Another off-the-wall idea

jasonrohrer · 2019-04-24 01:47:29

Imagine a world with much bigger biomes, and maybe at least viable wild food and some farming path in every biome.

--What if, like an animal, you can never leave the biome where you are born?

Of course, characters could still stand at the edge and "set" things across the boundary, to trade with people from the other biome.

--What if only men can cross biome boundaries?

--What if there's only one big family, and all incoming babies are forced into that family, and no new Eve is created until the last fertile female from that family ages out?

Peaches · 2019-04-24 02:02:12

Honestly?
Those ideas all sound amazing to me, I'd be all kinds of down to give them a shot

But what if you could also pass babies over the borders?

Tarr · 2019-04-24 02:11:00

Absolutely absurd to the point that I would think you're sniffing glue or something.

The one family thing sounds at least fine to try but again if I knew my Eve was an asshat I'd just go off and play something else. Certain biome types would be absolute death traps that you straight up cannot thrive in (desert, arctic, jungle.) while others would be a pain because they lack needed resources (savannah, badlands.) So that leaves us with two livable biomes and they both 100% rely on each other just so you can do something basic like farm (swamp, grassland.)

Early game would be an absolute mess. Having to wait for a son to be born so you can start to do anything while you hope to god your biome can support you while you wait for RNG to bless you with the correct gendered child. I know it's annoying to have any sort of run get all males and fail but having double fail possibilities (all girls, all boys) is just as bad if not worse. I get that you're throwing a bunch of ideas at the wall to see what sticks but my lord Jason, you need to throw at the wall and not the floor.

Tea · 2019-04-24 02:21:22

No thank you.

The reason why I love OHOL so much, is that you get reborn into a new family with a new name, new layout and new people. Another life, another story.

Also not being able to cross the border to another biome seems ... bizarre. Why wouldn't I, a female or an Eve be able to get to the next biome, where the food or recourse is situated, that I really need. As an Eve that would suck ! Imagine you are spawn into the badlands (where one can find iron and no food) and you know you can already throw yourself at a bear.

If you really want us to trade with other families, how about adding some sort of "islands" into the game. You could add huge rivers or cliffs that would act as barriers, separating the lands and the families living in those areas. Now why would they want to trade ? Add in each area unique resources that each family would want to have to be able to get higher to tech tree. That could be special clay to make bricks to be able to build a better oven or better quality iron to make better stuff, idk. The families would need to work together to build a sort of zip-line on each side to trade the goods.

A_person_1234 · 2019-04-24 02:44:27

I love the idea of huge biomes. I don't love the idea of restricting movement between them. That's a pointless restriction and takes away a lot of gameplay possibilities, like breaking off from your colony to form settlements or trade routes, or a great migration to a new land. If only men could leave their biomes, many players would die to be born as men. And if there were large biomes there would be no need to restrict only men from crossing the borders anyway, because the biome would be so large that it wouldn't be feasible for most fertile women to raise children and travel the vast distance needed to leave their biome.

I don't think there NEEDS to be a viable farming path in every biome. There needs to be a viable FOOD and TECHNOLOGY path- that doesn't necessarily have to heavily involve farming (Sorry to sound like I'm yelling in caps, I don't know how to italicize here). Like the snow biome for example, could instead be reliant on fish and shrimp, maybe having nets that would be renewable in a similar way to plant farming. In the mountains, the early game could be more reliant on hunting.

Eve spawns could be restricted to one per biome at a time. That way there would always be multiple families to trade with... or maybe even start a war with.

futurebird · 2019-04-24 02:55:52

I'll try anything once but this sounds annoying and I like to explore. I get so cooped up and bored staying in town the whole time.

I wish there were more reasons to explore, some game-generated ruins. Mysterious notes and treasure maps. Just even more neat things to find. Some of the time I just wander and think about how well different locations could support a town. Or I take a bowl and make a huge milkweed farm one biome over for someone to stumble on and be shocked by. I have wanderlust don't fence me in Jason!

DestinyCall · 2019-04-24 03:29:16

jasonrohrer wrote:

Imagine a world with much bigger biomes, and maybe at least viable wild food and some farming path in every biome.
--What if, like an animal, you can never leave the biome where you are born?
Of course, characters could still stand at the edge and "set" things across the boundary, to trade with people from the other biome.
--What if only men can cross biome boundaries?
--What if there's only one big family, and all incoming babies are forced into that family, and no new Eve is created until the last fertile female from that family ages out?

It is funny you should post this. I was actually thinking about a similar thing all day today. But rather than impose a hard biome lock, my idea was to give each Eve a different temperature tolerance - some would do better in cold biomes, while others would do best in hot biomes, and still others would be the same as we are right now. Their lineage would inherit this temperature preference. It wouldn't prevent exploration, but it would encourage a different play style depending on your tribe.

Since fertility is already tied to temperature, settling outside of your ideal temp range would be bad for your baby chances, but you might be able to do it with enough clothing.

Booklat1 · 2019-04-24 04:28:20

Why does it have to be HUGE CHANGES INCOMING LOSERS every damn time? have a chill, man

every one of these ideas is ok to good, just tone them down a lot FFS

Slightly bigger biomes is great and so is more base game variation, but don't go too crazy over this. To me these wacky ideas are the worst way of making the game more complex

more variety and smart nerfs, thats all we need

tarr has also pointed ou really well why exaggeration is a disservice here.

Last edited by Booklat1 (2019-04-24 04:29:58)

Dodge · 2019-04-24 04:38:45

This seems like a forced mechanic that doesn't make any sense and some way to cheat the system to make trade viable instead of finding something that makes sense like limiting the map and ressources

No more travelling? No thanks

Amon · 2019-04-24 05:12:49

Im all in to make other/different biomes liveable.
If you could make igloos in the snow biome, use pine needles as kindling and safekeep fire in small stone boxes and have alternative means of producing rope for shrimp nets and not need knife to clean it up etc.
I'd be game. And this is one of the examples.

But not the male only boundary moving...

The only 'seperate' tech tree that needs to be is the primitive sustinence and fire one, later tech should simply be the same.

Whatever · 2019-04-24 06:01:58

Please let things evolve naturally.
Dont create more magic mechanics like biome lock.
Increase the things players can do, instead of limiting them.

breezeknight · 2019-04-24 07:01:24

why making players artificially bound to biomes ?

if biomes were better equipped, more distiguishable, so that different cultures can develop, then players wouldn't feel the urge to leave in that particular life that particular biome, but traders might want to or nomads as well

add more options for different life design

atm
all lives are more or less same because there is only one viable option to progress
all towns are same, all Eve's camps are pushed down one line of development only, not only there is no digression from that but you get punished for any digression

if you think this thought further, then at some point players start to optimize that one tech tree progression & Eve's camp development, because there is just not even one alternative to live

you're Eve ?
make hatchet - tick
make fire bow - tick
make kiln - tick
make pots - tick
make berry farm - tick
make carrot farm - tick
make sheep pen - tick
collect iron - tick
...
& so on
down one line - over & over & over again

that's why i don't like to play Eve at all, it's stressful but at the same time, it's always the same
you have to tick off all the necessary points, if you don't then you get punished, but there is no deviation, which would be as viable as this one line of development

it's meantime like painting by numbers,
thus boring if you know what you have to do
& it's optimizable,
there are meantime many players who have optimized that one line of development to perfection & those players seem to draw some sort of fun by repeating it, but this won't last forever, at some point even those players get bored with the repeat & start first asking for tech tree updates to rush through those (mobile gameplay with constant linear content updates), then they start to roleplay some fantasy lives, which harm the development for others & then they start to grief or they leave the game - because bored with painting by numbers

solution to that is

make different paths of development possible
make alternative to iron, to wood, to reed, to clay, to wool, to thread, to rope ...

* that's why asked several times for an option of a stone axe & stone knife, to at least being able to live a nomadic life & not being bound to settle

but there would be more options for more diversity of life design
eg,
* copper would make tools as well, but those would be less sturdy while still viable if abundandly available
* add hard wood workable with stone already & you'd get wood tools on par with metal tools, if there was an abundance of wood but no copper & no iron in long proximity, players woul develop wood tools

alternative solutions to necessities of life would make a more interesting gameplay

- - -

Last edited by breezeknight (2019-04-24 07:04:00)

breezeknight · 2019-04-24 07:09:34

another off the wall suggestion from me

instead to send off cursed players to Donkey Town, make them play as animals

that would be consistent with the classic karma belief
here was my suggestion made 10 months ago : traditional karma - to be born as an animal

would make for a completely different life experience & would mix up the stale gameplay down one line of development

- - -

JonySky · 2019-04-24 09:40:23

Jason, have you thought about creating random climatology in different biomes?
perfect areas during a certain period of time ... but in a few years it begins an extreme cold or a suffocating heat
Currently, this is static ... that is why an EVE creates a camp in a certain place, with water and a "normal" climate and there is no need to move from there ...
If the weather is dynamic ... this practice will change

also encourage to take better care of babies, because with extreme cold, you can not leave babies in a bonfire so easily ... that generates a family care necessary ...

Last edited by JonySky (2019-04-24 09:42:56)

Wuatduhf · 2019-04-24 09:57:28

jasonrohrer wrote:

Imagine a world with much bigger biomes, and maybe at least viable wild food and some farming path in every biome.
--What if, like an animal, you can never leave the biome where you are born?
Of course, characters could still stand at the edge and "set" things across the boundary, to trade with people from the other biome.
--What if only men can cross biome boundaries?
--What if there's only one big family, and all incoming babies are forced into that family, and no new Eve is created until the last fertile female from that family ages out?

Mmm, now this is quite interesting!

Much Bigger Biomes

On principal, I'd have to say big yes for larger biomes. That was something I had enjoyed within CivCraft; it restricted crop growth based on the biome the crop was growing on. It did gives some flexibility by allowing certain crops to grow faster in one biome than a few others, but the platform Minecraft offered enough biomes to allow for that to be done, I think you could manage. My main concern is that OHOL presently is built around visiting each region to get the necessary resources to advance.

- As long as each biome offered some varieties of food that can be made, that should be okay.
- If surface iron/veins were in each biome as Very Rare and Badlands' spawn rate of them was upgraded to Rare (and slightly less-rare for surface iron)

Biome-locked

I think this would make things way too hard, unless technology was easier/more nuanced for advancement. Things like sheep, rabbits, clay, and ponds are absolute necessities to progressing civilization, and they don't share the same biomes.

Men-only biome-transitioning

It gives more external focus for the men, I can say that much, but I think males are already powerful enough in the current meta from my perspective. Females are burdened with the responsibility of continuing the lineage if they get babies, and are disadvantaging themselves if they leave the village too long.

One primary family/lineage

This is very interesting. While I'd like to go back and see the lineage progression of a main family on the map, I think it would eliminate the possibility you seek of trading and conflict, which would really need to take off first between villages of different lineages. I'm sure there's a middle-ground here of less family lines available per server, before a new Eve line gets started?

The_Anabaptist · 2019-04-24 11:11:28

Step back and think what this change would devolve into: Towns huddled at biome boundaries. An ideal spot would most likely be at the intersection of with two other boundaries. Then the interior of those great big biomes would be mostly ignored.

I wouldn't mind to see biomes increased in size to a degree in context of the current game only.

Since this conversation revolves around trade, ask yourself: when did trade truly take off historically? It wasn't in the cave man era. Even in the early middle ages the vast majority of people stayed in their hometown and visitors were mistrusted unless they were a relative visiting family from the village next door. Trade as we think of it today requires greater travel, not less of it.

Why did Europe go to such great lengths to trade for spices? It wasn't because they were starving, it was because they hated eating the same bland food day after day.

The_Anabaptist

Wuatduhf · 2019-04-24 11:47:39

The_Anabaptist wrote:

Step back and think what this change would devolve into: Towns huddled at biome boundaries. An ideal spot would most likely be at the intersection of with two other boundaries. Then the interior of those great big biomes would be mostly ignored.

I think that's okay, personally. There are a lot of 'uninhabitable' regions IRL, and initially, society was only able to form within 'fertile crescents' for life to sustain itself. There's an argument against this, that a game doesn't need to be perfectly realistic, sure. For the sake of OHOL, I think it would be an interesting option to avoid being away from the 'ideal' biomes, occupying a space that might be better in the long-run by gambling the lineage's early stability.

The_Anabaptist wrote:

Since this conversation revolves around trade, ask yourself: when did trade truly take off historically? It wasn't in the cave man era. Even in the early middle ages the vast majority of people stayed in their hometown and visitors were mistrusted unless they were a relative visiting family from the village next door. Trade as we think of it today requires greater travel, not less of it.
Why did Europe go to such great lengths to trade for spices? It wasn't because they were starving, it was because they hated eating the same bland food day after day.

The current topic of trading is incredibly flawed; even though I believe in the practice, no society in OHOL is beyond the stage of their tribal state of economics to be able to hard-transition into privatization and bartered trading. Trading is a massive burden locally, as any sort of transaction involves spending between 15-60 seconds discussion, which is equivalent to 3 months to a year. It is also, in one sense, not justifiable, as trying to prod private ownership into a community economic system is going to lead to a breakdown of cooperation.
- Who owns the kiln/furnace? It provides us with clay pottery and a place to smelt resources, if you gathered them yourself.
- Who owns the fire? It keeps everyone alive, and is generally centralized to literally avoid burning through wood faster.
- Who owns the sheep? Someone gathered them first, and is now allowing everyone to use them. Were they 'paid' for doing that?
- Who owns the baskets/farmland/food? Someone had to spend time tilling the soil, planting, watering, picking the food, refining them at a bakery, cooking them in the oven. Who decides the value of them when the village will die if you try to put a price tag on them?
- Who owns the Iron? Someone had to go out and gather those, either from the surface or from an Iron mine. Did the person gather all the materials to make the Pickaxe used to mine that Vein? Did they gather the rope, the butt logs, the bow saw, the flint-tipped bow drill, the Adze/Froe, to make the Stanchion Kit?
- How many interactions have people trying to privatize their own space and resources had with the village they live in that result in them having to 'take' or borrow their tools? What gives them the ownership of resources that they gathered using the village's resources?

Our gameplay loop is not adequately timed for us to be able to do these things, even more so because the moment we die, none of the things we 'owned' or gathered will belong to us the next time we come around that village. The only trade I consider legitimate is initial bartering between villages of different family lineages, because they are exclusively in their own space.

w0wma · 2019-04-24 12:07:14

breezeknight wrote:

another off the wall suggestion from me
instead to send off cursed players to Donkey Town, make them play as animals
that would be consistent with the classic karma belief
here was my suggestion made 10 months ago : traditional karma - to be born as an animal
would make for a completely different life experience & would mix up the stale gameplay down one line of development
- - -

that would make people grief/be disruptive on purpose JUST to be able to play as an animal. plus don't reward griefers for griefing by giving them a 'special' play style.

futurebird · 2019-04-24 13:17:05

I think it's kinda sexist to use invisible walls and magic to force fertile women to stay home by the fire. As it is now you have a choice and there are REALISTIC draw backs to going off questing when you are 23-- but just making it a game rule is kind of imposing a view of how people "should" live rather than letting it grow out of the circumstances that exist. I really wouldn't like that.

denriguez · 2019-04-24 13:21:13

Wuatduhf wrote:

The current topic of trading is incredibly flawed; even though I believe in the practice, no society in OHOL is beyond the stage of their tribal state of economics to be able to hard-transition into privatization and bartered trading. Trading is a massive burden locally, as any sort of transaction involves spending between 15-60 seconds discussion, which is equivalent to 3 months to a year. It is also, in one sense, not justifiable, as trying to prod private ownership into a community economic system is going to lead to a breakdown of cooperation.
...
Our gameplay loop is not adequately timed for us to be able to do these things, even more so because the moment we die, none of the things we 'owned' or gathered will belong to us the next time we come around that village. The only trade I consider legitimate is initial bartering between villages of different family lineages, because they are exclusively in their own space.

Yes. We just don't have the kind of time or communication capacity required for coordinating trade. Hell, we can barely coordinate basic tasks--things (usually) only get done because individuals see that they haven't been done yet, not because the council of elders passed a resolution that the town should establish a bakery, then appointed a town baker, then raised taxes to pay the baker a salary, etc. Bureaucracy would take years and years of OHOL time. Unless time is somehow stretched or communication and coordination are made much easier, I don't think trade will take off in any kind of meaningful way.

Trade requires a local economy that creates demand for scarce resources from outside the local economy. Currently there is no local economy to speak of (there's barely private ownership!) and there is no regional scarcity--everything is available to everyone just about equally. So I see how the property fences and big biomes ideas are attempting to address this. However, I'd argue that the former doesn't create scarcity--it just pretends at it--and the latter is overkill. To me it seems that this would require almost entirely separate tech trees to make any kind of early civilization viable before a family can even make contact with other civs to attempt trade, much less do so efficiently. One thing we can be done right now is to make some resources for higher- or top-tier tech much more scarce, and only available in tiny "islands" at distances far too spread out for them to be accessed by more than one town. Things like oil and gold, or special new domesticable animals, or certain key ingredients for rubber, copper, glass, certain pigments, etc. Such items have no usefulness in the early game, so it's not harming anyone by making them much less common, but it would create a simulation of scarcity and eventually a regional economy. In this scenario, if your town has abundant palms and rubber trees, you can start cranking out tires and gaskets to trade with the folks from the town over who have access to oil. If there's even higher-tier tech that requires the combination of _all_ of these scarce resources, you get the opportunity for multi-city trade and massive coordination; however, given our time and comms constraints, I really don't see any of this as viable.

Last edited by denriguez (2019-04-24 13:22:00)

denriguez · 2019-04-24 13:25:00

denriguez wrote:

Trade requires a local economy that creates demand for scarce resources from outside the local economy. Currently there is no local economy to speak of (there's barely private ownership!) and there is no regional scarcity--everything is available to everyone just about equally. So I see how the property fences and big biomes ideas are attempting to address this. However, I'd argue that the former doesn't create scarcity--it just pretends at it--and the latter is overkill. To me it seems that this would require almost entirely separate tech trees to make any kind of early civilization viable before a family can even make contact with other civs to attempt trade, much less do so efficiently. One thing we can be done right now is to make some resources for higher- or top-tier tech much more scarce, and only available in tiny "islands" at distances far too spread out for them to be accessed by more than one town. Things like oil and gold, or special new domesticable animals, or certain key ingredients for rubber, copper, glass, certain pigments, etc. Such items have no usefulness in the early game, so it's not harming anyone by making them much less common, but it would create a simulation of scarcity and eventually a regional economy. In this scenario, if your town has abundant palms and rubber trees, you can start cranking out tires and gaskets to trade with the folks from the town over who have access to oil. If there's even higher-tier tech that requires the combination of _all_ of these scarce resources, you get the opportunity for multi-city trade and massive coordination; however, given our time and comms constraints, I really don't see any of this as viable.

However, reading through my list of challenges and suggestions, I can see how one could logically arrive at the idea of giant biomes, uncrossable borders, and one big family. So maybe it's worth a shot on an experimental server or something.

Tarr · 2019-04-24 13:39:21

At the end of the day Jason if you want actual trade you have to put some work into it. "Property" and fences didn't add trade what they've added is what could essentially be called leeching. Players take things from the communal stockpile then proceed to try to sell back to the community. Is it trade if I go into your house, take your keyboard and try to sell it back to you? I don't really think so in my opinion.

Trade requires two parties to both have different needs and wants. An Eve camp has many many needs which a player can generally easily fill: I can trade them iron, rope, and clothing because they have almost nothing. On the other hand something like a big town needs almost nothing so it becomes about trading stuff that is rare: crowns, children, and rare resources. Of course this means I also needed something back for my trades but what could an Eve camp have and a giant city have as well? Curse tokens. Since curse tokens regenerate per playtime it's not something you could just get within the game without having saved your curse token or earned it through playing for two hours. They worked as the perfect currency because one player could only ever have one at a time and their availability was always limited by players actually playing the game.

Players got the resources they needed/wanted and I got to ensure that people griefing would actually go to donkey town instead only risking going. Is it fair? I always thought so myself but apparently Jason doesn't exactly see it that way. The major point is if you want trade you need either rare items that cannot just be farmed all day, (think finding a monolith or regenerating a curse token) something that can be valuable to people in any sort of stage in the game, (boon buffs and rope), or is specifically tied to a special thing or events (curses, an actual rare version of an endstone, whatever you would use for boons.)

Also players actually have to know where others are Jason. You might not like that there's another coordinate leak but at least now people can interact with other families which is one of the actual steps to real trading and not the shammy trading you pushed on people with last weeks update.

futurebird · 2019-04-24 13:47:48

What about gold rings that let you change your last name? Those would be instantly valuable and useful for marriage role play but also adoptions and other family dynamics. And it would make gold more important.

Ace · 2019-04-24 16:01:06

This sounds like something great for the game future.
Regarding the first point, i can see it going very well with making the civs more random in a good way, since that would mean needing multiple metas of how one builds it. However, im assuming this will take a lot of work with no assured outcome. The question is: will those biomes be fully randomly generated or would there be somewhat of a human intervention to at least assure they are livable.
The second point i assume comes from the demand to balance out genders in game and solves the problem the previous idea introduces. Just from the top of my mind alternatives would be to craft something for passing that area limit like the airplane for example. The problem with that is that it introduces a bug: what if a male carries a female child over that boarder? You can't just make him drop everything since the whole point would be scavanging for items or trading.
As for the final idea, it feels like it's harder to implement than it sounds. Would women still have their child birth cooldown after having a kid? What happens if all the women in the family are either on cooldown or, some more likely scenario, the only ones are too young to give birth? Would the new family be created or what? This idea to me doesn't sound right with how it would be made to work and how the current system is designed to work.

Last edited by Ace (2019-04-24 16:01:41)

Stylingirl · 2019-04-24 16:07:37

I made similar suggestions in your resource contention thread although I don't think the boundary crossing suggestions are the right way to go.
https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewt … d=6087&p=3

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2019-04-24 01:47:29

Another off-the-wall idea

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