Town stages are skipped and game difficulty is out of balance

Frodo · 2023-09-19 10:54:15

Im really enjoying the grindy gameplay loop, however find myself without a purpose in most towns, since they already "maxed" and have everything they need.

The biggest problems causing this are:
- truck drivers mass feed new eve towns, completely skipping the towns tech progression to midgame items
half nude half rabbit towns usually already have some fully wool clothed players around, knife, froe and some horse handcarts before even starting a farm, it kills the fun and difficulty curve
- lack of endgame content(could use some hightech items that take forever to build and only enhance comfort a little bit)

This tech skipping is also overflowing into other issues:
- due to the early availabiliy of horse handcarts and tools, veterans dont have to help with early tech things like rabbit catching or tool smithing but can right away go into mass construction of rooms and food variety producing, meaning that both surviving in the town becomes too easy aswell as outside(as foraging has been almost non existent)

The only thing that is currently lessening the issue is that families die overnight due to low population and ppl dont want to transport everything over so they only take the high value items. So the issue does not get out of control, but it does remain stable meaning that 95% of the gameplay time is being in an advanced town, wandering around, trying to find a job thats not already been completed, which is boring and likely not what you were aiming for.

possible solution inspiration to the eve town feeding issue:
- limit trading in some way, perhaps to only biome specific items, or only between similar tech tier towns
- some tag on all but starting items, that disallows families to use them, only to be removed when a family member itself crafts one of them
- enforced isolated start(temporarily removed from world or some barrier), only allowing other towns to interact when they have i.e. a radio
- not letting new eves spawn until all families perished(waiting players can play as enemies to help clean up the server, like in human vs zombie gamemodes)
- new eves spawn in an isolated part until all 4 races are there and stable and then the next eves will again spawn in another isolated part

possible lategame inspiration:
- large statue that saves the family name, date and personal quote into some hall of fame website
- portal for teleporting(without handcarts or trucks) to other towns
- cryopods that allow the family to retire, put the whole family to sleep permanently(kinda like a positive apocalypse)
- super expensive robots, that can automate a small part of the more boring tasks
- lategame biomes north and south of the race bands with difficult enemies(maybe even a boss?) and lategame ingredients(think of minecrafts nether&end)

pein · 2023-09-27 10:03:08

travel has no point right now. I tried a few times, and it was fun with the bug to the graves, as nobody else knew it how, so it was like bell runs without bells. the travel stones are similar but with 2 families it messes you up. there were too many attempts to ruin coordinates and navigation, and the flaws with single families are kind of rough
but just as a game element, it makes no sense. it's like a sales pitch, 'oh the map is huge and you can never get to the end', why would you want to? around 150-200 hours in I realized the power of horses and stops, so I was designing towns in mind with running around on horse carts, and I was placing some fences 100-200 tiles in strategic zones.
there were some interesting towns, like one was 40+ gens the other started later and was around 25-30 gens, they were barely 300 away but a huge ice biome blocked any travel on foot, played for a week in both towns when I finally realized you can cross one to the other.
there were some lives where towns were 600-900 tiles away and tried creating a road, never finished.
there were some attempts when we made roads like 4-6000 long manually, connecting everything. you ended up with people stealing engines and anything of value. even when I locked up a horse cart and made my town again it was gone by the next time.
90% of players live their life within 50x50 tiles, some others travel like one direction then return.
rift was a bad idea for a whole server, but for a family, 200x200 isn't that bad.
the other issue is the 'everything runs out' principle. it's a game, it should be an idealistic world where you can fix everything, create endless value and live in harmony with the nature. mistakes shouldn't be final and you should be able to progress endlessly.

I had an idea back before, basically each family would have a seed, but each town would be a unit on it's own, with the ability to place it on a world map, basically teleporting it. the eve would mark a center tile, and gradually unlock 50x50, 100x100 up to 200x200 tiles. that would be the town. it would still have an area around it, so you could travel on foot. but it would be just a randomized land of a similar size, like 2-300 tiles.
ooooo
oxoxo
ooooo
oxoxo
ooooo
x -town o-empty
the towns would be placed in the middle tiles, and the area around it would be empty.
other means of travel could include trains or boats or airplanes
underground subways would be best, since it would show on your map but wouldn't need to be connected.
towns could upgrade it and travel to other places for a cost, instantly
travel is boring. finding towns more than 20 minutes away is hard, and boring and makes no sense when you don't live any longer than 60 and not fertile after 40, moving people so far is pointless
so this way you could have the travel but also would make the map more compact

there could be a ranking system or weekly limit of how much you need to achieve. then people would have their own towns they could return to and fix it up. people could rank map seeds with good or bad or more scaling ranks like 1-10.
then the bad ones could be wiped and replaced. it could even be a ranking system that places good towns closer to the center and would give more resources around it.

for the progression: the town should be a unit, with parts that count as sub unit. each item would be tracked around it, you couldn't take items from the town territory as other family, and travel methods wouldn't let it either.
there could be eras with requirements to build certain stuff, then it could reflect in the style of items. some items should be expensive, but the resources should come back endlessly, making work more important than the actual resources.

I would also love private lands. for example each town would have a town center, 50x50 always shared, the outer ring could be taken as private lands, like a 10x10 plot, and you could fence it up, and automatically leave a road in between. these lands could be used to produce things.

for all these the whole game should be changed in a few ways.

Brohop · 2023-09-27 10:40:08

If only there was a mechanic to get a fresh start/reset in the game, ohhh wait there is but Jason nerved it even tough it didn't happen for over 1,5 years.....

Frodo · 2023-09-27 18:10:37

Brohop wrote:

If only there was a mechanic to get a fresh start/reset in the game, ohhh wait there is but Jason nerved it even tough it didn't happen for over 1,5 years.....

so you saying all vets should come together and do apocalypses at regular intervals? XD sounds good to me, if only we could convince all vets at once haha, its probably gonne become a curse fest otherwise

edit: or if dev could add a more friendly way of fresh starts instead of having to grief the complete server by yourself with an apoc or deal with "tech looters" in another way(the people that loot rich towns to spoonfed new eves or even prebuild towns for them, which is super helpful but ruins the fun of early eve survival)

edit2: i guess we could use the other servers in a creative way? get a couple vets/noobs to switch to an empty server all at once? would require organisation tho, say we inform/advertise somewhere in discord and maybe sometimes at random main server nurseries to also get some noobs involved that on i.e. mondays's and friday's we switch our active server to an empty one, have like a smart shedule for which date/times we switch to a new empty server?

Last edited by Frodo (2023-09-27 19:35:47)

SoloAceMouse · 2023-09-27 21:07:19

Brohop wrote:

If only there was a mechanic to get a fresh start/reset in the game, ohhh wait there is but Jason nerved it even tough it didn't happen for over 1,5 years.....

I mean fuck it, why not just do Apoc every day?

That way we can have permanent restarts and no one needs to build anything at all!

No need for towns, just have everyone wander around like destitute hobos surviving on wild carrots and burdock.
Fuck progression, we should cater to the players who would rather destroy everything!
XD

[Also, I will personally make sure every account that adds an endblock to a successful tower is cursed on my accounts and many others will do the same. Any apoc-griefing jackasses can enjoy their reset from Donkey Town. If the griefers don't like it, then they'll just have to cry about it, like they do every time their dumb-as-shit plans to do apoc fail again.]

Last edited by SoloAceMouse (2023-09-27 21:10:14)

Brohop · 2023-09-27 21:51:44

Its a huge leap to go from daily apocs vs maybe wanting to experience a apoc once after 1.5 years.

Brohop · 2023-09-27 22:02:35

Frodo wrote:

edit2: i guess we could use the other servers in a creative way? get a couple vets/noobs to switch to an empty server all at once? would require organisation tho, say we inform/advertise somewhere in discord and maybe sometimes at random main server nurseries to also get some noobs involved that on i.e. mondays's and friday's we switch our active server to an empty one, have like a smart shedule for which date/times we switch to a new empty server?

I once got a few people together to play in a low pop server a few days it was fun, but you gotta accept the family line probably wont stay alive long and you'll just have to get back to the town later. It was a lot of fun but its also very hard to get some people together to do so. Last few months I've mainly retreated to just playing lowpop(not main server), once my place was fully tech-ed out i started working on one together with my neighbor who was also tech-ed out. At some point all essential stuff simply has been done.

squishysquid · 2023-09-28 01:34:05

hold on, I need everyone to pretend they just bought the game yesterday so I can enjoy the eve life.

Kaden56 · 2023-09-28 02:50:05

I guess the only way to experience new Eve starts is to do apoc on server1 and then play that server when the main shuts down. But its crazy how fast server1 has advanced since the apoc I did. Barely anybody plays server1 but theres already advanced towns since the apoc. Ig ppl are just too good and eve starts just dont exist anymore.

Last edited by Kaden56 (2023-09-28 02:51:55)

wio · 2023-09-28 08:57:30

The Eve feeding stuff is really frustrating. That's why I have been playing on a small server lately. It's a bit lonely, but it's nice being able to go up through the tech tree and experiment without everything having been done for you previously.

fug · 2023-09-28 10:06:30

As I always say: This is a five year old game with a hardcore veteran population with an influx of new player occasionally. Early game is going to last an hour or two MAX and that's if your Eve sucks.

People have always rushed through early game for YEARS at this point even without the trucks and looting. The only time early game lasts is if there's a new player boom AND server 1 becomes active. The only reason they can even keep a basic civ going at that point is because Jason buffed new accounts to drain food at half speed. This keeps early game going because otherwise they would all starve.

There's also the issue that 3/4 families are required for the game to function (unless low population) which when combined with the highway leads to this looting issue.

Clearing the map doesn't suddenly make everyone bad at the game again. Early game is unironically one of the better balanced stages of the game as it's clearly defined on what needs to be done by each person in the camp vs mid and late game where people start doing random stuff.

Frodo · 2023-09-28 17:56:32

SoloAceMouse wrote:

Fuck progression, we should cater to the players who would rather destroy everything!

who said we hate progression and like to destroy everything? neighter is true so stop with the salt reactions and threats to curse everyone.
we are not 5year old bear luring sheep murderers alright? XD never done, never will, we're just theorizing possible ways to optimize the progression curve for maximum amounts of fun for everyone, including you

the game loop is just so much fun, but there is literally nothing to do anymore which is a waste of a great game and already limited playerbase
we are just endlessly stuck in the "midgame" with zero possibilities of progression
ye you could start a glass bottle collection, and an army of bucket stacks and trucks but if no one uses them whats the point? did you really progress at all?
at some point you made so much that hauling it to the next settlement is gonne be a pain so you only take the valuables.
leaving your next town in the exact same situation with the exact same amount of riches as your last run.
what "progression" are you talking about? there is literally none to begin with.

as for the solution, i would agree that apoc is harmful to the fun of others and would love to see anyone or the dev come up with a better solution.
playing on another server is a nice alternative but requires alot organisation to find a group of ppl and its always more fun if you could do it with alot of ppl preferably including a bunch of noobs which mostly only play on the main server and dont hangout on discord
also agree that earlygame even without tech looting will probably be over fast. but fast is better than nothing at all. we could maybe minimize the harm an apoc does in some way, i.e. not doing it daily or whenever we feel like but say on the 1st day of a month or something so ppl know not to grind too much on the 30-31th(alot of games with this kind of grindy progression have a montly server reset) and trade that slight harm for a couple hours of earlygame chaos fun followed by alot more hours of early-midgame fun with setting up i.e. the very useful but less critical stuff that veterans likely didnt speedrun yet. we could have hours of fun for a group of people * 4 towns.

fug wrote:

Early game is going to last an hour or two MAX and that's if your Eve sucks.

than thats 2 hours of fun we missing out on currently and that is assuming you are not exaggerating which you definitely are. maybe the critical stuff ye, but theres enough useful things to do after the critical stuff is setup that would give a ton of gameplay for bored veterans that seek progression
even with the current tech looting, some towns are still uncivilized after a full day, im sure thatll be even worse(and thus more fun) without tech looting

Last edited by Frodo (2023-09-28 18:01:23)

squishysquid · 2023-09-28 19:23:23

Frodo wrote:

assuming you are not exaggerating which you definitely are

he's not, most of the advanced players /die out of eves, if you forced ~5 playing at peak tryhard with how popular the nodelay client's become too. You're going to have a guy bitching about how no one wants to build cisterns for him to drain the newcomen so he can put the engine on by hour 2.

Frodo · 2023-09-28 19:52:20

squishysquid wrote:

he's not, most of the advanced players /die out of eves, if you forced ~5 playing at peak tryhard with how popular the nodelay client's become too. You're going to have a guy bitching about how no one wants to build cisterns for him to drain the newcomen so he can put the engine on by hour 2.

how is vets refusing to play with eves an argument that supports eves speedrunning earlygame fast?
and people bitching about not having X or Y in town, is exactly what i want(minus the bitching part), cisterns, rubber, compost, other shitty jobs, just give me anything to do man, everytime i login theres a town with 99/100 things already completed, i feel completely useless after 5 minutes and end up playing another game instead.

Last edited by Frodo (2023-09-28 19:52:46)

Brohop · 2023-09-28 20:02:16

squishysquid wrote:

Frodo wrote:
assuming you are not exaggerating which you definitely are
he's not, most of the advanced players /die out of eves, if you forced ~5 playing at peak tryhard with how popular the nodelay client's become too. You're going to have a guy bitching about how no one wants to build cisterns for him to drain the newcomen so he can put the engine on by hour 2.

I mean i'd love to see that, i've yet to see a eve camp making engine in gen 2/3/4 , maybe it would be happening in one town (prob ginger) where a group of friends that know how is working together.

And all towns gonna have kero in 2 hours as well right..? /doubt

CatX · 2023-10-03 09:48:23

Maybe you could try to create a thread announcing a community apocalypse at a specific date. Publish it on Discord as well. Then people who don't want an apocalypse at that time can let you know that they're against it. Maybe if it happens once a year or so, it would be a rare enough event that it generates some interest. I'd prefer that it is a community decision, when it happens. And I prefer that apocalypses are rare, since each map contains a lot of lore. But I can see how a 'true' Eve start can be a novel experience.

SoloAceMouse · 2023-10-07 07:40:29

CatX wrote:

Maybe you could try to create a thread announcing a community apocalypse at a specific date. Publish it on Discord as well. Then people who don't want an apocalypse at that time can let you know that they're against it. Maybe if it happens once a year or so, it would be a rare enough event that it generates some interest. I'd prefer that it is a community decision, when it happens. And I prefer that apocalypses are rare, since each map contains a lot of lore. But I can see how a 'true' Eve start can be a novel experience.

Using apoc to destroy towns to have a pure eve start is unambiguous griefing.

It's the same as using boars to kill a town to do an eve start, except on a bigger scale.

Frankly, while I understand the utility of keeping an emergency reset button around, I think apoc creates more problems than it solves and it would be better to just remove it entirely. The amount of division and conflict centered on this stupid game mechanic is insane. Multiple years of constant arguing and bitching, not to mention the incredible amount of in-game drama, is just not worth it to keep the option of having 2 seconds of white screen.

Kaden56 · 2023-10-07 08:27:00

Thats the exact reason why its still in the game. Jason loves the juicy drama it provides.

SoloAceMouse · 2023-10-07 08:48:37

"Juicy drama" is also a big part of why this game has such a small active playerbase.

Jason is a talented programmer, but his unwillingness to address the problem of unrepentant, rampant assholes in this game is frustrating.

In an ideal world, you'd have some sort of antagonist role that provides an interesting conflict dynamic. Many satisfying gameplay loops are built on this exact premise, in fact. Instead, we get this endless rotation of people exploiting poorly-implemented mechanics to be a nuisance without any real way to counter them (which the curse system is supposed to do, but is woefully inadequate). It's so fucking easy for a person to be a pain-in-the-ass in this game, and they can just keep doing it over and over.

Then people get frustrated their towns/families/work gets ruined and they quit the game, further reducing the population. The selfishness of griefers taking away other people's fun for their own amusement is gross. It's why I look down on them as shitty people, because that is what they are deep down.

Deliberate and malicious acts of destruction make the game worse.

lose · 2023-10-10 14:32:21

I would like to join the map system.

Caprys · 2023-10-13 14:20:05

SoloAceMouse wrote:

"Juicy drama" is also a big part of why this game has such a small active playerbase.
Jason is a talented programmer, but his unwillingness to address the problem of unrepentant, rampant assholes in this game is frustrating.
In an ideal world, you'd have some sort of antagonist role that provides an interesting conflict dynamic. Many satisfying gameplay loops are built on this exact premise, in fact. Instead, we get this endless rotation of people exploiting poorly-implemented mechanics to be a nuisance without any real way to counter them (which the curse system is supposed to do, but is woefully inadequate). It's so fucking easy for a person to be a pain-in-the-ass in this game, and they can just keep doing it over and over.
Then people get frustrated their towns/families/work gets ruined and they quit the game, further reducing the population. The selfishness of griefers taking away other people's fun for their own amusement is gross. It's why I look down on them as shitty people, because that is what they are deep down.
Deliberate and malicious acts of destruction make the game worse.

I quit because town stages are skipped and game difficulty is out of balance. It has nothing to do with grieving, I quit because I'm bored and the game in its current state makes me feel useless. There is no more struggle to survive.

SoloAceMouse · 2023-10-13 14:25:30

Caprys wrote:

I quit because town stages are skipped and game difficulty is out of balance. It has nothing to do with grieving, I quit because I'm bored and the game in its current state makes me feel useless. There is no more struggle to survive.

I understand your frustration.

I was commenting on a different problem in the community, griefing, which I've seen burn-out dozens and dozens of highly skilled players and make them quit.

When players try to make apocs and kill towns, then talk about it like they aren't being mean, it just pisses me off. I felt the need to share my thoughts on this topic with the person I replied to.

Last edited by SoloAceMouse (2023-10-13 14:25:56)

Tarr · 2023-10-13 14:46:09

The game cannot be more difficult early because the difficulty curve is already near impossible for new people to handle which is why player retention is so low. On the flip, because veterans have been around so long early game is mastered because anyone with experience knows exactly what they need to do at any given time.

Anyone who has played on server 1 during a population boom can see this in action. People sit around not knowing what to do and only survive due to a combination of the few vets and the fact new people have to eat half as much as a normal player.

Ohol was hard when no one knew how to play or what the meta was. If you’re at the point that the game is too easy you’re a veteran who either can move on to doing your own little projects, teaching, or playing a different game. To make the game harder for yourself is to make the game impossible for others which doesn’t make sense to do.

If you’re bored then like you’ve done quit. There are other games out there for you to enjoy and if you want to come back later to see changes made that’s great. If not that’s also okay, not every game was made to play forever. The fact ohol is still going strong with its dedicated playerbase after 5 years is great.

TheSamWish · 2023-10-13 14:57:34

I think ohol was harder in the past because the entire meta of the game changed every other week back in the day. I prefer the game in the stable state that it is now tbh. Everything isn't perfect but I cba to learn the game all over again.

forman · 2023-10-14 20:41:26

This is all VERY true

The simple solution is to allow players to Eve whenever they want
This would naturally balance out and people would just avoid those stupid maxed out towns

You should go to Github and mention your issues in the issues section
This is the list he is currently working off of for the weekly updates

https://github.com/jasonrohrer/OneLifeData7/issues/

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#1 2023-09-19 10:54:15

Town stages are skipped and game difficulty is out of balance

#2 2023-09-27 10:03:08

Re: Town stages are skipped and game difficulty is out of balance

#3 2023-09-27 10:40:08

Re: Town stages are skipped and game difficulty is out of balance

#4 2023-09-27 18:10:37

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#5 2023-09-27 21:07:19

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#6 2023-09-27 21:51:44

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#7 2023-09-27 22:02:35

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#8 2023-09-28 01:34:05

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#9 2023-09-28 02:50:05

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#10 2023-09-28 08:57:30

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#11 2023-09-28 10:06:30

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#12 2023-09-28 17:56:32

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#13 2023-09-28 19:23:23

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#16 2023-10-03 09:48:23

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#18 2023-10-07 08:27:00

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#20 2023-10-10 14:32:21

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#21 2023-10-13 14:20:05

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