Children of Men - Partnerships and Adams

DestinyCall · 2019-04-07 07:39:40

This topic has come up frequently in the past, but the recent conversations about increasing the importance of immediate family and raising the value of personal property got me thinking about how to form a true family unit in OHOL. Currently, it is not supported by the in-game mechanics, because fathers do not exist outside of role-play. Reproduction is entirely matrilineal with no male contribution - family trees never intermingle because men are genetic "dead-ends". If you are born a Foster, you will die a Foster and all your children, if you are female, will be Fosters. For this reason, the last female in a village is cherished, but male children valued much lower. Men work in the village alongside women, but they are not necessary for its continuation. This is a core mechanic of the game, so trying to change it will have widespread ripple-effects. But at the same time, I think it is a significant piece of the puzzle that Jason is trying to solve right now. How to encourage people to form more meaningful connections and more dramatic in-game stories during their brief one-hour lives. Right now, you can fill that gap with role-play, but I'd like to see family units working as a real part of the game.

My idea is three-fold - Partnerships, Adams, and a new fertility system.

First, we need the ability to form a lifelong "partnership" with another player. I'm thinking this would be done by using a text command or similar interaction - for example, both players would stand near each other and simply say "We are partners." A partnership can be formed between any two villagers, old or young, male or female, related or not. This partnership would have three meaningful effects. First, after forming the partnership, both you and your partner would gain a in-game marker, similar to the home marker. At regular intervals (five minutes?) the marker would "ping" and indicate the current location of your partner, similar to the bell tower. Tracking their location in real-time would be too difficult and isn't necessary. This would allow you to keep tabs on your partner's general location and could be used to coordinate movements in-game. Long distance travel or migration would be made better, since you wouldn't be able to lose each other as easily. As long as your partner is alive, you will have a rough idea of where they are or at least where they were within the last few minutes.

The second effect of a partnership only comes into play if the two players are male/female and both of reproductive age. In this special case, the partnership gives the female player a fertility rating, based on how closely related the two players are to each other. Unrelated players = 100% fertility. Immediate family (siblings or parents) = 0% fertility. First cousins = 25% fertility. Second cousins = 35% and so on. Without a partnership, the basic fertility rate is now 0%, so if you want to have children as a female, you MUST seek out someone to partner up with and your chosen partner MUST be a distant relation of a suitable age and gender. Also, these partnerships are life-long commitments, so you should chose your partner wisely. You can only have one partner at a time and your current partner would need to die (somehow) before you can select a new partner. Proximity has no impact on fertility rating, so you can be as far apart as you like from your partner. You can even live in different towns and it doesn't matter, since there's no actual sex between anybody going on in an OHOL village. But if you aren't in a valid partnership, no magic sky babies for you!

Lastly, you gain a small icon on the HUD to let you know the status of your partnership and whether or not your partner is still alive. When you are in a "fertile" partnership, the partner HUD icon will be slightly different to indicate that your partnership is valid and fruitful. For example, the standard partnership icon could be a pair of clasped hands ("handshake"), while a fertile partnership could be two interlocked rings ("marriage"). The HUD icon would update if your partnership status changes during your lifetime. So if an unrelated girl and a boy form a partnership and one of them is too young to bear children, the icon would indicate a neutral partnership - clasped hands. When they are both of an appropriate age, it changes to indicate the relationship is now fruitful - overlapping rings. And when either partner becomes too old, it changes back to the neutral partnership icon. In the unfortunate event that one of the partners dies, the surviving partner's status icon will change to a skull or other suitable death marker, to let them know that the partnership has ended. The survivor can now start a new partnership, if they so desire.

Next we come to Adams. Eves are a special case, since they are born alone, without anyone else around. After this change, it would be necessary to add an Adam to compliment the Eve. After the game spawns an Eve, the next available player will be born as an Adam, instead of becoming someone's baby. Adams will spawn some distance away from their Eve and they will already have an established partnership. This means that the Adam will immediately get a "ping" to lead him to the Eve's general location. He can seek out his partner or head in the opposite direction, whatever he wants to do. It is his choice. But if the Adam dies, the Eve would need to find a new partner to have any more children. Since this will probably be impossible, hopefully he won't die too quickly. The Eve won't start making any babies until the Adam spawns in and then she will stop having babies if he dies prematurely. If her Adam lives and seeks out her camp, then they can work together to form the early village. As long as both Adam and Eve survive, the life of an Eve doesn't change that much, although she might have it a little easier if her Adam is a decent player (or harder if he isn't). However, the life of the second generation is going to be dramatically different. You can't gain fertility by partnering with siblings or parents, so the second generation MUST find unrelated partners to continue the lineage. This means that Eve spawns would need to be changed and the distance between neighboring villages would have to be significantly smaller to allow villages to form within a reasonable walking distance of each other. It might even be necessary to have Eves spawn in "clusters" of thee or four Eves to allow different lineages to co-mingle. I'm not sure on the best way to accomplish this, but I suspect that simply tightening the Eve spiral might be adequate. Instead of hunting for iron, you would be sending out boys to hunt for new villages and wives to continue the family line. At least one neighboring village would be necessary to keep your fledgling Eve camp going into the second and third generation. And beyond that point, it would be important to continue to seek out fresh blood every couple of generations to improve the birthrate and prevent the family tree from becoming to closely inter-related.

Exploration to find new villages and mutual exchanges of people and goods between neighboring villages would become more common. The arrival of a new man in a village with an abundance of unmarried women would be heralded as a miracle, in much the same way as we currently celebrate a fertile woman appearing in a village of old men. In a larger town, with multiple family lines, boy children will be as important as girl children for the future of the settlement. Another aspect of partnerships - the partner marker would be distinct from the home marker. So if you are partnered with someone who has a home marker in a different village, they can lead you back to their village by following their home marker and then you can follow your home marker to find your way back to your home village. So if you want to establish trade between the villages or bring men/women back to your village from the other village or build a road to connect the two locations, this can be more easily accomplished with the help of a willing partner.

Regarding children - I think family names should continue to be inherited matrilineally, passing from mother to child, in honor of the first Eves. The father's last name would not be passed on in this way, so girls would still be more important for continuing the family name istelf. However, the death of a last name wouldn't mean the end of the entire line - the family's story could continue through the children of men.

YannaChan · 2019-04-07 07:46:26

I think fathers would be a good feature for increasing fertility but I think you should still be able to have magical babies out of thin air when there's no available males around so your family tree can still live.

DestinyCall · 2019-04-07 07:50:41

If you want to make magic sky babies, you'll need to advance up the tech tree high enough to make artificial wombs. Those sky babies don't just grow on trees, you know.

Or maybe they do? I'm not that clear on the exact providence of celestial infants. I just always assumed they were dropped onto the village by a passing goose.

Amon · 2019-04-07 07:51:52

Having an eve camp depend on more people would just factor in a more punishing survival camp.

Promisciuity exists.

futurebird · 2019-04-07 08:09:54

I generally like this but I think it's important that there is always the chance of having kids even if you aren't in a partnership. Partnerships just increase the chance. In the family tree you get a link to the other person. I like that partnerships could be used for other things, like if I'm building with someone it could be very useful. I'm not thrilled about romance taking up time in the game so if its a multi-purpose thing with a real benefit (help finding a person) or even just knowing if they alive.

Hm.

I agree that this can't be ignored. Don't know the perfect solution or the one that will minimize nonsense.

DestinyCall · 2019-04-07 08:49:06

Amon wrote:

Having an eve camp depend on more people would just factor in a more punishing survival camp.
Promisciuity exists.

As does abstinence. But what we have right now is parthenogenesis. Any attempt to change that will have widespread consequences.

Getting an Eve camp up and running will be rough, but Eves are already at the mercy of RNG in many other ways. It is always a bit of a crap-shoot, if you will find a good spot, if you will have smart kids, if you will have enough girls. This just adds a few extra wrinkles. We can't continue to live as an isolated group for generation after generation with no outside contact. It won't be easy, at first, since we are so used to our villages being self-reliant and alone. But I think it might end up being even more fun to have real neighbors and other people/places to go visit and explore.

futurebird wrote:

I generally like this but I think it's important that there is always the chance of having kids even if you aren't in a partnership. Partnerships just increase the chance. In the family tree you get a link to the other person. I like that partnerships could be used for other things, like if I'm building with someone it could be very useful. I'm not thrilled about romance taking up time in the game so if its a multi-purpose thing with a real benefit (help finding a person) or even just knowing if they alive.
Hm.
I agree that this can't be ignored. Don't know the perfect solution or the one that will minimize nonsense.

I considered including some kind of base-line fertility rate for non-partnered females, since I know that some people aren't going to be interested in playing along. After all, hunting down a valid partner and establishing a partnership, just so you can pop out a few babies does require a lot more effort than the current system. It would certainly be easier if you could do nothing and still get a baby or two. But frankly, that undermines the whole point of this change. I want men to have a real role in reproduction. I want them to actually matter to the village, like women actually matter. If you don't have any girls in your village ... the whole village stops. But if you don't have any boys ... nothing changes. I want to fix that. More than that, I'd also like people to take the time to look around their village and meet some people. Maybe forge a real connection or two. We are all busy and have lots to do, but sometimes you have to put family first. Make time for kids before you are too old, instead of focusing on your career.

I strongly agree with the link in the family tree. Not sure what else might need to change to help people track male lineage information, but some kind of link between the lines is a must. I also forgot to mention this in my original post, but I think there should be some kind of partnership info when you hover over a person. Like after their name it will say "Partnered to Sally Richards" if they are in a partnership with Sally. This would be very important for hunting down other single people quickly when you are ready to partner up. And it would give you a way to quickly remember your husband's name if you haven't seen him in thirty minutes and you are starting to grow forgetful in your old age. It could also be useful if someone is a murderer or confirmed griefer and you would like to check on their partner, in case they are also a partner-in-crime.

Last edited by DestinyCall (2019-04-07 09:05:52)

Amon · 2019-04-07 08:50:49

I think compiling all suggestions and extracting all nonesense and giving a nice comperative analysis. + If possible extract all the good bits and see if they work together.

Vexenie · 2019-04-07 09:56:58

It should work like this:
Eves still have a chance of giving birth without Adam, but it's really low, like 5% low
Adam would spawn near the Eve, but not too near, again, like 10-30 tiles away, because if they both run to each other, it slims down to 5-15 tiles away
Also, as like in real life, there should be a low chance of deformities for partnering with a close relative, but still low, somewhere 5-10% and it gets lower as you partner with a more unrelated partner, like siblings are 10%, first cousins 7%, second cousins 5%, third cousins 3% and fourth cousins 0%
The deformities would include:
The inability to carry heavy things, like big rock and stone piles
Not to run as fast
Faster or immediate death after getting stabbed, shot, cut or bitten
Worse vision
And others
These would motivate male players even more to search for other females

I basically just woke when I'm writing this, so this my sound like a crack pot theory

breezeknight · 2019-04-07 10:09:52

if any reference to sex will enter OHOL, this will bring up a new form of griefing - the sex offenders will enter the space asap

we had already some forms of it, as kidnapped babies by "rapists"
even while Jason tuned the sex depiction to a minimal cartoonish realism

you are too blinded by your romantic notions of a helpful intact family
but most appaling forms of porn do exist IRL & a game is a perfect way to do it in an "unharmful" way
not without reason the names we are able to give the kids are whitelisted & blacklisted as well - censored !
there were already plenty of insidents where players gave their kids names of "hitler" & "shit" & using the names as griefing, to harm other players, to cause grief

i warn again
The Sims Online, the only true multiplayer sims ever existed,
turned in short time to a porn platform & was shut down after the devs realised it's too hot to handle
& Jason is just one dev

i still suggest that sex is shoved aside to private servers
same as it's done with The Sims, there were & still are outright sex oriented, R rated & adult sims groups & websites, but they are all unofficial
you might ask why the woohoo sims do is so basic & clunky & invisible, the answer is - for exactly those porn reasons, to not invite sex offenders into the game
you might wish that kind of players to go away but in a true open multiplayer you are not able to control it, Jason would be needing 24/7 control system, this won't be feasible
it's a dangerous swamp territory

the only safe way to deal with that is the option of mariage as the only option where kids can be adopted by one additional person as the other parent
i would even prohibit any more than two parents, because that already goes into a dangerous sex territory

but Jason should introduce an option where males & even already infertile females have a chance to still get a kid spawned

but i am strictly against the need of a male partner for a kid, this is middle of sex territory, cause it will be exploited
& it will tilt the whole game & its gameplay into that dangerous sex direction
the game is safe as long it stays cartoonish, not realistic in some aspects of life

& plz - no "artificial wombs"
something should be done at some point with the afk players
but "artificial wombs" ? whatfor ?
it's a multiplayer with a strong random aspect, AI doesn't have any reason to exist in it other than the few cases of dangerous animals & maybe later on some natural disasters
i even suggested once to punish griefers by spawning them as animals, so the reverse option, to repalce AI with an actual player & not to replace the absent players with an AI - this idea is a dead end in a multiplayer game, the unsuccessful tryout to save it before the actual end, where no player cares anymore to play it

- - -

DestinyCall · 2019-04-07 10:24:03

I don't think birth defects would work in a game like OHOL. You are not commited to living every life and no one would enjoy being born broken.

Most likely, if someone gets born with a visible defect, they will just /die. There is no compelling reason to stick around if they know that they will be significantly impaired from birth. So if the problems are bad enough to motivate the father, they are probably too severe to be tolerated by the baby. We don't need more runner babies or suicides.

Reduced fertility for partnering with closer relations is a simpler way to get to the same place - fewer babies born if you marry your cousins. More healthy babies if you branch out to other villages.

MultiLife · 2019-04-07 11:17:43

I always defaulted to this view of "sky babies" being wanderer male babies, or bastard babies, rather than celestial babies.
Overall I think they should stay as part of the game, and partnerships should be acting as boosts. Lack of a partnership would most likely mean you'd be losing to partnered ladies when competing for babies though.

I wish we had more ways to track down others to meet up. With zoom out, I have been able to find dying villages by finding the smallest traces of people, but without the mod, I probably wouldn't have had found so many.
Here is an "Adam story" of mine when I found a struggling new Eve and became her Adam, as I was the sole survivor of my Eve mother's family; https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=4931

karltown_veteran · 2019-04-07 13:25:04

DestinyCall wrote:

The second effect of a partnership only comes into play if the two players are male/female and both of reproductive age.

Technically men can remain fertile until the age of 60

Starknight_One · 2019-04-07 14:13:48

karltown_veteran wrote:

DestinyCall wrote:
The second effect of a partnership only comes into play if the two players are male/female and both of reproductive age.
Technically men can remain fertile until the age of 60

"It's different for men! Charlie Chaplin had babies at eighty!"

"Yeah, but he couldn't enjoy 'em!"

(A No-Prize to the first to identify the source of the quote...)

Chimera · 2019-04-07 15:05:10

I do like the idea of men in the village increasing the fertility rate of the women in the village. Might give Eve a reason to keep her early sons so she can pop out more babies.

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2019-04-07 07:39:40

Children of Men - Partnerships and Adams

#2 2019-04-07 07:46:26

Re: Children of Men - Partnerships and Adams

#3 2019-04-07 07:50:41

Re: Children of Men - Partnerships and Adams

#4 2019-04-07 07:51:52

Re: Children of Men - Partnerships and Adams

#5 2019-04-07 08:09:54

Re: Children of Men - Partnerships and Adams

#6 2019-04-07 08:49:06

Re: Children of Men - Partnerships and Adams

#7 2019-04-07 08:50:49

Re: Children of Men - Partnerships and Adams

#8 2019-04-07 09:56:58

Re: Children of Men - Partnerships and Adams

#9 2019-04-07 10:09:52

Re: Children of Men - Partnerships and Adams

#10 2019-04-07 10:24:03

Re: Children of Men - Partnerships and Adams

#11 2019-04-07 11:17:43

Re: Children of Men - Partnerships and Adams

#12 2019-04-07 13:25:04

Re: Children of Men - Partnerships and Adams

#13 2019-04-07 14:13:48

Re: Children of Men - Partnerships and Adams

#14 2019-04-07 15:05:10

Re: Children of Men - Partnerships and Adams

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