Jason's Vision

mrbah · 2019-05-17 17:13:52

Hey,
We are having a lot of discussions in this forum, on what should be done to improve the game.
I am getting the impression that essentially a lot of this is wasted effort, because we don't understand what exactly Jason wants to achieve with this game.
What level of realism does jason want?
How "game-y" does he want the game to be (no needle before you have fire, because raw rabbits don't have bones, no backpack unless you catch rabbits, because rabbit fur is the only fabric tough enough to transport four items)?
How much does he want the game to mirror real life, in regards to Trade, Politics and Administration?
What is the "End-point", the last item of the tech tree?
What mechanics can or can't the engine support, at what point could it be worth to rework the engine to allow for specific features?

I think the answers to some of these questions are important for us to make educated feedback and suggestions.

MultiLife · 2019-05-17 17:57:38

I'd like to know too. What is he going towards to?

BlueDiamondAvatar · 2019-05-17 18:22:11

I heartily agree. When I see a tagline that reads " a multiplayer game about parenting and civilization building" it gives me a number of assumptions about the game like 1) generally peaceful and 2) community oriented, etc.. Neither of these seem to be the case, so if Jason could explain what he sees as the essentials of "parenting and civilization building" I'd understand his goals a lot better.

There's also a lot of expectations built up around the original trailer... how much of that does Jason expect to implement literally (Lasers? robots? tshirts? desks?) and how does that video express his vision for the game?

FeignedSanity · 2019-05-17 18:25:05

Yep, definitely in dire need of some clarification and updates in that area, IMO. I feel that would definitely help with the feelings of being mislead and (for lack of a better word) betrayal.

Wuatduhf · 2019-05-17 19:11:21

BlueDiamondAvatar wrote:

I heartily agree. When I see a tagline that reads " a multiplayer game about parenting and civilization building" it gives me a number of assumptions about the game like 1) generally peaceful and 2) community oriented, etc.. Neither of these seem to be the case, so if Jason could explain what he sees as the essentials of "parenting and civilization building" I'd understand his goals a lot better.

"Space Station 13 is a community developed, multiplayer round-based role playing game, where players assume the role of a crewmember on a space station."

That's the tagline for Space Station 13, and even though it sounds relatively peaceful day-to-day workings on a space station, anybody who's played it knows that there's a lot more going on than is in that sentence.

OHOL and SS13 are very close to each other in being multiplayer-oriented, long-form roleplaying, seeking to give the player different gameplay experiences with each 'life' that they live. SS13 currently does a far better job, but it has had a 16-year headstart over OHOL in gameplay refinement.

Hans · 2019-05-17 19:42:16

BlueDiamondAvatar wrote:

I heartily agree. When I see a tagline that reads " a multiplayer game about parenting and civilization building" it gives me a number of assumptions about the game like 1) generally peaceful and 2) community oriented, etc.. Neither of these seem to be the case, so if Jason could explain what he sees as the essentials of "parenting and civilization building" I'd understand his goals a lot better.
There's also a lot of expectations built up around the original trailer... how much of that does Jason expect to implement literally (Lasers? robots? tshirts? desks?) and how does that video express his vision for the game?

I honestly don’t understand why so many people seem to think civilization building = mostly peaceful. In my mind the total opposite is the case, after all you can't write the history of civilization without war.
My interpretation of Jason’s vision is that he thinks the threat of violence is what makes people band together and organize politically. From this standpoint introducing war swords is perfectly logical if you want civilizations to develop. Of course, whether or not it will actually work is a completely different question.

The_Anabaptist · 2019-05-17 22:21:20

When in doubt, strive for a literal definition:

"a multiplayer game" ergo us paying Jason to play a game he is creating...
"about parenting" that allow Jason to raise a RL family...
"and civilization building" and afford a house, a car, and whatever else...

Everything else that we've associated with the game has been our imaginations running wild.

The_Anabaptist

jasonrohrer · 2019-05-17 23:00:43

Did you watch the trailer?

I'm killed at the end of my own trailer by a defensive robot who was guarding a city gate.

What made you think it was going to be an entirely peaceful game?

There's also a lot of peaceful stuff going on in that trailer, of course.

But there are other things in that trailer that you currently don't see very much of in the game. Buildings. City walls and gates. Specialization.

Take a look at this spot in the trailer:

https://youtu.be/mT4JktcVQuE?t=1m36s

It's currently STILL very misleading:

1. You see an old man inside a building baking pies. Kids run out, and then he closes the door behind them. (I've never seen anyone baking pies indoors, nor have I seen many people closing doors.)

2. (1:45) You see me walk into a walled village, through what looks like a village gate. (Even before property fences, you almost never saw walls around a village.)

3. (1:47) You see me walk past three specialists who are operating in three different well-defined spaces. Two are enclosed, but one is out in the open because it's too hot to do indoors. (You rarely see spaces in the game structured by walls).

4. (1:50) You see me walk past a sheep herder inside a fenced-in area (you almost never see real fences used for sheep).

That portion of the video shows stuff that is all 100% possible inside the game right now (it was possible at launch). After that, I go into the "future" part of the video.

So a player, seeing 1-4 in the video, might expect to encounter those things in the game. You know, they might expect to see something that looks like a real village. But those things never occur in the game.

My vision for the game is to have those things occurring in the game, almost always.

Many people have said, "Those things are too hard, so that's why we don't do them. Make walls cheaper, and then we'll build buildings."

But that's not it at all. There are plenty of cheap things in the game that you rarely do. And there are plenty of crazy-hard things in the game that you do almost always, in every village. Getting a Newcomen pump up and running is no joke, but every village has one. And whoa, Newcomen machine shops everywhere too now? I hadn't seen many of them for a while...

You don't build buildings or walls or gates in the game for one simple reason: YOU DON'T NEED THEM.

My vision for the game is to actually make you need such things.

To need specialization, and buildings, and walls, and gates, and trade, and businesses, and laws, and judges, and police, and guards, and hospitals, and restaurants, and shepherds, and weavers, and smiths, and millers, and soldiers. To have nurseries and orphanages. To have roads and outposts. To have airplanes and cargo cults.

My vision for the game is to actually make you need civilization.

And if I see a key piece of civilization that you could build, but that you apparently don't need, it's my job to figure out why you don't need it, and how to make you need it.

It is not enough to ask players to pretend to need something. To expect them to "play along." They'll try it once, just to see it, and then move on. Gosh, I haven't see a dog in the game for months and months. Why don't you all like playing with dogs? They're cute. You can feed them and breed them. The answer should be obvious. You don't need dogs, just like you don't need painted walls. Just like you don't need walls at all.

So if you claim you want new stuff to do in the game, I don't believe you. There hasn't been a photograph taken in the game in more than four days.

You don't want more new stuff to do in the game. You want more stuff to need to do.

The best place to start with that project is to make you need some of the existing stuff that you don't currently need, so that civilization in the game starts to take on a more well defined and less flaccid form.

But yeah, if you want to understand my vision for the game, start with the trailer at least.

jasonrohrer · 2019-05-17 23:08:34

(There are also three our four different village within walking distance that are operating at different tech levels in that trailer.)

(I also call it a "crazy game" near the end of the trailer, and say, "who knows where we'll end up"---that's also part of my vision for the game, that we will just roll with it and see where we end up.)

jasonrohrer · 2019-05-17 23:14:32

If you want to dig deep, the original screenplay for the trailer is here:

https://github.com/jasonrohrer/OneLife/ … script.pdf

Go! Bwah! · 2019-05-17 23:29:42

People who want to breed dogs are off playing a pet-battle game where they don't have to keep stopping to eat.

Anyway, nobody needs to play OHOL in the first place. If it's going to be more an experiment than a game, "players" are going to expect some sort of a reward.

I honestly think the vision would be best realized by a few hundred learning bots, rather than humans that insist on pesky annoyances like having fun.

jasonrohrer · 2019-05-17 23:34:35

To need specialization, and buildings, and walls, and gates, and trade, and businesses, and laws, and judges, and police, and guards, and hospitals, and restaurants, and shepherds, and weavers, and smiths, and millers, and soldiers. To have nurseries and orphanages. To have roads and outposts. To have airplanes and cargo cults.

That doesn't sound fun to you?

Léonard · 2019-05-17 23:36:37

Not if my "need" comes directly from you making a bunch of magic objects/rules as if you were some kind of god.

That's literally why making a contrived game is bad in the first place.

Spoonwood · 2019-05-18 00:49:02

jasonrohrer wrote:

Many people have said, "Those things are too hard, so that's why we don't do them. Make walls cheaper, and then we'll build buildings."
But that's not it at all. There are plenty of cheap things in the game that you rarely do. And there are plenty of crazy-hard things in the game that you do almost always, in every village. Getting a Newcomen pump up and running is no joke, but every village has one. And whoa, Newcomen machine shops everywhere too now? I hadn't seen many of them for a while...

You don't build buildings or walls or gates in the game for one simple reason: YOU DON'T NEED THEM.

That's not all though. They can also be counterproductive. Like that bakery in the trailer? It's too small and could't really get used to feed enough people or it can blocked. Heck, I might feel inclined to stab the guy who made that bakery building, because it's worse than useless, it's positively an inhibition on anyone trying to cook for multiple people there in the future. It's even worse with a smithy. Have someone building a wall structure one or two tiles below a newcomen engine, or probably a forge even, and I would quit on the town unless I'm playing with a streamer, and then I'll make new open air forges and hope there isn't some idiot around who doesn't build a wall structure below it. Buildings also aren't hard to grief.

jasonrohrer wrote:

My vision for the game is to actually make you need civilization.

An Eve does NOT need civilization. And I mean an Eve out in the wild with a clean slate. You can't make people need civilization, since if they needed it, they would first have to make it without having it. But if they don't have it, then they clearly don't need it. Playing for the sake of a lineage might be attractive, but it's always optional. People aren't going to curse others to donkey town just for doing something like surviving in the woods like a hermit for 60 years or something like that. And those people I do NOT think would be attractive targets to griefers either. At least not usually. I once explored on a road and got stabbed by someone hiding behind a tree who said some strange phrase and I just laughed, because that sort of griefing was more funny than serious. Your current goal is misguided and is impossible to achieve. You might encourage people to want civilization. But, that's a much different matter from people needing it.

Spoonwood · 2019-05-18 00:51:18

jasonrohrer wrote:

To need specialization, and buildings, and walls, and gates, and trade, and businesses, and laws, and judges, and police, and guards, and hospitals, and restaurants, and shepherds, and weavers, and smiths, and millers, and soldiers. To have nurseries and orphanages. To have roads and outposts. To have airplanes and cargo cults.
That doesn't sound fun to you?

It's not fun to *need* any of those things, no. Needing something really isn't fun in general.

Having those things might be fun and amusing, but needing them is another story.

voy178 · 2019-05-18 00:57:02

I feel like the problem is that Jason isn't adding things in the correct order. Why do we novelty items like radios, photographers and cars when we don't need buildings? Is Jason afraid that we'd get bored by simple storage upgrades?

One would hope that he knows that clutter is the real problem right now.

Last edited by voy178 (2019-05-18 00:57:32)

BlueDiamondAvatar · 2019-05-18 01:01:53

jasonrohrer wrote:

Many people have said, "Those things are too hard, so that's why we don't do them. Make walls cheaper, and then we'll build buildings."
But that's not it at all. There are plenty of cheap things in the game that you rarely do. And there are plenty of crazy-hard things in the game that you do almost always, in every village. Getting a Newcomen pump up and running is no joke, but every village has one. And whoa, Newcomen machine shops everywhere too now? I hadn't seen many of them for a while...

You don't build buildings or walls or gates in the game for one simple reason: YOU DON'T NEED THEM.

I think you are thinking about this slightly wrong... it's not about how much we NEED something. We do the things that we know are USEFUL.

The solution to making us build walls isn't to make them cheaper, but to make them more useful. You tried this a bit with the temperature update, but then we realized how tricky it is to get a temperature benefit from a building. And how much of a death trap walls are, and how much the path blocking makes them a pain, even with the springy doors. And now they are gone. When a completed building exists it's used as an organized storage. There might be a fire with babies nursed next to it... but there's probably another one outside. And there might be an oven... but there's probably another one that's outside, too.

Let's talk about those newcomen pumps and machine shops... because I've built my fair share of them. And if I succeed in making them, I always build them BEFORE they are needed. Once you NEED a newcomen pump, it's too late. You need buckets of water to get it primed. You need food to sustain you while you gather than iron, sulfur, rubber and palm oil. We make pumps well before they are needed, because we know they will be useful for our children or grandchildren.

Maybe this seems like I'm splitting hairs... but it's the difference between living a USEFUL life expressing love for your OHOL family, and responding out of fear. You are trying to force us to build walls out of fear, but you didn't actually make them more useful. The fact that swords exist does not make fences and walls any different - they have the same pros and cons as they always had. We are just more afraid. And since this is a GAME and not real life, we respond to that extra fear by feeling stressed out, and in some cases, rage-quiting the game. We don't respond by building walls that we didn't want to build in the first place. (Yes, I know some people are building more fences... but it's pretty clear that isn't actually enough to protect anyone from anything, and we're still in the experimental phase.)

Add ways to make shelves on the walls; add non-firewood heating for enclosed rooms; make springy fence gates that let us pass while keeping the goram sheep inside the pen. Make these things MORE USEFUL and we will build them! And still enjoy your game.

Did you see Ferna's food efficiency forum post? (http://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=5706) She did some amazing analysis of how much work goes into each type of food. I don't hate mango slices because "I don't need them." I hate them because they are actively a bad use of limited resources and labor. And i'm far from the only player that is efficiency conscious. You don't learn to survive the brutal starvation rates of a naked toddler child-of-an-eve and not learn to value efficiency. You don't run a bakery in a big town without learning to value efficiency.

Stop giving us more things we MUST do, and give us more things that are USEFUL.

jasonrohrer wrote:

My vision for the game is to actually make you need civilization.

Couldn't you reframe this as "My vision for the game is to make every stage of civilization useful."

If you succeed in making civilization NEEDED... how can Eve survive? How do her children survive? They NEED civilization, and they don't have it.

If you succeed in making civilization USEFUL... a lucky or smart Eve can survive, but she can't clothe her children or leave them with renewable food sources, or iron for a pump.

You have succeeded in making rabbit clothes and Newcomen engines useful. You have not succeeded in making mango slices or walls useful. i you want walls and fences to be useful, that doesn't mean you should add more fear of violence from swords. That means you should keep working on walls.

I can imagine a game where swords make walls needed out of fear... very easily, there are thousands of examples. But I know from experience that I get bored of that dynamic really quickly. And the way the mechanics work right now, walls or fences are not effective defense against swords in OHOL. And you can do something BETTER. Make our walls useful.

futurebird · 2019-05-18 01:02:22

S T O R A G E U P D A T E

Spoonwood · 2019-05-18 01:03:13

jasonrohrer wrote:

And if I see a key piece of civilization that you could *build* ...

I'm quoting this for empahsis and singling it out. Wars are NOT about building civilization. They are about destroying or hampering another civilization. When you encourage war, you are NOT encourage civilization building, but rather civilization destruction.

Spoonwood · 2019-05-18 01:06:28

I agree with BlueDiamondAvatar.

jasonrohrer · 2019-05-18 01:07:06

Walls are mostly needed in real life out of fear, or some related need (privacy). This depends on the climate, of course, but climate is only one consideration.

In Davis, in the summer, it's too damn hot for walls, but we have them anyway, to keep people out, and to keep people from looking in.

Buggy · 2019-05-18 01:26:16

If there were some things in game that could only be built inside that may help. Like an electric stove ,space heater , or a baby bed that would keep infants at the perfect temperature if it was indoors. Things that wouldn't work outdoors that would improve our lives if we built them.

BlueDiamondAvatar · 2019-05-18 01:34:18

jasonrohrer wrote:

If you want to dig deep, the original screenplay for the trailer is here:
https://github.com/jasonrohrer/OneLife/ … script.pdf

Ok, I did. And... while the script mentions the range of ages and gender of most of the people who appear in the trailer, you don't mention ethnicity. The trailer shows ethnically diverse families and communities living in peace. (The only thing causing violence is an inanimate tool that apparently is unaware it has killed a person.)

The representation of ethnic diversity was definitely part of the appeal to me and to others in the community. It's been part of the appeal most of the thousand hours plus I've played this game. Was the ethnic diversity in the trailer just an accident? A chance to show off the different character models you've developed? Do you intend for us to have peaceful multi-family communities in the future?

Right now it feels like you are intentionally driving us apart. Into racially divided families that speak different languages and can slaughter each other at a moments notice, regardless of how integrated we get. I mean, just look at the racially pure families behind fences in the trailer for the "Coming Together" update.

So your intentions for racial diversity from the very beginning - and going forward - have become more important to me. I'm not going to accept that you're "Letting things go where the game takes us" when an update causes this big of a change in the way our families interact.

Left4twenty · 2019-05-18 01:49:26

Humans make amazing walls and structures in places where they dont need walls and structures to keep out animals or defend from the elements. In these places they can even be freed up to create them better than they would out of necessity. The great pyramids werent necessary, but theyre still great. Maybe make building compelling for its own sake? Its essentially a human instinct to build

Last edited by Left4twenty (2019-05-18 01:49:41)

jasonrohrer · 2019-05-18 04:03:37

People from different parts of the world speak different languages and look different. That is exactly what "diversity" means.

I'm still thinking about how this will shake out long term, and maybe even thinking about marriage and other things (though they are very complicated to get right).

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2019-05-17 17:13:52

Jason's Vision

#2 2019-05-17 17:57:38

Re: Jason's Vision

#3 2019-05-17 18:22:11

Re: Jason's Vision

#4 2019-05-17 18:25:05

Re: Jason's Vision

#5 2019-05-17 19:11:21

Re: Jason's Vision

#6 2019-05-17 19:42:16

Re: Jason's Vision

#7 2019-05-17 22:21:20

Re: Jason's Vision

#8 2019-05-17 23:00:43

Re: Jason's Vision

#9 2019-05-17 23:08:34

Re: Jason's Vision

#10 2019-05-17 23:14:32

Re: Jason's Vision

#11 2019-05-17 23:29:42

Re: Jason's Vision

#12 2019-05-17 23:34:35

Re: Jason's Vision

#13 2019-05-17 23:36:37

Re: Jason's Vision

#14 2019-05-18 00:49:02

Re: Jason's Vision

#15 2019-05-18 00:51:18

Re: Jason's Vision

#16 2019-05-18 00:57:02

Re: Jason's Vision

#17 2019-05-18 01:01:53

Re: Jason's Vision

#18 2019-05-18 01:02:22

Re: Jason's Vision

#19 2019-05-18 01:03:13

Re: Jason's Vision

#20 2019-05-18 01:06:28

Re: Jason's Vision

#21 2019-05-18 01:07:06

Re: Jason's Vision

#22 2019-05-18 01:26:16

Re: Jason's Vision

#23 2019-05-18 01:34:18

Re: Jason's Vision

#24 2019-05-18 01:49:26

Re: Jason's Vision

#25 2019-05-18 04:03:37

Re: Jason's Vision

Board footer