"Every Life is Different"

Jk Howling · 2019-05-30 01:10:44

Right now there's 2 families on the server. The Bee family, and the Blondin family. There's virtually no other options for gameplay outside of the giant cities they're inhabiting. If you think I'm joking about their size...

Screen_Shot_2019-05-29_at_8.02.09_PM.png

And that's quite literally only females. Chances are there's easily 40-50 players in that family right now. Nearly half the server, for a single family.

Before Jason applied the most recent update, I spoke up, concerned that he'd be completely killing the eve/early game playstyle. This is a playstyle I personally preferred. I liked helping eve camps get off the ground, and I liked playing with small families. It felt like my contributions mattered more, and that I got to forge better bonds with family members when I only had 5-10 rather than 40-50.

And I was told this:

jasonrohrer wrote:

Also, if you like to Eve, just get born in a town and run away. Anyone can play the starting-from-scratch game whenever they want (assuming that the land isn't stripped bare around town, which is another problem....)

https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewt … 224#p61224

Problem is.. You're in direct competition with your own family. The reason why is because Jason made a change without bringing it fully to light: /die is no longer area based. He's brought back the lineage-based system for the new 'skip' concept. So any player that /die's out of a large city, also adds anyone who left the city to start a new camp to their skip list.

You're also directly competing for fertility. Yum/temperature boosting does little for a player when they're in direct competition with several dozen other females.

I understand this comes from a bit of bias, as I personally enjoyed the early camps and eve runs much more than city life. But bias aside, should there really ever be only one gameplay type prevalent in the game?

I remember reading somewhere regarding the game that every life should be different, unique, special. You could be born into riches or poverty. A thriving city. A fresh camp whose berries were just planted. A young village that just got their first sheep, or whose well just dried up. Different scenarios for different families.

That's nearly nonexistent now. The options have dwindled.

I want a balance between these massive cities and these smaller, more interesting scenarios. There shouldn't ever be only a single type/option of gameplay. There shouldn't ever be only one or two families in a game with 100~ players online and a nearly-endless map.

futurebird · 2019-05-30 01:18:17

I think it'd be good if the number of families on the server were a function of server population. So if there are more people you'd get more eve chances, fewer people fewer chances.

Grim_Arbiter · 2019-05-30 01:21:03

I personally can't wait to experience this when I get to play. I thought this might happen where town pop was going to boom. But dayum.

FeignedSanity · 2019-05-30 01:28:51

Jk Howling wrote:

Problem is.. You're in direct competition with your own family. The reason why is because Jason made a change without bringing it fully to light: /die is no longer area based. He's brought back the lineage-based system for the new 'skip' concept. So any player that /die's out of a large city, also adds anyone who left the city to start a new camp to their skip list.

...but it just resets. Once you "/die" out of all available lines, you go back around. Wouldn't that make this a non issue?

lychee · 2019-05-30 01:36:10

The first game I played on this version was incredibly dry.

Some of these towns are so deep in the lineage (generation wise) that it's almost all exhausted wells and half-dead towns (a bunch of towns that failed to get diesel). My mom was at a fringe/dead town (no water, also very little iron) -- idk how far she traveled from the main cluster, but I spent my entire life at a cluster of dead towns with my cousin (who I ran into) who never got any kids that stayed.

The feeling was very much like "no girls left" -- except occasionally there would be someone on a horse running by (a distant family member) but doesn't stop -- so I knew that this dead town/city would certainly cross paths with someone else in the future, so both my cousin and me basically spent our entire lives prettying up two adjacent dead towns so that if anybody decided to stay, it'd have everything they need.

And I think we only had two horserider visitors who didn't even stop.

So yeah, it was a very very dull.

Jk Howling · 2019-05-30 01:45:35

FeignedSanity wrote:

Jk Howling wrote:
Problem is.. You're in direct competition with your own family. The reason why is because Jason made a change without bringing it fully to light: /die is no longer area based. He's brought back the lineage-based system for the new 'skip' concept. So any player that /die's out of a large city, also adds anyone who left the city to start a new camp to their skip list.
...but it just resets. Once you "/die" out of all available lines, you go back around. Wouldn't that make this a non issue?

You'd just end up being born back to the mother whose birth cooldown you reset. Or one of the dozens of other females in that city. The point was mainly in the fact that, you can never truly "branch out and start your own camp" without being directly tied to the original camp still, both in name and kids.

Also, if someone /dies from a city because they don't want to play in a city, its unfair that they're also skipping the outpost camps that came from that city's family.

This is also assuming an actual balance is found between mega cities and early camps. I'm hoping to see less "literally 2-3 families and you cycle between them by your fourth /die" and more variation in families. Being able to exclude yourself from being skipped alongside your original family in some way would allow these outpost camps to become a little more common.

Tea · 2019-05-30 02:44:26

Well then the idea from the other user would be great in such situations. You could start a new family with another player with another surname. Start an Eve life with your partner, away from the big town.

But then again, resources like iron would become a problem.

jasonrohrer · 2019-05-30 04:55:07

Unfortunately, we have a fundamental problem: There can't be 1000 new families a day.

The people who like starting families also seem to be complaining that too few families survive. If your long-running family has 1/10 of the females, you have roughly 1/10 of chance to get an incoming baby.

You're right about "competing for babies" if you wander away... sorta. I mean, you're not competing any more or less than you would be if you stayed there. If you do well getting your own sub-line off the ground, then you'll have just as big a share of the fertile females as the main town. Yes, if someone /DIEs in town, they will skip you too, but if there are only two families, they'll be back around to you soon enough.

I think it will take some time to settle down.

Looks like there are some new families growing in the family tree browser.

If we have a fixed number of families, do we spawn a new Eve whenever we drop below that level? Like, say we want 20 players per family, so we need 5 fams if we have 200 players. Or lets do 15, so it's 6 families for 100 players?

lychee · 2019-05-30 05:12:26

jasonrohrer wrote:

If we have a fixed number of families, do we spawn a new Eve whenever we drop below that level? Like, say we want 20 players per family, so we need 5 fams if we have 200 players. Or lets do 15, so it's 6 families for 100 players?

I think it's possible to go through the lifelog and compute the relationship between current family size and how many more generations a family is likely to survive into the future.

From there, you can target the preferable number players per family. I would expect this to look something like a sigmoid curve, so maybe aim for the inflection point before there are diminishing returns with more family members alive at once.

jasonrohrer · 2019-05-30 05:39:35

Don't have time for that kind of research.

So for now, I did the target of 15 per family line, where we spawn a new Eve if the average gets higher than that.

Dodge · 2019-05-30 06:44:40

So the /die prevents you from spawning in smaller camps from the same family?

That seems like an issue, you dont really need more eves to have more playstyle since eventually people will branch out due to overpopulation in big cities.

But if you cant access these small camps then this is the issue.

hmrka · 2019-05-30 11:04:52

Btw awbz's mod glitches sometimes so its not accurate all the time.

pein · 2019-05-30 18:28:03

15 per fam sounds good just you should ignore old people 40+

futurebird · 2019-05-30 18:32:43

jasonrohrer wrote:

If we have a fixed number of families, do we spawn a new Eve whenever we drop below that level? Like, say we want 20 players per family, so we need 5 fams if we have 200 players. Or lets do 15, so it's 6 families for 100 players?

Just make it server_population/15. That is how many families there should be. That way if lots of people log on they don't get sent to already huge families, but when the server population drops you don't have baby droughts.

Spoonwood · 2019-05-30 23:21:06

jasonrohrer wrote:

Unfortunately, we have a fundamental problem: There can't be 1000 new families a day.

On the contrary such could exist if you gave people control to let such happen OR the playerbase massively increased in size. Alright, the later isn't going to happen. At least not from the looks of it. It also seems that yet again that you've decided something as "wrong" with how the game worked on an entirely arbitrary basis. Trying to give people more control isn't an arbitrary basis for changing things. It's way to enable them to feel more free and have more enjoyment of THEIR experience in the game.

Also, this small family system pretty much kills off families competing all that much for another girl during a fertility crisis. Yum or temperature mattering for fertility reasons when a family needs a girl? Not very likely if there exist only two families.

The old Eve spiral, with the ability to curse people outside of their lineages, and /die should all go back to how they were before the sword downgrade. Swords should get removed from the game also, but that's kind of tangential.

And there SHOULD exist a button that enables people to become an Eve at a moment's notice, because that would mean fewer SIDs under such a system, and would mean more control for players. More control for players would lead to greater degrees of player satisfication. Worrying about lineage numbers is just worrying about a mere statistic, and not people's actual enjoyment.

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2019-05-30 01:10:44

"Every Life is Different"

#2 2019-05-30 01:18:17

Re: "Every Life is Different"

#3 2019-05-30 01:21:03

Re: "Every Life is Different"

#4 2019-05-30 01:28:51

Re: "Every Life is Different"

#5 2019-05-30 01:36:10

Re: "Every Life is Different"

#6 2019-05-30 01:45:35

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#7 2019-05-30 02:44:26

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#8 2019-05-30 04:55:07

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#9 2019-05-30 05:12:26

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#10 2019-05-30 05:39:35

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#11 2019-05-30 06:44:40

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#12 2019-05-30 11:04:52

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#13 2019-05-30 18:28:03

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#14 2019-05-30 18:32:43

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#15 2019-05-30 23:21:06

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