Available tech doesn't allow us move beyond a shared resource society

Matok · 2018-03-16 21:58:20

We are currently stuck in a shared resource society with no enforceable rules. You only 'own' the clothes on your back and what you happen to be carrying, and carry capacity is very limited. One of the most valuable resources, which is food, is very hard to claim in any sort of meaningful way. Just because you plant it, harvest it, or bake it, doesn't mean it is yours. If you put it down somewhere it is no longer yours, and anyone can walk up and take as much as they like, and leave you with absolutely nothing left for yourself with nothing of value traded in return for your time.

I'm honestly surprised that the game wasn't named Tragedy of the Commons the Game.

But it's a very good example of how economic socialism with no rules will always result in failure. With no rules, you can guarantee no production quotas and have no limit on consumption. While the system may work for a short while when production is outpacing consumption, the moment that consumption outstrips production you end up with a shortfall, and any stores of resources that you do have are simply buying you a little bit of time before the collapse happens. Unless members of the society happen to notice the shortfall and have both the capability and drive to overcome it, the civilization will fail.

I find it fascinating, but I also find myself wondering if we'll ever even have the capabilities to change to a different economic structure with how the game works. Trade can only form when people can't freely take whatever the hell they want, and right now people pretty much can, whenever they want. Even when you're working on crafting something, which you must do on the open ground, anyone can step in and just take whatever the hell they want and stop you, and there's little you can do about it.

A flourishing settlement can become a graveyard in minutes with the current game rules. Just last night I was born into a settlement that had somewhere around 8 to 10 people running around. I don't know if they were all born there or not, but I do know that at one point, a few of them loaded up as much food as they could in carts and took off, leaving nothing behind. I only survived myself by leaving the settlement behind and living on my own for the next 10-15 minutes somewhere nearby. When I did decide to come back to see what ended up happening to my original home, I saw no food and fresh corpses littering the ground, in a society that had been so lively only half an hour earlier.

And all because anyone is allowed to just take whatever they please.

Giving players the ability to claim and store resources in some meaningful way, and be able to demand trade for those resources, for just an hour of game time would be very tricky. What happens when someone dies? Can anyone just loot their storage then? Does it become a free for all frenzy of taking dead people's things every time someone kills over dead? Do you allow inheritance, so the children get first dibs?

Honestly I don't see how it could work but maybe Jason already has some ideas. If not, and we're always going to have this wide open take whatever you please structure, then we're doomed to repeat civ build up and collapse.

Casdir · 2018-03-16 22:06:45

The amount of times that I have died due to people "stealing" my food out of my basket that I have prepared for myself earlier, is pretty high. xD

sticks223 · 2018-03-16 22:11:00

That would just incentivize people killing eachother for things which is not supposed to be the games focus.

Left4twenty · 2018-03-16 22:20:39

Since you can destroy walls now, though with difficulty, if you had say a well organized council of yourself and another or a few people, You could workout a "locked"storehouse of your valuables that theoretically neither individually or anyone outside the pact could effectively get to it

Last edited by Left4twenty (2018-03-16 22:21:37)

Thexus · 2018-03-16 22:21:30

This is a "a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building".

You have to give birth to your own child, and teach them the rules and laws. You can teach them how to farm, so they will produce food. You can also teach them how to bake pies, so nobody will starve in a 15 miles zone around the pies.

You have to establish a civilization, where everyone shares everything, clothes get worn my multiple people, and they work with the shared tools. This game is not about the player, you are not in the center, you are just a small part of a tribe, you can make the future generations' life easier by doing a lot of things. Making clay bowls, clay plates, storing carrots in baskets, making clothes out of rabbit hide...

Also, i dont think that 10 people needs trading, they can live in anarchy. And you have to remember that this game just came out, a lot of balancing needs to be done.

This is not like other survival games, in this game, you dont work for your own survival, you work for your tribe's survival.

Matok · 2018-03-16 22:36:53

Thexus wrote:

This is a "a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building".
You have to give birth to your own child, and teach them the rules and laws. You can teach them how to farm, so they will produce food. You can also teach them how to bake pies, so nobody will starve in a 15 miles zone around the pies.
You have to establish a civilization, where everyone shares everything, clothes get worn my multiple people, and they work with the shared tools. This game is not about the player, you are not in the center, you are just a small part of a tribe, you can make the future generations' life easier by doing a lot of things. Making clay bowls, clay plates, storing carrots in baskets, making clothes out of rabbit hide...
Also, i dont think that 10 people needs trading, they can live in anarchy. And you have to remember that this game just came out, a lot of balancing needs to be done.
This is not like other survival games, in this game, you dont work for your own survival, you work for your tribe's survival.

And tribes will fail. Nothing requires anyone to listen to the 'rules' that their parents lay down. You can do whatever you want, as much as you want to until there aren't enough resources left to do so.

Unchecked socialism will not work in the long run, because you can't guarantee that everyone will follow unenforceable rules.

Potjeh · 2018-03-16 22:43:04

Matok wrote:

What happens when someone dies? Can anyone just loot their storage then? Does it become a free for all frenzy of taking dead people's things every time someone kills over dead? Do you allow inheritance, so the children get first dibs?

IMO best would be manually designating who inherits, and if nobody is designated or designated person is already dead it's free for all. Workshops should be handed to apprentices regardless of familial affiliation.

Dagar · 2018-03-16 23:06:00

I'd honestly only see that as a problem if I happened to die more often from stolen food than not. Which I don't, even if you don't count the neglected child deaths. How often do you die because someone steals your stuff that you see that as a problem. Apart from that, I like to think that, apart from the not existing perma-death (as in, you play once and never again), it is a nice depiction of stone age society. They likely did not have the notion of some tool belonging to a single person. And some tribes likely also had all their stuff stolen or raided and suffered the consequences.

Potjeh · 2018-03-16 23:23:09

Pre-farming stone age society maybe. But I'm pretty sure personal property was a thing as soon as individual family dwelling were a thing, which generally coincides with development of agriculture. I think it makes sense that nomadic cultures wouldn't have much of a sense of personal property, and that sedentary cultures would need to develop a stable property system to avoid bloodshed over farmland.

Matok · 2018-03-16 23:33:26

Potjeh wrote:

Pre-farming stone age society maybe. But I'm pretty sure personal property was a thing as soon as individual family dwelling were a thing, which generally coincides with development of agriculture. I think it makes sense that nomadic cultures wouldn't have much of a sense of personal property, and that sedentary cultures would need to develop a stable property system to avoid bloodshed over farmland.

If pre-historic people's were anything like us and didn't like their 'things' being taken, pretty sure a pre-farming stone age person would beat your ass if you tried to take his favorite rock. And that would be deterrent enough to keep strangers from trying it again. No one wants an ass beating.

But dealing with people taking things that you don't want them to take in OHOL is pretty binary. You either let them, or kill them, there's no in between.

Hiker170 · 2018-03-17 00:11:40

Sadly it's not easy to teach them a lesson before you kill them since typing something out and killing them results in them only seeing it for a split second. Ownership works really well in long term games, where you will spawn back into an area, but then would you prefer it come down to infighting between people because one person chose to pick up all the carrots move them behind their locked door and watch as you all died.

It would only change it from them running away to another area to them hiding stuff behind their ownership, resulting in you needing to kill them to get it. This game punishes other quite harshly for the actions of others, drain a well no water from it for 10 years, eat all the carrots and run out of seeds. The ability to kill people is within the game and I'm pretty sure people will agree with you for doing it, if you have enough reason.

zekigames · 2018-03-17 00:24:18

We need chests that can be blocked just like minecraft.

lesslucid · 2018-03-17 01:08:49

Lockable doors and keys will enter the game at some point, I imagine.

I also imagine they will create almost as many problems as they solve...

Looking forward to seeing how things evolve socially.

ShadowsSoldier · 2018-03-17 01:10:42

This game is somewhat of a social experiment as I see it, can we come together as a group and make something substantial or we will all be in it for ourselves and fail. Having personal property enforces the in it for ourselves idea, and i can say with no doubt if you yourself focus on keeping the civilization alive and going, even if it means doing the most menial tasks it will not fail, provided you do the task correctly.

I leave you with one thing, learn to farm, do it right, leave rows for seeding, have someone make a little compost, you will not starve, even if the trolls and idiots decide to do their own thing.

xFaTE · 2018-03-17 01:16:12

What is the point in trading, specially in this era. Who will pay you out, who will take accountings, who is going to be the one in charge? I dont think this game will be able to handle this (at this moment). Only if somekind of more advanced civilization becomes standard.

Potjeh · 2018-03-17 01:49:15

Sure, you can run an endless carrot farm, but that's about all you can do. I thought this game was about tech development which implies division of labor, and you can't have division of labor when everything is in one pile that everyone is messing with.

Twinsen · 2018-03-17 03:43:53

Potjeh wrote:

Sure, you can run an endless carrot farm, but that's about all you can do. I thought this game was about tech development which implies division of labor, and you can't have division of labor when everything is in one pile that everyone is messing with.

I think the issue is that we advanced the tech much faster than Jason's anticipation though; but on the other hand, our life isn't improved much because people aren't building houses for nursery or successfully grew a huge area of milkweed.

Portager · 2018-03-17 04:37:52

Twinsen wrote:

Potjeh wrote:
Sure, you can run an endless carrot farm, but that's about all you can do. I thought this game was about tech development which implies division of labor, and you can't have division of labor when everything is in one pile that everyone is messing with.
I think the issue is that we advanced the tech much faster than Jason's anticipation though; but on the other hand, our life isn't improved much because people aren't building houses for nursery or successfully grew a huge area of milkweed.

This is a key point, we still have a ways to go in terms of evolving within the current tech level. Although we are inhibited by the lack of storage atm.

TheRedeemer · 2018-03-17 05:05:08

Matok wrote:

I'm honestly surprised that the game wasn't named Tragedy of the Commons the Game.

Lol.

Want to form a suicide society? (Basically we just kill ourselves as babies til we get back home to the society.)

It would need someone to always be online so it would need quite a few people.

Tebe · 2018-03-17 10:30:03

Twinsen wrote:

Potjeh wrote:
Sure, you can run an endless carrot farm, but that's about all you can do. I thought this game was about tech development which implies division of labor, and you can't have division of labor when everything is in one pile that everyone is messing with.
I think the issue is that we advanced the tech much faster than Jason's anticipation though; but on the other hand, our life isn't improved much because people aren't building houses for nursery or successfully grew a huge area of milkweed.

We might have reached the top of the current tech tree, but we still seem to be far from making it work sustainably. So many settlements are permanently in a state of death, revitalization, death - and only because the resources aren't being smartly utilized.

The top of the tree currently involves working wells, three golden crowns, dyed wool... Most settlements I'm born into are full of starving naked people hustling desperately just to get food in their bellies.

Sustainable settlements within the current tree are so rare, and I think this is what it's all about. We can figure out how to make everything, but making it actually work is the whole game. If things were easier, we'd be seeing surplus and abundance, but we always seem to be teetering on the precipice.

Hiker170 · 2018-03-17 14:33:28

Trading and ownership, will probably become a larger part of the game as the civilisations begin to survive for longer, along with the ability to have set up towns and valuable resources, some having more then others and wanting to trade for such things. Yet since you can keep travelling further and further away from a settlement and find a huge set of resources again trade and ownership don't mean a lot. You would honestly be better off just sharing it continuously until you can get a good family group going and can keep it up over mutiple generations.

Inoox · 2018-03-17 19:21:33

Portager wrote:

Twinsen wrote:
Potjeh wrote:
Sure, you can run an endless carrot farm, but that's about all you can do. I thought this game was about tech development which implies division of labor, and you can't have division of labor when everything is in one pile that everyone is messing with.
I think the issue is that we advanced the tech much faster than Jason's anticipation though; but on the other hand, our life isn't improved much because people aren't building houses for nursery or successfully grew a huge area of milkweed.
This is a key point, we still have a ways to go in terms of evolving within the current tech level. Although we are inhibited by the lack of storage atm.

storage is fine, i always pack thingsi nto baskets and then into crates. but then people take them out and just leave stuff all over the floor, which is what op means, plus people are lazy arseholes on this game that just take and do not give back.

although lately i have been finding more advanced civilizations where everyone is doing a job and it runs perfectly fine until someone decides to murder everyone (maybe not now its much harder to do). I wish I could go back to some and see if they are still going strong.

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#1 2018-03-16 21:58:20

Available tech doesn't allow us move beyond a shared resource society

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Re: Available tech doesn't allow us move beyond a shared resource society

#3 2018-03-16 22:11:00

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#4 2018-03-16 22:20:39

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