[Discussion] A look back on "the Property Update" and Trade...

Wuatduhf · 2019-05-16 19:41:25

EDIT: This was originally posted 10 months ago, btw.

Hello. This thread is going to be looking at questions that Jason asked back on April 21st regarding the state of OHOL. The point of this thread is not to push specific ideas or to explain the details of what features would help answer these questions.

If you'd like to get to the TL;DR, scroll to the very bottom.

The point of this thread is going to focus on the underlying concepts, roadblocks, and the general kinds of features that would help answer the questions asked. I'd like to encourage discussion, as hopefully instead of simply giving Jason a request of what we each individually think, we can give him axioms, observed opinions on 'the state of being', etc. and how that translates into the features still not properly fit into the game.

On April 21, Jason asked the following questions in the Proper Fence Update:

jasonrohrer wrote:

"While I'm very happy with some of the complex interactions that have blossomed inside the game, I feel like some other possibilities have been stunted. Where's trade? Where are the stores? Where's resource contention? Where's crime? Where's trans-generational conflict? Where are the sheriffs? Where are the monarchs? Where are the guillotines?"

I'm going to tackle these down the line, feel free to reply to this thread on one/all of the topics as you want.

Where's Trade?

Trade is complex and has a long history in IRL society, with historical records indicating barters as far back as 30,000-140,000 years BC. It began as bartering, as currency was not yet a concept, involving the trade of scarce resources that the two parties could not have acquired in an easier fashion.

As such, before we can answer where trade 'is', we have to first answer the question of 'what is scarce' and 'who owns resources? On top of this, we must also understand if we are operating on the scale of macro- or micro-economics.

Let's start w/ macroeconomics, which would involve actors on the scale of villages, towns, etc.

Scarcity varies. A resource could be plentiful and easy to exploit, but not locally available. A resource could be local and numerous, but difficult to exploit/refine. A resource could be local and easily exploitable, but too low in quantity. Each of these scenarios is undesirable, and can happen with a number of resources.

And now an example:
Village A is in the middle-stages of technology, on Newcomen Pumps, and is continuing to advance itself. It has plenty of tools for farming, shearing, you name it. They've started working on building a pumpjack and a newcomen freestanding tower, but haven't made any more atmospheric chambers. The location of the map they were in does not have a jungle nearby, and is a 10-minute total walk to get up to 10 palm kernels.

Village B is in the late-stages of technology; they have diesel wells, buildings occupying the cold grasslands, and insulated buildings in the jungle with wooden floorboards. One of their core buildings that keeps people warm is halfway complete with bear pelts; they have placed 20 of the 49 total needed. Once that room's done, another 49-tile room needs to be carpeted. The nearby bear caves have all been emptied, and they won't be able to reasonably harvest more without traveling 10 minutes just to gather a handful more.

In this example, Village A has situation 1; a good quantity of palm kernels that are easy to refine, but they are not locally available. Village B has situation 3; there are plenty of caves and they're easy to exploit, but their quantity is too low to sustain the demand.

If Village A gathered bear furs and had no need for them, and Village B had plenty of palm kernels that they could gather locally, the two could reasonably open a trade between each other. Bartering would allow A to send their furs to B, in exchange for B sending their kernels to A. Both match their supply-demand shortcoming by taking advantage of their supply-demand surplus.

This will not happen.

The reason that this will not happen is because this scenario does not exist in current OHOL. The scarcities were artificially created in the example. Village A would never be 10 minutes walk from palm kernels, and Village B would never have an easier time trading for bear furs than continuing to travel around on horse-cart. The example also operates under the assumption the villages are aware of each others' existence, which happens only on rare occasion between the dozens of family lines that are created (and survive for a while) each day.

Macroeconomics within OHOL is currently limited in scope, and in its possibilities of interaction. On the macro scale, every village has roughly an equal level of access to resources as each other village on the map. The resources may be generated randomly, but are generated randomly AND equally across every biome, every region, every quadrant, every time.

Let's transition now to microeconomics, trading between players within a single village. How do we enable trade between players?

This premise first operates on the idea that individuals have resources that they can consider 'owned' by them. The concept of ownership is difficult to identify, given the situation that every player exists in within OHOL. Every family, town, village operates on the idea of communal ownership; resources are gathered by the players, and left in the village to be used by "the state" - which in this case, is all other players in that village that would like to claim it.

Let's pull out another example in the form of a brief story:
Steve is a 5th-generation male. Their village is in Kerosene tech but has not yet constructed a Diesel Well. His mom gives him the task of helping keep the farms alive while the village works on their other projects of iron-gathering, rubber-making, fur-collecting, etc. etc. After a couple minutes of work and gathering milkweed/crops, the Steel Hoe breaks down, and he needs to get another one.

Steve goes to the current smith, Anne, and asks for a Hoe. She tells him "You'll need to trade me for it." Steve asks why, and she explains that she gathered the iron and chopped the wood for the charcoal to refine it into steel and to make it into a tool. Therefore, she wholely owns the steel and wants something in exchange for giving it up. Steve has nothing to trade her, as he has given all of the food supplies and milkweed to the town bakery for making better foods and stews.

Anne then proceeds to eat a pie that she got from the communal bakery, and then stores it in her backpack that she got for free from the village hunter, and resumes using the communal forge and flat rocks that were left from the previous family generations.

Steve decides to take one of the steel bars against Anne's permission, makes a hoe, and resumes working in the farms. Disgruntled from the interaction, Steve decides to take Anne's advice on ownership and builds a property fence around the non-berry farms, and resumes tending to them. Anne, upset about Steve taking one of her steel, puts up a property fence around the kilns, so that other members of the village can't take them forcefully.

Michael, the town baker, goes to the farms to get more food from Steve, and is surprised by the fence. He asks for the usual grain and stew supplies, and Steve tells him "You'll need to trade me for it."

The example story illustrates the issue with the idea that players within a village can 'own' resources. For all intents and purposes, villages operate on a communal resource pool; each member both takes from and contributes to the same resource pool, for the sake of sustaining the village. The baker produces food for everyone; the farmer farms food for everyone; the smith refines ingots, for tools, for everyone; and so on, and so forth. All of these jobs are interchangeable, and do not require any training beyond understanding how OHOL's crafting works. Each family generation brings with it new "workers" to provide to the village, and "demand" for resources from that same village.

A conflict occurs immediately when any member of the village attempts to privatize their work on their own. When Anne privatizes her steel, she removes herself from contributing to the resource pool, but continues to take from it. Does Anne produce her own food or take from the communal bakery? Does Anne tend to the crops to give over to the bakery to justify taking the food, or does she take from the communal farms? Does Anne make her own water source or use pondwater, or does she take from the communal well to tend to the crops? Does Anne gather wood for her own fire, or is she using the communal fire shared by all? Does Anne chop all of the wood used for said fire?

The problem here lies in the impossible boundary of distinction between private ownership and ownership by the community; unless every member of the village privatizes their individual work, any attempt of privatization will inevitably 'trigger' a conflict of interest in providing to the individual over providing to the community, which is antithetical to the OHOL experience of "caring for your family", unless the definition of caring for your family is to charge your fellow man for your labor.

Where are the Stores?

This falls pretty close to the topic of trading, as it manifests itself into a physical location for where bartering would be handled on a larger scale. Stores (which will hereon be referred to as markets) can exist on the macro and micro scale, but in the concept here we can assume that it's the micro scale being intended.

Stores within a micro-economy broach the same topic of private ownership; the grey area between private ownership and communal ownership will spur conflict when a privatized player attempts to force a communal player to spend their community's resources for the goods being withheld.

Stores within a macro-economy would exist in situations where villages establish physical locations in each others' towns/villages to barter surpluses of goods that they do not require use of, in exchange for goods they have shortfalls in. This runs into conflict once again with the macro-trading issue of 'technically infinite' resources available to both societies, that these stores would never exist.

The current technology-tree of OHOL does not support cross-technology societies for trading. In a brief example, Village U has diesel tech

Where's resource contention?

Resource contention has been mentioned several times on OHOL. The lack of conflict over resources stems from multiple reasons; the constant creation of new villages over an infinitely-generating map, the lack of applications for some resources, and the lack of overarching geopolitical societies taking root. Let's touch on each of these:

1) New lineages in Unexploited Terrain

In a fixed location, certain non-renewable resources (and resources that are scarce in the region, if they existed) will diminish to the point that external exploitation becomes a priority to the Village/Town. When this point is reached, the function of the town has shifted from maintaining its existence through constant technological advancement, to expanding its reach of resources and attracting others to its town borders. Usually, this society has hit the Diesel well and has stabilized its food supply, its clothing, and its main buildings, emanating Maslow's hierarchy (which we will get into below). The village's new focus becomes stabilizing the non-renewables, such as building/acquiring horse carts, and ringing bell towers to maintain the town's population. The latter has changed recently, due to the introduction of swords, but I will not get into that for now.

In the current state of OHOL, villages do not have long-term permanence. It is only recently that villages have started to have regional permanence. The average family lineage gets between 30-50 generations deep before 'expiring', which is about 15-25 hours on average.

2) Multi-purpose Resources

OHOL has a variety of raw and refined materials that make up the technological tree. These vary from Soil and Iron, to Charcoal and Steel Rods. In order for the game to facilitate resource contention adequately, resources need to be able to have multiple use-cases where the opportunity cost of investing the resource for W means giving up X, Y, and Z as other options.

Iron/Steel is one of the most visible resources that experiences this opportunity cost debate. Should you upgrade all iron into steel to make every steel tool in an early village, or just the bare essentials and save the rest as Iron for a Newcomen core? Should you invest into the pumpjack to get kerosene as quick as possible, or produce more backup tools just in case one of the primary ones breaks down? There is no straight answer to how to spend it, as all options are ultimately 'good' for the village, depending on the circumstances and the individual opinions of those present.

This is not the case when it comes to other resources, like rubber, copper, glass, clay, and many more. Only some of the technology tree in OHOL expands horizontally, rather than vertically. These technologies are few in number, and usually center around iron and steel, while most others can only contribute to one or two important facets of technology, like copper for Looms and radios. These resources have very low opportunity costs compared to iron/steel, because the only major sacrifice is time spent on other laborious activities.

3) Geopolitics

This one is the shortest of the three, as it is a feature that does not yet exist in the game. Geopolitics delves into the macroeconomic scale of the game, between villages that recognize themselves as their own political entities that seek to control resources on the map. However, because there are no truly fixed resources to 'control', and because there are no family lineages/societies that survive long enough for political entities to form, this does not come to fruition. The game would require a radical change in how long towns or family lineages survive, along with the addition of rare map-tied resources, for geopolitics to come into the game.

Where's crime? Where are the sheriffs?

Crime currently exists in the game as 'griefing'. The catch-all term has been used between various types of individuals that inevitably live in every growing/developed town. Their actions generally are for the purpose of inhibiting other individuals' play, whether that be for their own benefit or not is up to them. Crime has yet to be elevated to the status of 'crime', as the game lacks any real sense of player-run law enforcement or political entity per town to establish "what activities are crimes".

Sheriffs, much like Crime, do not sufficiently exist in the game due to the lack of law-enforcement tools and the necessary societal structures (governments, political authority, public trust) to enable them. Players that consider themselves police, sheriffs, or of a law-enforcing position are primarily acting as vigilantes, carrying out justice as necessary and from their own perspective. This bleeds back into the previous conversation of Geopolitics, where the lack of familial/town sustainability makes it difficult to establish political entities and, in turn, a security force, such as police officers/sheriffs.

In conclusion (or TL;DR for each question's answers)

"Where's Trade?"
- Trade is missing on the macro-scale, due to map generation uniformity of biomes and resources. With enough time, every resource is more easily and readily available to the village that it does not need to interact w/ other villages to get said resources.
- Trade is missing on the micro-scale, due to the indistinguishable boundaries between communal economics & private ownership.

"Where are the stores?"
- Stores are missing on the macro-scale due to resource non-scarcity between higher-tech villages attempting to trade with lower-tech villages (what do low-tier villages have to trade that high-tier villages cannot get easier?).
- Stores are missing on the micro-scale for the same reasons of trade lacking on the micro-scale.

Where's Resource Contention?
- Villages, lineages, and map locations are not permanent enough, but are moving in that direction
- Majority of resources lack opportunity cost, low variety usage limiting debate for how to use said resources
- No geopolitical growth due to "short" lineages unable to take root in a specific location, maintain town(s) population(s)

Where's crime? Where are the sheriffs?
- Crime is currently lumped into 'griefing' due to lack of law enforcement methods to tackle crime differently from griefing.
- Sheriffs/officers do not currently exist due to lack of political establishment/authority, individual vigilantes act as 'law enforcement'

Where's Trans-generational Conflict?
Where are the Monarchs? Where are the Guillotines?

I'd like to address these questions too, but I'm going to need more time for them, as this went quite long. In short:
-the Guillotine is just one tool of law enforcement that would push the game in the direction of having sheriffs, but would still require a legal system, entity, or similar to see positive use.
- Monarchs are in the realm of political entities, which do not truly exist in OHOL. For the most part "monarchy" has been roleplayed in the game with crowns, but with no legal authorities over their fellow players it inevitably collapses following 'bad' monarchs or players that do not want royalty.

Last edited by Wuatduhf (2020-03-10 12:58:28)

futurebird · 2019-05-16 19:54:25

I agree with most of this but I think the notion that you need nonuniform distribution of natural resources to create trade is totally wrong. Trade is about *value added* that is you turn raw materials like iron and tree branches in to a hoe or a diesel engine which has more value than the raw resources. Most trade globally isn't about moving raw materials around: it's about manufacturing and surplus.

But I think your points on resource contention are spot on and ALSO cover the reason why there isn't any trade. Towns don't persist long enough to develop culture and specialization. Further the mechanics to make a large investment of time and resources and then mass produce a surplus just aren't in the game. We don't even have the S T O R A G E technology to stockpile anything at the levels you'd need to have a store and we don't have the transportation needed to make exchanges of surplus possible.

I don't even like capitalism that much but more people need to read Adam Smith raw materials aren't the foundation of trade manufacturing and services are.

From another post on a related topic:

HIGHER TIER IRON
A high tech way to get more iron that could be used for...
MASS PRODUCTION
Each of these would be huge projects so you would need to pick one to focus on:
-pie factory
-rubber factory
-car parts factory
-cloth factory
-plate and bowl factory
These automate some of the more boring aspects of producing these items and over time towns could specialize. Perhaps the factory uses the spring location in some way so you are limited to just one or two types of factory per town. The point is to produce a glut of one kind of item in each town (and each town has to choose what it wants to focus on) and THEN you'll have trade.

Last edited by futurebird (2019-05-16 19:56:05)

Booklat1 · 2019-05-16 20:05:09

Amazing post, I hope Jason reads it.

Some of these issues are easily solveable, specially resource contention. There are heaps of suggestions concerning quality of life/storage tech, its a shame this isnt explored more often. Logs, for example, become way more valuable if furniture exists.
Decay has also been a common suggestion.

Honestly, I've no more to add since we arent looking at solutions.

Wuatduhf · 2019-05-17 11:31:53

futurebird wrote:

I agree with most of this but I think the notion that you need nonuniform distribution of natural resources to create trade is totally wrong. Trade is about *value added* that is you turn raw materials like iron and tree branches in to a hoe or a diesel engine which has more value than the raw resources. Most trade globally isn't about moving raw materials around: it's about manufacturing and surplus.
But I think your points on resource contention are spot on and ALSO cover the reason why there isn't any trade. Towns don't persist long enough to develop culture and specialization. Further the mechanics to make a large investment of time and resources and then mass produce a surplus just aren't in the game. We don't even have the S T O R A G E technology to stockpile anything at the levels you'd need to have a store and we don't have the transportation needed to make exchanges of surplus possible.
I don't even like capitalism that much but more people need to read Adam Smith raw materials aren't the foundation of trade manufacturing and services are.

- Trade primarily is value-added commodities, and less raw materials
- Lack of stockpiling capability for medium-large scale trading reasons
- Manufacturing and services are foundation of trade

Yes, you are correct that current trade in real life is largely about value added. However, OHOL does not have a lot of capability to 'add value' to resources; most materials transition from their raw form to their 'final form' in a couple of steps. In your example, the transition of iron, wrought iron, steel ingot, and finally the steel hoe, is a small list of steps that the 'value added' to them is negligible at worst and a minor benefit at best. I should have included that nonetheless. Thus, I primarily consider raw materials as the 'value added', and the more complex materials, like Diesel engine components, radio components, difficult to trade due to their incapability to be stored and transported faster.

Yes, "tile economy" (space for storing things) is quite painful at present, but it's not like this is impossible to improve on; it requires villages constantly developing their storage capabilities, which is combining planks w/ rope in order to store larger tools, and baskets of smaller ones. While I would like more abilities to stockpile materials (the seed bowls have significantly helped there), it is not a perfect solution to the bad habits of current players.

No, I don't agree that manufacturing/services are the foundation. We did not have either of these thousands of years before current civilization developed; raw goods and crudely-refined items were being exchanged long in the past. The foundation of trade as I see it is two individual entities where one seeks something of value from the other, while the other is willing to exchange it for something they want/need in return.

Wuatduhf · 2019-05-17 11:44:15

Booklat1 wrote:

Amazing post, I hope Jason reads it.

Some of these issues are easily solveable, specially resource contention. There are heaps of suggestions concerning quality of life/storage tech, its a shame this isnt explored more often. Logs, for example, become way more valuable if furniture exists.
Decay has also been a common suggestion.

Honestly, I've no more to add since we arent looking at solutions.

Thank you!

And yeah, I get that there isn't a whole lot to add since I'm not wanting to post solutions, but that's because I'd like to make sure that there is a clear argument on defining the problem before Jason attempts to fix them. The worst thing to do when solving a problem is to frame the problem/issues incorrectly, as the solution will be incomplete. Hopefully this thread can get enough key issues raised that, once acknowledged, we (or Jason) can then propose the best solutions.

Resource contention is gonna be tricky, because a large part of it relies on the meta. Can towns survive long enough a 'political identity' can be born to claim control over resources in an area near another town/city? Can resource deplete properly that resources become scarce in a large area that people are trying to survive in? Can we get more opportunity costs to resources that give us reason to not spend them on X, but on Y instead? Sure, furniture sounds like a way to open up log usage, but does this 'furniture' offer something of value when it exists and/or is crafted?

kittykatthegreat · 2019-05-17 12:52:57

I think one of the problems with solving some of these issues is life is too short to monopolize resources for a town to establish something like a store. Also, with life being so short it would require the store to be handed off to someone younger to take over and manage everything after you die. This would be very difficult to pull off because you could run into people having no interest in taking over or just one bad apple ruining everything it has been built up to.

This could be a very far reach of a fix but something to think on. if money was introduced to the game. Something like a market tech could be added to the tech tree. Something like build a building with x amount of storage inside and end large piece to add to turn it into a market could be a cash register.

People could make money by depositing resources into the store. Then use money to buy resources that others have placed into the store. This solves the problem of having to get a line of actual players to run the store. The less refined the object the less it’s worth in money terms.

Having a store in your village would also be a reason to bring in outsiders to come trade for resources that their city needs. The store could also have an out put based on what has been brought into it. Very simple example you cant buy a rope from the store if 4 milkweed or a rope had not previously been sold to the store. But say you have a thread and some cash and the store had two milk weed in inventory. You could sell your thread and buy back a rope.

Having a system like this could also reward players that know how to make higher tech because the higher the tech of an object the more it would be worth in the store. This would also make having private property more important so people can’t steal your projects out from underneath your feet.

The store and money would pretty much serve as a middle man to make sure trades go fair and smooth. Player A spends most of their life gathering iron. Instead of just leaving it by the smith they deposit the iron into the store to make some money to buy what ever resources they want for their next project. Player B can then go to the store and buy iron to smith with and making for example a hoe. That player C the farmer can trade in for their crops. That player D can buy to make pies with.

Your money could be given to other players or passed onto other players at your death. Leaving another aspect of the game of are you born rich or poor.

Wuatduhf · 2019-05-17 17:00:29

kittykatthegreat wrote:

I think one of the problems with solving some of these issues is life is too short to monopolize resources for a town to establish something like a store. Also, with life being so short it would require the store to be handed off to someone younger to take over and manage everything after you die. This would be very difficult to pull off because you could run into people having no interest in taking over or just one bad apple ruining everything it has been built up to.
[More...]

Thank you for the response!

I do want to reiterate that the thread is less about giving solutions, and more about addressing the questions Jason asked and the root of their problems preventing them from taking off.

Life is 'short' in this game, where we only have an hours-worth of time to invest into a village and attempt to make something of it. Unless Jason opens OHOL up to more than just the 'One Hour' lifespan, and makes things more 'magical' in that sense, every approach has to come from the idea that every person is living 1 hour at most in a village, and that they should not be returning to that place for at least 2-4 generations.

Maybe a part of our conscience is ignoring it as well, but this is not far off from real life; we have no idea who our babies/kids are, or their morality when they are born. People can only really 'hope' that when they pass along their belongings that it's going to something 'good' down the line.

lychee · 2019-05-17 19:46:17

Regarding natural resources, I’m inclined to agree with Whatduhf.

The fundamental basis of trade is an uneven distribution of *something*. The *something* can be natural resources, manufactured goods, services, or even abstract entities like financial instruments that represent futures.

Adam Smith is noteworthy in part for his formulation of the “production function.”

Specifically, F = land + labor + capital.

The point of the production function (and Smith’s criticism of mercantilism) is that it’s useless to hoard an abundance of resources (which he terms “land”) without the labor and capital to process it. Therefore, according to him, labor (people) is the most critical part of an economy.

However, something critical to understand about Smith’s argument is that he takes “land” (natural resources) to be effectively infinite. Regardless if you are in England, France, China, or Indonesia, you can raise sheep or aquire iron — if not by catching wild sheep or mining ore, then at least by importing it. In a sophisticated modern society with established trade/transport infrastructure, you can obtain virtually unlimited resources (people weren’t that concerned with environmental sustainability in the 1700s — “cut as many trees as you want”) anywhere — and therefore he argues labor is most important.

However this sort of view of the world assumes that at the minimum your society is sophisticated enough to bring access of all goods anywhere (and that you won’t run out of resources), which is absolutely not true for early human cultures, since the distribution of resources on Earth are actually incredibly lopsided. In fact, these societies are characterized by long-distance trade of rare materials such as obsidian, malachite, and other materials.

Applying Adam Smith’s production function to OHOL also has two other major pitfalls.

The first is that in OHOL, the “labor” force is equivalent everywhere. The spawning algorithm is random, so every settlement has approximately the same number of veteran and newbie players. You can’t have a village that only knows how to make Diesel Engines and a different village that only knows how to make paper, because the player base is equivalent in all locations if you average across time.

I’ve seen some people suggest that maybe some races could be better at some tasks than other races — and as much as I dislike this kind of idea, these types of interventions are required to produce a difference in the “labor force” in village A and village B. Personally, I much prefer a Blueprints system where not all players start with knowledge of how to craft everything, and you have to be taught by your ancestors your Grandma’s secret pie recipe (or else attempt to research a prototype).

The second major issue is that there is very little value to Capital in OHOL. In the real world, capital (e.g. factories) are infrastructure that increase the efficiency that something is done. A car factory, for instance is able to produce a car in fewer man-hours than an artisan mechanic.

OHOL’s problem is that the crafting system is already instantaneous. A rope factory doesn’t make sense in OHOL because the process of making rope from 4 milkweed is near instantaneous. It’s hardly possible to reduce the crafting time any further, which puts into the question what is the point of having a factory?

Of course, you can always #magic and break conservation of matter and say that a Rope factory can produce 2 rope from 6 milkweed, but the real world doesn’t quite work in that way. Crafting is instantaneous in OHOL, so there’s little value to most capital infrastructure.

I like Wuatduhf’s point that actually production/crafting reduces the value of goods in most circumstances in OHOL (largely as a factor of instanrous crafting). A steel bar is more valuable than a hoe, because the potential associated with the steel bar is greater than the hoe, and the crafting effort/time is negligible.

Consequently, when you take F = land + labor + capital and set labor an capital as constants, the only variable that you have left to manipulate is land (natural resources). People are most vocal about natural resources because Earth itself has an uneven distribution of resources, and it’s the most intuitive/simple way to incentivize trade.

You could also produce trade by modulating labor or capital, but those questions are far more delicate and complicated to answer.

Last edited by lychee (2019-05-17 19:57:21)

DestinyCall · 2019-05-17 23:11:25

I think the way that water and oil is handled in the game could serve as a model for how regional resource scarcity could work for other things. A raw resource deposit (iron, copper, stone, etc) which can be accessed by building a simple structure (well, mine, quarry, etc). After gaining access, it will provide resources for a while, then become exhausted. To regain access, additional tech must be added (newcommen pump, drilling device, oil-rig). Gaining the resource requires an investment of time, labor, and common resources. The deposits are rare enough to be precious and worth defending. Some towns would have easy access to one resource, but limited access to other resources, allowing for greater specilization and the potential for trade.

wondible · 2019-05-18 00:24:15

One thought I had a while ago was to build up multiple cycles on the order of compost. Compost is nearly infinite, but requires infrastructure (berries, carrots, wheat fields, sheep pen). Perhaps other resources like iron could be nearly infinite, but require much more work and infrastructure to mine, permitting a town to develop specialized infrastructure.

Wuatduhf · 2019-11-17 22:58:17

7 months later and this all still, for the most part, rings true. Despite Jason's best efforts to ignore everything here and to try to force Trade through, in my opinion, backwards implementation:

- There is still no trade
- There is still no real politics
- There are still no stores
- There is still no resource contention
- There is still no law-enforcement mechanics

Jk Howling · 2019-11-18 00:26:28

Honestly I read through this entire thing and actually thought it was a recent post until I noticed the last response.

Yep, all of it definitely still rings true. Same problems now as there were back then. We're not gonna get trade, politics, stores, law-enforcement, etc. on our own, and Jason hasn't really done anything to push us towards it.

Even shoving us into a box for resource contention never brought these concepts to light. All that really did was encourage people to grief/kill each other and reset the map.

He definitely needs to take a step back and reevaluate these concepts. The "Family Specialization" update was a better attempt to encourage these [namely trade], but still isn't working. I think the reason it's not working boils down to this simple fact: There's no reason to trade rather than share. It's quite similar to your second example, except on a multi-family scale rather than within your own family.

Spoonwood · 2019-11-18 03:01:28

Wuatduhf wrote:

7 months later and this all still, for the most part, rings true. Despite Jason's best efforts to ignore everything here and to try to force Trade through, in my opinion, backwards implementation:
- There is still no trade
- There is still no real politics
- There are still no stores
- There is still no resource contention
- There is still no law-enforcement mechanics

Meh. Is that what the playerbase wants anyways? Is that what will attract more players to the game?

I don't see evidence of that. Maybe it is, but I kind of doubt it. At least some of it. Jason insists on these things, but his insistence just shows that even after 15 years of game development he still doesn't have a clue about how to go about satisfying customers. And that he believes he knows their tastes better than they do.

Last edited by Spoonwood (2019-11-18 03:02:11)

pein · 2019-11-18 05:07:40

most issues come from the shortness of life
even if our soul is reborn, we don't really carry wealth trough lives
I saw some people lock up stuff and continue but they receive so much hate
I saw people destroy things I built just for the sake of it
takes a lot of time making something valuable, others steal it right away

some point system or unlock system between lives to keep some of the value over lives
like LOL or Hearthstone, each game plays out the same but you can unlock things between lives and get a tiny bit of advantage

For trade, we need personal ownership first of all. Then a secure way to change owners. If I make a horse cart, others shouldn't be able to take it. It's the internet, there is a lot of bad intention and a lot of dumb people. I want my transactions to be secure and final. I give 5 pies for 5 adobe then you are enforced to hold your end of the bargain if you accepted it.
The currency is obvious. Some sort of money which should be virtual would make it more secure if can't be stolen. I seen games which had some part of money safe like you need to put in a bank or you can lose 1/3 of it via duels.

That being said the duels are not fun cause they aren't skill-based anymore. I don't think that tools should be mixed with it. You might need to choose ranged or mêlée but you should alwas be able to fight when needed. Same for heal.

Also it's a major problem that you cannot kill others on their special biomes. Seems like the kindergarten style hide and seek is the name of the game. IF players can't be honourable they should be enforced to become that.
"If you want to kill someone you should be able to" that's dumb. It's not a single player.
If you got a problem with someone you should be enforced to duel him in a limited environment with a chance to win.
You can't do shit with high skilled griefers anyway so at least low skill bad intended people should prove themselves.
If you want to mess with others, they should be able to challenge you into a duel, and you need to accept it, play it out, die or win.
Probably just non-deadly fights would be enough.

Other than that, you need a system where items always got some value, which won't be true in a player-driven economic system with 100 online players, so part of it should be simulated.
You could cut firewood, and sell it, but the value would go down, but since you do the job that pays better, you do something else if needed.
So the AI market would always pay some, nothing would be too much, you could always cook pies, make compost and exchange the value for something you need.
Transport and travel aren't so important so should be simplified and simulated. Sell and buy and get it instantly, no one should go 500 tiles, negotiate, the risk then carry it home when he can settle another town or can make his own stuff closer to home. So either some specific stuff or just speed it up.
Dump items to a market building, get the counter value and profit from it.

That would provide a way to produce things beyond their need. Want a hoe? buy from the market. Got a lot of meat but no population? sell meat pies (get back the plates).

Other than that, we might need specific materials which got no value on their own but can be combined and sold for profit.
Tropico had a nice system like that, cash crops can't be eaten, coffee tobacco and cocoa can only be sold. Or invest in the industry, produce cigarettes, dried roasted coffee, chocolate and sell those. Now the point is not if these things can be used or not, it's that they produce value. The money can be spent on something you want, then the simulation is not about their use, just a minigame to produce value. Even better if you need to choose between those industries and adapt to conditions.
So we need some special items you cannot make, only buy for cash made from such activities.

The other is iron and the whole industry. I think It should be more focus on work, exploring, than on finding the resources, transporting and using it. We search for perfect values but there is none, we depend on the population. Water nerfs were so idiotic. had to teach my kid, we had no water, no soil, even if he wants to work and produce value he can't. There should always be something to do, and always a way to produce a profit. All activities, the time of people should be valuable. For example take items from different biomes, like leaves or similar, combine them, sell them. Profit. There should be a case when the gathering is hard. There should be always something to gather. I see that most towns got a radius of 50-50 scrapped then it's too far to gather and too boring to do so. If resources are time-limited or got a chance to get something randomly, it's better than distance limits and world limits. For example: go out into badlands, spend time to gather crushed rocks, get random materials from it after processing it, some iron some clay, some flat rocks, then sell what you don't need and use what you need. Move a mountain and process it. As I said, sell pies with or without plates, remake those plates etc.

Specialization and industries should have more levels. Farming could have level 2 plants with a small chance to get better seeds better yields, profit for the time invested.

other activities like washing clothes to preserve their look and advantages. Food decay and compost from them, refrigerate and preserve food.

More focus on work, less on getting stuff from point a to b and slow burnout of resources in the world.
If someone explores, can get stuff within a 5 minute window, so no matter when and why you are out you can get lucky, no like now that several people run through a biome and slowly empty it. More content, less limitations and slow downs to stretch the content.

Ilka · 2019-11-18 15:34:08

The only thing that succeeded was crime.

It was enough to give griefers swords.

Well, I think that the very assumptions of the game do not allow real trade, private property, etc.

Why?

Because we live only an hour and then we lose everything.

So why accumulate wealth if I lose it in 10 minutes?

I really wish Jason would concentrate on what is unique and good in the game.

It is a joint work to survive future generations.

Creating your own small society.

Unique contacts with other players.

This made OHOL stand out from other games.

Why force something that no one is missing (I miss the police and politicians in the game so much, heh ...)

Greenwood · 2019-11-18 16:34:08

It seems that capitalism and One Hour One Life don't go together. Even with resource scarcity, organising yourself that effectively over multiple generations would be a logistical nightmare, a nightmare most would not bother with when they're simply gathering wealth for themselves. Therefore, perhaps focussing on more achievably goals like creating cultures and governments would be easier? If your average town simply lasted longer, there were more hats like crowns to designate status, you could more easily write stuff down (e.g. more words per page, pages are cheaper to make at high-tech, pages can be combined into books?) and there was more variety between towns then you could likely end up with old towns with deeply entrenched cultures.

Wuatduhf · 2019-11-18 19:16:57

Ilka wrote:

. . .
Well, I think that the very assumptions of the game do not allow real trade, private property, etc.
Why?
Because we live only an hour and then we lose everything.
So why accumulate wealth if I lose it in 10 minutes?
. . .
Why force something that no one is missing (I miss the police and politicians in the game so much, heh ...)

I agree that you have good questions, but this is where I feel that things are missing from your perspective vs. my own.

Understanding wealth in a game like this is hard to imagine unless you've been in a very similar kind of simulated survival-political-roleplay experience, and I bring CivCraft up a lot because of the things that I ended up REALLY enjoying from that. Given the short 60-minute time-frame you play from birth to death, there isn't a whole lot of "wiggle room" to do person-to-person trading. That's to be expected. You, yourself, have no permanence, so when you die off you have no way of maintaining/reclaiming the wealth you once had in a past life.

HOWEVER, that is microeconomics.

There is a difference between microeconomic and macroeconomic trade, and their feasibility in the game.

If you consider one individual on the micro scale being the player, then you can consider the Village/Town/City they are apart of to be the macro.

Village-to-Village trading IS* achievable as a gameplay feature. Asterisk because you have to have the right kind of conditions lined up for such trade to be possible.

Often times you'll see Jason refer to how trading existed in the ancient eras, and tribes that were distances apart traded unique resources in the area with each other. THIS is the type of trade that could exist, because when everyone sees the word "trade", they immediately picture it as being some person selling a product.

However, when Jason talks about these concepts, he immediately converts it from macroeconomics to micro, and completely whiffs with the implementation.

To really understand what I'm getting at here, I am saying that just like every player is an entity, so too is every Village, every Town, every City that develops ingame. Even if the player themself dies, all their belongings inevitably get handed down to the next-of-kin, their related cousins, a complete stranger, etc. But almost always, it's to someone belonging to that same Village/Town/City. This is what I mean by the timespan of a player making micro trades impossible, but that the timespan of a city lasts many hours.

While players cannot trade with each other to make themselves more valuable as individuals, players CAN trade with each other if they are from separate societies that seek to improve those towns.

These kinds of gameplay experiences can happen, they've existed in other games in the past, in almost identical fashion. However, I still believe we are stuck in a terrible loop of having to sustain Food and sustain Water, and therefore we are not able to "advance" to those tiers of gameplay as a whole.

Last edited by Wuatduhf (2019-11-18 19:18:03)

Wuatduhf · 2019-11-18 19:22:23

Greenwood wrote:

It seems that capitalism and One Hour One Life don't go together. Even with resource scarcity, organising yourself that effectively over multiple generations would be a logistical nightmare, a nightmare most would not bother with when they're simply gathering wealth for themselves. Therefore, perhaps focussing on more achievably goals like creating cultures and governments would be easier? If your average town simply lasted longer, there were more hats like crowns to designate status, you could more easily write stuff down (e.g. more words per page, pages are cheaper to make at high-tech, pages can be combined into books?) and there was more variety between towns then you could likely end up with old towns with deeply entrenched cultures.

A lot of what you're referring to bleeds into my other thread I made from a while ago:

http://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=6588

tl;dr yes, culture and government could exist if we were able to reach Tier 3/4 of Maslow's Hierarchy. However, the "core gameplay loop" focuses on us suffering to sustain water and food, so we are perpetually stuck at Tier 1 as a whole, while the occassional memer/streamer/roleplayer attempts to ignore Tiers 1 and 2 and go straight into acting out certain roles/activities that are a "net detriment".

Galafalachida · 2019-12-04 04:55:17

I swear, If Jason doesn't reply.

DestinyCall · 2019-12-04 13:42:20

Galafalachida wrote:

I swear, If Jason doesn't reply.

Family specialization was Jason's reply.

Trade is fun, isn't it?

Starknight_One · 2019-12-05 12:31:15

Galafalachida wrote:

I swear, If Jason doesn't reply.

I swear, regardless of what Jason does.

Wuatduhf · 2020-03-10 13:21:28

Seeing as the topic of Trade has come up yet again in a new thread, it looks like it's time to give this one a Bump, and even take a look back at how things have changed on this topic in 10 months.

Here's where we were at that time:

Wuatduhf wrote:

In conclusion (or TL;DR for each question's answers)
"Where's Trade?"
- Trade is missing on the macro-scale, due to map generation uniformity of biomes and resources. With enough time, every resource is more easily and readily available to the village that it does not need to interact w/ other villages to get said resources.
- Trade is missing on the micro-scale, due to the indistinguishable boundaries between communal economics & private ownership.
"Where are the stores?"
- Stores are missing on the macro-scale due to resource non-scarcity between higher-tech villages attempting to trade with lower-tech villages (what do low-tier villages have to trade that high-tier villages cannot get easier?).
- Stores are missing on the micro-scale for the same reasons of trade lacking on the micro-scale.
Where's Resource Contention?
- Villages, lineages, and map locations are not permanent enough, but are moving in that direction
- Majority of resources lack opportunity cost, low variety usage limiting debate for how to use said resources
- No geopolitical growth due to "short" lineages unable to take root in a specific location, maintain town(s) population(s)
Where's crime? Where are the sheriffs?
- Crime is currently lumped into 'griefing' due to lack of law enforcement methods to tackle crime differently from griefing.
- Sheriffs/officers do not currently exist due to lack of political establishment/authority, individual vigilantes act as 'law enforcement'

And now let's touch on each of those again, briefly!

"Where's Trade?"
- Trade still doesn't exist despite the addition of Specialty Biomes. Players are currently in a situation where the collectivization of all families is more vital to survival than maintaining separate identities. Micro-scale trading is still heavily out of scope for OHOL, while Macro-trading is always on the precipice, but never getting closer. Jason is still attempting to figure out ways to keep players separate and to force them to trade, but now there are two separate issues to tackle here; we need additional resources to crop up that are both unique, non-uniform, and worth trading for; we also need towns/families to be individualistic again, in order for multiple nationalities to exist. Otherwise, there are no 'entities' on the macro-scale with which can do business with one-another, via the citizens.

"Where are the stores?"
- This is still in the same spot as previously. No one cares for stores because it's anti-communal economy. Stores on the macro-scale are the only recognizable method of the term in OHOL, but without separate Towns/villages that could be considered entities, these are also non-existent.

Where's Resource Contention?
- There are still no rare resources that could be considered unique to one town vs. another. All resources are quite uniform, require a basic amount of time (and maybe skin tones) to acquire. Resources in general do not come with Opportunity-cost, STILL. You know what you're making out of a resource the moment you start gathering it, and aren't simply collecting that resource as part of a greater supply chain.

Where's crime? Where are the sheriffs?
- We still don't have Batons or Guillotines, so that's why. The servers have gone thru a very pain-staking process of phasing out violent conflict from the game between players, because we live in a society. As it turns out, society doesn't need people to enforce the law, just vigilante's that can get enough popular support.

And now for some predictions:
- I believe we're going to start seeing a shift in gameplay, from one multi-cultural town to multiple towns but all inadequately supplied with resources/struggling to get hold of them.
- Griefing inevitably swings to the opposite end of the spectrum, and people start having a difficult time getting rid of the correct griefers as their skills in 'stealth' advance.

DestinyCall · 2020-03-10 13:45:34

Almost a year later ...

jasonrohrer · 2020-03-10 16:40:31

These are difficult problems to solve.

jinbaili83 · 2020-03-10 16:59:04

We could get rid of multi cultural cities in long run if race mixing was a thing or new children ware of same colour as majority of people in town.
Still one migrant can supply town with dozens of special biome resources.

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