Ideas for improving the life limit

jasonrohrer · 2019-06-21 15:35:20

A few weeks in, there are some problems:

1. New players start with a big number (36), but only see that number go DOWN for a long time. There is a chance that they don't understand what's going on, and that they will earn lives below 18. That's an abstract notion. What they really see is 36, 35, 34, 33, 32... yikes!

2. One hour is a long time, meaning that even after players dip below 18, they don't see the number go up that much. It mostly goes up when they are sleeping. So the usual experience is a number going down down down as they play. Even if they live to old age, the number stays the same instead of going up a bit. There's no positive feedback. While playing, the number will only ever go down or remain the same, never going up!

These are both psychological issue, but still issues.

Proposed changes:

Get rid of the bonus lives for new players. It's too hard to understand.

Lower the cap somewhat. Maybe back to 12. (This can be adjusted down more later).

Have people earn lives every 20 minutes instead. (This violates the one hour one life premise, but so be it).

So, if you live until 40, you'll see your number going up. If you live until 20, it will stay the same. If you die young repeatedly, it will go down.

And if you live until old age, it will go up by 2 each life.

Dodge · 2019-06-21 15:42:13

If dying rate from hunger was lower (less stress on food) then having a limit of 12 even for new players wouldnt be an issue.

Then screen could say 12/12 lives, 10/12, 8/12 etc (or 12 out of 12 or something else ), with the mention of a new life every hour (or not)

CatX · 2019-06-21 15:55:12

Perhaps new players (who have played less than, say 30 hours in total) could be awarded lives by doing basic stuff.

"In this life you'll earn one extra life if you manage to eat five different types of food."
"In this life you'll earn one extra life if you water a berry bush."
"In this life you'll earn one extra life if you produce a small ball of yarn."

sigmen4020 · 2019-06-21 16:16:10

Maybe instead of giving new players a straight up visible bonus, you get one time where if you reach 0 you get all your lives back (This will only happen the very first time you run out of lives) to give new players a chance while avoiding the psychological problems with the number only going down.

BladeWoods · 2019-06-21 16:24:04

I don't understand how (1) is hard to understand even for new players. But I guess you could get rid of the bonus lives and give new players extra lives in a different way. Achievements like CatX suggested could be cool but wouldn't be simple. Or instead of bonus lives there's a bonus timer. You get a new life every 10 minutes instead of 60 for your first 10 (or whatever amount) lives. Or a hidden one-time life refresh you get the first time you run out of lives. Or just nothing at all. New players could just deal with no bonuses.

With the timer at 60 minutes, and it being practically impossible to live to 60 every life, you eventually run out of lives if you continuously play. You've also got a maximum of 24 lives a day not including living stored lives. It doesn't matter to people like me who don't play every day, but I imagine it hurts the hardcore players who play every day and play enough that they are running out of lives even without abusing suicide. So I think lowering the timer would be a good thing.

Twisted · 2019-06-21 16:25:58

What if the cap for everyone was 12, but new players earned life at a higher pace? When you have 0 hours played you get one new life every ten minutes, and for every hour of playtime it takes one more minute to earn a life, up to 60 minutes per life when you have 50 hours played.

pein · 2019-06-21 16:34:17

could be like a refill
so if you got out of lives, you "open a pack"
this fills the lives back to max once or twice, how you like it

so they cant do it unti lthey got 0 lives
but once they run out of lives, they can refill it once and start again

i like he longer life more reward thing tho

DestinyCall · 2019-06-21 16:37:26

I would recommend leaving the extra lives for new players, but add an indicator for maximum lives.

36/18 lives or 18/18 lives or 6/18 lives. If this showed on the rebirth screen it would be clear when you reached maximum lives and how close you are to "not enough lives".

jasonrohrer · 2019-06-21 16:51:58

Someone just emailed me about it, so I know that new players are confused.

36/18 seems even more confusing.

I do like 11/12 as a display improvement.

BUT the key thing I'm proposing here is that you earn lives faster, but bank fewer

Someone on Steam suggested this crazy thing:

Max cap of 4 lives.
You earn a life every 5 minutes.

There is a little bit of a risk of 4x abandonment, but even that will take close to 5 minutes. Maybe it's a bit too knife-edge for the unlucky player, though.

dangergirl713 · 2019-06-21 16:55:44

How about figuring why people /die in the first place and fixing that instead of limiting lives?

People that are already abuse /die won't care if they run out of lives. Time is precious and if they don't get born into a situation they want to play then they will just wait and play another game. The only people that care about running out of lives are your loyal players. Maybe time out the person that /die ten times in a row or maybe polling them to ask them why they are /die-ing so much.

You are throwing the baby out with the bathwater with this update cause it really only punishes new players and loyal players.

Kamor · 2019-06-21 17:03:57

"You have currently 36 Lives. You gain no extra life, till you are under life regeneration cap of 18."

and then

"You have currently 17 Lives. You gain an extra life in 26 minutes 14 seconds."

That´s two sentences to make it all clear.

Anyway i am not a friend of you lifecap idea, i have still my 36 lives. ;-P

Spoonwood · 2019-06-21 17:27:50

dangergirl713 wrote:

How about figuring why people /die in the first place and fixing that instead of limiting lives?

This.

First things first. One Hour One Life means that within the scope of One Hour, if the player is not an Eve, then the player has the possibility of living One full, or in other words, complete Life. That's all it means and all it has ever meant. Anything else is in someone's head and not in the actual game, and hasn't ever been in the actual game. And that's all it should mean. Not being able to play again, because my poor mother got bit by a tree boar would just be a rotten experience for players.

Griefers, those trying to impede or actually impeding other people's ability *to do* things in game, aren't likely to use /die. I mean what's the satisfaction in using /die? Making one person clean up baby bones? That's extremely unlikely for any bigserver2 griefer. It's just too low to think that /die griefing would be all that serious even if a small number of people choose that method.

Thus, people use /die for valid reasons.

Most likely people use /die, because they want to become an Eve, play as child of Eve, got born into a later generation camp, or have some issue that happens when they are a baby that really makes for a poor situation, like *all* of the sheep in the pen getting slaughtered. And I say that as a person who has used /die, to become an Eve to found a town, to play an earlier generation camp, and because all of the sheep got slaughtered (actually I used shift + delete, but I think I was 4 in game, of course). I've used it, because I prefer to play in towns that don't have a diesel water pump, as I've found towns that have them less interesting to me.

So, and you do need to hear this Jason, the solution to this lies in a choice screen for players.

Some people might insist that such will decrease lineage length, because people might not play in later generation towns as much. However, this is a game of civilization BUILDING not one of civilization maintenance. Additionally, those people basically want to impede people who want to become Eve. And well, trying to impede what other players do in the game, that's what griefing is... so their attitude comes as perilously close to that of a griefer.

Additionally, a choice screen would have the benefit of enabling more choice for players in the game. If anything can get gleamed from Rimworld and all of it's mods, AND the game even having access to a development tools screen (I'm not kidding here), and other games like civ III having had popular utility programs like MapFinder to reroll starts, it's that gamers like choice in their games.

And of course, a good choice screen would have a 'random' button also.

Spoonwood · 2019-06-21 17:42:17

I'm going to add Dangergirl's comment from elsewhere, because I think it's extremely relevant here:

dangergirl wrote:

Your poll really should be on why people are using slash /die not how many lives should you limit people to.

Also, my list of reasons as to why I've used /die is not exhaustive by any means. Another popular reason lies in that people have used it to become a woman in the game (the gender system is flawed and a system to bootstrap men WHILE still having children born seems difficult to figure out, if not impossible... eliminating it entirely might be better). I remember Tarr saying that he always played as a woman, and dangergirl has said that now.

Oh, and the problem related to a choice screen is lack of choice in the game. Let me state that again:

Problem: lack of choice with respect to initial birth conditions.

CatX · 2019-06-21 17:46:37

Why not the best of all worlds?

- Players with hours played<10: No choice screen, no limit to lives
- Players with 10-50 hours played: Limit of 18 lives
- Players with hours played>50: Limit of 12 lives, and a simple choice screen

I prefer new lives every hour. I do like the idea that griefers might run out of lives and be forced to wait a whole hour before logging back in.

Spoonwood · 2019-06-21 17:55:22

CatX has an interesting idea that sounds like it could work well.... though there might exist players who would use /die a lot with less than 10 hours played... I don't know.

Hstrike · 2019-06-21 18:21:07

CatX wrote:

Why not the best of all worlds?
- Players with hours played<10: No choice screen, no limit to lives
- Players with 10-50 hours played: Limit of 18 lives
- Players with hours played>50: Limit of 12 lives, and a simple choice screen
I prefer new lives every hour. I do like the idea that griefers might run out of lives and be forced to wait a whole hour before logging back in.

I like this idea better. Also a progressive challenge. But players with <10 lives should also have a cap, but with their lives hidden. Otherwise, i can just buy a new account and slash die until I get into an Eve camp. Otherwise, you can just game the system for 10 hours.

Keep the newcomers ignorant of the number of lives, give them plenty, but cap them. Ignorance is bliss.

Last edited by Hstrike (2019-06-21 18:24:16)

Tarr · 2019-06-21 18:26:58

CatX wrote:

Why not the best of all worlds?
- Players with hours played<10: No choice screen, no limit to lives
- Players with 10-50 hours played: Limit of 18 lives
- Players with hours played>50: Limit of 12 lives, and a simple choice screen
I prefer new lives every hour. I do like the idea that griefers might run out of lives and be forced to wait a whole hour before logging back in.

Seems nice instead of having to fiddle around getting the right gender when you actually want to play. Though, I'm pretty sure it's still hard to run out of 12 lives unless you are being super picky and would almost say once you have some sort of life screen you should have 10 or less lives (since you are likely to never actually lose a token if you are reaching old age.) The only issue of course would be that whenever the servers shit the bed or you run into bad moms you risk actually running out of lives since I would assume most veteran players don't die unless they want to or get murdered.

FeignedSanity · 2019-06-21 18:32:03

Yeah, I was thinking that you should probably counter the whole "the best thing to get more lives, is to not play" mechanic. I personally like the idea of still earning one token for every hour not playing, but have them get one every 30 minutes of play time. I also prefer a max limit of 6, but it's probably too soon for that.

I also think that new players (maybe those with less than 20 or 30 hours played) should probably have unlimited lives.

The_Anabaptist · 2019-06-21 18:38:10

I'm for all the proposed changes.

I would encourage a bonus +x lives above the cap any time a server reboot happens. That is the only time I seem to go thru a ton of lives as everyone is either eve or an unwanted child of an eve.

The_Anabaptist

FeignedSanity · 2019-06-21 18:41:33

jasonrohrer wrote:

Have people earn lives every 20 minutes instead. (This violates the one hour one life premise, but so be it).

Also, I don't believe this really violates the one hour one life premise. As long as you still get one hour per life (per life token), provided you don't starve or get killed, I think it'll still be valid.

jasonrohrer · 2019-06-21 18:48:08

Easy enough to reset everyone's life tokens right before an update.

jasonrohrer · 2019-06-21 19:11:36

Okay, this change is live. We'll see how it goes. Everyone has 12/12 lives now, earning one life every 20 minutes.

I also added a feature where I can easily bump everyone back up to 12 (which I will do right before the servers are taken down for an update, etc.)

Kamor · 2019-06-21 19:59:17

Imperator : " I have an idea, it´s like this and this and this."

Senator 1 : "blablabla"
Senator 2 : "blablabla"
...
Senator x : "blablabla"

Imperator : "Ok, then we do like i said in the beginning."

You are kidding me.

jasonrohrer · 2019-06-21 20:03:48

Was looking for feedback on the numbers changes, not suggestions for completely different systems.

If you see any problems with the new numbers, please let me know.

kategriss · 2019-06-21 20:13:46

jasonrohrer wrote:

Okay, this change is live. We'll see how it goes. Everyone has 12/12 lives now, earning one life every 20 minutes.

I think it's a little too much per hour. I preferred Twisted's suggestion that only new players earn lives faster and that "old" players (maybe 50+ hours) earned lives at 1 life per hour like in the beginning of the update.
But still, I think it's better that the cap is 12 and not 18

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2019-06-21 15:35:20

Ideas for improving the life limit

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Re: Ideas for improving the life limit

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