously.

The experience of OHOL characters, having one hour one life experiences, is not compatible with "Nintnedo Hard".  If one has a "one hour one life" experience, then that life wasn't "Nintendo Hard", or at least no one that I know of beats any "Nintendo Hard" game after one hour of gameplay.  If one has a "Nintendo Hard" experience, then they didn't have a one hour one life experience, they died earlier, and didn't survive one hour of gameplay, meaning that they didn't have gameplay for one hour and one life.

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Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.

DestinyCall

Member

Registered: 2018-12-08

Posts: 4,563

Re: On "Nintendo Hard" Garbage

All of this to say, what on earth does the lived experience of our one-handed characters have to do with Ninendo Hard?

Absolutely nothing.   Other than the possibility that their imaginary lives would be Nintendo Hard.  Can you imagine how frustrating it would be to put on your clothes with only one functional hand?   No wonder all the shoes in OHOL are slip-ons.  Tying shoelaces one-handed would make me cry.

Nintendo Hard is about the game-play experience of the player, not the character.   It refers to games that have insane difficult or unfair mechanics, reminiscent of old Nintendo and arcade games.   Stuff like limited or no save points,  limited health and/or lives, and clunky controls.   This TV tropes article explains it quite well.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ … 0locations.

Keep in mind, it isn't any single characteristic of a game that makes it qualify as Nintendo Hard.   It is cumulative effect of many design choices, resulting in a game that is very difficult to play or extremely hard to win.

This is not necessarily a bad thing.   Games like Dark Souls are marketed toward players who are seeking a challenge.  And old Nintendo advertisements also capitalized on their reputation for difficulty with slogans like "WE ARE NINTENDO. WE CHALLENGE ALL PLAYERS. YOU CANNOT BEAT US."

As frustrating as it is to die, over and over and over, on the same stupid jump puzzle, it feels like a real accomplishment when you finally stick the landing and make it to the next checkpoint at last.   Arcade games banked on the lure of competition by providing high score screens and encouraging players to compete with their friends to see who could get the best score or beat the final boss.

I think that is the feeling that Jason is hoping to inspire by making the Eve camp experience "Nintendo Hard".   He wants it to feel like a real accomplishment.   A triumph over insane difficulty.   Being able to say that YOU started this family and have that statement really mean something.   Most players try to survive, but they fail.   Only the very best will succeed.

Unfortunately, I just don't think that is the right approach for the game as a whole.    OHOL is not a single player game.   It is community-driven.   And if you make the whole game "Nintendo Hard", then you are requiring the majority of the player-base to rise to the challenge and become experts.   

It can be done.  We are doing it right now.   But it kills the gameplay experience for new players.  They are faced with a brutally difficult learning curve from the start with no chance to learn the basics.   It is frustrating and unfair.   And it keeps our community tiny and insular.   

Nintendo Hard is killing this game, bit by bit.

Spoonwood

Member

Registered: 2019-02-06

Posts: 4,369

Re: On "Nintendo Hard" Garbage

This TV tropes article explains it quite well. ...

I can't seem to get your link to work at present Destiny.

I think that is the feeling that Jason is hoping to inspire by making the Eve camp experience "Nintendo Hard".   He wants it to feel like a real accomplishment.   A triumph over insane difficulty.   Being able to say that YOU started this family and have that statement really mean something.   Most players try to survive, but they fail.   Only the very best will succeed.

Unfortunately, I just don't think that is the right approach for the game as a whole.    OHOL is not a single player game.   It is community-driven.   And if you make the whole game "Nintendo Hard", then you are requiring the majority of the player-base to rise to the challenge and become experts.   

It can be done.  We are doing it right now.   But it kills the gameplay experience for new players.  They are faced with a brutally difficult learning curve from the start with no chance to learn the basics.   It is frustrating and unfair.   And it keeps our community tiny and insular.   

Nintendo Hard is killing this game, bit by bit.

I don't disagree with this, but think it's worse.  From Jason's website:

"This game is about playing one small part in a much larger story. You only live an hour, but time and space in this game is infinite. You can only do so much in one lifetime, but the tech tree in this game will take hundreds of generations to fully explore. This game is also about family trees. Having a mother who takes care of you as a baby, and hopefully taking care of a baby yourself later in life. And your mother is another player. And your baby is another player. Building something to use in your lifetime, but inevitably realizing that, in the end, what you build is not for YOU, but for your children and all the countless others that will come after you. Proudly using your grandmother's ax, and then passing it on to your own grandchild as the end of your life nears. And looking at each life as a unique story. I was this kid born in this situation, but I eventually grew up. I built a bakery near the wheat fields. Over time, I watched my grandmother and mother grow old and die. I had some kids of my own along the way, but they are grown now... and look at my character now! She's an old woman. What a life passed by in this little hour of mine. After I die, this life will be over and gone forever. I can be born again, but I can never live this unique story again. Everything's changing. I'll be born as a different person in a different place and different time, with another unique story to experience in the next hour."

http://onehouronelife.com/

Sounds like one hour one life.  Not some "Nintendo Hard" 5 minutes (if even that) one life game.

Also, here's what it says on Steam:

"A multiplayer survival game of parenting and civilization building. Get born to another player as your mother. Live an entire life in one hour. Have babies of your own in the form of other players. Leave a legacy for the next generation as you help to rebuild civilization from scratch. Updated weekly. "

https://store.steampowered.com/app/5956 … _One_Life/

An entire life in one hour.  One hour one life.  Not some "Nintendo Hard" five minutes one life game.

Also, from what I've seen watching Twitch streams this week, and what I experienced when I played this past few weeks, some players (I did some of this in the form of clothing and a horsecart once or twice... how can one reasonably help out an early camp if one is generation 50 without clothing?  It wouldn't seem right to gobble up their food) have ended up moving resources to shallow well/deep well/Eve camps, instead of those items getting made at those camps.  Also, it seems that families keep resettling the old towns.  That's all well and good for players wanting to play in those towns over and over again.  But, what should people who want to rebuild from scratch do?

From the discord, some people said the following, though I'll leave their names off:

"The update wasn’t good period. It’s only “good” for the first 12 towns but you realize the bands are set up that people keep going back to the old towns were the resources or completely drained which drains even more resources rather west so even if you want to settle west you have to go thousands away so you actually start “fresh”"

"if someone has the march west i mostly see the same town, just diffrent family living each life hehe"

"also for about four days (and i maybe only played a hour a day) all the time i see the same town with plenty of kero so meh"

"the update is bad for tarry spots.

with every specialty fam always end up resettling old towns.

all the tarry spots within 1.5 k tiles of the usual ginger town is dry/exhausted.

with the 200 tile north-south limit of the arctic homeband, a lot of spots are dry (not exhausted). (jason should lessen the tap-out of tarry spots.)

and with other specialty fams also resettling old towns, they all need kero. (pretty much, no one using water from shallow/deep.)

with the endless fertility of the east west, players are more easily been able to migrate back to the old towns."

Sounds like an ongoing cycle of civilization maintainence to me (something I talked about as bad long ago for anyone interested).  But also, some people suggest that they aren't motivated to build up things when they can't get back to where they were, as one highly rated and negative review said.

Last edited by Spoonwood (2020-11-07 18:59:16)

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Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.

DestinyCall

Member

Registered: 2018-12-08

Posts: 4,563

Re: On "Nintendo Hard" Garbage

This TV tropes article explains it quite well. ...

I can't seem to get your link to work at present Destiny.

That is odd.   It opens for me just fine on my phone.  If you do a Google search for TV tropes and Nintendo Hard, it should be in the top results.  Just be careful to not get sucked in to reading TV tropes articles.   It is highly addictive.

.....

Out of curiosity, what changes would you like to see in the game to bring in closer to delivering on its promise, Spoonwood?   What would make One Hour One Life better?

Sometimes, I think it is easy to see that something is wrong, but hard to find a good solution.   If you could fix this game, what would you change?

Last edited by DestinyCall (2020-11-07 20:17:20)

Spoonwood

Member

Registered: 2019-02-06

Posts: 4,369

Re: On "Nintendo Hard" Garbage

Out of curiosity, what changes would you like to see in the game to bring in closer to delivering on its promise?   What would make One Hour One Life better?

Sometimes, it is easy to see that something is wrong, but hard to find a solution.   If you could fix this game, what would you change?

"Get born to another player as your mother. Live an entire life in one hour. Have babies of your own in the form of other players." (see above)

Jason said this a while back:

In the ideal case, every player who joins the game joins as a baby.  On the other hand, we NEVER make a player wait to join the game.  Everyone should join instantaneously.

https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=6

   The game has had a longstanding problem from the foundations, since an Eve is the first player.  But, note that the term used is *players* or *player*, not humans or human.  So, I'd make the first player on a server necessarily something controlled by a program, instead of a human person.  All Eves would be controlled by a program.  Or some form of hominid, I suppose, that would give birth to a girl who could grow up to become an Eve.

    Also, players might not get a baby due to player population decline at certain times of the day.  There is no solution to the lack of babies problem with human players, since a lack of human players joining is inevitable at some point during a week.  So, similarly, I would have some characters start as babies controlled by a program. 

   Third, there's the problem of male players not having babies.  Blocking players from spawning as male until they've had a one hour one life experience as female or ending male characters entirely could both work as solutions, unlike the previous two issues which only have non-human players as a possible solution.  But, since you asked what I'd do ideally, I'd go with fathers "having babies" in the sense that they end up on family trees and entirely rework family trees.  I think I'd go with mating mechanics as expected for all human players.  Mating mechanics would *only* produce human babies (or from an account of someone who bought the game and made their own bot, since differentiation the two doesn't seem possible).  Female and male characters could both produce babies controlled by a program if they hadn't mated for one reason or another by a certain age like 35.  I mean, since the baby is basically just a computer program, and men write computer programs, wouldn't it make a sort of sense for men to have children in such a situation in some hypothetical future?

   I'd make more of the tutorial about learning what sorts of foods they can eat in towns that make their own food, instead of some pseudo-wilderness area.  Like instead of needing to make a stone hatchet to pass it, you need to farm and cook a certain amount of food and then eat it also.  Someone on discord, who has worked for Nintendo before, suggested that a mock town would work better.  Maybe something like that.  Probably also some section where the player had to dodge wild animals inside of there.  Also, I'd make the tall/short object bug into a feature (see here for what this means: https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewt … p?id=6365).  Or I'd put more wild foods on the initial map, so that there's more food possibly seen for players in earlier camps.

   Closeness of families isn't consistent with rebuilding from scratch.  Not in a persistent world, at least.  So (race restrictions would have to go), how would I get rid of closeness of families?  I think I'd go back to an ever-expanding Eve spiral.  Maybe multiple areas of like 1k by 1k for each family would make more sense, with each area blocked off by barriers.  I'd also spread players out to at least half of the servers by default, if not  all of the servers after an update has stabilized.  Someone can't exactly throw loom clothes at a family on a shallow well if they're on a different server than a family on a shallow well.  Some sort of barrier for each family (or group of players if some player could restart a family) seems kind of needed as a final solution for the closeness of families problem.  But, the old Eve spiral certainly would seem like an improvement from what I saw this past month or so when I've played and what I've seen on Twitch this past week, with respect to bettering the probability that players could rebuild from scratch.

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Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.

Spoonwood

Member

Registered: 2019-02-06

Posts: 4,369

Re: On "Nintendo Hard" Garbage

Your link worked this last time I clicked on it Destiny.  I'm not sure what happened before.

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Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.