WE NEED TO BUILD A WALL

Mushroom · 2019-05-13 17:24:46

step 1: set a stone wall around your city

step 2: leave 2 property gates at each side

step 3: give access to every family member of yours

step 4: leave open box with lock outside the wall

step 5: have key to the given box

step 6: if any foreigner comes by and wants to enter and they are armed, they have to leave all of the weapons in the box and close it, only then they can enter

step 7: after the visit you open the box for them and close the gate so they can leave with their stuff

step 8: you just set up a border control

step 9: ???

step 10: profit

seriously though, if any of the bell towns ever emerges, the guard will become the new full-time job

Last edited by Mushroom (2019-05-13 17:25:15)

DestinyCall · 2019-05-13 17:44:24

*Step 10. Get wiped out by a griefer born inside your death trap city

Fixed that for you.

Tarr · 2019-05-13 17:45:47

DestinyCall wrote:

*Step 10. Get wiped out by a griefer born inside your death trap city
Fixed that for you.

Pretty much this. The people coming from outside aren't going to be a threat if you're armed or prepared. However, just because they're different doesn't mean you should look to pick a fight because all that gets you is stabbed

Spoonwood · 2019-05-13 18:38:07

An outsider who plans to kill your family comes and sees the wall. The outside just blocks the door or gate someway and no one notices since the wall is on the outskirts of town. And since someone has to leave town eventually, that dooms the town and your family.

Solbusaur · 2019-05-13 18:42:39

Instead of walled cities, have farm plots. It's effective enough, and during a raid, the residents can retreat inside their own plots to avoid getting the women killed, living off of their small farms for the time being. It also avoids the whole griefer among us thing, as you're not trapped in with them, rather they're stuck outside of your plot

Mushroom · 2019-05-13 20:17:03

You guys certainly have some points, but I would really like to see a great wall around some towns
Maybe huge amount of gates would help prevent blocking? Also, a full-time guard that walks around it from time to time? The only sword in the family, passed through generations, because one is enough (no more wasting steel).

Can't really help the inside griefing, however it wouldn't be much different than what we have now, would it?

This update gave the property fences use for sure, I don't now if it's good or bad yet. Today a Tori family succesfuly raided the bell town and killed everyone there. They had very little or no property fences and couldn't hide.

Amon · 2019-05-13 20:54:29

Even with another family which is seemingly friendly or genuinely friendly being accepted, there is bound to be a griefer born some time or another and then you have double the deathtrap.

RedComb · 2019-05-14 05:07:44

Amon wrote:

Even with another family which is seemingly friendly or genuinely friendly being accepted, there is bound to be a griefer born some time or another and then you have double the deathtrap.

This is the problem with this whole concept of war swords and changing the curse system.

It is already incredibly easy to grief and cause strife between two otherwise peaceful families because your life in this game is so brief, you are likely to be born to various locations, and there is inherent anonymity when playing.

Since there is no persistent identity tag from one life to the next, players will never know if you are baddy or not.

Griefers, or those who just like to stir up shit can game the system, can grow up in one town, discover another settlement within travel distance, /die until they spawn at the other settlement, go to the first town and start killing people. Start a war for no reason between the two, no repercussions, nobody will know who they were, just frustration and chaos for the people who were trying to accomplish stuff in both towns. AWESOME~! /s

To me, that is one the glaring problems with this game (if the curse system is nerfed and there is no "report" or "mute" features).

Players can be bad apples and you can never learn to be on the lookout for them because in their next life, they will be somebody totally different (unless they are an Eve and always name themselves with a particular surname and name children a particular way, and even then, that is them voluntarily making it obvious who they are).

Griefers and bad actors can just hide behind the RNG and anonymity and wreck all the progress of others in the name of their fun, all because of the game's mechanics.

There is no persistent identity tag, there is no way to flag people or report shit that crosses the line. I understand there is not really the infrastructure for that, but if you're going to create a virtual sandbox, you have a responsibility to address issues like this.

This is a serious problem, like when I saw people spouting N words and racist crap right after the change to genetic diversity in offspring. I was dismayed that there is nothing that can be done about reporting them even though I probably wouldn't have in the first place.

I'm normally very pro-free speech, even tolerating disgusting and racist speech as long as it doesn't take away the rights and agency of another person, but when there is absolutely no recourse for players to report problems, it creates a huge issue with harassment and griefing in this game.

You can't even mute people, which is merely a bandaid for really bad issues, and not only is there no purposeful answer to this question, things like nerfing the curse mechanic and empowering griefers with war swords just seems to add powder to the keg.

@ Jason Rohrer -- please see the segment starting at 6:45 of the following 2017 GDC presentation by Raph Koster discussing responses to harassment in virtual realms titled Still Logged In: What AR and VR Can Learn from MMOs

If you host an online community, you are on the hook.
If you don't have the wherewithal to be on the hook,
don't host an online community.

Also, at 12:53 he discusses the harm a single player can inflict upon retention, potentially driving away THOUSANDS of players:

The worst offenders can chase away actual thousands.

And then at 13:19 he explicitly talks about the the importance of a persistent identity system, and how problem players can and will use anonymity to get away with their bad behavior with impunity if you allow them to.

If your social VR or AR system does not have a persistent account system with persistent identity that players invest into, you're effectively making every player get away scott free because all they need to create a brand new account every single time they log in.

^With OHOL, they don't even need to go to the trouble of creating new accounts, the anonymity and ability to come back completely unknown is baked right into the game's spawning system.

Granted, this talk is geared toward moderating social VR and AR communities, but it is taking lessons from MMOs (which I think share a lot of commonality with OHOL, at least sandbox MMOs).

And at 13:50, he discusses why blocking or muting doesn't wholly address the problem because others can still see the problem actor doing and saying things that might be way over the line (see: "A Rape in Cyberspace" by Julian Dibbell or the book My Tiny Life). His point here is that when trolls do abusive stuff, it isn't entirely on them if you as a designer lack the adequate means to respond to problem behaviors.

Every feature must be looked at as a weapon.

(and here you are, actually creating magic weapons for people to use against non-lineage players... creating weapons for griefers to potentially use against your own community... dafuq?)

Time 19:09 = discussion of the mistake in the UO alpha when they allowed people to spawn in the Inn (with players colliding with each other), and how players would use this mechanic to PK from within the Inn (which the player who was attacked could not reenter).

And he points out something really important about the generation of these kinds of stories: "we laugh about them, they're fun... until you're pincushioned with a 100 arrows in your back."

Perhaps you and some in this community will laugh about war sword massacre sprees, but that is at the expense of another player's enjoyment of the game or even the enjoyment of whole groups of players. This kind of stuff is predatory and deeply cynical because it is based on victimizing other people for fun.

The sad part is that you are coding this kind of stuff into a social game, a game without any kind of report or block/mute feature, because "muh vision".... and one of the very few mechanics that could address something like this, the curse system, is now disabled for non-lineage players.....

In short, you are creating a griefer's paradise.

I urge you to watch the rest of the presentation, there are other good nuggets in there about this topic, but I will stop now. I've already written enough posts and walls of text about this topic trying to address what I see going wrong with it, trying to speak to you and citing experts in your field so it's not just some bullshit opinions of a noob player posting on your forum.

From all I can tell, it's fallen on deaf ears and me and others like me might be in a small minority with these feelings, but I will still express myself because like the "On Getting Criticism" blog post by Koster points out, a dev and their game won't improve if people don't give them their genuine impressions or feedback about it, even if you disagree with what I'm saying.

I honestly hope you'll consider all of this when looking at things like the war sword, changes to the curse system, genetic and language changes, and when considering the possibility of implementing some kind of persistent token or user ID that will stick with a player from life to life.

For the bit I played your game, almost entirely pre-"Come Together" update, I thoroughly enjoyed myself and found the community to be awesome (yes, there were some murders and griefers, but I've played hardcore FFA pvp games since the late 90's, so this community is paradise compared to most).

However, I think if you're not careful in nurturing the sandbox players and "carebears" here, you will upset the ecology of this community and drive all the "sheep" away, ultimately leaving nothing for the wolves and fighters to do either, thereby killing what is a promising title.

Last edited by RedComb (2019-05-14 05:44:06)

futurebird · 2019-05-14 05:25:39

I used to bring a lot of innocence, love and trust to the way that I play this game. Now I'm more detached and play a lot less. That's normal I don't play any one game or do any one hobby forever ... but part if that isn't just the newness wearing off it's realizing that the game isn't as unique as I thought at first. It's not that different from other games where a kind of mischievous let f-s**t up kind of vibe is just part of the "cool" way to play.

I'll find the game someday that taps in to vulnerability and those deeper levels, but this can't be it, at least if we keep riding in the well trodden direction we're going.

And I really do think a game that broke that barrier could be massive, because lots of people don't play games at all because they can't deal with the uh... "culture" of gaming. Which is like what culture would be if it were made by 12 year olds in detention.

lychee · 2019-05-14 05:37:09

Amen to @RedComb and @futurebird with regards to everything.

I'm still optimistic though (maybe naive?). I think/hope Jason will continue to make something deeply meaningful.

It might be a painful journey (with a lot of game-breakng changes and fixes), for sure, but I still have some faith.

Guppy · 2019-05-14 06:28:05

Sounds good, how does one complete step 1?

lychee · 2019-05-14 06:35:58

As an added comment (I think this is related to futurebird's thread about stress vs. excitement), I think I'm coming to feel that I do play this game a lot for comfort.

It's kind of like candy-crusher, I guess?

In the sense that a lot of times I like going to a town and doing something mundane but helpful -- fetching clay, baking pies, planting carrots and milkweed -- it's really calming to me, and I like that part. My favorite part is having kids though, haha. I love carrying them around town asking if they're new (even though I'm still pretty new), looking for extra clothes/furs, teaching them something, or telling them about something I saw even if I've never personally tapped an iron vein.

I love having awesome and amazing kids.

I love seeing a child doing an amazing job making a sheep pen after telling them we don't have sheep, being able to tell them "good work" when I see the pen nearly done.

I even (as morbid as it is) like the feeling when my cousin accidentally stabs my son and there's this brief moment of "omg what have I done" and shock. I love all of that.

I think there are a lot of really beautiful things in OHOL (particularly with regard to family and accomplishment), especially when many of people live in a sad(der) real world where there might be family problems, or there might be violence/hate/grief/helpless, or various circumstances that make it so easy to lash out in anger instead of channeling energy to somewhere constructive --

OHOL to me, is addictive because it's a little virtual world where you can prove to anybody that they're important and valuable, and their contributions can become something amazing.

I like how it can fill people with confidence, hope, meaning -- and maybe have further impact on their lives when they walk away from the computer screen. (And also make me consider how I want to be a parent, too).

And I think all of that is contained a very delicate world.

I don't really play OHOL very much at all for the "thriller" component. TBH I don't even think OHOL is even that thrilling (even with the water updates), because when you've played the game enough, the meta is essentially the same and it's a grind regardless once you've learned exactly what to do. Rather, OHOL's main appeal after hundreds of hours of playtime is the magic of oxytocin (which comes from a great community), and the fact that the **people** you play with (not the game mechanics itself) are interesting. Also, there are a lot of games that are great at being a "thrill" or a rush of adrenaline to players, and frankly they usually do it far better than OHOL (at the cost of usually having a somewhat toxic gaming community).

I would be really saddened if OHOL (and everything we love about it) disappeared because of a fundamental change in the playerbase and community -- and the types of people who are drawn in and others who are repelled away.

Last edited by lychee (2019-05-14 06:50:43)

CatX · 2019-05-14 09:25:25

RedComb wrote:

@ Jason Rohrer -- please see the segment starting at 6:45 of the following 2017 GDC presentation by Raph Koster discussing responses to harassment in virtual realms titled Still Logged In: What AR and VR Can Learn from MMOs

Thank you RedComb, that was a very interesting talk.

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2019-05-13 17:24:46

WE NEED TO BUILD A WALL

#2 2019-05-13 17:44:24

Re: WE NEED TO BUILD A WALL

#3 2019-05-13 17:45:47

Re: WE NEED TO BUILD A WALL

#4 2019-05-13 18:38:07

Re: WE NEED TO BUILD A WALL

#5 2019-05-13 18:42:39

Re: WE NEED TO BUILD A WALL

#6 2019-05-13 20:17:03

Re: WE NEED TO BUILD A WALL

#7 2019-05-13 20:54:29

Re: WE NEED TO BUILD A WALL

#8 2019-05-14 05:07:44

Re: WE NEED TO BUILD A WALL

#9 2019-05-14 05:25:39

Re: WE NEED TO BUILD A WALL

#10 2019-05-14 05:37:09

Re: WE NEED TO BUILD A WALL

#11 2019-05-14 06:28:05

Re: WE NEED TO BUILD A WALL

#12 2019-05-14 06:35:58

Re: WE NEED TO BUILD A WALL

#13 2019-05-14 09:25:25

Re: WE NEED TO BUILD A WALL

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