Is the drama gone?

jasonrohrer · 2018-10-31 15:50:01

Someone recently emailed this story:

https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=3667

It's an example of drama in the old curse system (pre Donkey Town).

Many of you will remember how hesitant I was to "do" anything at at all about griefers. In fact, I was meeting with some designer friends several months ago, and we were outlining various player roles in the game, stuff like:

Smith
Baker
Shepherd
Nanny
Miner
Farmer
Cart-driver
Hunter
Prospector
etc.

And then one of my friends said, "You forgot the most important one," and wrote:

GRIEFER

at the top of the list.

It's partially a joke, but the point is that griefers add necessary tension and drama to the game. Even in real life, they are part of the reason that we form societies. There's strength in numbers. If we were each on our own, we'd fear that we'd each become helpless victims to the worst among us. And in places where the rule of law fails to function, that seems to happen (like in the inner city, or places where organized crime has flourished).

On the other hand, you don't want TOO many griefers. If drama is constant, it stops being dramatic. Drama comes from an uneven texture, not an even texture of constant conflict.

But there's nothing like that moment where you finally catch and kill a griefer.

The problem here is that, due to reincarnation, a small handful of griefers can pretty much cause constant drama. Yes, you can send them to other family lines, but then they just make the rounds. If 1/10 the population is a griefer, then you can pretty much have one in every village.

So, they are currently all being sent to Donkey Town. I'm pretty sure that for most people, grinding out time there will get old quick, and they'll just quit playing.

Good riddance, you say?

So you really want to play for the rest of your days without a single incident of theft, mischief, or murder? I don't think you actually want that. Search your heart.

Is there enough drama now? Maybe so. But it has a cost. The poor souls that are brave/foolish enough to provide us with occasional drama get cursed into Donkey Town right away. If they ever manage to come out of there (instead of quitting), they will have learned their lesson, and will be treading lightly forever.

And with less and less drama, everyone has curse tokens to spare, which means that people are more likely to spend them over the slightest infraction. Thus, a vicious cycle of walking on more and more eggshells.

Finally, Steam is coming, and brand new players will be in the mix. Curiosity will get the best of some of them.... what does this knife do? Holy crap! Then Donkey Town for 5 hours?

Maybe, if there are enough players around, Donkey Town will be a lively place, so it will be just fine, but I worry.

Also, I should point out that the bug in the lineage ban that affected baby suicide was ALSO affecting murderers. If you murder at age 16 in life after life, you "earn" 30 minutes of living in each line, and after three lines, you've lived enough to return to the first line. So a murderer could make the rounds pretty quickly. Now, that is fixed. You must live 1.5 hours in other lines for real before returning to a line.

Anyway, assuming that systems are in place that heavily discourage griefing, like Donkey Town, then where does the legit drama come from?

Maybe people could be selected at random to be "Curse-proof" for one life, which means that they have been picked to be the bad guy for this life. Congratulations, you're in charge of causing drama in the village today.

I will post some stats here in a bit.... how has Donkey Town changed the murder rate?

denriguez · 2018-10-31 16:11:24

Yes, the game has been far too predictable since the Donkey Town update. I think with the lineage ban fix, once a griefer is killed off, we can at least feel like we accomplished something lasting instead of postponing the inevitable.

Man, you're taking a lot of shit lately in the forums for the iron nerf, but I am so glad I found this game and I so appreciate your work and the careful thought you seem to give to every decision you make, even when it's pretty predictable that those decisions will be unpopular. You stick to your vision, and I so respect that.

As a note, I haven't played games of any kind (console, PC, etc.) since college, more than 10 years ago. I doubt I'll get into other games, but when Jason Kottke shared this on his blog, it was an insta-buy. I suspect you'll have tons of success with the Steam release, and good on you for considering the new players w/r/t Donkey Town.

Anshin · 2018-10-31 16:14:03

Jason, the griefer is you!

Aurora Aurora · 2018-10-31 16:14:51

Yeah fuck donkey town, I almost got sent there for a harmless roleplay, thankfully they were short with 2 votes.

Tarr · 2018-10-31 16:24:53

I mean it definitely seems interesting to have someone be selected to be the village antagonist as it brings the community together to stop someone. However, this doesn't mean people care to actually do anything to stop someone from griefing the whole village. Too many times have I seen people with knives not put an end to the guy running around stabbing women or killing.

What's the harm in at least giving it a try? At worst we have a few weeks of annoyance and at best we have something to actually do in a village besides eat food. I think a lot of it comes down to how it actually gets implemented into the game before we could see if it's just annoyance or something that could be fun.

Where do the antags spawn? Am I going to have to worry about fighting off said person living as a feral eve in the middle of nowhere? Do they start as babies or are they full fledged adults who can start reeking mayhem as soon as they spawn in?

It sort of reminds me of SS13 with this sort of thing. Probably worth a shot even if killing them gets tiring after a while.

Dodge · 2018-10-31 16:34:48

I was very surprised when donkey town was created instead of having a visual cue like devil horns, i spent some time myself in donkeytown and i can understand how it could make a player angry/unhappy about this system

Also it was fun drama when the mothers protected cursed babies and you would try to convince them or chase them with a knife

Is it going to make some new players quit the game, not sure, but it will at least make them play the game less, especially for players that mainly play the game by griefing

Imo donkeytown is not a good solution, dealing with the griefers is part of what makes it challenging and sometimes entertaining to live in larger villages/cities

Current system feels like denying the enjoyement of the game for a certain category of players, that's without counting regular players that can be cursed for petty reasons and misunderstandings

jasonrohrer · 2018-10-31 16:45:59

And it doesn't look like it affects the murder rate, anyway:

Maybe slightly.

There's some server downtime in July there, but after that, it almost looks like curses increased the murder rate. Maybe all those cursed babies being killed.

I don't know if you guys remember, but I ran some numbers, and there were one or two people in this game who were absolute killing machines. Like, they had each killed an order of magnitude more people than anyone else, and been cursed like crazy.

I'm thinking about a few changes here:

--Go back to having babies be born marked, after 8 points accumulate, or whatever.

--Have perhaps a second tier for people who rack up a ton of curse points. Maybe those people do go to Donkey Town, but maybe for a fixed amount of time, not per curse point. Like, maybe 50 points racked up (this means that you've bothered a bunch of people over and over with very little break in the middle).

--Increase the lineage ban for murder victims. It's currently 1.5 hours for anyone who lives to 30, anyone who murders, or anyone who is murdered. Assuming that a griefer is more likely to be murdered, repeatedly, what we want is for them to eventually run out of families to play in. A non-griefer will get murdered occasionally, but not murdered in every family that they play in. I will try a 3-hour lineage ban for murder victims. If you're a random, unlucky victim, you will still have many other families to play in.

happynova · 2018-10-31 17:17:26

I feel like the level of drama right now is just right, actually. Yes, people still cause problems for various reasons. Some of them are the annoying "kindergarten kids who kick down other kids' blocks for fun" kind or the intolerable racist asshole kind, and those I never, ever found fun to play with. More than once, they've made me seriously consider quitting the game forever. But I feel like there are fewer of those people now, fewer of the ones who make the game intolerable and not-fun because their whole goal is to make the game intolerable and not-fun, and I am profoundly grateful for that. But we still get drama! I've seen quite a bit of it lately with people arguing over whether people who have obviously disconnected should be fed or starved or just plain stabbed, for instance. That's drama that comes out of the game between people who are actually there to play the game, not just to fuck with other people. And as your statistics show, people still do kill each other over that kind of stuff (often in a Shakespearean spiral of revenge). But it feels at least somewhat less toxic to me.

Donkey town genuinely feels like a good solution to me for weeding out the people who are only there to be abusive in ways that make me want to quit, without utterly sanitizing the whole experience. It also makes me feel like I can genuinely do something about those people, in a way that actually means something. Powerlessness isn't fun, and previously I did feel kind of powerless, because we could kill all the griefers we wanted, and it never actually changed anything because they'd just be back, life after life after life. Dealing with a miscreant in a way that actually accomplishes something beyond the immediate moment is exciting and feels like an accomplishment. But being interrupted at everything else you want to do life after life after life because some jerk wants to force you to pay attention to them instead and there's nothing lasting you can do about it is the opposite of dramatic fun. I have zero desire to play "bullying victim simulator," even with the option to knife the bully.

Potjeh · 2018-10-31 17:27:32

Please no. Griefer drama is terrible. Drama arises organically from resource shortages is much better.

Catfive · 2018-10-31 17:39:46

Really torn on this. Curse free would see them cause complete chaos, not just a little drama. Evidence for this are the 2 griefers who believed their curse count was too low for Donkey town and laughed as they spouted 'I'm nowhere near donkey town' so we made sure as a camp that's exactly where they went. As happynova states we still have drama in near every camp, it's just not non stop drama now, but it surely is still there. If you wanted to make it say one person on a server at any one time as antagonist then sure give it a try but if you lose donkey town and go back, we;ll go back to having aggro in every lifetime.

I do understand the 'drama can be fun' thought but I'd prefer a tiny number of antagonists over removing donkey town, at least it won't see every family have griefers all over again..

WomanWizard · 2018-10-31 17:41:10

I agree with everything happynova said!

Donkey Town has been one of my favourite updates so far, because the gameplay since then has changed in noticeable ways. I don't feel like I need to stop playing for a bit until whatever griefer is playing gets bored (because after you stab them in one life, you have to deal with them all over again in your next life without Donkey Town.) Lives are more peaceful, and the drama that does come up is a lot more interesting than "Timmy is stabbing all the girls." We have the time and freedom now to argue with and murder each other over more complex and interesting things, like how and where to build the clinic, whether or not we should paint the bakery, that lady who took all the clothes I was making for my kids and ignored my pleas for her to stop, etc. And we do occasionally still get a stab happy, hide all the tools, kind of griefer, but they are rare enough that it doesn't feel like your time in the game is being completely wasted because someone is going around wiping out all the lineages.

Right now, griefers have to be more creative if they really want to tick people off, and that can only be a good thing.

Dodge · 2018-10-31 18:02:32

Why not remove donkeytown but lower to 4 curse points for getting marked, since:

a) not everybody uses curses
b) most camps/villages have less than 8 people in it

Twisted · 2018-10-31 18:05:59

My two cents - griefers don't cause 'drama', they just make my experience worse and make me want to stop playing.

Putting aside the lack of tech advancements and the fact that the 'meta' hasn't really changed, I really feel like my enjoyment of an average life went up since the introduction of Donkey Town. I honestly think that was the best update so far and I would be really sad to see it removed without a suitable replacement.

happynova · 2018-10-31 18:06:43

Well said, WizardWoman.

And, geez, I might suggest that anybody who doesn't think non-griefer players are perfectly capable of generating their own drama, complete with bloodshed, go and watch this playthrough from Twisted. Now that's the fun kind of drama. Even the person who was the victim of it chimed in in the comments to say they thought it was dramatic and cool. And as far as I can see, no one involved was setting out to deliberately mess with or ruin things for anyone else. Even the the guy who started it seemed to genuinely think he was in the right.

But, y'know, you don't get that kind of fun drama happening so much if everyone is busy running around trying to deal with someone who is just deliberately trying to upset people. Because when that happens, that story takes over from, distracts from, and erases all the other stories that might have been in the making. This fun drama would certainty never have happened if, in the middle of it, some actual griefer had come in and started stabbing all the women and killing all the sheep and cutting all the wheat and RPing molesting the kids. Then everything would have stopped and become all about that much more tedious, over-familiar, and unpleasant conflict instead.

ETA: Wow, speak of the devil! Look who just commented while I was typing this... At least, I'm assuming that's the same person!

Last edited by happynova (2018-10-31 18:08:17)

Turnipseed · 2018-10-31 18:08:13

Theres plenty of drama jason. Play a few lives youll see

Potjeh · 2018-10-31 18:08:21

Besides, griefing is still very much doable without getting cursed. You just have to be smart about it. Just running around stabbing people is not a fun form of drama because the knife dance is a mediocre combat system.

AmyJ · 2018-10-31 18:25:15

I definitely prefer murder griefing to people just running off with tools and other essentials. Chasing down/avoiding a murderer can be fun, having to constantly replace items is not, but I know most people seem to feel differently.

Personally, I liked having the visual cue of a griefer much more than having them just banished.

Roblor · 2018-10-31 18:29:29

I don't miss them.
Besides, clever griefers doesn't get cursed, as Potjeh writes.
They are still lurking on the fringes, stealthily picking off villages from behind trees, or stabbing whoever wanders too far away from the flock.

jasonrohrer · 2018-10-31 18:37:58

Okay, I will leave Donkey Town alone for now.

There's something unsatisfying to me about it. It seems like a giant hammer that just obliterated the problem. I worry about the wrong people getting caught in the same net. Like, during legit drama, one faction could curse the other into Donkey Town.

And the time it takes to burn off those curse points.... it's so long.

I know, the more people you anger, the worse it should be, right? But there's a mob/snowball effect here too, and before you know it, you're stuck there for 9 hours.

So I feel like that part of it is out of whack.

It almost feels like your curse score should have bearing on the amount of time you spend in Donkey Town.

Like, if you get over 8 points, you get one hour, and that's it.

If you keep bothering people, you'll keep getting another hour each time.

But if a bunch of people gang up on you, there's no way that they can send you away for 9 hours.

I've even heard of people bouncing onto Discord and saying, "Everyone curse Michael Smith." That. Sucks. The mob should not have that much power here.

There should be no reason to get more than your village involved. It should have no effect. Currently, each extra person that you recruit sends the person away for an extra hour. When you put it that way, it does really sound unbalanced.

Also, I just looked at the curse server, and some of the people with the highest total curse scores (sum of all curse points earned, ever) have 0 curse points currently. I.e., they served their time in Donkey Town and then kept playing after that, without making people angry.

So, I think I'm going to make the following changes:

--Fixed amount of time in Donkey Town, if you ever accumulate over 8 points. Say 1 hour.

--After you serve your hour, no matter what your score is, your score goes back down to 7 points. Make even one person mad after coming back, and you'll be in for another hour.

--When you're outside Donkey Town, you still burn 1 curse point per hour, as usual.

--The amount of time you serve each time is based on your lifetime total curse score. Maybe 2 hours if you have over 25 points, 3 hours if you have over 50 points. There are currently 14 people with 25+ total lifetime points, and 3 people with 50+ points. These are the repeat griefers that we really want to get rid of.

Tarr · 2018-10-31 18:40:45

happynova wrote:

...

On a funny note, I'm actually the little old woman who was stealing iron from that village to make our villages tools. I made sure not to steal all of it but apparently someone eventually caught on to me borrowing things and must not have seen me returning stuff (except the iron obviously.)

But yeah no one in this situation was trying to screw the other, I was just trying to make a better town for people to live in since the other town was super cold and my cousin found a viable place for us to move.

But yeah, this is the good kind of drama formed instead of the "It's just another random serial killer" sort of thing.

As others have said I'd prefer a few randomly selected people to be griefers than just releasing all the donkeys. This way people aren't always living in a state of bouncing donkeys from town to town in an attempt to sooth the chaos.

Potjeh · 2018-10-31 18:51:20

How about scaling time nonlinearly? Something like logistic function maybe.

MultiLife · 2018-10-31 18:58:27

Personally, I hate drama with a burning passion. At least the sort I endured in this game. Donkey Town was an absolute blessing to me. I hated the role of a guard, I hated the investigation, I despised playing a god damn "baby sitter" in towns (basically felt like herding restless kids that throw insults around, being headaches). There is still drama as griefers are starting blame fights now to get innocent people killed.

I'd rather have tensions come from the environmental challenges that may escalate some communications to drama. I hate that we'd have to rely on racist curse word spewing kids to spice up the game. Eff that. There is enough of those kind of people in real life to get my fill from.

Last edited by MultiLife (2018-10-31 19:02:14)

boggers · 2018-10-31 19:20:23

My take on it was that the system works great but the first pass was a little bit heavy handed.

Black text was good in its own way, but useless without the *threat* of something worse.

I would have made it so 8 to 11 points you get the black text which serves as a warning to the cursed player and also the players around them. Then 12 curse points Donkey Town.

To balance things better, curse points could wear off faster in Donkey Town, maybe 4 per hour... since you'd have to play out at least 12 points down to 8, minimum stay is still an hour, but it takes a lot more curse points to get a long stay. And Discord BS is less effective.

Something else to consider when there are more players - shorter stays in DT will also mean fewer people in DT - which will make DT worse for those in it. With longer stays you'd get higher population in DT, and perhaps the OHOL equivalent of PvE & PvP servers.

Selecting someone to be griefer is a bad idea IMO, and unneeded... Players already do this by naming their kids Awakumberumba McTavernackopolis, or whatever.

Aname · 2018-10-31 19:25:26

Tbh i griefed many times but never got into donkey town.

Its because if i grief i dont randomely murder anyone i see. i choose a victim try focusing on him and end them. Try too frame then when possible.

Sometimes i steal stuff and sometimes i lure bears into cities.

But i never ever do it twice in a row because if i do it one time i get 5 curses.
But still when i named an unnamed bb who was all alone i get 3-4 maybe 5 curses and got stabbed like wtf.
And when i roleplay i get cursed as well. bcuz roleplays isnt allowed. but i think roleplay make the game more fun even if its a little roleplay.

And tbh i like the drama of murders and someone stealing.But I played a month ago and that was a living hell with all those griefers i then stopped playing for a while and i just came back too check on the game because its a fun game too play from time too time and the griefers are waaaay less. so i think it should stay like this.

still dont curse someone because he just roleplay its annoying and you just wasted a curse.
and the guy can come in donkey town for just roleplaying.

jasonrohrer · 2018-10-31 19:52:34

Okay, these changes are in.

When your lifetime total is at or above these values, you serve these number of hours:

$lifetimeThresholds = array(   0, 15, 25, 55, 65, 75 );
$hoursToServe =       array( 0.5,  1,  2,  3,  4,  5 );

And you serve these hours whenever your curse score goes to 8 or higher.

After serving your hours, your curse score goes back down to 7.

After that, you burn one curse point every hour that you play.

So you can see that the repeat offender, who keeps bothering people as a way of life, will eventually serve 5 hours every time they bother people. A brand new player who tries something once will spend a half hour in Donkey Town.

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2018-10-31 15:50:01

Is the drama gone?

#2 2018-10-31 16:11:24

Re: Is the drama gone?

#3 2018-10-31 16:14:03

Re: Is the drama gone?

#4 2018-10-31 16:14:51

Re: Is the drama gone?

#5 2018-10-31 16:24:53

Re: Is the drama gone?

#6 2018-10-31 16:34:48

Re: Is the drama gone?

#7 2018-10-31 16:45:59

Re: Is the drama gone?

#8 2018-10-31 17:17:26

Re: Is the drama gone?

#9 2018-10-31 17:27:32

Re: Is the drama gone?

#10 2018-10-31 17:39:46

Re: Is the drama gone?

#11 2018-10-31 17:41:10

Re: Is the drama gone?

#12 2018-10-31 18:02:32

Re: Is the drama gone?

#13 2018-10-31 18:05:59

Re: Is the drama gone?

#14 2018-10-31 18:06:43

Re: Is the drama gone?

#15 2018-10-31 18:08:13

Re: Is the drama gone?

#16 2018-10-31 18:08:21

Re: Is the drama gone?

#17 2018-10-31 18:25:15

Re: Is the drama gone?

#18 2018-10-31 18:29:29

Re: Is the drama gone?

#19 2018-10-31 18:37:58

Re: Is the drama gone?

#20 2018-10-31 18:40:45

Re: Is the drama gone?

#21 2018-10-31 18:51:20

Re: Is the drama gone?

#22 2018-10-31 18:58:27

Re: Is the drama gone?

#23 2018-10-31 19:20:23

Re: Is the drama gone?

#24 2018-10-31 19:25:26

Re: Is the drama gone?

#25 2018-10-31 19:52:34

Re: Is the drama gone?

Board footer