If genetic fitness actually matters, is life limit still necessary?

jasonrohrer · 2019-10-30 21:02:27

Note also that there's quite a bit of overlap in the lower bins, but that's okay.

46.5 will "slow down" the jumps by a factor of 4.6x, which means that even the biggest possible "surprise" (a 0-baby to a 60 player or a 60-baby to a 0 player) will result in the score changing by only 1.29 points. Before, the biggest surprise resulted in a score change of 6 points.

On the other hand, "grinding up" to a high score will take much longer. But that's okay, I think.

Anyway, I can flip this switch right now, setting K=46.5, without changing anything else.

StrongForce · 2019-10-30 21:05:26

What if the k value is your genetic score at the start of the life?

The better your genetic score the less impact a single baby has on it

jasonrohrer · 2019-10-30 21:18:26

Wow, StrongForce, that's a brilliant suggestion....

Obviously there would have to be a lower limit of 10 or whatever.

I'm feeling a little bit math-burnt right now, and it's past lunch time. Anyone else care to weigh in on whether this is sensible?

jcwilk · 2019-10-30 21:18:29

Dodge wrote:

Unless you lock them up in a prison and farm them for genetic score

Omg 1000 times yes, something like this should me the first step in bringing on the apocalypse xD

Last edited by jcwilk (2019-10-30 21:19:58)

fug · 2019-10-30 21:19:54

jcwilk wrote:

Dodge wrote:
Unless you lock them up in a prison and farm them for genetic score
Omg 1000 times yes, something like this should me the first step in bringing on the apocalypse ???

He's not joking. This is something you can actively do in game under current conditions with the only downside is you're likely to get cursed by farming your children for meme score.

jasonrohrer · 2019-10-30 21:24:07

Yes, this is intentionally in the game.

See The Act on Hulu, which is one of the strangest true stories from the past decade:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_5fqDZCjQo

This game is supposed to allow all aspects of the human condition to emerge. Given that it is A GAME and not REAL, there is no moral peril in allowing such things.

jcwilk · 2019-10-30 21:29:06

I mean, except they can just /die right? I must be missing something

pein · 2019-10-30 21:35:57

I never really ran out of lives, considering that you can live 60 minutes you always gain net 3 lives per hour
12 lives are plenty for even the newbies like 5-minute long life isn't really a pressure other than the end of the arc

spawning as eve can be an issue, as I said on another topic, you practically consider yourself more important than other 10-15 or more players who take your name and play for your family rather than starting their own, while they have not quit on you as you did on them, people like to play eve but they forgot how bad it was when you had to start over every damn life and do the same grind and still the families died

maybe a choice screen could be implemented so people can have some control over their next lives
not full control but maybe extra preferences would consume the life tokens

for example:
"spawn as female" for 2 life tokens
"spawn in chosen family" 6 tokens
"spawn with extra tool limit" 4 tokens
or some sort of spin the wheel mode where you bet some tokens to get some random bonus or choice
for example you can bet 3 tokens and you get "gender selection" or "family selection" or "location selection" (choice from 9 locations around the edges or middle)

Live to 55 to increase your token limits
Each specific boost could be used limited times

Maybe the refilled tokens could be "spent". Kinda useless now, I'm wasting them even if I'm playing. I start at 12, I gain 3 and I'm still alive so basically lost 2 tokens. Sure the goal is not to live many short lives, morel like preventing the abuse, but still, we could have some between life system where your choices matter.

For example, you could choose to play as a male and gain tokens, or choose other bad situations out of challenge or necessity. Borrow 100 tokens and play as Eve then your regenerated tokens would go to pay off the "debt".

I think that long-timers will always abuse the system a bit, but they kinda deserve some bonus for playing a lot of hours. And you can't do much to force people to play a life. They want to be female, they suicide until they are female. Now that indirectly makes everyone else a male.

jcwilk · 2019-10-30 21:36:49

jasonrohrer wrote:

Yes, this is intentionally in the game.
See The Act on Hulu, which is one of the strangest true stories from the past decade:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_5fqDZCjQo
This game is supposed to allow all aspects of the human condition to emerge. Given that it is A GAME and not REAL, there is no moral peril in allowing such things.

Hmm i seem to remember a certain reluctance in allowing men to participate in reproduction for ethical reasons despite it being a game ;P

jasonrohrer · 2019-10-30 21:45:31

I just ran the sim for 10,000 experiments with Strongforce's suggestion, having K be your current genetic score if K >= 10, and 10 otherwise.

The results are promising:

total average error: 16.593987

total overlap: 73.892109

The average error is slightly better than the one for fixed K = 46.5, but the overlap between score tiers is quite a bit worse. This means that a dynamic K-value does not differentiate players in different tiers very well, and the scores have more spread.

It is also, I imagine, a bit harder for players to reason about when they are looking at the numbers. "Last week, having my baby live to 60 brought in X points, but this week, it brings in much less..." That is already the case as your score goes up, but this is yet another complication on top of what's already there.

wondible · 2019-10-30 21:52:16

fug wrote:

He's not joking. This is something you can actively do in game under current conditions with the only downside is you're likely to get cursed by farming your children for meme score.

Perhaps people who curse you should count as 0s in your score?

Dodge · 2019-10-30 22:10:09

jcwilk wrote:

I mean, except they can just /die right? I must be missing something

Right /die must go, Jason instead of removing something that discourage players from dying why not remove something that enables them to die.

Babies being able to suicide is dumb anyway, arent you supposed to deal with the cards your dealt with?

The whole /die thing was added because babies where running away to reroll a life, how does that make sense?

Babies running????

You got baited i would bet about it, players that wanted to choose their life used the excuse of griefing to persuade you that being able to chose your life was the right choice. "If i'm forced to live this life i will grief" That sounds like blackmailling to me.

Curses exist to deal with griefers

The only valid reason would be because the current life you are about to live will be boring but that shouldn't be the case anymore right?

Are you planning to remove the ability to choose a life when there is a consistent variety and interesting dynamics between players?

Or will there always be the ability to choose but it will have a very high cost?

Keep in mind some group of players dont care at all about the score and would spam /die if the limit was removed.

I could even picture a /die bot on a secondary account that would do this all day, maybe even several accounts that could entirely ruin the game.

Imagine 20 bot accounts spamming /die all day long, yikes forever.

Keyin · 2019-10-30 22:42:46

How about incorporating r selection? It should be # of grandchildren who live to adulthood. Those who fail to reproduce are failures in the eyes of evolution, and those who produce infertile offspring are also failures!

Right now the game rewards those who are genetic failures(have no kids) and punish those who have many(gaaaaah, my 10 nieces/nephews and 3 great nieces/nephews who lived to 30 average tanked my score!)

StrongForce · 2019-10-30 22:59:00

If you take babies under 2 year the ability to walk
They can't run away so if it dies its the mothers fault.
This way you don't have to detect runner babies.

jasonrohrer · 2019-10-30 23:02:18

People can't control whether they have kids in this game, right?

So though having no kids and living until 60 will be the largest possible "safe" boost to your score, you can't pick that, right?

And FYI, fitness impacts are only logged if there are more than 15 players on the server where you're playing, so playing on an empty server is a non-strategy.

There is the whole "kill your mom" thing, but I could just make it so that your mom counts toward your score (I have thought about it, in real life, most people would go to great lengths to save their own mother).

The other exploit is "kill your older sibs" if you're a man, to eliminate nieces and nephews. But your younger sibs count for you if your a man or a woman, so you can't block all nieces and nephews.

Thus, kill your mom is the only fool-proof exploit that I know about.

StrongForce · 2019-10-30 23:17:00

15 friends I think that's doable

jasonrohrer · 2019-10-30 23:25:03

Oh, yeah, sure, if you want to go through the trouble of gathering 15 friends to play for hours and hours on an empty server to boost your scores, knock yourself out.

I'm currently patching the "kill your mother" exploit by making it so that Ma and GMa and GGMa count toward your score, if you are over 3 when they die. So you'd want to do everything in your power to save them and help them live to old age.

That was always in the original plan.... but it was removed for some reason that I can't remember. I think I didn't have to "you must be over 3" thing in place, and it really felt like your mother's death could be outside your control. Now that we wait until you are 3 before counting younger sibs and such, you definitely could help your mom survive.

jcwilk · 2019-10-31 00:03:23

jasonrohrer wrote:

I'm currently patching the "kill your mother" exploit by making it so that Ma and GMa and GGMa count toward your score, if you are over 3 when they die. So you'd want to do everything in your power to save them and help them live to old age.

I mean... What's a 3 year old going to do that's born into a starving village or nomads stuck in a wasteland? Waiting until a couple years after they can use basic tools to start blaming them for their parents death seem analogous to real life, right? Like i think no one would blame a 5 year old for their parents dying. Main age it needs to def be earlier than is when they can use a knife I guess

jcwilk · 2019-10-31 00:07:36

jasonrohrer wrote:

It is also, I imagine, a bit harder for players to reason about when they are looking at the numbers. "Last week, having my baby live to 60 brought in X points, but this week, it brings in much less..." That is already the case as your score goes up, but this is yet another complication on top of what's already there.

So explain it on the death screen. What all the factors were, how much they affected their score and why. Plus it'll shove their rating in their face and give them a goal to work towards. Maybe even have a full log of their rating history either in the main menu or as a tool on the site like the family tree inspectors

Coconut Fruit · 2019-10-31 00:22:16

To me it's actually annoying thing to care/look for anyone personally. I want to care for the town I live in, that means for everyone living there, by doing right things. I don't want to feel like I'm involved in anyone's death, even tho I do my best to keep the town in great state. That's annoying.

Why you want to push people to do better scores than 40 by rewarding them even more? Why genetics were implemented in the first place? To not leave your babies with no reason? If yes, then anyone with genetics higher than 40 should be considered as success, they don't leave their kids. Pushing it further is only annoying.

Kaveh · 2019-10-31 00:22:20

jcwilk wrote:

jasonrohrer wrote:
I'm currently patching the "kill your mother" exploit by making it so that Ma and GMa and GGMa count toward your score, if you are over 3 when they die. So you'd want to do everything in your power to save them and help them live to old age.
I mean... What's a 3 year old going to do that's born into a starving village or nomads stuck in a wasteland? Waiting until a couple years after they can use basic tools to start blaming them for their parents death seem analogous to real life, right? Like i think no one would blame a 5 year old for their parents dying. Main age it needs to def be earlier than is when they can use a knife I guess

Agreed. I often go looking for food immediately if I notice I'm in a (new) place where food is scarce. Getting a basket, sharp stone and a few wild carrots can definitely take more time than the <60 seconds between me setting off and turning 4, especially if the food sources close to camp are already depleted. No way for me to rescue me mum of starvation in that case.

Even in a more developed town, if my mom gets stabbed I may not be able to find meds immediately, just because I haven't had the opportunity to look around yet (ty all moms who purposely or accidentally show me the town so I know where to find things and what's needed).

Allowing 1-2 mins of free play before being 'guilty' would be coo.

StrongForce · 2019-10-31 01:14:03

I think the genetic system has great potential

The more tools get added the better you have to balance your decisions and coordinate

Also its the only thing you keep from one life to the other

jasonrohrer · 2019-10-31 04:44:50

Coconut Fruit, the point is that I want player behavior to directly mirror what's thematically appropriate. Not because of roleplaying, but because of realplaying. Behaving in a thematically appropriate way should be optimal.

This is the holy grail of artistic coherence in game design.

So I'm currently pretty unsatisfied by "GL BYE" at age 3. Yeah, the kid can feed themselves, but they're still pretty vulnerable and helpless. It is thematically off when this happens.

Likewise when an older child (even full grown) is in danger or wounded.

Real mothers (anyone have one?) care about and check on and downright pester their children until death do they part.

And real children also care about their mothers. If your mother, even in her later years, was in danger or wounded, you would rush to her aide.

The fact that players might react to this in-game with a shrug is thematically dissonant.

Now, there are probably many ways to make such behavior optimal, but I think that some kind of genetic component lands closer to the actual mechanisms at play in the real world. When faced with dropping one of two people off a cliff in order to free a hand to save the other, most people intuitively perform a genetic-potential calculus when making the decision. Violation of what is genetically optimal is shocking:

https://youtu.be/xqsDUwDwdUM?t=49

We've also discussed "seeding" your future spawn locations by tying you to the fate of your offspring (you can only spawn as their children, etc.), but this clashes with other thematic elements of the game (like getting born into a different situation every time). Some of those thematic elements have been hamstrung in recent days, but they will be coming back soon, I hope.

Coconut Fruit · 2019-10-31 05:13:08

jasonrohrer wrote:

So I'm currently pretty unsatisfied by "GL BYE" at age 3.

I for the other hand am totally fine with this. To me it's just a game, I don't need any realistic themes, I just want a good game. I know I'm probably in the minority in this case, so not gonna argue.

There would be "gl" without "bye" if we could communicate through whole life, even without being next to each other. To me it would be much better if we had "unralistic" communication system, but sadly I'm probably in the minority in this case too.

Kinrany · 2019-10-31 05:34:57

Evolutionary psychology would predict that real mothers care about their grandchildren more than they care about their own children, and that they don't really care about their children living to old age.

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#51 2019-10-30 21:02:27

Re: If genetic fitness actually matters, is life limit still necessary?

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