a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building
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I thought it could be interesting if we broight up the current problems, issues, and pitfalls with the current system. How they affect the gameplay, how they compare to old mechanics they may have replaced or been edited from, and how they may be improved. What would likely be the result if some mechanics were removed or adjusted.
This is a freeform thread and i encourage different voices with different perspectives on what people find to be problematic in the current environment. What has been lost from previous versions of the game that you found valuable? What time period of thr game was your favorite and why? How have things changed for better or worse since that time period.
I want to hear all your perspectives first before voicing my own so that the thread can flow naturally without guidence.
I look forward to hearing all your thoughts.
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Alright. Disclaimer, I played this game for the first time in nearly a year so there are probably some new mechanics that I am not aware of.
The biggest things that stuck out to me would be the overcomplicated iron system. It doesn't feel intuitive at all and is needlessly confusing. As a returning player I was at a complete loss trying to figure out what the game wanted me to do, and nobody was able to explain it to me in-game either. Which leads me to believe it's probably confusing for other players as well.
I also was disappointed to find that you can only have children in your home zone. As far as I know there is no way to emigrate your family to a new area, which was my preferred way to play in the past. Creating a sister town to the main family settlement or even integrate your family into a completely new town lead to some of the most interesting player interactions in the past imo.
Both these changes really limit the amount of freedom and choice that originally charmed me about the game. I'm sure there's a reason these restrictions were added but for me they dampen the experience overall.
Last edited by JellyLegs (2022-04-18 21:02:35)
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I also was disappointed to find that you can only have children in your home zone. As far as I know there is no way to emigrate your family to a new area, which was my preferred way to play in the past.
Actually you can get kids everywhere as long as you stay in your biome band. The problem is iron unlocking, as you can only unlock iron spots ONCE with the first well site your family (usually the Eve) creates. So any pseudo Eve town you create afterwards will not be able to get iron and evolve. It's an annoying system that isn't explained in the game and is hard for new players to get into, you have to dig through old forum posts or ask around on Discord to understand it.
My biggest problem with the game, though? Race. Restrictions. I hate this mechanic so much and the longer I play this game, the more I despise it. There is nothing redeemable about it in my opinion, it makes the game less fun, less accessible and encourages elitism. AND it keeps experienced players from doing productive things because they have to travel between towns to get resources instead.
Recent example: I was in a Jungle fam and our pump broke, so I wanted to make an engine. I had all the iron ready but noticed there was no timing belt (even though I thought I saw one lying around earlier) and of course no sulfur either. So I ended up riding to the Desert family (I think they were like 1k away) just to get sulfur for that ONE component I needed. By the time I was back, I was old, so I couldn't even finish the belt. The sad thing is, the entire time I was wondering if it was all even worth it because even if we did make the engine, it was unlikely for our family to somehow get our hands on oil during a newbie boom. Now, had it not been for race restrictions, I probably would have been able to at least finish the damn thing OR spend the time wasted on traveling between towns on setting up an oil pump. But I guess making it so everyone has to pray for Gingers to get them oil instead is more “fun”?
I can live with magic fences, I can live with magic iron … but magical racism? T E R R I B L E
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That's part of the joy of OHOL.
Jason wants us all to suffer.
Because without the pain of defeat you wouldn't understand what happiness really is.
But, for reals the bad tutorial is the reason people can't figure the game out.
Instead of letting them die and finish, they should have to make tools and escape.
At the very least the tutorial should focus on Yumming instead of dieing!!!
Imagine designing your whole game around yumming, yet fail to explain this to new players!
I want to know why Jason thinks OHOL vets should show 1000 new players how to play.
This all comes back to Jason not caring to balance his game!
Best part is new players get that buff where they lose half health, yet this is not explained, so after 10 hours of berry munching they start killing town and have no clue whats going on.
Last edited by Laggy (2022-04-19 04:19:46)
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You're supposed to learn the game from other players. In it's purest form you would learn everything from your elders like we did at the very start of the game.
I find more issues with illogical unexplained items such as the iron system for example because why would putting rocks on a well site unlock iron and doing it again not? Like I get for balance reasons these things exist but when the game is booming all the balancing goes out the window anyways.
Besides the normal race restrictions stuff the fact that only one race has easy access to horses is just plain annoying due to in ability to easily transport them. Change horse spawns to be in the savannah to make travel between towns less annoying. Same issue as always: would really like to see breedable worms to shift the fishing from being so skewed towards harvesting rather than fishing. It's one of the only food methods that gets better with more people doing it and as such means someone is stuck on worm duty if anyone else if fishing. Buff to nets being repairable with thread instead of yarn would be wonderful in these times but I get why it isn't a thing.
When player base is high like this either families need to be toned down in amount of people per family or water stages need to last longer. Water is going way too fast in my opinion and is leading towards needing rubber (which requires a lot of walking) and then requires families to stick around to get gingers to kerosene else everyone fails.
Worlds oldest SID baby.
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You're supposed to learn the game from other players. In it's purest form you would learn everything from your elders like we did at the very start of the game.
Elders are berry munchers nowadays lol.
They think that living to 60s makes you spawn in the same town, pretty funny when they eat everything in town and get starved as a child tho.
How you supposed to teach 5-6 players each life and still make enough food so the town doesn't starve?
90% of player where brand new today.
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I mean I get that, you can't teach 5-6 people by yourself let alone can the few people who do know what they're doing carry a bunch of new people. Was just trying to point out why the tutorial is sort of bare bones in the first place.
The game is not exactly playable when it's balanced around 30-40 people online and we suddenly have 30-40 per family hence why I suggested either smaller families or longer lasting wells. To my knowing Jason didn't tweak any of the settings when we talked earlier last week about shrinking family sizes which I think is the quickest fix to some of the issues.
The families with the highest yum chains + warmest families are going to be the ones getting the highest fertility bonus which means if you cn feed a woman you're going to have more kids which then leads to famine and a huge bust in population.
Worlds oldest SID baby.
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bruh
A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.
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I mean I get that, you can't teach 5-6 people by yourself let alone can the few people who do know what they're doing carry a bunch of new people. Was just trying to point out why the tutorial is sort of bare bones in the first place.
The game is not exactly playable when it's balanced around 30-40 people online and we suddenly have 30-40 per family hence why I suggested either smaller families or longer lasting wells. To my knowing Jason didn't tweak any of the settings when we talked earlier last week about shrinking family sizes which I think is the quickest fix to some of the issues.
The families with the highest yum chains + warmest families are going to be the ones getting the highest fertility bonus which means if you cn feed a woman you're going to have more kids which then leads to famine and a huge bust in population.
Something is definitely wrong.
If we have a population cap on families, then endless eves spawn because their kids will starve thus increasing eve spawns?
Give us all the half pip loses, that new players abuse, when population gets over 70-80.
A new player server would be nice. First ten hours they can play together with less harsh rules. Then they could be told that they are entering hard mode, told about yum, and getting cursed for munching berries.
I wish we had an Eve, yum, mothering 101 tutorial? Guess that takes work....
If we had a tutorial that actually taught you anything useful it would change the experience for new players.
Problem is I doubt Jason could eve, how are you supposed to teach when you can not do?
The food values and pip loses are based on players with thousands of hours of playtime, and we wonder why this doesn't work.
Maybe increase the new player half pip loses for a longer time? You don't learn much in ten hours anyways.
Last edited by Laggy (2022-04-19 08:14:35)
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The food values and pip loses are based on players with thousands of hours of playtime, and we wonder why this doesn't work.
Maybe increase the new player half pip loses for a longer time? You don't learn much in ten hours anyways.
Triple, new player should be given at least triple food bonus.
I played more than eight lifes today and felt so despair, only two roles dead for old age, others all adults death for starvation. None family can living longer than thirty generations.
In the farm, rows are barren, berry bushes are dark. And no matter you fill the kitchen with how many foods, it was empty fast. No clothes, hungry chases you, berry much no more a blame, for there are no food and you are starving nearly die.
New players want communication, my daughters eager to talk, but I am too busy to stand and say much with them, for the whole family is in bigger survival tension and I have to work hard saving my every sec for productivity works. It destroyed my emotional connection with my kids : (
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Laggy wrote:The food values and pip loses are based on players with thousands of hours of playtime, and we wonder why this doesn't work.
Maybe increase the new player half pip loses for a longer time? You don't learn much in ten hours anyways.Triple, new player should be given at least triple food bonus.
I played more than eight lifes today and felt so despair, only two roles dead for old age, others all adults death for starvation. None family can living longer than thirty generations.
In the farm, rows are barren, berry bushes are dark. And no matter you fill the kitchen with how many foods, it was empty fast. No clothes, hungry chases you, berry much no more a blame, for there are no food and you are starving nearly die.
New players want communication, my daughters eager to talk, but I am too busy to stand and say much with them, for the whole family is in bigger survival tension and I have to work hard saving my every sec for productivity works. It destroyed my emotional connection with my kids : (
It's because their buff is wearing off, they dont know. Nice if they knew...
Unless you read the forums or discord most people don't know.
Maybe we should start telling new player how screwed up OHOL is, say get a refund, don't waste time on a broken game.
Last edited by Laggy (2022-04-19 13:39:45)
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Sad thing is, so many of the new players are eager to learn stuff but it's so hard to teach when everything is chaos. Teaching requires a certain level of patience. Yesterday I was trying to show a girl how to make pie, we went to the farm and collected some berries for filling … yet by the time we got back, someone else had already filled up all the crusts she had set up. And I can't even blame them because our town was starving, so obviously we needed those pies ASAP. Another guy wanted to learn how yum works, when I gave him a shucked ear of corn to check out, some girl started complaining that I showed him how to eat it because she saw someone “eat up entire rows of corn” before.
With so little time to teach, is it really a wonder that newbies just end up munching berries all day and eventually quit the game out of frustration?
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Some people on the discord were commenting that towns die too fast with the westward forever spawn, implying that it was better when the game had the every expanding Eve spiral that would also reset to the longest living family spawn when an update happened. No race restrictions then. Towns did last longer then, since people would reappear at that longest living family spot and old towns could get resettled without needing to get resources from an old town. Also, tarry spots didn't deplete, so one oil rig (and there was almost always one within 100 tiles of tile with the way the map was then) would suffice.
Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.
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Some people on the discord were commenting that towns die too fast with the westward forever spawn, implying that it was better when the game had the every expanding Eve spiral that would also reset to the longest living family spawn when an update happened. No race restrictions then. Towns did last longer then, since people would reappear at that longest living family spot and old towns could get resettled without needing to get resources from an old town. Also, tarry spots didn't deplete, so one oil rig (and there was almost always one within 100 tiles of tile with the way the map was then) would suffice.
Ahh the good old days, before dumb banded world.
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Anyone seen a functioning diesel water pump this week? I'll remind you that they did get made a month or two after the first steam release with higher player population when the bigserver system first came out. So, they have gotten made with high population on a server and lots of new players before. But, not under the current nerfed food and temperature system.
Player population is up. But, judging from "this week's deep roots" it doesn't seem like families are lasting longer. In fact, they seem to last a shorter amount of time.
If anything, from what I can tell it more seems like how things were after the temperature overhaul. Families not really making it past the early stages.
To paraphrase Pein more people should add value. But, honestly, with the new people that's been one reason why I haven't played much since the influx. More people is more clutter. And more people means more people who didn't learn anything useful from the lazy and awful tutorial.
Last edited by Spoonwood (2022-04-20 19:36:01)
Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.
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Also, from the streams I've seen, families are mostly naked or close. With normalish family numbers, players had a lot more clothes.
I played three days early morning hours EST when it was 40-60 total player pop and got myself fully clothed and got some clothes for my children, but it was more like normal family size, not what I see mid-day EST with lots of nudity and 100ish or more server population.
Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.
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Oh, also, lots of clothes are rabbit based. But, more players means a lower ratio of rabbits to players, so less clothing material available per person.
I DO remember though that once there were A LOT more rabbits (and berry bushes and milkweed on the map). It was only a week, but still:
This is now: https://imgur.com/ZWt4IXb
This is how it once was: https://imgur.com/K5s8cda
Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.
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