Is 63 hours long enough for you?

Twisted · 2019-09-27 17:57:01

jasonrohrer wrote:

Yes, I agree that it should last more like 5-7 days. But NOT with only 2 fams left. 5-7 days with only 2 fams left would be stale.

It doesn't matter if there's 2 or 20 families, gameplay inside the Rift is going to be stale either way because those families will always be practically identical to one another. The staleness comes from the fact that, as long as the Arc has been going on for 12+ hours, you are placed in a very similar situation every time you spawn. You spawn in a big town with a lot of food and other resources, a fence surrounds the town, there's clutter everywhere, there's a lack of ropes, unfinished radio parts surround the smithy, and you get water either from a Newcomen pump or a Diesel Engine. Every single time. Having a different last name doesn't really change that experience.

What happened to the Unique Situation Generator?

Jk Howling · 2019-09-27 18:17:26

Twisted wrote:

jasonrohrer wrote:
Yes, I agree that it should last more like 5-7 days. But NOT with only 2 fams left. 5-7 days with only 2 fams left would be stale.

It doesn't matter if there's 2 or 20 families, gameplay inside the Rift is going to be stale either way because those families will always be practically identical to one another. The staleness comes from the fact that, as long as the Arc has been going on for 12+ hours, you are placed in a very similar situation every time you spawn. You spawn in a big town with a lot of food and other resources, a fence surrounds the town, there's clutter everywhere, there's a lack of ropes, unfinished radio parts surround the smithy, and you get water either from a Newcomen pump or a Diesel Engine. Every single time. Having a different last name doesn't really change that experience.
What happened to the Unique Situation Generator?

Exactly my issue with the rift. I used to LOVE not knowing what situation I'd be sent into. It was easily one of my favorite parts of the core game. That surprise factor of where you'll be born to was what gave the game its interest. Having a variety of different situations to play is what kept it fresh.

Prior to the rift, at any time of day, I could be born to any sort of situation. It could be a fresh eve, still searching for a place to settle down and raise her family. It could be an early-gen town whose wells just ran dry and are pushing to build their first newcomen pump. It could be a late-game town struggling to get supplies for a diesel engine. Or hell, it could be an end-game city, with all of those necessities handled, where I can explore brand-new options that I otherwise would be too busy trying to stay alive to do. Things like building and managing a casino! Being a shroom dealer! Dying clothes! Teaching players how to heal wounds! Marrying someone! Building a satellite outpost!

The possibilities, while not maybe endless per-say, were variable enough to keep me interested. There was an excitement factor knowing I could spawn to any of these situations, or others. And sure while I had my preferred situation [I really liked eve's child runs] not knowing where I'd end up and being able to play other scenarios kept things from going stale.

Right now, there is no variety. The rift settles and things stagnate very quickly. You have extremely limited options to play from, even just leaving the eve window, and those options only get even more limited over time. I miss the game of "You never know where you're born! Every life is unique!"

Booklat1 · 2019-09-27 18:30:09

Jason, the lack of actual pacing in techtree climbing is much more of a cause for staleness than few families.

I know you've talked about how it's hard to create a techtree we won't just rush and I know you are absolutely right, but every improvement here would greatly benefit the game long term in a way that forcing multi-family populations just won't.

Long arcs will always be stale if we reach endgame in two hours. The techtree is a much more evident aspect of a civs development than the number of families remaining and thus is also a much more visible indicator of overall endgame game state.

Honestly, what seems harder to implement a techtree with many well punctuated steps or a set of mechanics based in population genetics that make people deeply care about their families even though they're given no guarantee they'll ever see their families again nor any major benefits for caring? I know there's plenty of researchers who spent their lives doing brilliant math on population genetics, Morgan, Hubby, Lewontin, J Gould, all of which you could get into if you really wanted families to feel viscerally important. I just don't think you have to. We're animals, we do already have the instinct to care, you just gotta start setting up stakes for what happens when we lose after working hard to survive. "Do we lose the techtree and the families we've worked for during the last week?" feels much tougher of a question when the techtree doesn't get topped at a few hours.

Booklat1 · 2019-09-27 18:33:28

I purposefully didn't say it in my previous post but as JK mentioned, laxk of overall variance is also terribly harmful for the game.

Single techtree, single combo of starting biomes, you've actively tried to keep these as such, so of course the game gets stale after a while. RPing diplomat with other families over nearly infinite food doesn't change that.

wondible · 2019-09-27 19:04:25

jasonrohrer wrote:

https://wondible.com/ohol-family-trees/ … id=2097941
Nothing special, it looks like. Look near the bottom and find HOPE TREE. She lived to 60 and never had any BBs. Why is that?

A little note here: I filtered out very short lives during the /diepocolpyse to keep the trees from getting unreasonably wide. The main lineage site only shows one SIDs though, so still not many.

jasonrohrer · 2019-09-27 19:13:23

Well, like I said before, you can't have it both ways.

If new towns are starting up all the time, then what happens to the old towns? There are only so many people to go around, so old towns and families must die out to make room for new ones sprouting up in the wilderness. As you run out of nearby wilderness, you need to put these new towns farther and farther away.

You simply cannot have all these things exist simultaneously:

1. Permanence of families.
2. Permanent reachability of player-built areas.
3. Lots of variability in terms of which "tech era" you are born into in each life.
4. Towns close enough together to allow interaction.

The game has never had (1), but maybe that's possible if I keep working on BB distribution.

The game launched in Feb 2018 with (2) and (4), but not (3).

Then we had an Eve Walk to get (3) and (4), but we sacrificed (2).

Then we switched to an Eve Spiral, which made (2) better, kept (3), and sacrificed (4).

Then we switched to a resetting Eve Spriral with center cull, which sacrificed (2), kept (3), and allowed (4).

All along, players have MOSTLY complained about lack of (2).

The rift solves (2) and (4) handily, and recent BB distribution changes have brought us closes to (1) for the first time, but (3) is sacrificed.

Thaulos · 2019-09-27 19:34:41

You give us 4 but don't actually give us meaningful interactions.

Keyin · 2019-09-27 19:36:19

A bit of a tangent, but right before the Tree family died out(about 10 mins before die out), I was born to a Tree woman on horse cart who just sped away from me.

So, all family die outs are basically down to player agency; it's just that it sometimes comes down to the choices of a few individuals online during off hours.

I do not know whether the Tree woman on horse cart deliberately ended the Tree line, maybe she had no idea she was the last Tree female, but yeah she chose to travel and not settle down to raise kids.

jasonrohrer · 2019-09-27 19:40:28

Thaulos:

Meaningful interactions currently in this game:

1. Learning another language, with children and writing serving as translation aids
2. Negotiating entrance into a town's fence.
3. Elders declaring war and peace
4. War itself
5. (eventually, hopefully: scarce resources that one town controls)

Twisted · 2019-09-27 20:01:13

jasonrohrer wrote:

1. Permanence of families.

We kind of have that right now, but it's completely independant on the rift/arc and it's a result of the recent distributon changes as you mentioned.

jasonrohrer wrote:

2. Permanent reachability of player-built areas.

We have so much less of this than before. A map that's guaranteed to be wiped 3-5 times a week has a lot less permanence than a dynamically culled map. Previously, whenever you lived in a town you didn't know what it's fate would be. Now you know for a fact that the town will be gone by the end of the week, no matter what..

jasonrohrer wrote:

3. Lots of variability in terms of which "tech era" you are born into in each life.

With the exception of the first few hours of the rift, we don't have this (and that's best part of the game in my opinion)

jasonrohrer wrote:

4. Towns close enough together to allow interaction.

We have this, but there are very few meaningful and interesting interactions that make sense outside of roleplaying.

So the Arc checks one out of four bullet points, which is a pretty sad number.

Thaulos · 2019-09-27 20:07:37

1. That's "passive interaction"
2. I have never seen an actual negotiation. With 1) there isn't any real conversation. People either just sneak in and hope they don't get stabbed or they don't get in at all.
3. Peace declared once per arc per pair of families.
4. War right now isn't "interaction" it's just a shift click fest.

We need tools for players to create their own story arcs that aren't based on:
1. randomly killing people for the lulz.
2. declaring peace.
3. lots of love emotes and smiling.
4. crafting the next level X for town.

Some examples off the top of my head:
- Intercity Trading
- Citizenship (towns)
- Town Politics
- Marriages
- Families (not lineages)
- Interfamily Trading?
- Property
- Police/arrests
- Record Keeping (books, history)
- More rewarding buildings: buildings shouldn't be so hard that it takes a full life to make half of one. I wouldn't even be building for my children and granchildren but for people down the line.

Last edited by Thaulos (2019-09-27 20:17:27)

Grim_Arbiter · 2019-09-27 20:08:04

jasonrohrer wrote:

The rift solves (2) and (4) handily, and recent BB distribution changes have brought us closes to (1) for the first time, but (3) is sacrificed.

Agreed, but I dont think 3 is off the table for getting back, in some kind of form.

Also its possible to basically be eve and start a new village from the ground up 3 days into an arc. I said it before but during our longest, most strenuous arc, it happened (I think pein made it)

Booklat1 · 2019-09-27 20:17:10

Yes, i don't actually disagree with what you say

Which is why i think the techtree needs a redesign somewhat soon. As you're nailing down the rift (and you kinda are) you'll have a much more controlled environment to design the pacing of the techtree.

But that's the thing, this pacing is really fast at the moment, to a point no family interactions stop staleness. In fact it's so fast it doesn't really allow much interaction in a first moment. I'll gladly wait for the rift to be as optimised as possible but different tech stages are a crucial point in creating diverse play scenarios.

Grim_Arbiter · 2019-09-27 20:29:37

Twisted wrote:

[
jasonrohrer wrote:
2. Permanent reachability of player-built areas.
We have so much less of this than before. A map that's guaranteed to be wiped 3-5 times a week has a lot less permanence than a dynamically culled map. Previously, whenever you lived in a town you didn't know what it's fate would be. Now you know for a fact that the town will be gone by the end of the week, no matter what..

Gotta disagree after the last arc. I kept going back to the same town at the end of my lives (usually a day apart) and just being kinda in awe at how much it grew and developed. It had its own decorative taste, and the amount of time put into that town could be seen.

I thought I was going to wake up today to see the arc still going and calls for jason to reset it, but it ended up resetting without it.

Also yes old towns COULD last over the course of weeks (casino town) but they weren't populated that entire time. It was very sporadic population. Even back then you didn't know if your town would make it (like eve starts now) and you just built because thats what you do anyways.

So I think there is a middle ground to resets.

A town lasting more than a week probably shouldn't happen, but there should only be 1 or 2 resets a week.

fug · 2019-09-27 20:30:43

jasonrohrer wrote:

The rift solves (2) and (4) handily, and recent BB distribution changes have brought us closes to (1) for the first time, but (3) is sacrificed.

Yeah, I don't know about that. We've had much greater permanence before and I wouldn't say clearly everything every 2-3 days gives any semblance of it. Compare it to before you did that goofy 8 hour cull timer.

We had villages that would spring back up that were thought to be lost to the culling which was always a delight. San-Cal lasted like an actual month, Goose Town lasted 3 weeks+, Casino town lasted so long that its name got changed multiple times throughout its history (and that's cool.)

1. is basically just a skin. Sure, I prefer being some models (or in some families) more than other but at the end of the day that doesn't change anything between life to life. Whether I'm Balls, Cock, or Gay doesn't matter since its just a surname attached to whatever skin I got for the hour. While its nice to have a lineage live for awhile it's probably the weakest of the four in terms of what makes the game good.

2. This is probably one of the most important features of the game as it feels good to see your own personal plans mature and grow. Back when I used to make sauerkraut all the time you would literally see crocks of it still around from previous days due to the massive amount I would make and the lack of people eating it at times. Hell, it was nice seeing all the mango trees over in Casino town still kicking around when I planted them on the mango update day. Remember what happened when you introduced the apocalypse the first time? It nearly killed the game which shows permanence does matter to the players.

3. This is probably the second most important thing as late game isn't developed enough to last multiple days let alone a week right now. The game is probably 8~12 hours of moving on up until you top out and go into maintenance mode. With lack of 2 it can feel completely fruitless to do anything which leads to towns becoming even more samey. When places last people start making them look nice and when they get to that point they start becoming special. Town names, town landmarks, and such make living somewhere feel good but its hard to want to when your work is potentially wasted before you even go to bed for the night.

4. While towns are now closer what actually meaningful dialog do towns have? "Imma declare war so I can shift click you >:))))" While language was a cool update you can't exactly go anywhere near another town without making sure to carry paper, a rubber ball, a pencil, and a knife otherwise you're likely to just get shanked for getting near. Not only that, the whole war sword arc pretty much flipped the game on its head from pve to pvp where now you have groups of people attacking places (and oh boy are those people idiots.)

So the rift makes 1 work, the constant wipes ruin 2, the game isn't really fleshed out enough at the moment for 3 to work out well, and 4 exists but right now has almost no reason to exist.

sigmen4020 · 2019-09-27 20:54:22

The whole thing with permanence is really important to get right. In the past after the well change I spent many lives getting oil and a diesel well, but now I can't really be bothered with the high tech on bigserver anymore. Knowing that my hard work on oil or diesel will be wasted within some time makes me not want to go through the tedious progress, since I'll never actually experience the fruits of my efforts.

I've stopped caring about high tech, because it has turned into too much tedium for the reward. I've come to enjoy obscure side projects more. Things like dying the towns undyed clothing (Thx btw Jason for doubling alums appearance chance, much appreciated), and food from the last food update. Tortilla chips has been a recent passion of mine, even though I know they are not as useful as making a bajillion pies. The meta has been stale so long that I find much more enjoyment when I go outside it. I remember exterminating a towns overwhelming goose population, basically making a KFC delivery service was much more fun than making the 100th mutton pie, the 10th compost pile or the 15th stew crock. I still do meta stuff when it's needed. I only enjoy that stuff when there's an actual challenge to it.

Last edited by sigmen4020 (2019-09-27 20:55:17)

Booklat1 · 2019-09-27 20:59:02

Grim_Arbiter wrote:

Even back then you didn't know if your town would make it (like eve starts now) and you just built because thats what you do anyways.

well that's the thing, not knowing is better than knowing it'll at best last a week

I don't even care for longterm town permanence all that much, I'm honestly ok if its a rare occurrence but having that possibility is certainly a great sort of fun for the game. I would like to see what kind of towns would exist if they kept being depopulated and reoccupied in the rift.

Finding ruins is extremely rewarding tbh.

Spoonwood · 2019-09-27 21:02:43

jasonrohrer wrote:

I'm still interested in WHY fams are dying out.

You're asking the wrong question. People who have played the game far more than you have, have generally, if not universally, agreed that towns matter more than families.

jasonrohrer wrote:

And yes, I'm still trying to make the best game of all time, eventually. It's hard!

Nonsense. You recognize situations that could be better, but then say it's too much work to rewrite the engine. So, it's reasonable to believe that your talk of such is merely posturing on your part.

Anhigen · 2019-09-27 21:11:07

Wow, ok, I had a completely different idea as to what a meaningful interaction was...

Presently I think our meaningful interactions between players are:

Healing--Saving a life or having your life saved. However, these are limited to times when people are hurt and therefore is dependent on how often this occurs.

Being Born--this is the big one. You first moments in the game are figuring out your relationship with your "mom". Are they absent, do they show interest in you, do you get a tour, are you a burden. Not a lot of "points" get exchanged, and it's not really RP, but the way your mother interacts with you, and you with them, will shape a lot of your game play. You get named, maybe clothed. This is the biggest and most meaningful iteration you will have with another play while you play OHOL. Period. Maybe I should have listed it first.

Learning A New Skill--getting taught something by another play is wonderful experience and so is teaching. What's interesting is that the game doesn't have "rift dependent" skills or teachings that need to be passed on. Everything can, and honestly should, be looked up on the wiki. The game has no situations that require information be passed directly from individual to individual. War was like this, but now we have global announcements that require less player interaction. Maybe that's for the good because war could swap so fast and there were too many moving parts for our limited communication options but now we have nothing? What if that changed. For instance, it could be that Milkweed comes in four to five different forms with very slight differences that produce different results. If you pick it like you pick the Milkweed from your last town it won't leave seeds. You'll need to know THIS particular strain, and it's that family knowledge that gets passed down that makes you useful. You get the "basic idea" but if you want to be optimal you'll have to learn from someone or figure it out through tests of your own. Better just to ask then... and if no one is around, it's a good thing someone left a note pinned to the nearby fence.

Help--An interaction that some times occurs is when you are farming and you need a hoe. You make your way to the smith area and see someone is already busy there. Not wanting to interrupt you ask them for a new steel hoe blade. They say they'll make it--or most often they shout that just flipping made one, but proceed to work on it anyway--and you head off to find the long straight branch you'll need. Getting help in the game is a valuable and meaningful interaction--I feel a part of something and like I'm playing with other people when I help them and they help me--so anything that increases those interactions the better. Maybe tasks can't be completed by myself, or require more dutiful attention so I can't readily drop the task and head off whenever I want--I'll need your help.

Fighting/Defending--While not always fun, and usually starts because of something bad happening, yeah, fights are meaningful, sometimes. Eve in your town? She's here to steal, probably. Someone keeps stealing the milkweed, they need to fucking learn who the milkweed boss is (hint, if you didn't plant it, it's not you--knife to the guts!) Curses fall under this umbrella too but considering how limited our present interactions with one another are, they dominate our "meaningful" interactions with other players. If you're not learning from someone else what point do you have to even interact with them unless it's to put a knife in their guts? Your only "meaningful" interaction with another player, outside of being named, will likely be a curse or a fight and that's... disproportionate, I think.

Property granting--I'm hesitant to put this in because it's not really meaningful but it is a command that endows people with abilites. One could make the argument so, here we are. BUT, you don't "become a part of the village" or anything when someone passes you gate privilege. I honestly think with some changes to buildings and how gates/doors work (they should just be automatic for those with rights so that you move with impunity when you have title/ownership instead of this micro door game that NO ONE thinks is fly or interesting) this could become more meaningful but it's effect is to just remove the nuisance of not being able to leave the village. Sure, we could have areas within the village that have private gates, but I'm sure everyone here would agree that the reason were not seeing more of that in game is because it's not practical in the least. The gates are too clunky and the buildings take way too long to build--there is no point in private property, presently. A bakery could be closed off to anyone who wasn't a baker, controlling clutter and food distribution but doors are a pain so you might as well just leave everything open. Water buckets are something to fight over but considering just how rare water gets you can't really have three buckets of water saved in the bakery under lock and key. That's tantamount to griefing with how scarce it is late game.

Thaulous points out some great options but I strongly second the need for Trade between families and towns. I understand that you're only making one game but each town and family shouldn't be able to do EVERYTHING so easily. Maybe near the end of the tech tree, sure, or through global domination, why not, but introducing trading, however it's designed, will greatly increase our interactions with one another on the rift. The first thing I can think of is a "Family Pie". Every family uses the same recipe, maybe, but if you eat a pie made from another family it provides x amount of more food, or yum bonus, or something worthwhile. Loading carts with this pie and heading off to go trade with a nearby village for their family pies can provide people with the need to learn foreign languages or even interact. Maybe they didn't have pies, but I'm sure we'll come up with an in game way of solving how to suggest trading if they don't. This bonus might even be enough of an incentive for people to welcome foreigners into their town as the pies they make will provide a bonus. Spit balling here but yeah, we need trade on the rift.

Thaulos · 2019-09-27 21:18:21

If we has towns it could be cool if we had some sort of "unlocking tech" mechanism over time. With town being able to unlock different types of tech.

That said, our current tech is too much "all or nothing", I don't see any way of locking part of the tech tree besides oil, engines or oddities like radios or cars. Maybe pies? But what's the point? lol

Spoonwood · 2019-09-27 21:20:27

jasonrohrer wrote:

Well, like I said before, you can't have it both ways.
If new towns are starting up all the time, then what happens to the old towns? There are only so many people to go around, so old towns and families must die out to make room for new ones sprouting up in the wilderness. As you run out of nearby wilderness, you need to put these new towns farther and farther away.

You simply cannot have all these things exist simultaneously:
1. Permanence of families.
2. Permanent reachability of player-built areas.
3. Lots of variability in terms of which "tech era" you are born into in each life.
4. Towns close enough together to allow interaction.

The game has never had (1), but maybe that's possible if I keep working on BB distribution.
The game launched in Feb 2018 with (2) and (4), but not (3).
Then we had an Eve Walk to get (3) and (4), but we sacrificed (2).
Then we switched to an Eve Spiral, which made (2) better, kept (3), and sacrificed (4).
Then we switched to a resetting Eve Spriral with center cull, which sacrificed (2), kept (3), and allowed (4).

All along, players have MOSTLY complained about lack of (2).

The rift solves (2) and (4) handily, and recent BB distribution changes have brought us closes to (1) for the first time, but (3) is sacrificed.

Your emphasis isn't correct, because your emphasis suggests that (2), (3), and (4) can't coexist, when they have *already* coexisted (your statement seems technically correct, because of (1)).

(2), (3), and (4) DID exist in the legendary city of San-Cal, because it had a suburb where interaction between towns took place (at least there existed variability in the tech era if you got born into San-Cal's surburb). Also, low pop servers, such as the old server12 system with roads, did have (2), (3), and (4). I know I certain could reach my old towns while having variability in the tech era I got born into when people were making new towns (and not all of those got connected to the road network before it ceased to exist). (2) in generally can get made much easier by having people allowed to get reborn into the same spot, if say they choose to via a choice screen, if they live to 60 (hard to be a griefer and live to 60). An Eve Spiral allows for (3). (4) can get made easier I suppose by a resetting Eve spiral. But, it also could get made easier by a substantially easier system of road building, such as something like 24 flat rocks fitting into a cart, or something like dirt roads that can quickly get made to map areas. But, (2) would not be sacrificed since there's an exception to such a spiral by the rebirthing mechanic for people who live to 60. Or more reachable areas if players had a map system or a coordinate system as the Hetuw mod once allowed for.

Booklat1 · 2019-09-27 21:30:07

Thaulos wrote:

If we has towns it could be cool if we had some sort of "unlocking tech" mechanism over time. With town being able to unlock different types of tech.
That said, our current tech is too much "all or nothing", I don't see any way of locking part of the tech tree besides oil, engines or oddities like radios or cars. Maybe pies? But what's the point? lol

Access to tech isn't really the problem, pacing is. Jason has tools to design how long till we need to upgrade a well, how desperate we are when we get to oil, how fast oil is consumed after it's obtained. It's no easy work but it's doable. He has a single pathway to tweek parameters of, biochemists and industrial engineers do this with multiple pathways all the time, I have no doubt Jason is competent enough to figure out a way to slow techrush down.

Wells are a very good example, the more water they have the harder they are to empty/upgrade and also the less need to upgrade them fast. And since regen can also be greatly reduced we have a somewhat defined amount of time for these stages. Pressure to get oil can come later, and other challenges can be arranged for each techtree stage, like how producing lots of coal was at first a proper town job when pumps were introduced.

Thaulos · 2019-09-27 21:36:49

What if players only had to go eat every 10 minutes instead of constantly? Even with the same amount of hunger pips per second lost?

That should still keep the pressure of needing food but allow a buffer for other tasks. Hopefully something that could get us away from the "pie meta" and allow more interaction without having to always run towards food or carrying it on our backpacks which right now are mostly used as a replacement for the food buffer. Would also make kitchens more impactful. You would go for lunch like 5 or 6 times in a life if you had proper clothing.

How many times have you tried to talk to someone only for not even 10 seconds later one of you had to excuse themselves and go fetch food?

This would be specially helpful for newbies to not instantly die.

Last edited by Thaulos (2019-09-27 21:38:52)

The_Anabaptist · 2019-09-27 21:54:43

Ideas for slowing the tech tree down:

1) require clay bowls and tubs to be glazed before they can hold liquid items.
2) require all domestic animals to be fed periodically. use unique noises to indicate that they are hungry.
3) allow raw foodstuffs on the bare ground to rot or be eaten by rodents.
4) require a few round rocks for a campfire base. don't just allow kindling to be lit on the bare ground. (might need to up the number of round rocks lying around)
5) add beds and make us sleep occasionally or suffer a penalty.

I'm sure you all can think of more.

The_Anabaptist

CatX · 2019-09-27 21:55:46

I too think that the Rift takes something away from the game that existed before.

The best part about the Rift is that it intensifies the problems that were already present so that they are easier to find and deal with. For example, the problem with bears resetting in their caves producing too many of them was discovered because of the Rift.

I suspect that some of the ideas that have been implemented since the Rift was introduced would be beneficial in an open-ended world too.

It would have been great if we could find a way to have the best of both worlds, the pre-Rift sense of discovery and adventure along with the closer interactions of the Rift.

jasonrohrer wrote:

Well, like I said before, you can't have it both ways.
You simply cannot have all these things exist simultaneously:
1. Permanence of families.
2. Permanent reachability of player-built areas.
3. Lots of variability in terms of which "tech era" you are born into in each life.
4. Towns close enough together to allow interaction.

1. Do we need permanence of families? Why not marriages as a way of creating an evolving history of families? In an open-ended world, if marriage offered some benefit to the families, it wouldn't take long before an Eve-family sought out others.

2. and 4. Roads. More flat rocks + less griefing = more roads. Pre-Rift there was a time when people didn't consider it wise to connect their towns because of the vulnerability to war, but the peace mechanism just might have fixed that.

3. The open-ended worlds had this.

It seems to me that the two main problems with the pre-Rift worlds were:

- People wanting to play Eve sometimes caused a player drought, and old families died out. The Rift fixed this but only because it removes the ability to play Eve except in certain windows.

- There was never truly a lack of resources, since you could always get more by horse or car. But even in the Rift, the concept of lack seems a bit artificial since it is direct result of the Rift, and when it happens, there is no way to overcome it. When it happens, there's no reason in struggling to help your town survive, because you know the Apocalypse is imminent anyway. In an open-ended pre-Rift world with seasons, the goal itself could be struggling through the time of lack, and the sense of achievement could come from whether or not the family succeeded.

One Hour One Life Forums

#26 2019-09-27 17:57:01

Re: Is 63 hours long enough for you?

#27 2019-09-27 18:17:26

Re: Is 63 hours long enough for you?

#28 2019-09-27 18:30:09

Re: Is 63 hours long enough for you?

#29 2019-09-27 18:33:28

Re: Is 63 hours long enough for you?

#30 2019-09-27 19:04:25

Re: Is 63 hours long enough for you?

#31 2019-09-27 19:13:23

Re: Is 63 hours long enough for you?

#32 2019-09-27 19:34:41

Re: Is 63 hours long enough for you?

#33 2019-09-27 19:36:19

Re: Is 63 hours long enough for you?

#34 2019-09-27 19:40:28

Re: Is 63 hours long enough for you?

#35 2019-09-27 20:01:13

Re: Is 63 hours long enough for you?

#36 2019-09-27 20:07:37

Re: Is 63 hours long enough for you?

#37 2019-09-27 20:08:04

Re: Is 63 hours long enough for you?

#38 2019-09-27 20:17:10

Re: Is 63 hours long enough for you?

#39 2019-09-27 20:29:37

Re: Is 63 hours long enough for you?

#40 2019-09-27 20:30:43

Re: Is 63 hours long enough for you?

#41 2019-09-27 20:54:22

Re: Is 63 hours long enough for you?

#42 2019-09-27 20:59:02

Re: Is 63 hours long enough for you?

#43 2019-09-27 21:02:43

Re: Is 63 hours long enough for you?

#44 2019-09-27 21:11:07

Re: Is 63 hours long enough for you?

#45 2019-09-27 21:18:21

Re: Is 63 hours long enough for you?

#46 2019-09-27 21:20:27

Re: Is 63 hours long enough for you?

#47 2019-09-27 21:30:07

Re: Is 63 hours long enough for you?

#48 2019-09-27 21:36:49

Re: Is 63 hours long enough for you?

#49 2019-09-27 21:54:43

Re: Is 63 hours long enough for you?

#50 2019-09-27 21:55:46

Re: Is 63 hours long enough for you?

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