Time pressure + bad text chat + low FOV = problems

Joriom · 2018-03-18 11:20:24

We basically had a nice conversation for over 90 minutes now on Discord general chat about communication, teaching others rules, organization.
I think we should bring more people to this topic as well as make it more permanent than chat that just flies by and gets forgotten so I decided to make this thread.

Everythig stemmed of mass murder conversation where general consensus (if any) was that we need more ingame organization, awareness and comunication. I'll present my opinion and let others speak for themselves.

To prevent grieffing by killing off entire villages we need better children selection and guards for sure.

We need to examine kids after they are born by talking to them to pick up only those that are obidient.
Even if we think kid is fine - he can just be trying to get on our good side or snap at one point. Random "Eves" or people from other camps can stroll in as well. Some of them might even be the kids which we killed before.

All of that makes guard duty more and more important every day.

There is a problem though. With our 10x7 field of vision you can't even see entrie farm most of the time. Not even talking about other buildings or clusters of "idustry" if your colony has smith, bakery, carpentry, hinter & tailor, milkweed farm, compost place... most of those tasks need their own space around the farm where everyone gets food. People also need to run for wood, water, iron, stones - basically out of the village.

So we need mobile patrols with knives and bows. Even then it might be already to late when you get there - 10 seconds on bloody corpse is not enough. Guards can also be shot and killed by bow outside of their sight range easily (your camera moves along your moves, you can't see sides and behing and you can't just move your head aroud)

So what happens when you see "crime" or grieffer? As a guard - you can act and try to be faster. If in pair - you have high chance that one of you will kill the problematic citizen. But there must be rule of "no questions asked". So you don't know if you killed someone defending himself or mass murderer. No time for that.

As simple villager - you can do nothing. You can't call help in time. You can't yell. You can't hide. You can't see guards to run to them. The guards can't see you running with hands in air yelling for help. In case of murderer - you're done. In case of grieffer - he has plenty of time to run away and stay anonymous in other part of village.

Lets imagine you got guards at spot in time. You can't comunicate fast enough what happened. Before you say who and where - hes gone and anonymous. And if you try to describe his character model on chat - oh boy. Lets start fire and get chairs - it will take a while. Chat is terrible atm - but thats next, just below the guard stuff. Oh there also might be few people looking exactly the same as well.

So - lets consider we don't have random Eves or other people strolling around and the only danger are our kids. If we want to make guard duty more efficient - we need to learn kids the rules.

So we need someone talking to them and telling them the rules of village. Thats almost impossible "on the move" - so most likely we need spot in town to raise kids. By the fire, in the middle of the willage. But the more rules we have and the more kids there are - the process of teaching them will take longer and longer. Requireing one or more "unproductive" person with knife - just to kill kids who are not obidient. (oh, btw - that makes the need for graveyard worker even higher, next carrot/pie hog).

You would also need to introcude kid to all the villagers. Which is virtually impossible because next time they see the people you've shown them - they've changed from teenagers to old farts...

When you try to teach kids the rules, past "where seeds go & dont touch berry bushes" - you will most likely take 10 minutes per one child. If another one pops up in the middle of the lecture - you need to start over or teach him some parts later. But you wont show them around the village that way.

Most of the time you need to move. To grab food, to pick up something. To move kids around so you can feed them. To see something around. And speach bubbles tend to go offscreen SOOOO often and disappear before you can read everything. Also - kids sometimes receive more than one message at a time (lag? latency? to fast typing?) and the speach bubbles cover each other - you don't know which part they didn't see.

God forbid they have questions - one of the bubbles will be hidden by the other. At least one person won't get whats being said. IRL thats not a problem. Excuse the person and ask to repeat. In game - you need to WIRTE that and you're in constant pressure of time. You only have 60 minutes. Make them usefull. The more time you spend learnig kids (who might just go out of the camp and die of hunger or to bear, or log off because of dinner, or start trolling) the less time you contribute to village.

And that all is considering that everyone knows what he is doing and IS doing his job. Don't even get me started on getting "new players" on to village becuase then you need to explain ten times more stuff - so you can kill them and make them hate you and the game or waste moooore time.

----

Those things seem not to be a problem when we have voice chat - but not only thank to "having pro players on VC blowing tech tree again and again". Even if we have people who can't start fire, can't smith, don't know how to farm - over VC we can tell them how in efficient manner and over distance. Its not a problem if we make few steps away from the building to take a pie and our words dont colide so much over VC. We can also teach them rules before they grow up enough so they become usefull before. We can also communicate whats goind on around the village way better so we can defend ourselves better.

Even considering that - spotting random eves or people from outside if often to slow with people on VS all over the village. You almost never know if that blonde that was on your screen for 1 second is random or your aunt - no, the mouse-over relation check does not fix much of that. Most of the time you don't see people on your screen long enough to check that if they are not occupied by work in one place.

Basically - with better commuication over VC even new players can do much more stuff with one single person who knows what he is doing. But even over VS pros can't protect themselves enough. Thats why so many groups move to custom servers and "higher number" servers with no "randoms".

TL;DR;
You can't see further than tips of your toes and you need hearing aids right from the womb.
10x7 FOV that moves with your direction makes guard duty almost impossible.
People reincarnating with grudges or troll intent from start make it WAY harder to play than to live.
10x7 FOV makes it impossible to know every single villager and know if someone if up to something bad.
Text chat that trolls itself by hidding messages or taking them of screen way to fast makes teaching very hard - almost harder than possible in 60 minutes.

Considering that every (up to) 60 minutes you need to learn the new lay of the land, new set of rules for the village, new layout of the buildings, camps, tool and resource locations... current fileld of vision and almost useless chat make it impossible to organize enough to counter slight incompetence - not even talking about trolling.

-----

And now imagine you need to convey at least some of the above rules to the kids that does not know how to start fire before you start teaching it how to craft items... and then another child... and another... and you need to repeat this every time... and game becomes your second job... and many people are not up for that and will start "having fun" their way. Maybe thats why we have so many trolls now?

-----

Also - we can see some of those things going on in real life too. In ancient times most kids of age 10 were already working hard for the family - if they made it that far. With introduction of more and more kowledge, we spend more time learning to become usefull. Now, depending on your country you leave school at age of... 14? 18? 22? Legal age to get a job is... 16? 18? 21? And that does not even include additional studies if you want to get a better job or be more usefull or live better.

25 year old over ages:
Ancient - I've had my share of life. 5 of my 21 kids made it alive and will soon have their own. I even ate fruit once. My life was good.
Middle - I'm raising my 6 young kids teaching them how to work and survive. We have large family, we plant crops. Its hard but good.
Modern - I'm still getting education. I need additional studies to get a good job. I'm not ready for family.
Future - Mommy, feed me!

-----

I'm so sleepy. I might have written something wrong or mixed some sentences together while reading text again. Watch for edits.

ned · 2018-03-18 11:31:14

What if we had a sentry tower, which increases FOV when in it. Could be something like

Fence kit + fence kit = tower kit
Tower kit + shovel = tower base
Box + tower base = tower
Tower + rope = sentry post

Dagar · 2018-03-18 11:35:07

Agree with you, but the good thing is that there are global customs that have stuck on pretty much everybody, and thus also stick fast on new players (like F for food as a baby or not completely draining ponds). My hope is that the same will become true over time for more stuff, allowing us to communicate more advanced stuff than "put the tools back where you got them from".
The ingame chat system is horrendous and I hope Jason addresses it soon. At the very least, a person needs to know you meant her/him when speaking while he/she went offscreen, so you don't have to run after them just to convey a short message. At this point, even some 10 character messages you can write on the ground that stay would be a huge help.
Low FOV is a problem with griefers, but could be solved with something like a watchtower structure you could build that increases it while you man it.

Kitaelia · 2018-03-18 12:19:01

Being able to craft and wright on simple signs would be amazing!

Sign next to Pond "Leave Some Water In Each"
Sign next to Farm "Don't Harvest This Row" and another that says "Let This Row Seed"
Sign next to Berry Farm "Don't Eat Berries", "Need For Compost", and "Water Brown Bushes"
Sign next to Milkweed Farm "Only Harvest Fruiting"

Matok · 2018-03-18 14:18:28

Kitaelia wrote:

Being able to craft and wright on simple signs would be amazing!
Sign next to Pond "Leave Some Water In Each"
Sign next to Farm "Don't Harvest This Row" and another that says "Let This Row Seed"
Sign next to Berry Farm "Don't Eat Berries", "Need For Compost", and "Water Brown Bushes"
Sign next to Milkweed Farm "Only Harvest Fruiting"

I'm not really for text signs. Anything you add to the game you have to ask your self this one simple question.

What would the trolls do with it?

Sign next to Pond "Take water here."
Sign next to Farm "Free Carrotz"
Sign next to Berry Farm "Weedz, dig up plz"
Sign next to Milkweed Farm "Ur Mama, lul"

I think they'd do more harm than good by being a vehicle for trolls to spread misinformation.

Left4twenty · 2018-03-18 16:47:20

Essentially you have a problem with the core mechanics of the game and are unwilling to find creative solutions given the tools provided?

Last edited by Left4twenty (2018-03-18 16:47:36)

Go! Bwah! · 2018-03-19 02:10:07

Left4twenty wrote:

Essentially you have a problem with the core mechanics of the game and are unwilling to find creative solutions given the tools provided?

There's always going to be a practical limit to what can be accomplished on a server based on the tools available, the number of players on the server, and the willingness of the players to spend time and effort on the game. The developer can always make the game arbitrarily hard, to the point where nothing can be accomplished without third-party mods (in which case "the developer" is no longer "the developer").

In other words, for a given problem, there might not be a creative solution. I'm not saying we're at that point yet, but I don't think you can just assume a complaint is due to a lack of creative response.

Kitaelia · 2018-03-25 09:00:12

Matok wrote:

Kitaelia wrote:
Being able to craft and wright on simple signs would be amazing!
Sign next to Pond "Leave Some Water In Each"
Sign next to Farm "Don't Harvest This Row" and another that says "Let This Row Seed"
Sign next to Berry Farm "Don't Eat Berries", "Need For Compost", and "Water Brown Bushes"
Sign next to Milkweed Farm "Only Harvest Fruiting"
I'm not really for text signs. Anything you add to the game you have to ask your self this one simple question.
What would the trolls do with it?

Matok wrote:

I think they'd do more harm than good by being a vehicle for trolls to spread misinformation.

Yes, I agree, this is very very true. Trolls will try to abuse every single thing that is added to the game. That doesn't mean we shouldn't add things. Our civilization eventually invented the use of practical and informative signs. Those signs can be abused by real life trolls, and often are.

So, I believe the answer shouldn't be "Let's not add this because trolls will use it against us." Because then we will never add anything. Or add things at a very slow rate.
The answer should be "What can we do to prevent sign abuse?" Well for starters we can't just protect the signs we place, because trolls can place theirs next to ours, right? So we have to protect more than the sign. How do we protect that patch of ponds, that carrot, berry, or milkweed farm? We need to develop better systems to either keep the trolls out or have some sort of land ownership rights that prevent certain people from changing anything on that plot of land. What systems exactly? That I am not sure about.. But that's what we should be discussing.

Otherwise we greatly limit our possibilities. We're already giving the trolls way too much satisfaction by telling each other "We can't have this because: Trolls".

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2018-03-18 11:20:24

Time pressure + bad text chat + low FOV = problems

#2 2018-03-18 11:31:14

Re: Time pressure + bad text chat + low FOV = problems

#3 2018-03-18 11:35:07

Re: Time pressure + bad text chat + low FOV = problems

#4 2018-03-18 12:19:01

Re: Time pressure + bad text chat + low FOV = problems

#5 2018-03-18 14:18:28

Re: Time pressure + bad text chat + low FOV = problems

#6 2018-03-18 16:47:20

Re: Time pressure + bad text chat + low FOV = problems

#7 2018-03-19 02:10:07

Re: Time pressure + bad text chat + low FOV = problems

#8 2018-03-25 09:00:12

Re: Time pressure + bad text chat + low FOV = problems

Board footer