Suicide is OP - Should it be nerfed?

WalrusesConquer · 2018-10-21 06:42:01

I'm not a fan of getting rewarded by living past 60..its called ONE HOUR one life. Wouldn't it defeat the whole point?

happynova · 2018-10-21 07:17:08

jasonrohrer wrote:

Talked to a designer friend of mine just now.
Here are some minor tweaks to how things work that will help.

1. Mothers have better control over babies. Babies move even slower, and are easier to grab. Babies cannot jump out of arms (this is kindof a pain anyway) until age 2 or 3. If your mother wants you, she can keep you.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think I see how this actually helps? I strongly suspect all it'll mean much of the time is that you'll waste two or three minutes worth of effort and food on them -- and babies are going to sometimes be even more effort than before, if they're even slower and you give birth to them away from home and need them to follow you -- and then when they're able to, they'll just go and throw themselves on a snake, anyway, leaving both players feeling annoyed at having wasted their time.

2. On disconnect, server keeps your record alive, as long as you haven't starved to death yet. On reconnect, you re-enter that same living body, and resume play. This is going to be needed anyway to deal with disconnects (a robustness measure). This will also make disconnecting to suicide ineffective. As long as the mother keeps caring for the zombie baby, the baby will stay alive, waiting for the reconnect.

I'm very dubious about the idea of keeping a zombie baby. Either it disconnected by accident and might very well never come back, or it disconnected to try to die, and is just going to kill itself if and when it does come back. And here I've been really, really enjoying the way that Donkey Town eliminated the tedious task of interrogating babies to make sure they're not cursed. God, I hated doing that. The thought of having to go back to doing that to make sure they're not disconnected is making me sigh rather heavily.

Last edited by happynova (2018-10-21 07:20:12)

MultiLife · 2018-10-21 07:43:21

happynova wrote:

jasonrohrer wrote:
Talked to a designer friend of mine just now.
Here are some minor tweaks to how things work that will help.

1. Mothers have better control over babies. Babies move even slower, and are easier to grab. Babies cannot jump out of arms (this is kindof a pain anyway) until age 2 or 3. If your mother wants you, she can keep you.
Maybe it's just me, but I don't think I see how this actually helps? I strongly suspect all it'll mean much of the time is that you'll waste two or three minutes worth of effort and food on them -- and babies are going to sometimes be even more effort than before, if they're even slower and you give birth to them away from home and need them to follow you -- and then when they're able to, they'll just go and throw themselves on a snake, anyway, leaving both players feeling annoyed at having wasted their time.
2. On disconnect, server keeps your record alive, as long as you haven't starved to death yet. On reconnect, you re-enter that same living body, and resume play. This is going to be needed anyway to deal with disconnects (a robustness measure). This will also make disconnecting to suicide ineffective. As long as the mother keeps caring for the zombie baby, the baby will stay alive, waiting for the reconnect.
I'm very dubious about the idea of keeping a zombie baby. Either it disconnected by accident and might very well never come back, or it disconnected to try to die, and is just going to kill itself if and when it does come back. And here I've been really, really enjoying the way that Donkey Town eliminated the tedious task of interrogating babies to make sure they're not cursed. God, I hated doing that. The thought of having to go back to doing that to make sure they're not disconnected is making me sigh rather heavily.

+1
Heavily agree on the interrogation thing.
Also I don't want to lockdown babies who are going to run. Just go, if you don't want me, I don't want you. Let's not waste each others' time hoping the other changes their mind over staying.

About affection that was mentioned... I find it hard to love the babies of the game. They are random adults all around the globe with limited speech. I don't coo sweet nothings to them, time is money. No amount of sweet nothings will change an adult person's will so why do that unless you are really into roleplaying and have free time from saving the town.

boggers · 2018-10-21 07:57:32

Tarr wrote:

The thing is you're going to be punishing new people a lot of the time by having this sort of system. You also punish people who get neglectful mothers by luck of the draw. As interesting as I think it is to have some sort of little reward to hitting max age living much longer with four bars probably makes you a hell of a resource drain. You'll be eating something every thirty seconds in a desert, fifteen seconds in a non desert biome, or every minute if on a perfect tile.
What do you even use a person this old for? Writing long winded papers? I mean at least on the plus side popcorn is worth exactly three pips so you can eat without wasting food at that amount of pips.
I'm just not sure removing time off life expectancy is a good idea. Hitting old age your first time is a great feeling and to have to die a bunch of times at preset numbers for being bad at the game early feels bad.

I should have explained a couple other things about what I had in mind.

Currently you start and end with 4 pips, you can interpret your minutes left alive by your number of remaining pips. This should not change under a variable life expectancy system - the "extra years" you get or lose are in the middle, so an elder with five pips is still 1-2 mins away from old age death. Similarly, the player sprites at old age would change relative to years left to live, rather than years spent alive.

On punishing new players - it really isn't a punishment. If you take the goal of each life to be surviving to old age - lowering life expectancy on repeated "failures" makes the goal of living to old age easier by gradually lowering the target. They might experience their first old age death at 53, and get +2 longevity for making it that far. Only once they've mastered living long lives and start doing it consecutively, do they start living longer each life.

As a new player transitions into a regular, at some point the goal shifts from just surviving to prospering and leaving a legacy. Having a few extra years in the prime of your life only becomes rewarding once a player has reached this phase.

You are right about being abandoned, for experienced players the neglectful mothers will be the thing that makes it difficult to get to 80. That is OK though, it should not be easy.

Anyway, the idea is tabled for now, so I will stop going on about it.

gabal · 2018-10-21 09:54:47

happynova wrote:

jasonrohrer wrote:
Talked to a designer friend of mine just now.
Here are some minor tweaks to how things work that will help.

1. Mothers have better control over babies. Babies move even slower, and are easier to grab. Babies cannot jump out of arms (this is kindof a pain anyway) until age 2 or 3. If your mother wants you, she can keep you.
Maybe it's just me, but I don't think I see how this actually helps? I strongly suspect all it'll mean much of the time is that you'll waste two or three minutes worth of effort and food on them -- and babies are going to sometimes be even more effort than before, if they're even slower and you give birth to them away from home and need them to follow you -- and then when they're able to, they'll just go and throw themselves on a snake, anyway, leaving both players feeling annoyed at having wasted their time.
2. On disconnect, server keeps your record alive, as long as you haven't starved to death yet. On reconnect, you re-enter that same living body, and resume play. This is going to be needed anyway to deal with disconnects (a robustness measure). This will also make disconnecting to suicide ineffective. As long as the mother keeps caring for the zombie baby, the baby will stay alive, waiting for the reconnect.
I'm very dubious about the idea of keeping a zombie baby. Either it disconnected by accident and might very well never come back, or it disconnected to try to die, and is just going to kill itself if and when it does come back. And here I've been really, really enjoying the way that Donkey Town eliminated the tedious task of interrogating babies to make sure they're not cursed. God, I hated doing that. The thought of having to go back to doing that to make sure they're not disconnected is making me sigh rather heavily.

This isn't just about babies, it is for dealing with mass disconnects. Remeber when lag spike would wipe out half of village? This will help with this as people would have a chance to relog and resume their life.

And communicating with babies isn't such a hassle. I'm pretty sure community will figure out something that will be a shorthand for "I'll suicide on first opportunity" just like f is used for food. Even now while I'm Eve I say to my babies we are still looking for good spot to settle/still setting up so they know what they are getting into and quit before I dedicate precious resources to them.

Potjeh · 2018-10-21 09:56:53

A big part of the problem is the same baby suiciding in the same town over and over again. Babies need lineage ban too. Yeah, it makes it harder for towns to get babies, but that might not be a bad thing. Right now when I'm born into a town I feel like people don't really care about me, babies are a dime a dozen. Heck. they might even let me die as a male because they know I'll respawn back and the next time I might be female. I think babies should be a bit more precious than that, and giving the town only one shot at getting a specific player does that.

Speaking of lineage ban, it should be changed to birthplace ban. A big chunk of suiciders do it because there's simply no challenge in a sheep era town. If the ban was location based they could actually strike out on their own and start from scratch while still having enough babies.

As for forcing players to play the life they're given, that's a bad call IMO. I don't like towns because of lack of challenge and novel things to try. Either you need to increase the speed at which you're adding content at least tenfold so I've got new stuff to try for a whole week, or make game at all stages actually challenging. Otherwise I'll only be playing a couple of sessions on an update day. I'm pretty sure a lot of the veterans feel the same. And no babies at all isn't much better than suicide babies.

pein · 2018-10-21 13:08:31

curse system is dumb, i wont change my style cause of that, you are guilty, i deal with you ingame
if you or others curse, they might die too, people abuse it too many times, some people are butthurt over anything then they just curse you, people don't know what happened but others tell you to curse you and they do it.
now would be same with blessings even worse, wouldn't be a problem randomly blessing someone and you could just go and bless anyone for giving you a backpack he hasn't made or for roleplaying 2 minutes

you cannot force people to play same way 300+ hours
first people get bored from running bush to bush
they want to see big cities
when they learn the game they want to be eves
is it fair or unfair doesn't matter, i don't want to be with a noob mother who already killed 7 kids, i know what will happen, i will starve too or will be frustrated feeding my sister and her kids
i don't want to be in huge decayed town, people just explore and do nothing, i got to make baskets for them and do everything on my own cause they prefer to do random useless stuff, i can do it, but not twice in a row or more

some people have this bad unrealistic expectations, worst i seen: kid wanted to be named abby and suicided if you named her anything else, suicided if was a boy, when it knew its me, and still tried to enforce me, i named other kid abby, she told she gonna kill her. after 4 times reborn i got bored of it and stabbed it, was a kid for someone else but already wasted my time and our resources, when she got her name finally, to sting more, this is not ok, you dont get to choose.
i seen a player wanting to get back to a place where it was killed to revenge a killer, well that is highly unlikely, this case i convinced her to stay but imagine people suicide for that reason

now accepting eve run once a day is polite, if everyone would do that, would be quite a few lineages going on
i think you need at least the skill to find a viable spot, or you just waste your and others time, i don't really like to be an eve, starting from scratch every time but if i see a good spot i generally stay, or at least some unique setup

so i see a possibility in this case, when you die as eve over 30 min total time (29 first time and 1 min as new eve), a question would appear, do you want to be eve today anymore? it would give you a free pass from eve job
but i totally support letting people do eve runs if they want to. you will do an eve run anyway, it just ruins for everyone else until you get there, not like being an eve is always fun and giggles

but the game could have presets based on player preferences too
some would be passive, for example if more than 10% of times you quit if you got no gear as a kid, it's a custom you always do, so the game would try to find you later lineages
if you die often as eve within few minutes the game would rather put you as a later gen than as eve
but honestly, i just want a change, so i would rather would like a screen where you answer yes/no
it would be still random
do you want to be an eve? eve only/random/no
would you prefer to be a girl or a boy girl/boy -now this shouldn't be 100%, but maybe like 10% extra chance to be the preferred gender, i don't like raising babies over and over and next life be an abandoned boy or last girl again, i just simply refuse raising kids more than 1 hour, it kills me every time that in prime of my life i cant work on a project
but i totally understand some people like it
so let them do it
for example could be a button to spawn as eve when number of eves who are 30 or older is less than 10% of total online players
after that it wouldn't let it so we don't spread too thin
should be a way to indicate you like raising babies so you get a bonus of spawning as a girl or ingame solution of prevent/increase fertility, instead of just heat should be heat+food and higher chance of getting pregnant if both are present
if you don't want it you would eat in colder biomes and less often

Randomname · 2018-10-21 14:02:56

Living after disconnect is a great idea but like others have said not for keeping babies but for cases when you are having a great time then get that dreaded message.

However trying to force people to play the way you want them to is just going to lead to more people choosing not to play at all or turning griefer. Donkey Town is great but honestly only a small percentage of griefers get cursed, usually mass murders. Those that break the pen, release the bears, hide the tools, cut all the wheat, pick all the carrots, overeat, dirty the pads etc often go unnoticed.

Lately baby suicide has been an issue but in the past there has been cases of to many kids and parents choosing to let them starve. If babies are made to stay, should parents be made to feed them? Is that the next issue? How is forcing a life on a player but giving others the choice to starve them ok?

We all have limited time to play this game and we all want the best life we can have. Sure this leaves lineages dying out but maybe they weren't meant to continue. After all when the kid gets to four or five and starves after wasting your food and time as, are you going to be mad at them? What's next? Stopping all child death or death before their fertility ends or all death forever?

Another idea to stop the repeated suicide is to lineage ban infants. Say if they die three times before the age of three, they get lineage banned as clearly either they don't want the town or town doesn't want them.

I also like the randomness as I hate Eve runs but I've played a few and been happy to see my line continue and I never would have Eve'd if given the choice.

xclame · 2018-10-21 14:03:01

The only real way to prevent these types of suicides is to lock the person to that family, while it's not very elegant and could be annoying, this would keep the random aspect of the game.

Maybe instead of rewarding/punishing players by messing with life expectancy, it should instead be a yum bonus reward/punishment, this way the game keeps it's One Hour aspect. So if you suicide too often you get a hunger penalty, if you live for long, you get a hunger bonus, I dunno maybe something like 5 "extra" hunger bars. Could be especially useful early on, even if it's not a "permanent" boost, just starting out with say 5 extra food bars, maybe after you are three years old, to make fight for make sure babies survive early on still a challenge, that alone would be a massive boost, allows you to do just that little bit more and go that little bit further as a child, so you could be a bit more useful and then maybe as you age the bonus slowly decays, starts at 5 and goes down by 1, possibly as you age till you are 8 years old.

However all this is trying to solve a problem without actually solving the symptom and doing that might risk not solving the problem in the end or making things worse. To truly be able to solve this, you need to figure WHY people are suiciding. I believe figuring that out and possibly fixing/combating that would have a much better outcome.

Here are some of the reasons I suicide when I suicide. (no particular order)
1) It's a Eve or someone that is clearly in a very very early camp and I don't want to burden them by having to take care of me. Say they are out just now gathering milkweed, by having to take care of me, they have to either drop their basket with string/ropes and bring me to camp or we have to do the hopscotch dance and slowly make our way back to camp.

2) Mother that is way out in the middle of nowhere (almost always don't even have a name yet). The perfect example is a mother that doesn't have anything but is walking through a large snow biome. Again I suicide to help them out, this way they don't have to stop and freeze and costing more food, etc.

3) Again someone that is in the middle of nowhere, but this time they aren't early game, they actually have horse cart, but now they have to get off their horse, name me and play hopscotch again. Again I think it's much better for me to let them do their work instead of having to deal with a baby and possibly the horse running away. (maybe an idea here for a lead rope? Which you can use to lead the horse while carrying your baby and tie a horse on a tree for say 30 seconds before they break free?)

4) When the camp/town is horrible. To give an example, back a bit ago when goose town still existed, I HATED that town, the town was bad, before it was griefed, while it was griefed (was particularly bad then) and even after the town is just bad. I rather not waste my times in horrible settletments

However more often it's smaller camps I have issues with, why are you guys building the farm 10 tiles away from the closest source of water?
Why do you guys keep stealing my soil that I am trying to use to move the farm to a better and closer to water location?
Why do you build everything so close to each other? Why do you keep moving things so close to other stuff even though you see me move it out of the way, thus forcing me to curse you?
Why did you build a 5 by 3 building when I was trying to build 5 by 7 building for the bakery, thus forcing me to have to break 3 pickaxes to fix your mistake? AND why did someone re-add the walls to the 5 by 3 building after I died, thus forcing me to break another 3 pickaxes?

There are bad camps that sometimes are still enjoyable to try and make fix, but then other times it's just a waste of your time and I would rather not play in that camp. (could we maybe have a construction site marker or something? (take skewer slice them into 3-5 thinner sticks which you can use to mark a area. Take one skewer, a flat stone and a berry and be able to draw simple symbols on the flat stone then lean it against the skewer? Or heck even just letting us use a skewer to draw those simple symbols in the dirt.)

xclame · 2018-10-21 14:23:09

Potjeh wrote:

I don't like towns because of lack of challenge and novel things to try.

Adding disease could easily help with this. Since in real life once people started living in cities, they had to contend with diseases, so many people all bunched up, lot of people dying in one area. Having animals so close to where lots of people are. A whole lot of issues happened simply because of how towns and cities worked and these had to be dealt with.

For the game you could have it that early camp don't really have to worry about this, because the numbers just aren't that high.But as you progress things start getting stacked up against you, things that if you don't deal with them will cause a wipe, but if they area dealt with are relatively easy to manage.

Each person increase disease odds.
Each domestic animal increase disease odds.
Slaughter animal increase disease odds after X time. (So only slaughter what you will use now, don't slaughter and just leave the remains on the ground)
Bones of all kinds increase disease odds. Proper disposal of bones would be required. Allow for alternative method of disposing of bones during disease wave (cremate the bodies)

This would also allow for expansion of the medic, giving the medic face mask item which is used in head slot, but needs to be taken off before eating is possible. Allow for medics to create tonics against disease.

jasonrohrer · 2018-10-21 16:57:52

Well, I don't really know what to do here.

Random situations, and not being able to hand-pick your situation, are part of this game. If that wasn't part of this game, there would be a "pick your birth location menu." There is not. There will never be. That would make the game worse. For those of you with 300+ hours, think back to when you first played the game. Every new life was different. New mothers, new situations. That black WAITING TO BE BORN screen, full of promise and mystery. That is part of the initial magic. But magic fades over time.

Now, veteran players are sick of that aspect of the game. I understand why. You've got 500 hours in already, and your about to spend another hour. You don't want to mess around. You want to get down to business. You know the difference between Goose Town and a good town. You want to spare the snow-biome mother some trouble. (But what if that snow-biome player isn't an expert like you? What if it's their third game, and trying to take care of you in hard times would be their most interesting story so far? If they were an expert player, they'd let you die out of necessity anyway, right?)

So, you're forging your own "pick your birth location menu," through baby suicide. But it's a really horrible UI. Buggy as hell. Requires restarting the game over and over (there's not really a worse UI than that.)

And the resulting game kinda sucks, for everyone. You got one group of people restarting the game over and over, negotiating the world's worst UI at least once an hour. You have another group of people trying desperately to take care of their precious babies, and they all run away or insta-skelleton.

But I've trained you to do this. It's a pain in the ass, but it works.

What if it just didn't work?

You're only disconnecting because it's an effective tactic. If it has no effect, you will simply stop doing it. You're not going to waste time disconnecting if it does nothing.

You might still run away. But in a really desperate situation on the part of the mother or family line, if you can't jump from Mother, a tag-team of adults can keep a very close eye on you. Maybe in the most desperate situations, they can build a playpen for you and force-feed you.

I think this needs to be an important part of the game. Every family line is competing for babies. This is a fundamental tenet of the game. I think this is actually the main force that shaped human culture, perhaps above all other forces beside death itself.

But in order to properly compete, they need a fair chance to be interviewed. By the baby. And baby-keeping strategies need to be more viable. So baby-keeping culture, whatever that is, can develop through inter-cultural competition.

Go back and listen to the NPR story again. "You are our miracle." That made her stay and care. She didn't want to let them down. But insta-suicide would have prevented her from even hearing that proclamation.

Now, all that said, if you're born into a "bad" situation, you might still just disconnect for 10 minutes (in which case your family will have to decide when to finally pull the feeding tube from your catatonic, erect body), or you might decide not to play this hour at all. I guess that's "one way to play."

However, I suspect that you would at least stick around for a few minutes, just to see what happens. I suspect that it will be hard to NOT be curious about what will happen. And maybe, just maybe, the story that unfolds will be interesting enough to melt that hardened veteran heart of yours... and you'll choose to live after all.

And all the brand new players that are coming in will be trained a different way. So they won't even get in the habit of using baby suicide to pick their birth location.

Note that veteran players were similarly irritated when the lineage ban was put in place. They wanted to keep working on the same structure, life-after-life. They wanted 2d minecraft. But why, if I wanted to make 2D minecraft, would I stick this annoying hourly death mechanic, and baby-suicide-to-get-back-to-work mechanic in there? Surely, if you want a 2D minecraft, there's got to be way better versions out there.

Xan · 2018-10-21 17:14:54

If Jason does add the disconnection change I do think a facial expression is needed for that state. Disconnecting isn't just for babies. It will help with adult disconnects too. It probably won't happen but I'd also like to see that if you murder someone that is disconnected that there wouldn't be a murder penalty for it(The scream and the slow). That way if the baby and the village agree that they aren't wanted banning them from the lineage is easy. I wouldn't want to use this disconnect change to force people into situations they don't want to be in.

Here is an idea for a positive incentive system that might be viable and fit with the games atmosphere. I know Pein had the idea of quests, but I don't think MMO style questing fits in Jason's vision for this game. What if the "Job Board" wasn't an in game item to look at while you were an adult? What if it was something you saw before you pressed the "Get Reborn" button. Add a meta currency that can only be used in the afterlife. Earn if from doing jobs for people. Spend it to make job postings of your own. It is more like Craigslist than an MMO's quest system. The game doesn't know you are on a quest. OHOL might just help with the lineage matching process if the quest required a certain lineage. To collect your reward you'd just message the creator of the posting with a picture of the completed project in game. It would add an additional layer to the game because usually you don't have a mission with a life that young. What if you don't even live long enough to attempt your quest? What if your mom gives you a different job? Which one will you prioritize?

With this positive incentive you've got someone who wants to be there. Instead of "I don't want to be here what can you bribe me with to make me stay?" kind of incentive.

VioletLily · 2018-10-21 18:59:37

xclame wrote:

Here are some of the reasons I suicide when I suicide. (no particular order)
1) It's a Eve or someone that is clearly in a very very early camp and I don't want to burden them by having to take care of me. Say they are out just now gathering milkweed, by having to take care of me, they have to either drop their basket with string/ropes and bring me to camp or we have to do the hopscotch dance and slowly make our way back to camp.
2) Mother that is way out in the middle of nowhere (almost always don't even have a name yet). The perfect example is a mother that doesn't have anything but is walking through a large snow biome. Again I suicide to help them out, this way they don't have to stop and freeze and costing more food, etc.
3) Again someone that is in the middle of nowhere, but this time they aren't early game, they actually have horse cart, but now they have to get off their horse, name me and play hopscotch again. Again I think it's much better for me to let them do their work instead of having to deal with a baby and possibly the horse running away. (maybe an idea here for a lead rope? Which you can use to lead the horse while carrying your baby and tie a horse on a tree for say 30 seconds before they break free?)

Please don't. Please. I'm begging you here.

The mother is always more aware of her skill and situation than you are as a baby. What if you are her last chance for a girl? There is no way for you to know.

Always leave the decision of whether to keep you or not up to your mother.

Personally, I am perfectly capable of juggling a baby and whatever job I may be doing at the moment. And with how many babies suicide, believe me, YOU ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE JOB I AM CURRENTLY DOING. I will happily choose you over that basket of milkweed I am carrying if needed.

If I can't afford to keep you, I will tell you. More often then not though, that is simply not the case.

ksaturn · 2018-10-21 19:23:40

VioletLily wrote:

And with how many babies suicide, believe me, YOU ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE JOB I AM CURRENTLY DOING. I will happily choose you over that basket of milkweed I am carrying if needed.

I agree. It is a little strange to me that people think they are helping by opting-out when that is actually pretty rarely the case. That said I think most suicides are for more selfish reasons then this.

Last edited by ksaturn (2018-10-24 18:37:04)

Luniatji · 2018-10-21 20:45:13

That's exactly what I said in another topic:

"So I suggest to make a difference between why your baby suicide. Is it because there are enough girls and they are a girl? Is it because they WANT to be a girl and be a boy? Is it because there mom ran away? Is it because they just don't like the place? Is it because it is an early Eve camp and they want a city, or vice versa? Because that all makes a different situation!"

You can make people stay, babies stay, but what if they then get a grudge and decide to kill you/grief the camp? I would rather that a baby ran away/suicide on the spot than that it ran away with tools when its big enough to run! Or that they set loose the bears because "ugh I didn't want to stay, stupid family!" I mean, yes, it is annoying to see that almost every kid suicide.. but sometimes thats better than when they stay. I have a couple of times that I ignored the pleas of a wanting-to-suicide-baby and that they then decide to grief the whole camp .. yes, nice, if they can't run because you hold them and steal everything!

On the other hand, I myself want to play as girl most of the times. Some other people hate to play as girl, because of the babies. If you force them to stay and get kids/be reborn time after time after time to that same mom with the same gender, towns will die because of no girls .. or the other way, they have ten girls who give birth to girls.. who give birth to girls.. it's like the Ginger-apocalypse all over! No food because of all running kids, starving, famine's.. not something I want to have either.

So then you have it. You can't suicide because your mom won't let you die, so you grief. Then your family has a problem because you grief and need to make all tools, you have too big families because all girls stay, or no girls because you didn't get girls .. I don't think thats the solution at all. I agree we have a problem and I understand your vision Jason, about not wanting to change the game so everything is "random" but im afraid that it takes one problem away (for now), but it creates another problem.

WomanWizard · 2018-10-21 22:14:08

Luniatji wrote:

You can make people stay, babies stay, but what if they then get a grudge and decide to kill you/grief the camp? I would rather that a baby ran away/suicide on the spot than that it ran away with tools when its big enough to run!

I agree completely here. Yes, baby suicides can be a major problem, but forcing your players to stay against their will, I think, is more likely to cause problems then be a solution. You could end up caring for a baby that will let all the bears loose as soon as it's out of mom's arms, or simply run off anyway when you wasted resources feeding it during a resource crisis but desperately needed a girl.

On top of that, consider the people who want a specific scenario and are bored with others. Forcing them to stay in a situation they aren't interested in isn't going to magically make them not bored with it. Forcing them into a situation they aren't interested in is an overall negative experience that removes a huge amount of fun from their gameplay and could drive people away. I'm saying this as someone who very rarely suicides as a baby, so please don't see this as me ranting because I want that option for myself. Yes, you may find that the newer players aren't trained to suicide when they aren't happy with the life they were born into, but on the flip side, you may find those exact players getting bored with the game and dropping it a lot sooner then the ones who have the option to suicide.

I think when in come to solving a problem like this, you need to look towards positive reinforcement to encourage people to stay. Make it their decision instead of forcing it on them. Some of the ideas here about living longer if you have consistently long lives are leaning in the right direction I think, though I also think a game called "One Hour One Life" should stick to its one hour lifespan. But, you could change the way hunger works for people who consistently live longer lives, so they don't need as much food when they're cold, or they get some invisible hunger bars over the course of their lives. Maybe give them some sort of currency reward that allows them to customize their character a little bit right before it's born. You don't pick your skin tone or hair colour, but maybe you can add crazy eyes or funky birthmarks. On top of this, while the player is adding a little customization to their baby self, the mother can show up as pregnant and get herself into a more ideal location because she knows what's coming. If the player invests in that life before they are even born, they are probably more likely to stay.

Just some crazy ideas. Not all will work, but I still think it's better to reward players for playing true to the game rather than force them into it.

Morti · 2018-10-21 23:22:03

jasonrohrer wrote:

Good video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63fBJPFPCbs

@ 16:50 in that video there is a good point that I'd like to tie into something I've observed.

The transcript of the video:

"This swinging substitute mother, a bleach bottle covered with furry cloth, was invented for an experiment by Doctors William Mason and Gershon Bergson at the Delta Primate Center in Louisiana. The isolated monkey has known no other mother than this moving surrogate which rises, falls and sways, in a random way.

This isolated monkey has an identical substitute mother, but the mother does not move.

At ten months of age, the monkey raised on a moving mother substitute is given a chance to make close physical contact with a human being. His behavior seems normal; he appears to be curious, bold, and friendly.

The monkey raised with a stationary mother behaves in quite a different way. He seems timid, cringing, and apparently unhappy. He appears emotionally disturbed, unsociable, and unresponsive to changes in the environment."

The rest goes on from 18:08.

This is not a point about baby suicides as much as it is about the types of mothers raising children, in the game.

As an Eve or any other mother, I find that if I take my children out working with me and not rush them home to dump them in a fire, they appear more likely to work harder later in life and to take a chance leaving the safety of the village.

Often times I'll be laying roads, gathering rabbits, collecting iron, with a basket, cart or horse, and wind up having children. If I continue to collect those resources while also caring for the child, rather than dropping everything and rushing them home, they often seem more eager to help. Certainly they are more thankful because they are with me when they come of age and will often thank me.

Mind you, as a child, I will thank you, no matter what. "TY / MA" Is what you will get from me, almost every time, whether you were juggling me while working, or just standing next to me at the fire or corner of the desert. But a mother or nurse who spend 90% of her time standing there, and only 10% of it eating food and stoking the fire, is not one that inspires me to go above and beyond what I would already normally do.

Mind you I have hundreds of hours of trial and error in this game. I, and people in similar situations, already know what needs to be done after we've looked around the camp and taken in the state of things. We get a lot more new players than we do people with hundreds of hours of play though. Just look at the reviews, a majority of them are coming from people with 5, 10 or 30 hours of play.

We want to set good examples for people who have 0 hours. They are the true infants of this game. The ones who, if we are good parents, will be curious, bold, and friendly.

Potjeh · 2018-10-21 23:53:24

People would be a lot more likely to carry babies around while they work if breastfeeding blocked births. Nothing worse than showing my baby around the town and having another pop out while we're far from warmth.

As for bored people, I think the problem is that we can easily achieve a steady state where we can sustain a town virtually infinitely. Sure, there's limited iron, but the town will be long dead from griefers, bad luck with the RNG or low server pop before the iron runs out. IMO there should be some natural resource limiting compost earlier than iron, and as new tech is added that resource should be replaced by another finite resource.

xclame · 2018-10-22 00:51:45

Morti wrote:

...

I like what you are saying here, I'm thinking that the reason people might be more connected is that they actually get to see more then just the typical tour and more importantly they connect to their mother's work and are more likely to follow in their footstep, like how you are saying laying roads, hunting rabbits and collecting iron, a child might be much more willing to continue in the mother's footsteps if they know where their mom worked or what their mom was working. For example I can remember sometimes as I was making buildings and had babies if i told them something the lines of "I'm building a bakery" there is a good chance the child will stay with me or go get resources to help build the bakery. Same for say hunting rabbits "I'm getting backpacks for everyone" or "I'm making clothes for people". This way a child knows very early on a job they can do (maybe in a little bit once they have enough hunger to not have to hover around the berry field the whole time) that someone else isn't already doing, it's a much better way to find out "What job should I do", when you can just see it, you just know that when your mom gets old or dies that the job they were doing is no longer being done or being done by one less person.

Maybe the baby sling people have been talking about could help here, baby sling takes backpack slot (maybe allow it to carry a single item so it's not completely useless when you don't have a baby), baby is carried on the back, so no automatic breastfeeding and this way you are a little bit more free to work while raising your child and your child gets to see what you are doing AND also possibly learn a new skill just being on your back. Can see all the steps it takes to make pie, this would barely give a small advantage over what you can already do now and just watch someone make pies.

gabal · 2018-10-22 10:12:12

I think if you implement baby can't run away from mother mechanic you should also make it so babies are born held in their mothers arms. If they had something they would drop it or something. Sometimes when I'm roaming I don't even notice a new baby poped out.

Riding on horses is obvious problem here. Maybe horse riders should be excluded from births?

jasonrohrer · 2018-10-22 15:08:32

I think that generally, because of the map loading happening for the baby, the mother sees the baby for at least a few seconds before the baby can walk around.

If your disk cache is cold, this can even be 10+ seconds sometimes.

So, not sure if the baby needs to be born in arms, because a caring mother will always have a chance to grab before they get a chance to run. But it is a possibility.

And having a baby pop out on the ground as you run along is funny. I don't want to remove that moment.

Regarding horseback births.... its funny to think about trying to have a baby while astride a horse in real life.

Finally, breastfeeding blocking birth is true-to-life. And the stress of juggling two babies is annoying.... but it's also hilarious when it happens, and it's not that common (it doesn't happen every time). So often, a mother says, "Shit," or whatever, when the second baby is born. Too funny to remove. There is a randomized birth cooldown picked between 0 and 5 minutes, on a non-linear curve that makes the higher times more common. So most people won't have another baby pop out right way.

ShadouFireborn · 2018-10-22 18:13:28

Sometimes I really have to wonder what some of my babies think when they pop out on me right in the middle of me working the forge. It forces me to pause my forging, feed them once, and find a place for them out of the way of my working, and then get back to the important and time sensitive process of turning iron into steel, or steel into a tool, before the forge goes out. Then I retire from the forge to take care of the new kid... Assuming they haven't suicided or been kidnapped.

But in any case, I think it's a good idea to have something like a baby sling. IMO it should be in the front, though, and take the clothing slot. No apron while wearing a baby, but that person out hunting rabbits doesn't have to leave their backpack full of traps or food or whatever they're carrying for their job behind so they can wear a baby sling in case they have a kid

Last edited by ShadouFireborn (2018-10-22 18:28:20)

Ilka · 2018-10-22 19:59:47

In my opinion, forcing someone to play will do more harm than good.
I prefer that a player who does not want to play commit suicide right away.
If we stop the child against his will, it will only cause us to lose a few minutes to feed someone who will commit suicide anyway.
I think, that probably improve the situation of the line bans also for children. What is the purpose of the child being born again where he died? After all, either the mother does not want a child, or she does not want to be in this family, or there is no food there. Yesterday I had an extreme situation in the game - four times I had twins born and they committed suicide every time. I think they were the same players. Such rebirth blocks the birth of those players who will want to play. Another problem is the rebirth of griefers who died young in the same family line.
Read what this person writes.

Azrael wrote:

About that, your dead mom here, clearly I did die and didin't kill you by bear.... But i respawned, and fortunately wiped that town off the face off the earth . No more girls or women after I unleashed two bears onto the town. And then, the end XD

https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=4232

In a nutshell, forcing people to play is a bad idea, but a ban on children's lines can help at least a little.

jasonrohrer · 2018-10-22 20:41:19

Well, there's a reason why there's no lineage ban for dead babies.

People die a LOT as babies, for a variety of reasons. If it caused a lineage ban, people would run out of families very quickly and all end up as Eve.

The lineage ban is there to prevent you from working on the same project life after life. But if you died as a baby, you never had a chance to work there at all.

Tarr · 2018-10-22 21:06:34

Actually I just realized something really funny. There's a suicide baby in Jason's trailer for the game. At the 1:05 minute mark you see a baby run from behind a tree out into the wilderness alone.

One Hour One Life Forums

#51 2018-10-21 06:42:01

Re: Suicide is OP - Should it be nerfed?

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#54 2018-10-21 07:57:32

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#57 2018-10-21 13:08:31

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#62 2018-10-21 17:14:54

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#63 2018-10-21 18:59:37

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#65 2018-10-21 20:45:13

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#66 2018-10-21 22:14:08

Re: Suicide is OP - Should it be nerfed?

#67 2018-10-21 23:22:03

Re: Suicide is OP - Should it be nerfed?

#68 2018-10-21 23:53:24

Re: Suicide is OP - Should it be nerfed?

#69 2018-10-22 00:51:45

Re: Suicide is OP - Should it be nerfed?

#70 2018-10-22 10:12:12

Re: Suicide is OP - Should it be nerfed?

#71 2018-10-22 15:08:32

Re: Suicide is OP - Should it be nerfed?

#72 2018-10-22 18:13:28

Re: Suicide is OP - Should it be nerfed?

#73 2018-10-22 19:59:47

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#74 2018-10-22 20:41:19

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