a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building
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So I realize that my motivations for playing this game may be different from other people's. I'm a professional sociologist, and I'm mostly interested to see what a massive social experiment on this scale looks like. I've been playing from day one with the lure of watching civilization develop, grow, and change. The more realistic the game is in that respect, the more I like it.
I would have preferred a (sped up) ice age to a sudden total apocalypse, because there have been no total apocalypses in human history to the best of my knowledge.
The way you keep the game interesting and challenging is by constantly giving people new things to do. The game had brought in sheep and horses, which was awesome, but I never once lived in a village that really used them well, and I play almost every day. They were too inaccessible.
Moreover, once people have their basic needs met, they start creating art and culture. The game isn't currently set up to make that easy. Give me a way to build a religion and a cult. Give me a way to design a government. Theoretically, I think we could dye clothes now. Again, I never once have seen a blue sock or hat anywhere, even though I think we could make them.
If you want to keep the game interesting, it has to be possible to access new challenges and updates to the game. Right now, it's not. Playing wipe out on existing towns isn't going to help that either. I'm not sure what the best way to help that is, but I would like to ride a horse in this game one of these days. And paint the walls of my village. I haven't gotten to do either of those things (actually, I've never built a wall because I don't know how to make stakes). Every time when I play, my goal is to do at least one thing in it that I've never done before, and to try to make sure the kids are well provided for when I die. More than half the time I fail. I consider that a pretty hard game, lol.
The game isn't interesting to me as a game about survival. It's a game about civilization.
Oh, and if you really want to mess with people on the survival front, develop a code for contagious illness. That will really mess with things because statistically, people were much more likely to get plagues when they lived in cities together than in the wild.
Last edited by Jfenne (2018-04-08 14:39:06)
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Sounds like right now Jason is an old testament God. If the concern is complacency maybe it'd be worth researching the problems a post scarcity society would encounter. Though it'd probably be difficult to represent in a game like this.
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First, I wanted to say I love this game. I've enjoyed my time and playthroughs on it, and I think it was absolutely worth both the money I paid for it and the time I spent playing it. It is wonderful to be part of such an ambitious and experimental game. Thanks a ton for making it! I hope what follows is constructive criticisms and that none of it will be construed negatively.
The reason I personally played the game, and my most enjoyable moments, were when the constraints of the game naturally induced players to construct narratives together. This might be a little long-winded, but I wanted to describe a life I have lived in your game.
I was born a boy to a single mother traversing the wild by herself. She was near starving. We ran through the ruins of a village, but there was no food there so she could not stop. Eventually we found a few modest berry farms and started building a small farm there. "Mom. I want to go back to the place with adobe walls." "No, we survive. We farm, and we live here." My little sister was born, and she, too, joined us in building our modest little farm. We didn't necessarily thrive, but we did get by.
One day, our camp was overtaken by bears, killing my mother instantly. I grabbed a small basket of carrots, my sister grabbed her newborn child, and we ran off. I told my sister about "the place with adobe walls" and she asked me where it was. I said I didn't know and asked her if she wanted to try and find it. We ventured NE for what seemed like too long, and, in another tragic moment, she lost her child to another bear. At this point, I felt too ashamed to admit I was lost, so I said: "Just a little further." We got separated as we were exploring, and I couldn't find her, or even her body.
There didn't seem to be any meaning in crafting something of my own life, as I was a lone male unable to produce a legacy. I put my basket down and wailed text to no one until I starved to death in the grave of my choosing.
This anecdote was meant to emphasize the fact: I love this game because it is a storybuilding game that was not explicitly a storybuilding game. For me, the game was always a push-pull between the fact that living in a civilization was a way to live more comfortably, but living a meaningful life might mean grabbing a basket of carrots and exploring the unknown.
The other reason to play this game is to see things I haven't seen before. The unknown is a very strong pull; I want to climb the tech tree. I think this is a common reason people were drawn into this game; in particular, the min-maxers that showed up and wanted to learn every new system and the most efficient way to use it. They liked finding new content and engineering the best way to utilize it.
Both of these internal drives for gamers basically rely on new content to keep interest. In my opinion, it was optimistic to expect gamers to be actively engaged for two years. I think a natural expectation of the majority of your more engaged players is to log on once a week to "see what's new". Probably for a few hours or so. It's unlikely there will be a significant number of players constantly playing the game and keeping the world alive.
To me, modifying the survival mechanic doesn't build on either of these two drives.
From the narrative-seeking perspective, changing the survival mechanic can mean I die for different reasons, but not in a way that significantly adds to my stories. It's not how I die, but who I die with. And, in particular, for me, there is nothing aesthetically added to my narrative if the peculiarities of how carrots and soil function change some minor details in how I die.
From a new-stuff-seeking perspective, changing the survival mechanic only makes it harder to find the next new thing at the top of the tech tree, and, since some of the game feels a bit grindy already, only pushes me away from the game. It makes the same prize cost more time investment, and requiring too much time investment to see not enough content is arguably part of why my attention has atrophied.
In my opinion, the best strategy is to release content in big batches, even if this means the updates are more sparse. Again, I think it won't be possible to keep players active for sustained period of times, but perhaps OHOL can be characterized by 10 or so big events, where a giant patch with tons of new content was added, a lot of the players logged on again, rebuilt their civilizations from carrots and dirt, to find out what's changed in the world. We get lively worlds for a little bit of time after each big content drop, and accept that attention will die down in the moments in between.
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Hi. I registered on the forums just to make this post. There seems to be a lot of long thought out posts here and I hope that Jason has the chance to read all of them, including this one. As I am typing it to him basically.
I have been playing for a while now and have been intrigued by the game, which is why I purchased it. It is a very interesting concept and I like to imagine, from week to week, what new things will be implemented when it’s update time.
This last apocalypse update (unfortunately I wasn’t playing when it happened to experience it) seems to be causing a rift / divide in your player base. Not to say, there wasn’t already one before the update since as it seems there are more than a few of the 14,000 people who have stopped logging in, but I may just be speculating on that. Who is to say they will even come back though, and by the time you hit the apex of what you want the game to be, will they even be interested in the game anymore by the time the frequently mentioned 2 year update cycle completes?
It would seem a lot of the people are disappointed in the monotony of the beginning grind. Which is as they describe. Spawn as Eve, run around for a decent spot, try and start a family. Maybe your kids work out, maybe some die, maybe they all die and that’s it...
But… what if they survived?
That’s the question I always ask myself when I’m getting close to dying of old age. Will they work out? How will they live and die? Will they struggle and eventually prosper? Or make a stupid mistake which dooms the whole tiny group of family we struggled to feed and protect?
Currently how it is, this doesn’t even matter. As if you are lucky enough and possess the tenacity to push forward and survive until old age by developing a tiny tiny campsite, cause that’s what it is(a campsite) at these early repeating stages, it doesn’t feel like it matters. I establish something, anything, teach my children, help my grandchildren, then die, spawn, what is it 7000 tiles out(?), and start the process all over again.
I honestly think that maybe a good thing to "try out" would be to implement a very simple solution to this: allow for another spawn option; spawn to lineage. This would be in addition to have the choice of the ‘get born’ option. But only if there are surviving members of your family.
I’m not sure how it could be implemented, but that’s why it’s just an idea. Maybe choosing this option would cause a little bit of a wait to mash up with the ready for baby pregnancy cooldown, but I think it would be worth it to be reincarnated with my family. Maybe see my granddaughter all grown up, knowing I was a good mother and provider. This would help me feel that sense of belonging and accomplishment that I feel a lot of people also desire. Granted, the apocalypse trigger can still be in place so that would continue to be an interesting factor as well.
This may or may not be something that will contribute to what your vision for the game is. But I personally think it will help combat the wave of discord and dissenting opinions that nothing matters. Because it really is just a 1 hour reset now. Some people are fine with that, others, as you can tell, aren’t so ok with this. Me personally, I don’t mind the random starting over after getting to the point where we are actually surviving because this helps me refine the fundamentals of surviving in your game and learn new things, mostly on my own unless a kid of mine knows how(this is pretty weird though to have kids much smarter than you when they haven’t even reached child rearing age, like they come out of me knowing how to forge without ever doing it as if they had inherent generational intelligence programmed into them genetically somehow).
Granted, when born to a sprawling civilization you had the option of learning higher up techs if someone took the time to teach or you just watched. I loved telling my new babies, when they asked for a job or what to do, that they could be anything they wanted to be. Since all the options were there, in the event you spawned somewhere established. Maybe they want to be a doombringer and work toward another apocalypse. Maybe they wanted to start a Templar group to protect against the apocalypse. Maybe they just wanted to mash up carrots and rabbit to help make pies.
In the end, we are working toward the same goal; to establish something and survive.
I don’t really know how to end this, so if anyone read it all… thanks for taking the time. I’ll continue playing and watching what comes of this game. I’m interested to see what happens next.
See you all out there.
Last edited by FryinHard (2018-04-08 16:37:48)
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Spawning to lineage should be a thing if you die of old age.
Anyway, I love the new spawn mechanics because it was too easy before. However, the early game does get a bit too repetitive, and lineage mortality is too high. I think both these issues could be helped with some more early game foods. Preferably something that takes a little work so it'll stay conserved for times of famine. Maybe wild tubers that respawn in the same tile at around the pace of cacti, but need a sharp stone to harvest so people won't bother with them if there's other food. Or frogs in swamps that you need to catch, clean with a flint chip, skewer and roast. Basically stuff for any smart kids to make it through the crisis if newbies mess up farming.
Last edited by Potjeh (2018-04-08 17:24:04)
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I didn't stop playing because it "Wasn't hard enough" I stopped playing because advancement hits a standstill and it just becomes a grind of eating and farming without civilization advancing because there's nothing to advance to.
Like the game is just farming and baking simulator at this point.
The game has focused too much on making it harder to feed yourself instead of giving people a way to advance civilization into the fuiture. AkA what i thought this game was suppose to be about when i bought it. Everyone ends of getting scattered in small tribes and people can't come together to form a town or city because the current mechanics of the game want everyone to be spread out and discourage large settlements.
So like. Stop focusing on making it a hunger survival game and focus on the advancement of civilization. That's my 2 Cents.
Last edited by Mister Maow (2018-04-08 19:30:18)
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Keep working on the game, I love every single update... and I must say you update the game quite often!
Now that the reset happend it more fun, a lot more fun... I like when there is challenge... before I always was getting born in a developed civilization with someone who immediately gave me clothes, bag and food... that wasn't fun. I think that was the reason why so many babies committed suicide.
Keep the good work and know that there is people that really love the game!
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I love this game so much. I will keep logging in and playing no matter what. Explore away!
Thank you for putting so much time into it, and thank you to your family as well. You must have a very cool partner.
Keep building!!
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I think the vast majority of issues are just because of the low amount of up front content. I suspect as much more content comes out, it is going to make things a lot better. At the moment, you basically end up in one of three states. An eve with nothing. A small settlement with all the basics. And a city with walls and fences and basically everything that exists.
Now if we had much more stuff and more advanced tech, you might be in one of say ten different states. At that point you might occasionally be an Eve surviving off berries and occasionally be driving around in a car, or something in between. In that case you are hoping back and forth and mixing things up. Which keeps things fresh and interesting.
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Just wanted to chime in that I liked what the apocalypse did with creating a fresh start. I didn't like it as it was (too many too quick and no warning it was coming) but I appreciate you trying new things. I've really enjoyed making a village from scratch these last few days - before I did exactly what you said in your update, just ran until I hit an already established (or abandoned) village, I would have never started from scratch then. I like the idea of the new change with spawning far away. You'll always get people that complain but at the end of the day it's YOUR game so you need to try these things. Really appreciate your hard work.
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Reading over the messages, I think there are basically three groups of people who are attracted to this game (not necessarily mutually exclusive groups: 1. People who enjoy a survival/legacy challenge 2. People who are basically playing ancient sim, and 3. People who are into civilization building. The challenge for the creator of this game (who really weirdly does get to play god a bit) is to try to appeal to all those groups simultaneously. Good luck...
Also, another big thought I've had about introducing real world challenges is weather. Historically, weather is a major factor in the creation of religion (seriously), and would add all sorts of crazy challenge factors to the game.
Which, by the way, also allows you to regularly introduce mini-apocalypses in the form of hurricanes, floods, tornados, etc. Then you don't have so much stuff that just never goes away.
****
Last big thought: as a game, this one is pretty weird since the basic win condition is you die (of old age)... Or is it? I think for a lot of us at this point, it's dying of old age knowing that our legacy is provided for. And I can tell you I take the latter condition seriously--I rarely die at 60 because I have to take too much food from the kids when I'm that old unless I'm in a very secure village. I'd rather starve at 57 or 58 while saying good bye. Ditto when I'm a playing a man--can't take food from the kids because I can't have any. The game is called One Hour One Life, but I think a lot of us play it as Legacy.
All of which is to say... Please be careful, O Creator, in how you mess with our legacies.
Also, when our moms are too ignorant to give themselves last names, can the rest of us please do it lol?
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Anyway, I like the far spawn mechanic, but it's largely circumvented by coordinate tracking. Could we have obfuscated coordinates, please?
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Heya!
Thanks again for an awesome experience. Just know that once a player has gotten such a huge amount of time in a game, they have assuredly recieved the value of purchasing your game. I have already reached that point myself, and am excited to continue to support this game through the community and enjoy the updates.
With that said, I do understand the frustration people feel when they put time in something they thought would be permanent, and then it turned out not being the case. I too lost some sense of ‘Gilgamesh’ purpose with this update placing eves more wild. You lost a bit of the sense there is a metagame to work on with civilizations. Perhaps that metagame was never intended, but I wholeheartedly loved making roads and markers that felt like they always served purpose beyond my short life. The wilding of eves has brought more existential dread to my actions, whether or not they will ever help anyone if I stray far from base.
The Apocolypse brought a sense that there is a doom switch to try to reach or try to guard, which was neat, and I expect that to be a taste for new roles and experiences to come. The wilding of eves did make me more aware of the precise tech leap from no water to water via bowl or pouch, and how important that first rabbit bone is—and humorously easy to replicate when you have it!
My assessment of the game currently is, firstly, it lost metagame a great deal (civ and road legacy), becoming less appealing to vets and mixed bag for newbies (less babies accepted, less time to learn, more beginning purpose, more early responsibility). Second, more appealing to explorers (hopefully ingame tools to come to relocate ruins without ‘cheating’ for coordinates). Third, less incentive to grief (yes family lines more vulnerable, but way less bored griefing and ability to raze lands). And fourth, a much needed refresh of the environment, along with expectations on how to possibly communicate or run across strangers. Also, it’s become painfully more apparant with more time pressure felt that communication is really bottle-necked between players not being near each other, a kid vet trying to advise an adult, trying to rapidly show a new player the ropes as another new player’s small mishap wipes your lineage, and mothers not naming griefers or inability to mouse over a griefer running about to ID them and relay info to town. I remember seeing that phonograph in the trailer, and I really reallllllyyy want communication tools.
I look forward to navigation tools bringing a new metagame of town trading via horsecart. I saw that inkling before the wilding of eves, but it is currently beyond the development of 90% or so of my plays now.
Thanks for reading, and I hope the game has much growth in community to come!
She was born of nothing but the sands, a desolate screen of yellow.
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Jason,
I also want to say thank you for all the hard work!!!!!
I think the game is great and while content is still low I greatly enjoy trying to build a village up from scratch and with the new items being added weekly, it makes it more interesting if the village dies off and you have to start over. I also really enjoyed the apocalypse and hope there will be a way to accomplish this in the future, either automatically or by player choice. Perhaps this could be done with a natural disaster or world event such as the ice age or a world flood. For now, starting in the wilderness will work. Thanks again for all your hard work and just keep working on your vision. The game is amazing and your dedication is awesome! The people who complain about the changes you make are generally the griefers. Let them go back to Call of Duty, we will prosper without them!
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It's not that you are lazy or anything. I feel you sent a game with potential to an early grave by releasing the game without more than half the content.
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Remember: this is a game that is being actively developed. By one person. Working alone. Doing everything. 12-16 hour days. It's Saturday. My family needs me. But here I am.
Your family must take precedence, anyone that disagrees can *expletive deleted*.
I must have the freedom to try things, dangerous things, game-breaking things, in my endless quest to make the game better and more interesting.
I would truly hope that nobody would disagree with this, but would it be possible to have a chat before the game-breakers to weigh pros/cons and think of other potential options?
In the mean time, 14,000 people own the game. They are not playing. For a reason.
And it has nothing to do with the apocalypse.
This might be partially correct. I cannot speak for everyone, but I myself have not been playing specifically due to the constraints of work. (See, some of us do understand what it means for you to be pulled from family. And I am sorry to have contributed to this.)
When I found out about apocalypse though, that literally became the one cause behind the multitude of reasons that made me decide that I didn't want to play anymore.
Griefers are a symptom, not a cause. If you are struggling to survive, you have no time for griefing.
Griefers will always have time to grief. What's a few minutes of downtime as a baby between doing what you are enjoying. A bathroom break... So they will die because they aren't focused on survival. That isn't the point. Griefers play just to annoy, and sometimes infuriate, people. That is it. They don't care about the mechanics of the game. They don't care about what others think the point of the game is. They care to grief, and will play the game long enough to be able to ruin someone elses. Struggling to survive? Make sure someone else is too. They will always have time for griefing.
Thus, the game sorely needed a hard reset. I decided it would be more interesting to put that power into your hands and see what you did with it. I also wanted to create a shared collective event.
Why not host a server(s)wide event then? Announce that due to the nature of the game, a wipe would have to occur. Think up the rules for a game (or ask the forum to do so) and have a social event out of it. I would much rather feel like my voice is heard than to one day be told "Random anybodies can wipe the server now. Have fun wasting each others time."
And the result, for the time being, is a game that is much more interesting again.
Building a village from scratch is the interesting part, and making a contribution that really matters is the most meaningful way to leave a legacy. Making another bearskin rug in a village that already has 20 rugs, because there's nothing else to do, is far less interesting.
I'm sorry, but just because you find something interesting or disinteresting that does not mean that everyone agrees. The social experience is what I found interesting. We had built the city, now to maintain it. How long until people get complacent? And to find out that there are no more seeds? How will society change when food isn't around anymore? Instead we get wave after wave of Whiteouts followed by a group of people too busy to even talk. Although I thoroughly enjoy the survival aspects, the experience I found most interesting was going to be even harder to find.
In the place of the apocalypse, I have added a new placement algorithm for Eves that will have a similar periodic cleansing effect. Not server-wide, but at the lineage level. Your chance to continue living and working in a given village will end when the lineage in that village dies out. No more wandering back later and starting over in the same spot with everything already done/built for you. Each new line will start in the wilderness.
That said, pilgrimages to the old village locations are still possible, but they will require a concerted group effort to pull off, Oregon-Trail style.
This actually excites me quite a bit.
If you experienced this today, I'm sorry about that. I've fixed it now, but the source of the problem was surprising.
I'm sorry that you felt the need to apologize for this. Things break, especially after a change is implemented (at the request of the community no less). Thank you for fixing it. The explanation was good enough for me, no apology needed.
The long-term solution is to re-write the database from scratch as a stack, so that the most recently-accessed elements are the fastest to access, while the forgotten parts of the map slide to the ends of the chain. I'll be doing that work next week.
Wow dude. I wish I were more deeply involved with coding. I do have a novice understanding though, and that just seems rough. If I can offer any assistance, don't hesitate to let me know.
So I hope you'll stick with me as I continue working to improve the game.
It's not over yet. We have years to go, together.
Jason
So long as the everyman isn't in control of the end of the world, I'm sticking around. These things should really be discussed by the community as a whole. That's just my opinion though.
Holy wall of text Batman! Sorry for that guys.
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I'm also an inactive player with about 100 hours of playtime. The game did get much easier (really it's been always a matter of finding enough Milkweed to make clothes and waterskins, you just need a farm and then it's ez mode). BUT still it was fun for me to try and build roads, create new settlements and do some role playing. I think in fact the most boring part of the game is starting from scratch. Wandering around the map until you either starve to death or be lucky and find a suitable spot.
Nonetheless I'm 100% sure if I boot the game righ now I'll have tons of fun either way and probably spend the day playing but I doubt something significant/exciting/new will happen. And that's why I stopped playing! I'm just waiting until more interesting content is added and you bet I'll be there living another hundred lives.
I have trust on Jason, love all his games (Sleep is Death might be the most incredible game experience I ever had, and OHOL has provided me with a few of experiences alike), and I definitely know gamedev takes its time. It's just a matter of waiting until the game is appealing to me again.
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I have an idea for how the game could be fun after villages become advanced. Fountain of youth. If I’m a man in an established village I usually try to branch out and go on a walkabout to find new places. The world is so big that I often die before meeting anyone and there is never enough time to bring people together via roads etc. I thought the horse update would help this and maybe it has, but I have not been born in an advance village since horses became major. What if there was something out there that gave life instead of death? A fountain of youth that if you drink from it you can live to the age of 100 or so as long as you have food etc. It would be a quest you could go on for fun. Once so many people have drunk from it, it could run dry and a new one spring up somewhere else. Also, it would make life harder in villages because people would leave in order to get there making it a challenge to keep children who are willing to contribute. And here is another idea, what if you could live longer if you only ate wild burdock and onions and berries for your whole life. You would have to live in the wild, but you go on living long enough to establish camps all around. This would get people out there because it would be more appealing to rough it.
I love all of my children. You are wanted and loved.
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I was a once a week player looking to see what updates were happening and it was really enjoyable but then I realized that what I was being a drain on society and not learning anything. The best part of the game is learning new things. Once I was a carrot farmer for my whole life and I felt happy to have helped the village, but then I died feeling empty. I would like to have had a quest. I would like to have taken a cart of food on a journey to find something that would be a boon for my city. In another post I mentioned a fountain of youth that could allow you to live to 100. I could live long enough to make it home to tell other people where to find it. Future generations could build a road to it. In a way this would be a metaphor for advancement in medicine. Currently, old age is the only disease. Maybe building a fountain of youth could be a technology, but you would need to have a special rare item. The fountains could be temporary so that people would still have a reason to leave village life.
I love all of my children. You are wanted and loved.
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jasonrohrer wrote:My family needs me.
Sounds like you're getting a taste of your own medicine, huh? As the primordial Eve, you just birthed 14,000 new babies, and now they're all 'F'-ing you. XD
THIS
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