Jason's Radio Silence on Iron

Tramax · 2018-11-16 12:33:00

How do we get Jason to tell us his plans (if any) for iron? I feel like the fact that it's almost been a week since he mentioned it in these forums is foreboding given how much of a hot topic it is.

If we endured another week with no update on his reception of our feedback nor any changes in the iron spawn rates I feel like we may start facing major atrophy of veteran players who get tired of assisting low tech camps knowing that three quarters of the time they're not going to get more than 4 iron this life. Meanwhile the people they could be teaching gobble berries like locusts; prime for learning but in a situation where the town can't sustain education because of the lack of iron tools!

I made a poll to measure a course of action we as a community could take.
LINK
If you have any ideas beyond these feel free to comment and perhaps we'll have a revote once some more ideas come out of the woodwork.

Last edited by Tramax (2018-11-16 12:34:51)

Booklat1 · 2018-11-16 12:44:32

I dont think iron is too rare as the game is right now but i'm sure it'll be after the map changes.

I do believe that the way iron is right now it is an extremetly grindy task to gather it, so why not improve anyway?

Tarr · 2018-11-16 12:48:42

I think the issue was he didn't make real iron sinks in game and resulted in him having to gut all the iron on the map to make up for it. His idea of lower iron spawns lower and lower just leaves you in awkward situations. You end up having to hunt a good chunk of time so you have the iron to mine a vein and what happens after you do that?

You sit on piles of iron. I think this is where the issue ends up being. Rail carts and tracks would be a prime iron sink but they aren't useful because the way in which they're coded. As is now in game you sit at one of two points when it comes to the stuff - You either desperately need iron as you have none or you have enough to just sit there and look at. The only time I wasn't sitting on piles of iron was when I mined a vein for six iron ore... That felt like a straight waste of my time.

Maybe some of the tools could be nerfed to reasonable levels instead of making all the iron more difficult to gather? You have things like adze, froe, axe which all have 100 average uses compared to shovel and hoe which are 40 and 50 uses average respectively.

Anshin · 2018-11-16 12:49:14

Ya, it is very strange to make the game harder during an influx of new players. I would think retention would be the goal, and if anything make it easier given the steep learning curve for crafting. Without players actually making things they'll never see what the game has to offer. MAKE IRON GREAT AGAIN!!!

Elsayal · 2018-11-16 13:37:33

Only same town will make it to iron tech, this is great.

MultiLife · 2018-11-16 17:50:59

Make smithing great again.

I think Jason may be expecting that "we will get used to it, just you wait". Like giving us time to realize "it's okay" after all. If the nerf was done better, I would have had no objections. What bothers me immensely is that one day he just decided that we should get more pressure from iron and the solution was to lazily cut numbers before discussions. There were amazing ideas in that thread and we were in no rush to be under any extra pressure especially with Steam release. There were great points too, especially with Eve camps. The veins/mines should be different and should pressure big towns, not the ground ore, which just pressures young towns.

I have taught zero newbies smithing because I don't have enough ore to give them. Even if I had, I probably have to run my whole life from 14-50 (and not die to boars, snakes and wolves) to get that for them. And if I am running in the wilderness, I am not helping inside the town, which leaves it hanging on a thread if no tools are around.

The base of my problem is that the nerf that was done is just not how it should have gone down in such a randomly generated game as OHOL. There were way better approaches.

lowdt · 2018-11-16 22:12:26

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bog_iron

just want to leave this here. greetings

MultiLife · 2018-11-17 10:02:00

lowdt wrote:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bog_iron
just want to leave this here. greetings

Love it. Edit: cool, resistant to rust! Uh oh, don't add rust pls! Well maybe one day, but countering rust has to be a thing too.

Last edited by MultiLife (2018-11-17 10:03:47)

Starknight_One · 2018-11-17 17:54:12

Spawned in this morning to a spot I had camped on server 13. Mind you, I hadn't seen much iron (maybe 1 or 2) that I recall on the way there, but while out scouting for clay to get some bowls and plates going (and the kiln, and oven made), I found 7 within easy distance of the camp, and the mountain biome kept going past that. There's probably more up there, or an iron vein, somewhere around.

OTOH, that camp was after a fairly long run from my spawn point. I was twinning with EveChu, but we got separated and I guess she stepped on a snake. There just weren't any good spots before that. This one wasn't ideal, but there was enough water for a small camp to get the tech up a bit. If anyone finds it, the farm isn't in it's final location, it was just the easiest place to start growing food.

Let's see. I think I was a blonde the first life in that camp... and I was a ginger this time. Wonder who'll be next?

Starknight_One · 2018-11-17 17:57:07

MultiLife wrote:

lowdt wrote:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bog_iron
just want to leave this here. greetings
Love it. Edit: cool, resistant to rust! Uh oh, don't add rust pls! Well maybe one day, but countering rust has to be a thing too.

'Resistant to rust' = 'covered in glass'. That's basically a glazed piece of steel.

No need for rust; our tools don't last long enough anyway, for the most part. Bad enough they break if you look at 'em funny, having to worry about them just falling apart would be ridiculous. "We had an axe, where is it? Why is the lump of rust here... dammit, not again!"

Psykout · 2018-11-18 10:05:34

Starknight_One wrote:

No need for rust; our tools don't last long enough anyway, for the most part. Bad enough they break if you look at 'em funny, having to worry about them just falling apart would be ridiculous. "We had an axe, where is it? Why is the lump of rust here... dammit, not again!"

Meh that happens already with things like carts. It wouldn't be that the axe you made in your teens would rust when you were in your forties. It would be, "didn't grandpa make an axe somewhere... never mind I found it (looks at pile of rust) yeah should have expected that."

jasonrohrer · 2018-11-19 21:02:29

Sorry... been slammed by Steam.

Is iron too rare? The problem is, it's tied up in food production and other things, which is not too great.

I need a way to tamp down endless food production, without affecting other things that iron is made from.

Maybe there needs to be some other finite ingredient in long-term food production, separate from iron, so that can run out independently.

Remember the old earthworm-o-pocalypse? :-)

Dodge · 2018-11-19 21:53:40

jasonrohrer wrote:

Sorry... been slammed by Steam.
Is iron too rare? The problem is, it's tied up in food production and other things, which is not too great.
I need a way to tamp down endless food production, without affecting other things that iron is made from.
Maybe there needs to be some other finite ingredient in long-term food production, separate from iron, so that can run out independently.
Remember the old earthworm-o-pocalypse? :-)

Or something that forces villages too advanced and that have too much food to climb the techtree (needing to use more ressources, maybe even food related ressources) or else the village dies, doesnt big cities and large supply of food attracted some kind of problems at one point in time?

CrazyEddie · 2018-11-19 21:57:22

Iron being rare is fine. The problem is that it's too rare right now. We think you nerfed it because "the math" told you there was plenty of it everywhere, but your calculations did not consider search time as a factor.

There is plenty of iron available if the players could go directly to it. But we can't; we have to search for it. Including search time as a factor, iron is an extremely scarce resource, scarcer than it probably should be.

Tarr · 2018-11-19 22:02:43

jasonrohrer wrote:

Sorry... been slammed by Steam.
Is iron too rare? The problem is, it's tied up in food production and other things, which is not too great.
I need a way to tamp down endless food production, without affecting other things that iron is made from.
Maybe there needs to be some other finite ingredient in long-term food production, separate from iron, so that can run out independently.
Remember the old earthworm-o-pocalypse? :-)

You either have no iron or way too much iron in the current model which was the exact problem we had before the iron nerf. This is probably an unpopular opinion but make the tools more likely to break again but increase the amount of iron. This makes smithing an actual job instead of something you only do once every twenty minutes or so.

We have no real iron sink in the game to get rid of the reserves we end up building up to. Tracks and railcarts aren't a viable drain so it either needs to come from tools breaking a bit more often or possibly some new item that requires multiple steel bars at a time.

Iron just depletes at an incredibly slow rate once you have a stockpile unless you are wasting it on random stuff.

Last edited by Tarr (2018-11-19 22:19:36)

Catfive · 2018-11-19 22:16:53

Tarr wrote:

jasonrohrer wrote:
Sorry... been slammed by Steam.
Is iron too rare? The problem is, it's tied up in food production and other things, which is not too great.
I need a way to tamp down endless food production, without affecting other things that iron is made from.
Maybe there needs to be some other finite ingredient in long-term food production, separate from iron, so that can run out independently.
Remember the old earthworm-o-pocalypse? :-)
You either have no iron or way too much iron in the current model which was the exact problem we had before the iron nerf. This is probably an unpopular opinion but make the tools more likely to break again but increase the amount of iron. This makes smithing an actual job instead of something you only do once every twenty minutes ago.
We have no real iron sink in the game to get rid of the reserves we end up building up to. Tracks and railcarts aren't a viable drain so it either needs to come from tools breaking a bit more often or possibly some new item that requires multiple steel bars at a time.
Iron just depletes at an incredibly slow rate once you have a stockpile unless you are wasting it on random stuff.

I'm with Tarr on this one. Increase tool deterioration but increase iron availability a touch. make the iron gathering and tool making an ongoing issue.

Psykout · 2018-11-20 21:36:06

As far as iron sinks go, I find it odd there are no iron tools only steel. Perhaps another tier of tools that are in between stone and steel in durability? Raise the amount of iron, add in iron tools and up resources for steel tool production could be another sink that could work.

jasonrohrer wrote:

Sorry... been slammed by Steam.
Is iron too rare? The problem is, it's tied up in food production and other things, which is not too great.
I need a way to tamp down endless food production, without affecting other things that iron is made from.
Maybe there needs to be some other finite ingredient in long-term food production, separate from iron, so that can run out independently.
Remember the old earthworm-o-pocalypse? :-)

I can see the issue with endless food production as it removes a lot of danger of dying. Combating this is delicate as if you nerf things too hard for the established villages, you make it that much harder to get at that point. I have thought as well as many about food spoilage, but that could just end up slowing down growth and do nothing to an active camp that is constantly making food. My favorite thought, which I started really investing into after seeing yellow fever, is a transferable epidemic. Large towns that don't create medicines run the risk of being wiped out no matter how much food they have sitting around. Tie it to food and animal husbandry and or maybe temperature. Having a "bad" diet of eating one thing your whole life, stepping on sheep poo all the time or being cold for long duration have a chance to make you ill, and that can be passed to others in proximity with a second but higher chance.

Last edited by Psykout (2018-11-20 21:50:48)

denriguez · 2018-11-20 22:23:31

Psykout wrote:

As far as iron sinks go, I find it odd there are no iron tools only steel. Perhaps another tier of tools that are in between stone and steel in durability? Raise the amount of iron, add in iron tools and up resources for steel tool production could be another sink that could work.

Cosign this. Or just make more steel tools or supplies necessary (pitchfork and nails have been suggested). There are many, many other things we can make out of steel. Steel wheels or axles for carts? Grills or other cooking tools that can be removed from a bed of coals? Lots of possibilities.

Psykout wrote:

My favorite thought, which I started really investing into after seeing yellow fever, is a transferable epidemic. Large towns that don't create medicines run the risk of being wiped out no matter how much food they have sitting around. Tie it to food and animal husbandry and or maybe temperature. Having a "bad" diet of eating one thing your whole life, stepping on sheep poo all the time or being cold for long duration have a chance to make you ill, and that can be passed to others in proximity with a second but higher chance.

Edward Jenner developed the first smallpox vaccine after he noticed that milkmaids, who had been exposed to cowpox, seemed to be immune to smallpox. We have cows. (Also, we get the word vaccine from the latin word for cow, vacca.)

Next step could be hereditary immunity. A mom who goes through the trouble of immunizing herself can pass the immunity down to her children. Imagine the drama of unvaccinated newcomers from out of town arriving in your advanced civ.

Next step would be zombies, obviously.

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2018-11-16 12:33:00

Jason's Radio Silence on Iron

#2 2018-11-16 12:44:32

Re: Jason's Radio Silence on Iron

#3 2018-11-16 12:48:42

Re: Jason's Radio Silence on Iron

#4 2018-11-16 12:49:14

Re: Jason's Radio Silence on Iron

#5 2018-11-16 13:37:33

Re: Jason's Radio Silence on Iron

#6 2018-11-16 17:50:59

Re: Jason's Radio Silence on Iron

#7 2018-11-16 22:12:26

Re: Jason's Radio Silence on Iron

#8 2018-11-17 10:02:00

Re: Jason's Radio Silence on Iron

#9 2018-11-17 17:54:12

Re: Jason's Radio Silence on Iron

#10 2018-11-17 17:57:07

Re: Jason's Radio Silence on Iron

#11 2018-11-18 10:05:34

Re: Jason's Radio Silence on Iron

#12 2018-11-19 21:02:29

Re: Jason's Radio Silence on Iron

#13 2018-11-19 21:53:40

Re: Jason's Radio Silence on Iron

#14 2018-11-19 21:57:22

Re: Jason's Radio Silence on Iron

#15 2018-11-19 22:02:43

Re: Jason's Radio Silence on Iron

#16 2018-11-19 22:16:53

Re: Jason's Radio Silence on Iron

#17 2018-11-20 21:36:06

Re: Jason's Radio Silence on Iron

#18 2018-11-20 22:23:31

Re: Jason's Radio Silence on Iron

Board footer