Baby Crisis

CrazyEddie · 2018-11-13 00:08:45

Reading over the older forum threads, I'm getting the impression that prior to the Steam launch the spawning dynamics were different (and I don't just mean the change to the Eve spawn distances).

My experience as a new player from Steam has been frustrating. And I get that the game is supposed to be frustrating to a certain extent, but I don't think that what's happening now is what Jason intended.

My experience is that most of my spawns are either as a baby that gets abandoned by Eve, as one of four babies that Eve is trying to keep alive and so Eve and babies all die, as Eve who then gets four babies and so we all die, or MAYBE if I'm lucky I'll spawn into a town that's getting hammered with babies but is doing well enough that some of us can live to an old age.

I know that baby booms have always been a part of the game and that they put stress on a town deliberately, but what I've been seeing seems pretty devastating. Couple that with the fact that almost all the players are new and have no idea what they're doing, and you can pretty much guarantee that few camps will survive to become villages and that few villages will survive to become towns.

But what's worse is that this is a vicious cycle. Baby booms leave the experienced mothers with little time to teach new players. Failing camps and villages means fewer stable towns for new players to spawn into, where the pressures are light enough that they can learn basic skills that would help them in camps and villages.

Perhaps the mother-baby cooldown time should be lengthened. That would lighten the load on all players at every stage of the game, giving everyone more breathing room to explore and learn about the game. It would reduce the pressure on Eves and lead more of them to raise their kids instead of abandoning them. And it would lead to more Eves (because there would be fewer opportunities to be born to an existing mother), which is good, because being an Eve (without the pressure of babies) is where you learn the most important survival and camp-building skills. And paradoxically, it would also lead to more towns, because with the pressure lightened camps and villages will more often survive into the advanced stages.

Because, let me tell you - the most frustrating thing about this game is the sheer number of times that I sit there as an abandoned baby with nothing to do but wait to die. This is not fun. This is anti-fun, and I am hard pressed to imagine that this is part of Jason's vision.

Dacen · 2018-11-13 00:32:25

Most of players are actually new. As an experienced player i am barely able to set a camp as an eve if all my babies are new, and it happen most of the time. And when i suceed i have no garantee at all a girl will stay alive to keep the family going. Maybe the amount of new players make baby spawn more frequent, but with experienced players it's not a pb as they help.

The real problem here is that no one is able to figure out what happen. It's just chaos. The result is famine, by use of all natural ressources in eve camp or bad management for more advanced settlements. It will stop when new people from steam will have learn or abandoned the game.

If personnaly you want to learn in this situation, you have i think two main possibilities. First do it the hard way, observation and ask help, will work far better in towns or at least settlements where food is secured, as an eve it's just impossible to take time to really teach, all the time i don't spend on kids and food i use it to make the craft necessary to progress.

The other possibility is that you look the basic crafts on https://onetech.info/ For an eve or starting settlement : basket, fire tools, fire, kiln, omelets, row, homemarker, how to farm berries and carrots, will be enough to help even a little as a gen 2 or three (depends how slowly the town go). Be aware it will not help you enough as an eve because you will lack an experience you can only have by playing many lives. For big towns you can check the different farms, compost, sheeps, pies, but i think it's more satisfying to figure it in game, and in a town you have more time, less urgency in general.

if you just aren't happy at all in the current situation, i suggest you come back in one month, by this time we will have done most of the job and it will be far easier to learn and with less famine more kids will be kept and will survive

Last edited by Dacen (2018-11-13 00:35:37)

Fetch · 2018-11-13 01:21:41

What is puzzling me is that I have gone from hitting a big town every 4th spawn or so, to spawning 20 times and not finding anything but wilderness and an eve that looks at me and says 'christ'.

It is a little better during the week when there aren't so many players. I was able to get to at least 3 generations is a decent spot that was warm and had lots of water.

One way I learned to play was, when I spawned as a guy, I left town as soon as I could and practiced setting up a camp and surviving without the pressure of babies popping out ever minute.

Starknight_One · 2018-11-13 01:42:03

Well. Most play was on server 1 up until about a week ago. And most of the players are new. So it's no wonder there aren't that many settlements yet. But we'll get there.

On the one hand, the new players are helping to boost the game's visibility. On the other, many of them don't seem like they want to learn. The gripping hand is, if enough people learn - and stick it out until they see results - new civilizations *will* arise.

Naeght · 2018-11-13 03:01:26

First few days after the initial release were similar. There is a meta level of advancement as the player base learns the game. Step by step, life by life, the medium player learns to fend for themself and contribuit to the village.

denriguez · 2018-11-13 03:42:24

Fetch wrote:

One way I learned to play was, when I spawned as a guy, I left town as soon as I could and practiced setting up a camp and surviving without the pressure of babies popping out ever minute.

This is a really good suggestion. I wouldn't limit it just to boys, either. As soon as you're big enough to carry a basket, strike out on your own. If you're a girl, you'll have plenty of time to find an ideal spot before you start popping babies. Splitting up a lineage geographically is a great strategy for ensuring lineage survival--a famine or griefer in one location won't kill out the line entirely.

Lily · 2018-11-13 07:29:44

I have not been playing much recently, so I can't say how bad it is. I can however say that this has happened many times before. Any time there is a big influx of new people, or there was a big change. People eventually do get better.

mikekchar · 2018-11-13 07:29:55

I haven't looked in a long time, but there used to be 15 servers. I got this feeling that a while ago everybody was going onto server 1 because there were less active players. I wonder if there just needs to be better load balancing.

I've been watching a Youtube stream from Japanese player who is playing the mobile versions (Yes, I know, different developer). It's interesting that there are often 80 players or so on the first Japanese server, which seems like a lot. However, the play seems to be very stable -- probably due to the relatively high skill from the players. Possibly after the newbieness from Steam wears off (as players get more skilled) it will be better, but it *still* seems there are a *lot* of babies. I wonder how much load is on the servers at the moment...

Edit: Thanks to a previous thread - http://onehouronelife.com/reflector/ser … ion=report

I'm in Japan, so I'm pretty sure this is not prime time playing in the US, but it looks like 3-4 servers have 80 odd players and most of the rest are empty, so it's comparable. Probably lots of babies because people keep dying and respawning. Just have to wait until they get better at the game.

Last edited by mikekchar (2018-11-13 07:33:05)

pein · 2018-11-13 08:37:53

just learn to say no and accept no

if yo uare bad as babies you will be bad as adults
i seen patterns in babies who will be trolls and i rather kill them early
if you are new than admit it, i can live with one new player, but if you lie you not new and die in 2 min its frustrating
if you are not new don't act like them, produce, work and contribute
new people got nothing to do in eve camps
learn the temperature, how to not overeat and how to survive in wilderness
if you die collecting branches you already made your part
tried to keep all kids, wont work
now im selecting out some noobs to let it starve and teach some new baby girls
as long as you can do a task i ask for, and help out im happy to teach one person
if you don't communicate and die in few minutes you waste my time and others time too

The_Llamacorn · 2018-11-13 10:07:54

There are no really big cities right now cause there's so many new players that don't know how to make a proper city, but eventually people will start getting better at the game so I suspect that we'll have some working cities in a few days/a week. SO just be patient and old players: try to teach as many as possible!

Tarr · 2018-11-13 13:15:00

As pein said, it's important to tell your kids no. You can only have so many people in different levels of the game and as such you trying to keep all your kids at inappropriate times can lead to death for everyone. Playing on S3 and attempting to filter out some of the players with temp testing allowed for some really good early camps to form. My first camp would have likely had sheep before the end of generation two but unfortunately S3 decided to crash for ten minutes and killed everyone who was playing there.

pein had a pretty good camp too but the people who became in charge of it didn't show the kids how to make sauerkraut and the others were too lazy to make eggs which led to the camp dying out in like gen nine. The final village where temp testing was used to sort kids ended up getting to gen 23 but sadly I think it took them 10 generations for the kids to get sheep for the village.

Just dump your kids that seem to act new in early game regardless of gender (unless getting close to 40) as you don't need ten kids to make a camp. A strong group of three or four people is much MUCH better than 5+ who have no idea what they're doing.

Stormyzabeast · 2018-11-13 14:56:02

Fetch wrote:

What is puzzling me is that I have gone from hitting a big town every 4th spawn or so, to spawning 20 times and not finding anything but wilderness and an eve that looks at me and says 'christ'.
It is a little better during the week when there aren't so many players. I was able to get to at least 3 generations is a decent spot that was warm and had lots of water.
One way I learned to play was, when I spawned as a guy, I left town as soon as I could and practiced setting up a camp and surviving without the pressure of babies popping out ever minute.

Yes yes yes!

CrazyEddie · 2018-11-13 21:32:37

Selectively ensuring that new players have a bad experience (spawning and then being abandoned is a BAD experience) is about as dumb as picking berries but not fetching soil. You'll make your current run more satisfying to YOU, but you'll starve the game of new players and cut off Jason's income source.

This moment, right now, is the one and only time that this game will launch on Steam. There will never be another chance to bring in new players like this. This is the WORST possible time to make the game MORE difficult and frustrating than normal, but that's exactly what's happening BECAUSE of the influx of new players.

Jason can compensate for this by dialing up the baby cooldown timer. That will create fewer spawns as unwanted baby #4 and more spawns as Eve. That is vastly more preferable for a new player. They may die soon as an Eve, but they'll at least be given an opportunity to explore and discover. If they spawn as an unwanted baby they can do literally nothing; all they will do is spend a minute or two waiting to die.

I'd even suggest tweaking the spawn algorithm to increase spawn frequency in established lineages and decrease it - dramatically! - in new lineages. Expose your new players to towns; even if there's increased baby pressure because of it, they will at least survive to early childhood because noob moms will feed them. And if towns collapse from the pressure, the new players will start to learn WHY the towns collapse (no berry maintenance! no branching out to other foods! no basic tech and tools!), and that learning experience is an important part of the game.

But even more important is decreasing the number of babies born to Eves. Noob Eves need a big, big break from baby pressures so that they can spend time exploring and learning about how to start camps. Right now if a noob spawns as Eve, they have a fighting chance to learn something and survive for a while; but when they get their first baby, they are basically doomed. Now is the ideal time to relieve that pressure, at least a little bit... Now, while the new players are flocking to your game.

Last edited by CrazyEddie (2018-11-13 21:48:06)

denriguez · 2018-11-14 14:15:31

CrazyEddie wrote:

Jason can compensate for this by dialing up the baby cooldown timer. That will create fewer spawns as unwanted baby #4 and more spawns as Eve. That is vastly more preferable for a new player. They may die soon as an Eve, but they'll at least be given an opportunity to explore and discover. If they spawn as an unwanted baby they can do literally nothing; all they will do is spend a minute or two waiting to die.
I'd even suggest tweaking the spawn algorithm to increase spawn frequency in established lineages and decrease it - dramatically! - in new lineages. Expose your new players to towns; even if there's increased baby pressure because of it, they will at least survive to early childhood because noob moms will feed them. And if towns collapse from the pressure, the new players will start to learn WHY the towns collapse (no berry maintenance! no branching out to other foods! no basic tech and tools!), and that learning experience is an important part of the game.
But even more important is decreasing the number of babies born to Eves. Noob Eves need a big, big break from baby pressures so that they can spend time exploring and learning about how to start camps. Right now if a noob spawns as Eve, they have a fighting chance to learn something and survive for a while; but when they get their first baby, they are basically doomed. Now is the ideal time to relieve that pressure, at least a little bit... Now, while the new players are flocking to your game.

You're getting there, I think. I remember as a new player being *so* frustrated by the sheer number of moms that would straight up abandon me. I'm doing far too much of that now, just out of necessity, when I spawn as eve. I apologize when I'm able, but I know I'm giving someone a bad experience. I also remember being so excited to spawn into a small town, because I knew I'd have a chance to survive long enough to actually play. These things are important for the long-term success of this game.

However, I have a couple of worries about dramatically increasing or decreasing spawn frequency depending on the age of the lineage: 1) Older lineages would experience (exponential?) growth, because the older the lineage gets, the more babies each mom has. Unless we start teaching moms to start outpost camps or to migrate far from their birthplace, even the most efficient cities would collapse from sheer numbers. And Jason has promised to continue "boiling the frog," so maintaining old lineages is only going to get more difficult. 2) Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't the current birth mechanics have a bias toward warm moms? The warmest moms are either clothed, established near a desert, working near a big, slow fire, or working on a floor or in a room, none of which are typical of early camps. So the bias toward older generations is already kind of built-in. 3) If babies born to eves drop off dramatically, I would assume that we'd get more and more lineages that end at gen 2 with just a few of unnamed babies--maybe one named girl. Sure, eves pop a lot of kids now, but the more kids an eve has, the greater chance she'll have of keeping at least one girl alive.

Your suggestion to simply increase eve spawns is a good one, as is tweaking the cooldown for eves and probably all moms, generally, at least until the initial Steam activity starts to plateau. For eves, maybe delaying the first birth until age 20, even without a cooldown, would improve the abandoned babies problem. Eve spawns at age 13 or 14, right? Give her a 6-7 minute head start to at least find a decent spot for her camp.

Last edited by denriguez (2018-11-14 14:17:29)

CrazyEddie · 2018-11-14 17:00:22

One way to think about the issue is this: spawning a baby that will be abandoned is functionally equivalent to not spawning the baby at all - except that it frustrates the spawned player and annoys and/or scares the mother's player, which means that it's strictly worse than not spawning at all.

This means you should want to tweak the spawns so that the kept-baby/abandoned-baby ratio is as large as possible. And if that means more Eve spawns, then so much the better.

The_Anabaptist · 2018-11-14 17:24:10

In my last attempt, I was born into the most advanced village I had ever seen. Working farms, working smith, working kitchens, working animal husbandry, domesticated horses, etc... Every kid I raised I basically told them, this is an advanced village, hang out at the farms and eat. Take your time to learn some new skills, go watch the elders ply their crafts. I lived to 59. Was excited to look up my family lineage and see how the kids were doing. Totally shocked to see that 80% failed to make it to child bearing age. Most died of starvation!!! Only 1 made it to old age, and that boy was clearly an experienced player.

If 80% of the player base can't figure out how to keep themselves fed in a prosperous village, no amount of tweaking the baby rate will work IMHO.

The_Anabaptist

Booklat1 · 2018-11-14 17:27:17

CrazyEddie wrote:

I'd even suggest tweaking the spawn algorithm to increase spawn frequency in established lineages and decrease it - dramatically! - in new lineages. Expose your new players to towns; even if there's increased baby pressure because of it, they will at least survive to early childhood because noob moms will feed them. And if towns collapse from the pressure, the new players will start to learn WHY the towns collapse (no berry maintenance! no branching out to other foods! no basic tech and tools!), and that learning experience is an important part of the game.

Nerf the chances of eves getting babies and no towns will exist.

denriguez · 2018-11-14 18:26:16

CrazyEddie wrote:

One way to think about the issue is this: spawning a baby that will be abandoned is functionally equivalent to not spawning the baby at all - except that it frustrates the spawned player and annoys and/or scares the mother's player, which means that it's strictly worse than not spawning at all.
This means you should want to tweak the spawns so that the kept-baby/abandoned-baby ratio is as large as possible. And if that means more Eve spawns, then so much the better.

An abandoned baby is in no way equivalent to no baby at all. Any baby represents the opportunity to eventually multiply your productivity and possibly extend your line; with each child, the mother has to decide whether the potential benefit of a productive child outweighs the risk in raising that child. If yes, she keeps it; if not, well, sorry BB. But if she *can* afford one and no baby ever comes because her birth rate is so low, she'll never get to make a decision in the first place. Tweaking Eve's birth rate makes a ton of assumptions about those who spawn as Eve. I've seen experienced players raise every baby they pop; granted, they don't exactly get to steel tools in one generation, but that was their decision to make.

I'm all for improving the player experience--it *sucks* to die as an abandoned infant over and over and over again. But I think the answer to this is increasing the general skill of the player-base, not in substantially altering how many players get to be born to an individual mother. For this, an age-free sandbox, maybe just as an optional "area" of the tutorial, would allow players to get that experience that will let them keep more babies when they spawn as Eve. That's been suggested here numerous times.

CrazyEddie · 2018-11-14 20:23:09

I'm all for improving the player experience--it *sucks* to die as an abandoned infant over and over and over again. But I think the answer to this is increasing the general skill of the player-base, not in substantially altering how many players get to be born to an individual mother.

As the playerbase skill increases, various dials can be turned to crank up the difficulty and thereby keep the playerbase engaged. Jason is already doing this - he's talked many times about "boiling the frog".

My thesis is that the playerbase skill just took a MASSIVE nose-dive, and the dials should be cranked down accordingly, QUICKLY, so as to retain as much of the new playerbase as possible.

THEN put the frog pot back on the stove.

denriguez · 2018-11-15 18:28:24

CrazyEddie wrote:

I'm all for improving the player experience--it *sucks* to die as an abandoned infant over and over and over again. But I think the answer to this is increasing the general skill of the player-base, not in substantially altering how many players get to be born to an individual mother.
As the playerbase skill increases, various dials can be turned to crank up the difficulty and thereby keep the playerbase engaged. Jason is already doing this - he's talked many times about "boiling the frog".
My thesis is that the playerbase skill just took a MASSIVE nose-dive, and the dials should be cranked down accordingly, QUICKLY, so as to retain as much of the new playerbase as possible.
THEN put the frog pot back on the stove.

Fair enough.

PeaGirl · 2018-11-15 21:30:48

I've always taught new players. I always will, but I don't spend all my time getting furstrated on when people are lightminded when running about in eve camp which I sometimes are forced to do.
If you are just there to mess around, I will curse you. I am serious. If you have a task to do, that is simple as waters on ponds, you are a thing I am allergic to, and my nose is already running.
One Hour One Life highly resembles the learning technique of "Mabinogi", a MMO game I used to play, not anymore. It doesn't make you just go fly by with quests, you have to "read" read the whole thing. If you can't understand, go to wiki. Almost every game has their own wiki where you can get recipes or guidelines, and OHOL definitely is not an exception.

You also need to learn what nots, and latest updates that overcome the older ones. These common sense things are something you need to probably understand in terms of empathy, like:
Smithing is time sensitive, click sensitive, so you should stay out from forgery area, if someone is busy doing there something and you ARE not.
Baking, sheepherding: Definitely need a knife, you can't just hide them.
Cooking: You need those 3 blades for Kraut broad, not for 3 knifes. Don't use for griefing. *shivers for thought*

Lily · 2018-11-16 09:22:12

I just played a game earlier, and I hadn't in a while. It was just one game, so it may not represent a normal game. However, I ended up as the first child to an Eve and we actually got a pretty good place going. There was a lot of people who didn't know much, but it wasn't too bad. Most new the basics at least, just not the harder stuff.

In fact, I would say compared to several months ago, the game is pretty easy. Food is every where now. Even with a lot of people wandering around and not knowing what to do, there was still lots of food. With eggs and yums, and easy bushes in the game now, I feel like I was playing easy mode.

JonySky · 2018-11-16 10:45:52

I have spent many hours in this game, I have lived in many cities and I have created many camps with a future that end up living many generations ... and I think I can give some advice to the new people who have arrived from Steam (and the most veteran they have to live with new people)

Do not save all your children
just stay with 1 boy and a girl

If you are an EVE, first take care of yourself and try to reach 60 years in a camp well supplied with food and iron tools

Even if you can not have more children and you are alone, do not kill yourself ... this is the best time to learn new things

Try to give orders to new ones, simple orders to look for food, soil, wood, do simple tasks like eggs, popcorn, take care of the berries ... etc.

When you see that a child does not appear in a reasonable time, replace it with a new one (jejejej)

When you have your first ax, cut the trees that can hide boars or snakes

Kill idiots who do not want to help or learn, trolls or sponges with a bow
It's simple and saves you problems

Currently there is an explosion of births due to new players, you should not have problems to "replace" your children with better ones ... but remember that nobody is born knowing everything

That is why it is important to have only 2 children, to be able to explain and teach them more peacefully

Over time you learn that the most important thing is what you do, create and realize ... and that you can not take care of your children forever ....

Sometimes you think you have smart and valid children but end up dying of hunger in villages well supplied with food ... or because they step on a snake

and sometimes you have the feeling that your people will disappear after your death and a daughter that you thought was dead follows the lineage for many generations ...

Truth · 2018-11-17 06:47:35

The biggest problem as I see it is too many mothers keeping all their babies.

I see farms starting to languish, and that's when I know the mothers need to slow down. 1 person eats so many berries, having multiple kids in quick succession sets the town to fail in about ten years - everyone is still alive, but the farm is about to be empty and it's too late to fix it. Plus people rush to water it and drain all the pools, and the only shepherd dies, the bushes die, the sheep die or escape. No more compost. Town falls apart. But I do support some women leaving to make their own.

My biggest complaint right now is actually lack of milkweed, though. A slow but existent and random respawn rate would be nice.

sarannwrap · 2018-11-17 06:58:59

Annoying thing to me is as a bb I do my best to stay warm and out of the way of the forge, and mom doesn't bother to find me in the warm tiles nearby to where she left me. Literally a few tiles from where I was put down. And then no one else around feeds me cuz too many bbs... maybe a slightly higher Eve rate? Esp for older players... More experienced players tend to like being Eves and then we can teach the newer players very easily since they are our kiddos..

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