A rough, incomplete sketch for makng family survival more meaningful

Tarr · 2019-04-02 21:42:08

While I can get behind the idea of being stuck with a family there's so issues that pop into mind.

1). You need a way to remove people from your possible player pool. Knowing you're going to be constantly stuck with a troll, racist, or unsavory character for the whole time they decide to play or even worse the whole time you decide to play is just a big headache. Just my last life we had one of our children calling the other kids niggers and obviously that's not something the town is going to allow. Sure if the person trolls enough they'll get cursed to donkey town but if you don't have the curse tokens you're going to be stuck knowing and dealing with griefing until enough people have tokens available.

2). As you said if you get a bad family you're sort of stuck teaching everyone how to play or how to be successful. This isn't a huge issue as it allows you a lot more time to teach the person over multiple lives but if you get people who don't want to learn or don't feel like teaching that life you get into a situation. Do you quit playing for a few hours and hope the goofy people are gone or do you kill the fertile women to reset your chance to get a new life with new players?

3). In the case of situations where you're worried about solo players doing their own thing there's always going to be some weird way to avoid the bans put in place. Early suicide, coming back via coordinates, setting up flight paths between towns, or having someone walk out of the area ban are ways people can avoid the current ban system and if someone wants to go back they'll get back one way or another. We both know if there's a will to do something there's normally a way.

At the end of the day I'm not sure you can get people to care about families even by forcing them to stick to a single family since its pretty deep rooted in the community to care about the towns we've all built together.

Tea · 2019-04-02 21:43:17

The burial thing sound very interesting. If you would really want to be reborn to that family, make sure to get buried by them. But what about those people who will bury all those bones outside of town ?

Someone also had the idea of marriage being a way to marry into a new family. Family A's last female died and are asking for a girl from Family B to marry one of their sons. There could be a priest asking "Jane B will you marry John A & John A will you marry Jane B" and if both say "I do" Jane B will now belong to the Family A. That way, more families could live next to each other and could support each other if their linage is about to die out.

I would also like to see a possibility for people to start a new family of their own. Either through marriage (they could change their family name and be the Eve and Adam of that new family) or by moving out of their town to start an outpost or a neighbor town. Lot of times outpost die out because most of the people are born to the bigger towns.

Just some ideas.

Psykout · 2019-04-02 22:17:48

Two Ideas well kind of...

Psykout wrote:

Death Ban - X deaths in a lineage/area bans you out of that area** This resets after X hours. Your family is cleared and the area restriction is lifted. You could spawn back into the family, but it is not guaranteed
You will spawn as a baby to the closest relative in your family, if eligible fertile female is available, starting with mother or sister and working its way down. You could be your "brother", you could be your "grandson", you could be your "niece" or end up being your "cousin" twice removed.
/Die - Enacts the death ban instantly thus keeping player choice

The Death ban would help keep the new starts in place, while still keeping the pace changing. Three strikes and you're out would give players three hours in an area before having to leave, and be a part of a new family. I would put the reset at a pretty high amount, 24-48 hours (realtime not game time). Towns would definitely be more stable and longer lasting with these changes, hence calling for a day or two area ban. I also say area because I think it would be cool that having split of towns from same family would give you a chance to come back at a relative distance from the original town and family. If the original family were to ever die out, you would be able to go back and restart that town, but if you never split off, thats it, it is gone. If eligibility is also affected by natural births and baby cooldowns, making sure all the kids do well in the town would be a little more important, because players couldn't return for a second and third life, if there wasn't good amount of females.

Give the player the same name they had before plus an affix when they spawn as a baby. You'd recognize the name, plus the fact they came out named, that they were just in your family and not a new entry. As you recognize the names, you'd notice the ones that also have been around for couple lives today in that same town. When you come down those final minutes of your last life, saying goodbye would be hard. Right now its just aww that guy/gal was here for a whole hour, good bye I will miss you - immediately go back to what you were doing. This would be an, oh shit, that dude built the super pen and both bakeries, and now he is about to be gone. She was the one that got all the horse carts and started making the cars, who is going to fill her shoes? Oh man, that was Psykout from the forums, and since we had time we did a lot together and talked a lot, I wonder when I will get that chance again.

Bigger mega cities would need to be surrounded by smaller camps just outside the area ban to ensure their success. Without them, the strong players that have been in the city before, wouldn't be able to get back in time to stabilize them before collapse. If the area ban was all the way up to 48 hours, pretty much with no colonies, everyone would eventually get banned out of the town and it would go extinct after a slow slow death. The fragility of a new camp would still have ripples inside of the civilization. Keeping connected to your colonies via radio would actually have a use, as knowing whats happening in either would important. Oh the colony to the west just had a compost breakdown and don't have any iron? Someone take a car out there with some for them. The main city just said goodbye to its mechanic, and needs a new replacement, and a new one is flown in.

A real kicker, or possibly stand alone, that could be added to the mix.

Psykout wrote:

Old Age Deaths
Living past 40 enables an area ban. Dying of Old Age would clear this, unless the Three Strike Death Ban has been activated

Saying goodbye to someone that has lived three full lives would be sad, but heartwarming. Watching someone starving to death running towards a berry bush when old on their first life would be tragedy. Also my favorite thing about this.... Old Peoples' Home. We would have a reason to care for elders and make them rooms for warmth and food to nibble before they pass. Burying yourself and making a tombstone would be like a right of passage, that you didn't screw up, and your final burial next to your other lives would be the town funeral.

As a standalone, you could make it so living to old age is the trigger to respawn indefinitely if the town lasts, everything else would be rather normal. I prefer the mix

P.S also removing griefers would be possible by starving/killing them out with a group effort, and would ban them out of your area for a long long time. Passing information to colonies about troublemakers would be useful as well.

Last edited by Psykout (2019-04-02 22:22:28)

Psykout · 2019-04-02 22:19:47

Tea wrote:

The burial thing sound very interesting. If you would really want to be reborn to that family, make sure to get buried by them. But what about those people who will bury all those bones outside of town ?
Someone also had the idea of marriage being a way to marry into a new family. Family A's last female died and are asking for a girl from Family B to marry one of their sons. There could be a priest asking "Jane B will you marry John A & John A will you marry Jane B" and if both say "I do" Jane B will now belong to the Family A. That way, more families could live next to each other and could support each other if their linage is about to die out.
I would also like to see a possibility for people to start a new family of their own. Either through marriage (they could change their family name and be the Eve and Adam of that new family) or by moving out of their town to start an outpost or a neighbor town. Lot of times outpost die out because most of the people are born to the bigger towns.
Just some ideas.

The problem with burials is that you would need to wait to be able to be reborn until they bury you. What if you died when there was no shovels, too bad. Also you would need a know you were buried from the menu, otherwise you could accidentally be spawn in a different town because you clicked the button 10 seconds before they buried you.

Spoonwood · 2019-04-02 22:24:22

I think Twisted makes some good points.

I don't like the idea of getting locked to a family unit. Some bad apples will ruin things that way. It will also make death less meaningful. Why worry about getting bite by a boar or wolf? You'll just end up going back to that family.

I think the idea of people having the ability to get reincarnated via a burial, given that they live to 60, has a lot more going for it. It rewards people who live to 60. It rewards people who can communicate with others and come as valued by them. It also gives players some control over their next life. And no one gets compelled to do it. Twisted can choose to not do so, and that would be a respectable choice. Someone else can choose to get buried and get reincarnated and that would make for a respectable choice. It's more options for people. More freedom for them. And they can play more control over how they want to play. I still have reservations about it though, because I wouldn't want it to end Eve chaining.

jasonrohrer wrote:

I guess part of what I'm trying to do here is figure out a way to bring villages closer together without it degenerating into one big "mush" of civilization, or without short-circuiting the idea that a village really will be lost if it dies out.

Ah, but that sort of does already exist. There's a low population server that has a substantial road network and thus the villages lie closer together. But, one of the towns did disappear, because no one went there for a while. But, the road building difficulty would need resolved first for that to happen more often on bigserver2. People would have to want to build roads and have the ability to complete large road projects within an hour, or have the ability to get born to the same spot to make more roads, AND they would have to feel such worth it. However, if towns are too transient, I doubt that many would feel like building those roads, and even without that, road building isn't something that contributes to the food supply directly or even indirectly very well at present.

Tarr · 2019-04-02 22:39:03

I think grave respawns are certainly better than just locking people to one family as it means the people in the city specifically want you returning. This means at the very least someone cared enough about you to follow through with your wish to be reborn or valued you as a player to keep you coming back. On the flip side I would also like some sort of ward that blocks certain people from being reborn into a specific area as there are some people you don't ever want returning to a city/area.

Also on the case of graves I've said it multiple times before but I would love to see some sort of ancient graves added to the game just like ancient walls. Sure, people could potentially grief with said graves but people can do the exact same thing with walls if they wanted to. Of course I believe ancient graves should potentially require engraving before being allowed the ability to go ancient as a true sign whoever was buried in the spot was actually cared about.

Also different grave types would be wonderful from small wooden crosses, to something much more ornate do declare that whoever was buried in this area was incredibly special to someone.

Kinrany · 2019-04-02 22:47:53

It would also be hard for players to reason about (no longer would last name alone be a sufficient marker).

What's the problem? Just tell them exactly what you want them to know. "Uncle"/"No relation", "25% relation" would work just fine.

antking:]# · 2019-04-02 23:25:05

wouldn't the first step to acheve this goal is to stuff every one in the same server? I'm not a pro in programing but I think if we did the A/B area idea it might be hard on the computer as every server will have their own A/b area

Amon · 2019-04-03 00:01:14

If the graves become a thing, we have to think about the wider inplications for present and future.

BlueDiamondAvatar · 2019-04-03 00:05:31

jasonrohrer wrote:

If all villages are close together, or people are using sniffed map coordinates, and they can just walk back to it in a few days, the village really didn't die, and the drama that occurred leading up to that death is weakened. It wasn't real. There was no real danger of loss. We can get this village back online any time we want. No big deal.

Without the ability to move back and forth between villages, we can't have trade, diplomacy, or war. These are forms of drama. Yes, any technology or spawning distance changes that allow us to move back and forth will also make it easier to repopulate old villages and return to finish old projects, and the death of the town might not be as dramatic.

But I thought we were talking about making family survival more meaningful rather than town survival, right? How can families compete or cooperate if they can't interact with each other? How can you show other people that your family is awesome? Forcing us into isolated communities highlights the drama around whether or not the town exists, but it eliminates many other forms of dramatic tension that we could be creating.

antking:]# · 2019-04-03 00:08:59

jasonrohrer wrote:

I'm trying to fill this game with big deals. Difficult decisions. Far-reaching consequences.

then remember the concerns of a robin has to be as important as a kings worries... its the little things that make the biggest problems long term...

Booklat1 · 2019-04-03 00:12:51

BlueDiamondAvatar wrote:

jasonrohrer wrote:
If all villages are close together, or people are using sniffed map coordinates, and they can just walk back to it in a few days, the village really didn't die, and the drama that occurred leading up to that death is weakened. It wasn't real. There was no real danger of loss. We can get this village back online any time we want. No big deal.

Without the ability to move back and forth between villages, we can't have trade, diplomacy, or war. These are forms of drama. Yes, any technology or spawning distance changes that allow us to move back and forth will also make it easier to repopulate old villages and return to finish old projects, and the death of the town might not be as dramatic.
But I thought we were talking about making family survival more meaningful rather than town survival, right? How can families compete or cooperate if they can't interact with each other? How can you show other people that your family is awesome? Forcing us into isolated communities highlights the drama around whether or not the town exists, but it eliminates many other forms of dramatic tension that we could be creating.

Jason has answered his own question eons ago, resources should run out, that's how perma death happens.

Last edited by Booklat1 (2019-04-03 00:13:30)

Gabby · 2019-04-03 00:21:01

While I do wish I could go back to some families, and I would be happy to be in a good family for generations, I also worry that families will be killed off not because they are bad, but just because people want to play as Eve.

Griefing would be more harmful than ever, I believe, and some people who were not griefers before and that would just /die will now grief so that they can Eve. And there is the issue of griefers that do not succeed on ending a family and then get another shot at it because they keep being reborn in that family.

All in all, it seems like a fantastic mechanic in a perfect world where everybody is nice and happy to be part of that family. That isn't reality, though.

BladeWoods · 2019-04-03 01:18:23

There's still not any reason to do long-distance trading because everything in the game can be produced locally. I'm not sure what resouces you could add, but there could be a couple kinds of rare biomes with difficult to process but valuable resources in them. These rare biomes could always spawn far apart from each other.

pein · 2019-04-03 03:34:29

the first sentence already hit me: but what if there are too many eves?

i played a few marathons cause i was having a flu and nothing better to do

generally there are 2 states:
-only girl is you or your mom and most people run away, 2-3 girls stay then they get each 2-3 girls, in 30 min the town is overpopulated, people die over and over until all of them banned, back to few girls
ofc the third is when everyone dies off

start with basics::
you got X amount of players, lets say 100
a good number would be 12-15 people per city
so i would say max 10 eves per server.
the new eves kill off the older towns

i was in Bear3 city, it died off cause i was the only skilled person
i found Bear1 city 700 tiles away, it was struggling
Next life i orn in Bear1, took a girl toBear2, similar 700 tiles NW, they had too many people, no one was able to control them or feed them
felt unfair that Bear3 couldn't have a bit of the people back when we were stable
Third life i born in Bear2, took a girl to Bear3 but she ran into a boar, so i went to Bear1, took another but was killed by her own mother, cause she wanted to kill me (dumb players with knives who want to bully others)
took another girl and she had kids when we arrived, i died of old age and a guy from discord made them the last tools.

We need a tier list, generally the more hours a player has, the better
not always, a roleplayer wouldn't be able to make all the tools or pen, but maybe would be a fun town
Lets say Tarr gets to Team A, then im joining the server, i get to Team B, Mirelli gets team C
then some people with 300-1000 hours get spread around and each of us gets some newbies as well

there are quite a few good skilled people so im not worried, we could have 2-3 good ones each
Now this 3 towns are close then we can find each other
wars are currently too easy
now if other families just can curse you this wont work, they would curse you just by seeing you are other team
so i think curses on other families shouldn't work
your own family could still curse you out
but then it would be quite easy to grief other teams without getting noticed
so maybe some sort of alarm when you get inside their territory
also wars arent viable if you target the females before the male 'warriors" so maybe fertile females could have some sort of protection
like a male protector could be named, if he is in the girls radius, the girl cannot be killed until he is alive
this would give a purpose to males, as fighters, and bodyguards and griefers would have no choice but to get rid of the protector
with some delay the female would be noticed that her champion is dead so she either defends herself or ran away to safety

the trading or econimical part could be some sort of quest/competition, which family makes more pies
hard to determine this, maybe a shrine which takes up pies and gives back empty plates so you could only trade your excess food

any sort of rivalry needs to be for some sort of bonus to your family
this doesn't make the other family worse, makes yours better

some sort of score system should be in place
and some sort of limit
for example 10 eves start, after 30 min the 2 lowest score family is dropped, people cant join back there, they can get random players still, a new Eve slot opens for 2 eves.
each 30 min some families drop and new eves can come.
So basically the higher score families would have more steady supply of players, the lowest score fams, would still be able to survive but no longer get back the lost people so they can die out easier, which helps the new eves and everyone else to succeed.

suicide is other problem, i don't want totally block people from eve run, but maybe they could wait, like set their willingness to play eve, then within 30 minutes they can play eve with top priority. they could still pseudo eve running away from a city.
some sort of player score should also be needed, the "reeee i don't play eve runs, feed me all my life" attiitude isn't really helping
if you live in an eve camp for 20 min and raise up a girl successfully you gain points
if you suicide twice you lose this points, this would prevent you to get to the top tier teams. so you could switch teams, but you would have better chances if you play normally for a short time, help an eve get a grandkid.

maybe this could be a requirement, that when a family reaches the limit of 15 people, no kids are born in the area, so you need to send out people to make second city minimum 250 tiles away.

team play would have the benefit of getting back to same place, do long term projects, you could opt out of team play but then you would have random chances, and you would start from zero and you need to build up your score to get decent fertility for your own family.

this just isn't working out that we got 90 people, 5 cities, 5 decent camps, 20 eves running around, and babies suicide left and right until every big city is lineage banned.

the other option would be family groups.
for example the first 8 eves are different color.
if some of them doing bad, a new Eve can start with their color, and can spawn near them, blocking each other from getting new players until one wins or they join forces (a merge would mean that one of them loses their name)
this would be a bad thing if you lose against others, but if you got no girls, a merge could revive both cities.

so each 1st 9th 17. eve would be pretty close to each other and their score could determine how many people can get to that team.
so basically each area would fiht, not each family

Last edited by pein (2019-04-03 14:08:44)

antking:]# · 2019-04-03 03:44:21

pien I like your idea but how about new families? so if the two lowest scores are being dropped then when they come back they will have an obvious disadvantage compared to more advanced cities.... so what I am seeing that their would be 8 developed cities and 2 all ways eves....

oh and I think that kill enemy members of another family should give points!

and have some objects like a treaty that do the same.... to balance out war and peace.
(make the map smaller)

Redram · 2019-04-03 03:46:46

jasonrohrer wrote:

Maybe, instead of every existing family on the server being marked as B, and locking you into only one family, instead we simply lock you out of the one nearby family to your family in an area.

This won't really change anything because you still haven't given people a reason to care about a specific family line. Who cares if you can't be born to Montague family? They had the same stuff. Every family will have generally the same stuff, unless you've also got some resource reshuffling behind your back. It'll be exactly the same as now - you'd like to be born back in your old town if possible, but if not oh well, the next town will be broadly similar.

Oh, and like some people have said, locking you into one family as long as it is alive is a TERRIBLE idea. You will absolutely end up with people griefing the place just because they don't like it and want to leave. The way to handle this sort of thing would be to Create a mutual ban when there is a murder between two families - they each are banned from the other's lineage. This prevents internal sabotage in case of war. But otherwise, if there's no murder, let them get along. You need to let people choose war or peace. If you try to treat people like tomcats you've poked with a stick and tossed in a cage together, your game will die.

Now, how to make people actually care about their family line? You need to make the families have actual structural game-mechanic differences. Again, I talked about this in the other thread. I proposed a couple ways. You can reward the player for successive births in the family line by extending their life. The more generations you've spent in the family, the longer your life is. This, in combination with presumably being in the same town, will be a strong incentive to actually care about that family line that you've spent the most time in. Because if you have to start over, you're back to the 60 years (or less?) life.

Second make civilization-style achievements/wonders, that are family specific. This one is harder to swallow in logical terms, but it opens up the doors to trade, conflict, and many more interesting stories. You need a broad array of these things, some bring boons to the family line (extend lives of everyone in the family by a year) some are unique resources (your family is the only one that can produce uranium, or centrifuges, or gunpowder, or whatever. Ideally you would have a lot of these, to allow every family to have one, but - and this is crucial - ONLY ONE. And then you make some tech require MORE THAN ONE of them. This way some tech would actually REQUIRE trade, because your family can only produce one of the items required. Well, trade or war. If you kill off the other family in the vicinity of the 'factory', then your family (or any family) can use it. Perhaps only until another family researches and builds it though. Then the free-for-all factory crumbles. So you see, what you create here is the OPTION for trade or war. You create explicitly monopolistic resources, and let people decide how to interact.

Now family boons (life extension, extra food pips) those could work the same (the antibiotics one makes a bottle of penicilin, which can be consumed to add a year of life) or different. Maybe only one boon of each type can exist, and strictly benefits the family that owns it, but one family can own multiples. This tends more toward war though, and would tend to make familys/towns try to accumulate them by finding the ones owned by other families, and destroying them, to make room for their own family to make them. The resource way is more neutral.

As to the problem of 'awareness', well, you need to allow for multiple 'home markers' at once (which would be nice anyway, just so one can have both a bell marker and their actual home). Each one of these wonders would have their own marker. Of course you wouldn't want to spam the player, so certain items would allow you to see the markers. Compass, map, whatever. It might also be interesting if people could 'give out' their location via radio. So if you say something like "My transmitter is at these coordinates", anyone listening on the receiving end gets a marker for your transmitter. Note - not actual coordinates are exchanged. That's just what you say into the radio, that causes the marker to appear on the other end. There's a variety of other ways to deal with this, that do not require villages to be cheek-by-jowl, and could possibly give more use to airplanes and cars.

Now, much like the life extension by living successive generations - you will care about your family/village if they have one or more of these monuments, because other families CANNOT have the same ones. The downside of the monument method is that it requires a lot of intricate balancing, vs simple life extension. But it could be done, and I think it's your best shot at getting actual legitimate trade. With a maybe a side of war.

Psykout · 2019-04-03 04:12:51

Gabby wrote:

While I do wish I could go back to some families, and I would be happy to be in a good family for generations, I also worry that families will be killed off not because they are bad, but just because people want to play as Eve.
Griefing would be more harmful than ever, I believe, and some people who were not griefers before and that would just /die will now grief so that they can Eve. And there is the issue of griefers that do not succeed on ending a family and then get another shot at it because they keep being reborn in that family.
All in all, it seems like a fantastic mechanic in a perfect world where everybody is nice and happy to be part of that family. That isn't reality, though.

Players determined to Eve, could still self ban with /die and be banned out of that area/family, but players that don't necessarily need to be an Eve, but just like starting new camps, would have a place in a big town. To increase the longevity of the family, and the main town, you would need to have small colonies around your cities, and need people to start them. That with a stronger family tree visual and tracker, people would have pride in their cities and their family for branching out. You would want your families to succeed, you would want to take care of the young and the old, because they are your connection to the towns and colonies, it's a symbiotic relationship. There are ways to implement griefer control. Murders can ban them out of the family so they wouldn't respawn, or if there is a way to tell if the baby just came from the town and who they were before, you could just not feed them. Thats why I thought of having the ban kick in not based off time, but deaths in a family add up and then ban at a certain amount. Griefers would be removed pretty effectively by starving them out a few times.

I really started thinking about this after the lineage ban changes to area. It was the idea that someone in your camp could run away from the town and you get birthed to them and just come back. Well then I thought why not make a little mini base, nursery and farm. Once the kids are big enough to journey back and be useful off they go. A baby colony. It just naturally makes sense if you want your family to live as long as possible, if that's your goal, to have more than one sustainable camp. Any collapse in one will only effect a portion of the population, and if they were close and connected, an extra shovel to do compost in a time of need would be possible. Babies into the family would be spread between the two camps so there wouldn't be booms of food usage as heavy as they can be sometimes. If there is respawning in the same town for a couple lives, a smaller amount of people would be plenty efficient.

jasonrohrer · 2019-04-03 04:21:21

I'm hesitant to make the max life longer than 60 minutes. The game does what it says on the tin. 2HOL is boring, to me. It's just too long. I could make it shorter, by default, and then family lines living longer could "unlock" full lifetimes closer to 60. So, 40 is the default, and after your family lives 24 hours, it goes up to 50. And then at 48 hours, it goes up to 60. But 40 itself is "long enough." I'm not sure the extra time really matters, or is a strong enough incentive.

The other boons things are interesting.... though I wonder how it would work in an elegant, flexible way. I mean, if you KNOW how to refine uranium, but you're in the wrong family, does it just not work if you try it? Does it not even show up in your crafting hints? How do you know you are not able to do it? Wouldn't it be frustrating?

The simplest implementation of this could be game-wide, and even broader than just a few special things. What if the entire crafting tree was "filtered" uniquely for each family? These guys can make tinder, but can't make a hatchet. These other guys can make a hatchet, but not tinder. These guys can smelt iron, but not copper. These other guys can do copper and zinc, but not iron.

Only the things that your family can actually do would show up in your hints, and only those things would actually work.

(In general, I've avoided this kind of "forced specialization" because I can imagine it being frustrating.... if you "know" how to fish, but your character doesn't know how to fish, and must observe someone else fishing each life, in order to "learn" it each life... would just be tedious. Going through the motions: "Show me how to fish (again)" This has been suggested many times, by many people, including by the great Richard Garfield himself.... but I have very strong doubts about this approach.)

Psykout · 2019-04-03 04:37:06

jasonrohrer wrote:

I'm hesitant to make the max life longer than 60 minutes. The game does what it says on the tin. 2HOL is boring, to me. It's just too long. I could make it shorter, by default, and then family lines living longer could "unlock" full lifetimes closer to 60. So, 40 is the default, and after your family lives 24 hours, it goes up to 50. And then at 48 hours, it goes up to 60. But 40 itself is "long enough." I'm not sure the extra time really matters, or is a strong enough incentive.

Really agree, even if you were to do two lives in the same family back to back, you'd at least be going growing phases again. Like you said it's One Hour One Life, it would be odd to have it operate differently in game.

jasonrohrer wrote:

What if the entire crafting tree was "filtered" uniquely for each family? These guys can make tinder, but can't make a hatchet. These other guys can make a hatchet, but not tinder. These guys can smelt iron, but not copper. These other guys can do copper and zinc, but not iron.
Only the things that your family can actually do would show up in your hints, and only those things would actually work.

(In general, I've avoided this kind of "forced specialization" because I can imagine it being frustrating.... if you "know" how to fish, but your character doesn't know how to fish, and must observe someone else fishing each life, in order to "learn" it each life... would just be tedious. Going through the motions: "Show me how to fish (again)" This has been suggested many times, by many people, including by the great Richard Garfield himself.... but I have very strong doubts about this approach.)

I would fear that wouldn't be immediately intuitive to new players that are learning. Understanding they are doing it right, but it doesn't work, would be frustrating at first. To experienced players, there would be many projects they might like doing, but can't do at all, because it's locked out, which would also be frustrating.

antking:]# · 2019-04-03 04:40:25

jasonrohrer wrote:

I'm hesitant to make the max life longer than 60 minutes. The game does what it says on the tin. 2HOL is boring, to me. It's just too long. I could make it shorter, by default, and then family lines living longer could "unlock" full lifetimes closer to 60. So, 40 is the default, and after your family lives 24 hours, it goes up to 50. And then at 48 hours, it goes up to 60. But 40 itself is "long enough." I'm not sure the extra time really matters, or is a strong enough incentive.

The other boons things are interesting.... though I wonder how it would work in an elegant, flexible way. I mean, if you KNOW how to refine uranium, but you're in the wrong family, does it just not work if you try it? Does it not even show up in your crafting hints? How do you know you are not able to do it? Wouldn't it be frustrating?
The simplest implementation of this could be game-wide, and even broader than just a few special things. What if the entire crafting tree was "filtered" uniquely for each family? These guys can make tinder, but can't make a hatchet. These other guys can make a hatchet, but not tinder. These guys can smelt iron, but not copper. These other guys can do copper and zinc, but not iron.
Only the things that your family can actually do would show up in your hints, and only those things would actually work.

(In general, I've avoided this kind of "forced specialization" because I can imagine it being frustrating.... if you "know" how to fish, but your character doesn't know how to fish, and must observe someone else fishing each life, in order to "learn" it each life... would just be tedious. Going through the motions: "Show me how to fish (again)" This has been suggested many times, by many people, including by the great Richard Garfield himself.... but I have very strong doubts about this approach.)

towns evolve to their surroundings such as people who lived in the amazon didn't need to farm or make clothes because of temp and the plentiful of food and yet they excided in natural medicine as their jungle was filled with poisons... or how the people who lived in Hawaii, and the Australian islands developed advanced boats... may be you should decrease map size, and increase biome scale! such as have a plains biome stretch for a kl...
but then have a different teck tree for that environment, such as bone arrows and buffalo skin tents, sown by buffalo tendons (no joke that's what the Indians on the great plains in Americas did make rope out of buffalo)

or for the artic have the tundra where the natives evolved thick clothing and methods of spear fishing... (Kakivak) they never developed fire so they froze and dried their meat! and would occasionally migrate to hunt carrbu, they had an all meat diet and yet were very healthy and traded with whale oil and narwhal tusks.

that's what I think you should do Jason have biome dependent teck trees... and then make all biomes very big so that its harder for some one to have a multi biome settlement and would have to trade with the locals of the biome... or just concur it...

this would allow players to learn what they need to survive in each biome! and what they need to expand to the broader teck tree
the only thing that should be required is that every biome can exist independently... but needs each need to work to geather to reach the higher stages.

Last edited by antking:]# (2019-04-03 04:45:42)

Greep · 2019-04-03 04:57:29

Well, if you're going to be remove restrictions on rebirth, there is no real lifespan anyways. On the one city server, we'd suicide as an elder sometimes to keep our food bar average high. Another thing to think about when locking people into a family. A bear mauling is basically just a stubbed toe. I actually think under these situations a much much longer lifespan makes more sense as you can have more connection with people, we even have permanent names on my server. You can die early if you want to live shorter.

A big issue is also handling runaway girls, as even one of these could wipe out a town. Additionally, people not wanting to live in the town don't have to grief, they can simply walk away, and suicide repeatedly until they get reborn to one of their kids in the new town.

There of course needs to be some way to expel people, otherwise a single griefer can and will wipe out any town, and there is nothing anyone can do about it all. Murder comes to mind as the obvious solution: You get shot, you're out for good. Griefers can get good at sniping people out of town incospicuously, but maybe that's just a meta people will need to get used to and adjust for. Might even be fun honestly.

Anyways, I think something needs to change, just poking as many holes here as possible.

In any case, any changes in this area probably need to be thought long and hard over weeks with a lot of back and forth probably.

Last edited by Greep (2019-04-03 05:08:15)

honikker · 2019-04-03 04:59:48

jasonrohrer wrote:

I'm hesitant to make the max life longer than 60 minutes. The game does what it says on the tin. 2HOL is boring, to me. It's just too long. I could make it shorter, by default, and then family lines living longer could "unlock" full lifetimes closer to 60. So, 40 is the default, and after your family lives 24 hours, it goes up to 50. And then at 48 hours, it goes up to 60. But 40 itself is "long enough." I'm not sure the extra time really matters, or is a strong enough incentive.

Oooh. What if, in that case, age was somehow tied to technology instead of time? Like, in the beginning, it's 40. But rather than the limit moving up after time passes, instead it's once a certain piece of technology is present in an area, everyone that moves into its range is bumped up to a max of 50, and so on? Like how technology in real life has extended our lifespans?

Oof, now I'm imagining people going on pilgrimages to those big towns with the life-extending tech for the sole purpose of living longer. But if those technologies were somehow tied to one lineage, and if touched by another ceased being applied to that fam and applied itself to the fam of whoever did the touching, I could see that causing some family feuds. The low-tech people with the shorter lifespans vying for the life-extending tech owned and controlled by the people who can live 'til 60, taking up arms to hopefully take control of it. Though every family would be able to make that same technology, making it a non-issue, unless the resource(s) needed for those specific life-extending things was/were very sparse.

Last edited by honikker (2019-04-03 05:00:25)

Redram · 2019-04-03 04:59:57

antking:]# wrote:

that's what I think you should do Jason have biome dependent teck trees... and then make all biomes very big so that its harder for some one to have a multi biome settlement and would have to trade with the locals of the biome... or just concur it...

Won't work. You'll just be back to biome borders/corners being the ideal settling spot, due to access to different biomes. Just like before the temperature updates.

jasonrohrer wrote:

I'm hesitant to make the max life longer than 60 minutes. The game does what it says on the tin. ...I'm not sure the extra time really matters, or is a strong enough incentive.

I hear ya. I guess I thought since it seemed like you were totally throwing out the premise of random lives and not repeating, in favor of a new meta of intentionally allowing people to repeat lives to make them care more about their line, that maybe all things were on the table. It had previously seemed to me like the random lives in different places thing was pretty fundamental. I'm honestly very surprised you're open to institutionalizing repeating. Does the time matter that much if it's all about the stories? If the default life is one hour, I think the tin is still accurate enough.
I do think the extra time matters, both in a real and a psychological sense. How many times have we all watched Twisted just barely run out of time to complete his many projects? And even beyond that, just knowing that you have that bit of extra time is a reward that is concrete. And if extra-old people had extra-old faces, it would be kind of a merit badge I think.

jasonrohrer wrote:

The other boons things are interesting.... though I wonder how it would work in an elegant, flexible way. I mean, if you KNOW how to refine uranium, but you're in the wrong family, does it just not work if you try it? Does it not even show up in your crafting hints? How do you know you are not able to do it? Wouldn't it be frustrating?

Ya that's a very important question. I don't think the baked-in ability thing is a good idea. Again you're taking away choice from people. I mean obviously if your family has built a 1-off boon then later generations don't have a choice then either. But at some point someone did. In my mind, it was going to start with some kind of research, and you'd have to choose what you're researching at the start, and if the thing is already done then at the very start you'd get a sound or or other indicator that it's not available - maybe a text echo. So you've made your lab table, assembled your glassware, made your research journal of many pages, and you try to use the journal on the glassware, and maybe sort of like reading a paper, your player speaks ":looks like someone else has already done this". Ideally they would have checked the various monument home markers beforehand to make sure it wasn't already out there (if the home markers were part of it). It would definitely need though.

And I think you'd only want to have an array of 'special' resources specially made to be monopolized in the system. Because if you randomly forbid ones, you risk creating a broken trade or tech tree, would be my fear. But ya, the boons thing is trickier for sure.

Tarr · 2019-04-03 05:28:42

jasonrohrer wrote:

The other boons things are interesting.... though I wonder how it would work in an elegant, flexible way. I mean, if you KNOW how to refine uranium, but you're in the wrong family, does it just not work if you try it? Does it not even show up in your crafting hints? How do you know you are not able to do it? Wouldn't it be frustrating?
The simplest implementation of this could be game-wide, and even broader than just a few special things. What if the entire crafting tree was "filtered" uniquely for each family? These guys can make tinder, but can't make a hatchet. These other guys can make a hatchet, but not tinder. These guys can smelt iron, but not copper. These other guys can do copper and zinc, but not iron.
Only the things that your family can actually do would show up in your hints, and only those things would actually work.

I mean I think if you went with some sort of boon/wonder system it would have to be based around a family paying some sort of upkeep/maintenance cost or it poofs with a sort of chime related across the server saying "This boon is now available for anyone to potentially craft." The only thing is I don't know what things you could produce that people want.

Maybe some sort of fancy mining rig that you feed kerosene every X or so minutes and it produces a random materials such as iron, limestone, desert gems, cinnabar, etc. This mean this specific town is relieved of the stress of iron every few hours as long as they're making sure to do the upkeep cost.

Or some sort of apocalypse shrine that requires constant murder corpses to slowly tick down to the destruction of the server. Murder corpses would be specifically used over something like bloody knives as a corpse absolutely requires some sort of sacrifice vs a knife wound which can be healed. A chime goes out and everyone rushes to stop this town from attempting to reach its goal of the server being reset.

Perhaps a specific tree that produces vines for rope along with specific nourishing foods that can only be picked from this specific tree. As a cost it requires large amounts of water along with soil ever so often or the tree starts to wilt and dies do to neglect.

I just don't know what sort of thing you could add that makes people want to specifically try to trade for unless it's some sort of resource you are generating without anyone else being able to do so. On the flip, it makes sense for people to go out of their way to stop some sort of doomsday device that left unchecked while wipe everything.

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