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#1 2019-12-14 16:23:27

Bowser
Member
Registered: 2019-11-30
Posts: 55

So is it actually possible for a town to progress into higher tech?

As far as I can tell, it's not possible for a town to progress into any kind of technology that requires engines or kerosene.

1. You need a bell town if you want to get enough families together to have a shot at making oil (need rubber plus gingers for oil itself).
2. As soon as you make a bell town, people get lazy and start trolling instead of doing anything useful.  Usually just random murder and griefing. 
3. Anyone who does try to help gets ignored and due to tool slots, it's very difficult to build things up yourself... let alone in a single lifetime.  And you'd spend a lifetime doing all this work for a town that would squander the resources and waste them as soon as they got them...

What's the solution here?  You need a bell town to get enough families to trade, but getting a bell town means everyone is going to go full stupid and start trolling instead of anything remotely useful.  Due to tool slot limitations we can't even just do this stuff on our own, if we had time and resources (that weren't being wasted) to begin with.

I have yet to see a single car or engine get used ever, let alone a plane, since I've started playing about two weeks ago.  Is it just no longer possible to reach higher tech because people become too stupid to do it because the town gives them basic resources?

Let alone that the second that anyone actually managed to get this stuff going, a griefer or idiot would take the cars/planes into the wild and lose them, intentionally or accidentally, doesn't matter.

Are we trapped in low-tech nightmare now, where we can't even fix our wells for water?  What's the solution?  Because I don't see one...

Last edited by Bowser (2019-12-14 16:24:34)

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#2 2019-12-14 17:13:31

DestinyCall
Member
Registered: 2018-12-08
Posts: 4,563

Re: So is it actually possible for a town to progress into higher tech?

Bowser wrote:

I have yet to see a single car or engine get used ever, let alone a plane, since I've started playing about two weeks ago.  Is it just no longer possible to reach higher tech because people become too stupid to do it because the town gives them basic resources?

Don't feel bad.  I've been playing since before cars and planes were added to the game.   I've only seen a functioning car a handful of times.   I've driven a car three times.   One of those cars was found out in the wilds, hidden behind a tree in the middle of a dense jungle.  I've NEVER seen anyone fly a plane or had the opportunity to pilot one myself.   I've only occasionally seen evidence of someone working on constructing a plane and I suspect at least half the time it was because someone made the plane parts by accident.

Planes are almost as dead as radios. 

....

If you really want to see the top of the tech tree, your best bet is joining a low population server and building everything by yourself.    Most large towns get griefed out of existence long before they reach a point where they can support automobile and airplane manufacturing.    As the saying goes - Idle hands are the devil's playthings.

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#3 2019-12-14 17:30:29

Wuatduhf
Member
Registered: 2018-11-30
Posts: 406

Re: So is it actually possible for a town to progress into higher tech?

It's not even that this is a recent phenomenon, but just how the system has always been. Kerosene in general has been harder to 'lift' at times when other towns are very close by, but even that can be griefed.

At some point or another, every player thinks "I am the best, clearly I should use this Car/Airplane/Kerosene, and take it with me to start a new town, with Blackjack, and Hookers!" Shortly afterward they end up dying or sending it somewhere that it's never used in their lifetime, or held by another group of players that have 0 use of the items they brought.

So many resources are wasted and squandered every generation, not just because a griefer decides "Hey, I'm going to put all this good stuff, somewhere completely different," but also because regular players that don't even know how to build an engine decide "Hey, why should this town get these resources when I can clearly use them much better and build my own town?" and then proceed to die to a wolf. The moment their ambitions fly off into the ether, the resources they had are effectively snuffed out.

You are correct to say that we are trapped in a 'low-tech nightmare', but this is nothing new. The best way I can suggest you look at the civilizations is to see them as 'Tiers' in the tech progression.




Tier 1 are the barebones, basic villages that barely got to Deep Well, or just slightly past it. A lot of them die out before even reaching this state, and I consider those Tier 0.


Tier 2 are fledgling towns that managed to gain rubber and/or have horsecarts to enhance resource-gathering. They have deep well, but are quickly running out and have to transition to Newcomen.


Tier 3 are proper towns that have acquired a few dozen rubber tires, and have several horsecarts on standby within a 60-minute window. They have the standard Newcomen Well, along with a Freestanding newcomen, and at least one Cistern to store water. They have a bakery and/or nursery building that give the indoors bonus for idle chatter.

A long road usually connects the town to a neighboring town or resource depot. They have a belltower base starting up or in-development, in order to secure their place on the map. They might have a secondary well setup to gather water.



Tier 4 are Cities that have reached the Diesel Well and struck oil. They have several cisterns to take on water from the well's Kerosene operation. They have plenty of horse-carts on standby, or otherwise carts that will eventually be attached to horses. The amount of water has aided the production of Undyed clothing to permanently reduce food consumption per individual, and a House is designated for unused clothing. The bakery is well-stocked with food, Yum chain isn't a challenge, and there is even wine being produced.


Tier 5 are Megacities that have exhausted several Oil Pumpjacks, and have performed several runs of the Diesel Well. Several buildings that give the insulated bonus exist around the town's farms. The town has maybe had 1 or 2 Cars, or maybe even an airplane, but has almost assuredly lost them to griefers/idiots. They have had Brown families build Rubber tree farms in the nearby Jungle biomes, and have excessive buckets on standby. Numerous roads go in various directions from town towards important resources, or other neighboring towns, to sustain the population between generations.


Tier 6 is the Supercity with an over-abundance in centralized resources. They have constructed multiple cars and upgraded them to planes. There are numerous houses with specific purposes. The town has at least one guard and one doctor each generational cycle. There are tons of emergency medical pads, tons of Tire-Horsecarts, and the doctors/guards make sure to keep the general populace not dead and not grief'd.

The airplanes sustain landing pads for far-away oil wells, or potentially even towns, to ensure the "home city" never runs out of Kerosene. This is essentially the Communist Utopia because it can almost never be reached.


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#4 2019-12-14 17:45:28

Bowser
Member
Registered: 2019-11-30
Posts: 55

Re: So is it actually possible for a town to progress into higher tech?

Yeah I've never seen anything beyond tier 3.  By the time we get enough families to build anything, people start killing eachother and then the family we need to get the resources dies and we're back to square one.  Resources start getting low and people begrudgingly start working so they don't starve... usually involving long trips to wells far away.  Eventually, we find that family we need again and for a brief time things are well.  Then the cycle repeats.  I'm sure it's not just because of the family specialty update, but it is a major barrier moving forward.

While I do not see guards, well... ever, I do see doctors all the time.  If I don't see one, I make an effort to be that doctor.  The problem is as soon as people are comfortable all they do is start griefing eachother and any kind of resource we can use to get ahead goes unused.  And being a doctor that is healing morons killing each other and wasting pads that literally no one is making an effort to replace is just a massive waste of time.

Maybe the solution is to start killing people who are not working.  Sounds harsh, but something has to give... although I suspect it would just play into more random griefing and killing and accomplish nothing in the end, so it wouldn't necessarily be worth it.

Last edited by Bowser (2019-12-14 17:47:26)

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#5 2019-12-14 18:10:04

Kinrany
Member
Registered: 2018-01-22
Posts: 712

Re: So is it actually possible for a town to progress into higher tech?

I keep thinking that this is a problem of high-tech things being significantly rarer than low-tech things.

That's not the case IRL. Computers are one of our most significant achievements, but electronic components are dirt cheap. The easier it is to use and support an invention, the greater the invention. Most unique technological marvels are unique because they're useless, except as scientific experiments.

The limiting factor is usually technology, not materials. We have a whole planet worth of materials, we just don't know how to use them effectively.

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#6 2019-12-14 18:25:48

Kinrany
Member
Registered: 2018-01-22
Posts: 712

Re: So is it actually possible for a town to progress into higher tech?

Bowser wrote:

While I do not see guards, well... ever, I do see doctors all the time.  If I don't see one, I make an effort to be that doctor.  The problem is as soon as people are comfortable all they do is start griefing eachother and any kind of resource we can use to get ahead goes unused.  And being a doctor that is healing morons killing each other and wasting pads that literally no one is making an effort to replace is just a massive waste of time.

Maybe the solution is to start killing people who are not working.  Sounds harsh, but something has to give... although I suspect it would just play into more random griefing and killing and accomplish nothing in the end, so it wouldn't necessarily be worth it.

It seems the solution is to continuously kill off people who stir trouble. If people are comfortable, there are enough resources to keep a few guards.

This is probably harder than it sounds, because people who don't like this boredom will keep coming back.

But I'm assuming it's also too hard to organize. Why? Someone would say that we're missing some kind of social technology.

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#7 2019-12-14 18:27:04

DarkDrak
Member
Registered: 2019-06-05
Posts: 122

Re: So is it actually possible for a town to progress into higher tech?

Uhm. I disagree with the first part. Since the speciality upgrade we had like...what? 7? towns reach diesel era and exhaust several tarry spots.

I mean, yeah, in those towns people jsut have nothing better to do than to fabricate drama... but that's how life works in the endgame: a few people who know what to do work their asses off just so the majority can live in luxury.

I sorta agree with the lowtetch-nightmare part. Rushing a belltower for your town to stand a chance to reach engine kinda feels unnatural.

As about the cars and planes, they have seldom ever been used even before this upgrade. Their main problem is that they're like 90% useless. A horsecart with ruber tires is 50% more efficient than a car, but is laughably easier to make AND to sustain. As for the plane, there's really no way to fly it anywhere that isnt also reachable by a horse from the same town (i mean, who's ever gonna build a landing strip for you?). And, you said it, it takes a split second for them to get lost forever.


Youtube guide to Oil and Kerosene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKSZHPiUK6A
Youtube guide to Diesel Engine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sMX_GlwgbA&t=5s

World is not black and white

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#8 2019-12-14 18:32:31

Wuatduhf
Member
Registered: 2018-11-30
Posts: 406

Re: So is it actually possible for a town to progress into higher tech?

The best you can do in those circumstances when you are seeing people stabbing each other is to treat it using Triage:

  • Is is crystal-clear to you the victim is innocent?

  • Is it crystal-clear to you the offender is murdering for a dumb/griefing reason?

  • Has the victim been productive, and not a drain on the rest of the village?

  • Is the victim's death something that will trigger others to stop working and start getting into the conflict?

If at any point you answer "Yes" to any of these questions, heal the person, check that they don't do anything dumb, and move along. After all, if you stand by looking idle, it'll encourage other productive players to gawk just to figure out what happened.

While in theory a good doctor practices the rule of "First do no harm", in practice a good OHOL doctor must make a judgement call on expending a medical pad to heal the victim. Sometimes, the correct answer is to refuse treatment to the victim. The ramifications will either get the town back to productivity or perpetuate the time-waste.

Holding back on an unclear situation will "feel" bad, but getting involved in a quagmire with no clear answer just drains even more time on everyone else. Keep in mind that no intelligent player will be stabbed or shot by an arrow from a single griefer, they have ample time to run away. If someone is stabbed or shot, they either performed terrible movement, or are intentionally getting stabbed to create drama.


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#9 2019-12-14 18:36:01

Wuatduhf
Member
Registered: 2018-11-30
Posts: 406

Re: So is it actually possible for a town to progress into higher tech?

Kinrany wrote:
Bowser wrote:

While I do not see guards, well... ever, I do see doctors all the time.  If I don't see one, I make an effort to be that doctor.  The problem is as soon as people are comfortable all they do is start griefing eachother and any kind of resource we can use to get ahead goes unused.  And being a doctor that is healing morons killing each other and wasting pads that literally no one is making an effort to replace is just a massive waste of time.

Maybe the solution is to start killing people who are not working.  Sounds harsh, but something has to give... although I suspect it would just play into more random griefing and killing and accomplish nothing in the end, so it wouldn't necessarily be worth it.

It seems the solution is to continuously kill off people who stir trouble. If people are comfortable, there are enough resources to keep a few guards.

This is probably harder than it sounds, because people who don't like this boredom will keep coming back.

But I'm assuming it's also too hard to organize. Why? Someone would say that we're missing some kind of social technology.

It's very possible that, come a week or two from now, we have the hierarchy system used for the purposes of organizing a "town guard". The leader is simply whoever's the oldest of the group and can organize the rest.


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#10 2019-12-14 18:44:50

Gogo
Banned
Registered: 2019-10-11
Posts: 589

Re: So is it actually possible for a town to progress into higher tech?

Oh, there is a car. If you are in bell town aka Mafia City go north-east in straight line for 0.2k, but it has got empty tank.

Solution to end with self-killing would be to conquer others, but it's easier to kill ourselves.

If newest update would works, I suggest - make a lock, a key, store all knives and bows there, a car too, also kerosene, and let the leader hold the key and pass it to next leader.

Last edited by Gogo (2019-12-14 18:45:19)

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#11 2019-12-14 18:45:01

Bowser
Member
Registered: 2019-11-30
Posts: 55

Re: So is it actually possible for a town to progress into higher tech?

Wuatduhf wrote:
Kinrany wrote:
Bowser wrote:

While I do not see guards, well... ever, I do see doctors all the time.  If I don't see one, I make an effort to be that doctor.  The problem is as soon as people are comfortable all they do is start griefing eachother and any kind of resource we can use to get ahead goes unused.  And being a doctor that is healing morons killing each other and wasting pads that literally no one is making an effort to replace is just a massive waste of time.

Maybe the solution is to start killing people who are not working.  Sounds harsh, but something has to give... although I suspect it would just play into more random griefing and killing and accomplish nothing in the end, so it wouldn't necessarily be worth it.

It seems the solution is to continuously kill off people who stir trouble. If people are comfortable, there are enough resources to keep a few guards.

This is probably harder than it sounds, because people who don't like this boredom will keep coming back.

But I'm assuming it's also too hard to organize. Why? Someone would say that we're missing some kind of social technology.

It's very possible that, come a week or two from now, we have the hierarchy system used for the purposes of organizing a "town guard". The leader is simply whoever's the oldest of the group and can organize the rest.

We can dream.

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#12 2019-12-14 18:46:22

Bowser
Member
Registered: 2019-11-30
Posts: 55

Re: So is it actually possible for a town to progress into higher tech?

Gogo wrote:

Oh, there is a car. If you are in bell town aka Mafia City go north-east in straight line for 0.2k, but it has got empty tank.

Solution to end with self-killing would be to conquer others, but it's easier to kill ourselves.

If newest update would works, I suggest - make a lock, a key, store all knives and bows there, a car too, also kerosene, and let the leader hold the key and pass it to next leader.

Yeah I mean, this would be intelligent.  The problem is knowing whether the next leader can be trusted.  Either by whether they are actually trustworthy, or whether their judgement is sound.

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#13 2019-12-14 19:15:52

arkajalka
Member
From: Eesti
Registered: 2018-03-23
Posts: 492

Re: So is it actually possible for a town to progress into higher tech?

Its "end tech" for a reason.

Also those things are so useless at the moment that the people who can actually make them tend not to. I've build dozens of engines but never made it to a car. The engine serves just much better as a pump. If you make a car you eventually are just making a tool of grieffing as people just burn all the oil that could be used to water for pointless joy rides.

Maybe if the kerosene use duration on car would be much much longer people would consider these as an option for transportation.

Like lets say you put kerosene to a car and it will run one lifetime (hour).  This way you could actually consider the option of cars super fast speed over the horse cart. With time being the kerosene consumption is just too over the top to ever consider using em. Dont know if we would lose even more cars to even further distances, but hey thats the nature of the game with every item. Eventually some moron picks it up and drops it into his/her retarded den or fails it somehow.


I am Sheep, the lord of kraut, maker of the roads, professional constructor, master smith, bonsai enthusiast, arctic fisher, dog whisperer, naked  nomad and an ORGANIZER. Nerf sharp stone it's op.

"BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" -Jaleiah Gilberts
"All your bases are belong to us"-xXPu55yS14y3rXx-

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#14 2019-12-14 19:23:48

Bowser
Member
Registered: 2019-11-30
Posts: 55

Re: So is it actually possible for a town to progress into higher tech?

arkajalka wrote:

Its "end tech" for a reason.

Also those things are so useless at the moment that the people who can actually make them tend not to. I've build dozens of engines but never made it to a car. The engine serves just much better as a pump. If you make a car you eventually are just making a tool of grieffing as people just burn all the oil that could be used to water for pointless joy rides.

Maybe if the kerosene use duration on car would be much much longer people would consider these as an option for transportation.

Like lets say you put kerosene to a car and it will run one lifetime (hour).  This way you could actually consider the option of cars super fast speed over the horse cart. With time being the kerosene consumption is just too over the top to ever consider using em. Dont know if we would lose even more cars to even further distances, but hey thats the nature of the game with every item. Eventually some moron picks it up and drops it into his/her retarded den or fails it somehow.

I mean sure but, they are not used for non-cars either.  I've seen oil used one time... to power a well.  Most of the time an engine powered well is a death sentence for the water in that town.

I definitely agree that the time per usage is ridiculous (2 minutes per kerosene?  lol).

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#15 2019-12-14 19:31:56

arkajalka
Member
From: Eesti
Registered: 2018-03-23
Posts: 492

Re: So is it actually possible for a town to progress into higher tech?

Bowser wrote:

I mean sure but, they are not used for non-cars either.  I've seen oil used one time... to power a well.  Most of the time an engine powered well is a death sentence for the water in that town.

I definitely agree that the time per usage is ridiculous (2 minutes per kerosene?  lol).

Do you even play this game?

There ha been several towns with diesel pump running for generations...


I am Sheep, the lord of kraut, maker of the roads, professional constructor, master smith, bonsai enthusiast, arctic fisher, dog whisperer, naked  nomad and an ORGANIZER. Nerf sharp stone it's op.

"BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" -Jaleiah Gilberts
"All your bases are belong to us"-xXPu55yS14y3rXx-

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#16 2019-12-14 20:36:38

Kinrany
Member
Registered: 2018-01-22
Posts: 712

Re: So is it actually possible for a town to progress into higher tech?

Cars could be infinitely fast on the roads, but extremely slow on the ground. This way they're actually useful for long-distance travel along well-established routes, and it's really hard to lose them in the wilderness.

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#17 2019-12-14 20:57:22

DestinyCall
Member
Registered: 2018-12-08
Posts: 4,563

Re: So is it actually possible for a town to progress into higher tech?

Kinrany wrote:

I keep thinking that this is a problem of high-tech things being significantly rarer than low-tech things.

That's not the case IRL. Computers are one of our most significant achievements, but electronic components are dirt cheap. The easier it is to use and support an invention, the greater the invention. Most unique technological marvels are unique because they're useless, except as scientific experiments.

The limiting factor is usually technology, not materials. We have a whole planet worth of materials, we just don't know how to use them effectively.


And in this game, we live on a planet that is effectively infinite.    The raw resources should never run out completely, because there will always be more that can be found by traveling in any direction.   

I think that a big contributing factor to late game stagnation is a lack of tiered resource progression.    Things are great as lomg as players have a clear goal and a path forward.  In an Eve camp, your first goal is establishing farms and the basics for agriculture, then your next goal is tool production.   After you have farms and steel tools, you need better wells and sheep.   At some point, you will also need to start making pies and compost.   But after that?   

After you reach the "sheep town" stage, the main survival struggle revolves around iron and water scarcity.    There's very little left to do that feels meaningful and the majority of the upper tier water tech requires access to special biomes AND personal knowledge of newcomen and oil tech.   Most players can't or won't be able to help with that, so they feel useless.  Or worse ... they don't even realize the town is suffering from a water shortage, because they see food in the bakery.   

Many people feel like end-game towns are boring because "there is nothing to do", but this is almost never true.   End game towns offer a huge variety of activities to keep you busy, if you can look beyond basic survival.   Many parts of the tech tree are completely inaccessible, except while you are in a well-stocked large town.   

I think the real problem is not a lack of activity, but rather a lack of PURPOSE.   When someone is born into a large town, they feel lost.   The town already has a baker and a smith.   There are sheep and clothing.   There are buildings and roads. 
There is water in the well and iron at the forge.   What more can I do to progress the town forward?   Where do we go from here?   Too many people see all the "stuff" in a big town and look at all the clutter ... and they don't know where they are needed.    They can't figure out what job needs to be done or what tasks remain half finished, so they do nothing, get bored, and end up either wasting time, suiciding or griefing.

The sad thing is that most big towns have TONS of jobs that need to be done.   Far more than a smaller, less complicated village.  Despite the plentiful resources accumulated in big towns, they frequently suffer from critical shortages of useful things like milkweed, carrots, and wood.   But this shortages are hard to detect, because there is also an insane amount of clutter and lack of organization.    Because of these shortages, big towns can be just as fragile as small towns and die just as easily.   In fact, it an be hard to notice when the town is in serious danger, because the large size means people are more spread out.   Easier for people to leave or die without their neighbor noticing.  By the time you notice that the town has no children ... it is already too late.

I wish more people cared about big towns.   I'd like to see a city survive a long time.   Not just a few days.

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#18 2019-12-14 21:17:03

Wuatduhf
Member
Registered: 2018-11-30
Posts: 406

Re: So is it actually possible for a town to progress into higher tech?

Yeah, cars being able to sustain for 20 minutes would make them infinitely more valuable than their current form, even without a storage increase.

They're stationary unlike horses, so you don't have to worry about 'chasing down' mechanic if you aren't sitting on it for a while. Also, the expanded operational timeframe means people could utilize all 4 Slots, and not have to worry about keeping Kerosene in the car for "refills".

We're de-railing here from the convo a bit...


To go back to my earlier point about "Town tiers", Towns are a peculiar case. The moment people 'exist' in an area, they begin draining its local resources, no matter what they are. Clothing, backpacks, soil, water, etc. etc., if your goal is to climb the "Town Tiers" to as high as possible, you have to do it also as quickly as possible. Every generation that passes by means less resources are inherently available for crops because of food consumption, new tools have to be crafted, new clothes must be made to replace decaying/missing clothing.

Tier 5 and Tier 6 are inherently difficult because the oil you are gathering at this stage is usually very difficult to acquire (you have to somehow pry enough rubber tires from the townspeople to dedicate towards the Pump) and equally difficult to keep in place (people seeing excess Kerosene will think "This is mine now"). Thus, these are usually the most volatile to "collapse" and failing to make progress/maintain their tier-ranking. Eventually, after enough time, the cities have lost so many resources that attempting to sustain themselves or progress upward is a futile endeavor.


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#19 2019-12-14 21:17:54

Spoonwood
Member
Registered: 2019-02-06
Posts: 4,369

Re: So is it actually possible for a town to progress into higher tech?

DestinyCall wrote:
Kinrany wrote:

I keep thinking that this is a problem of high-tech things being significantly rarer than low-tech things.

That's not the case IRL. Computers are one of our most significant achievements, but electronic components are dirt cheap. The easier it is to use and support an invention, the greater the invention. Most unique technological marvels are unique because they're useless, except as scientific experiments.

The limiting factor is usually technology, not materials. We have a whole planet worth of materials, we just don't know how to use them effectively.


And in this game, we live on a planet that is effectively infinite.    The raw resources should never run out completely, because there will always be more that can be found by traveling in any direction.   

I think that a big contributing factor to late game stagnation is a lack of tiered resource progression.    Things are great as lomg as players have a clear goal and a path forward.  In an Eve camp, your first goal is establishing farms and the basics for agriculture, then your next goal is tool production.   After you have farms and steel tools, you need better wells and sheep.   At some point, you will also need to start making pies and compost.   But after that?   

After you reach the "sheep town" stage, the main survival struggle revolves around iron and water scarcity.    There's very little left to do that feels meaningful and the majority of the upper tier water tech requires access to special biomes AND personal knowledge of newcomen and oil tech.   Most players can't or won't be able to help with that, so they feel useless.  Or worse ... they don't even realize the town is suffering from a water shortage, because they see food in the bakery.   

Many people feel like end-game towns are boring because "there is nothing to do", but this is almost never true.   End game towns offer a huge variety of activities to keep you busy, if you can look beyond basic survival.   Many parts of the tech tree are completely inaccessible, except while you are in a well-stocked large town.   

I think the real problem is not a lack of activity, but rather a lack of PURPOSE.   When someone is born into a large town, they feel lost.   The town already has a baker and a smith.   There are sheep and clothing.   There are buildings and roads. 
There is water in the well and iron at the forge.   What more can I do to progress the town forward?   Where do we go from here?   Too many people see all the "stuff" in a big town and look at all the clutter ... and they don't know where they are needed.    They can't figure out what job needs to be done or what tasks remain half finished, so they do nothing, get bored, and end up either wasting time, suiciding or griefing.

The sad thing is that most big towns have TONS of jobs that need to be done.   Far more than a smaller, less complicated village.  Despite the plentiful resources accumulated in big towns, they frequently suffer from critical shortages of useful things like milkweed, carrots, and wood.   But this shortages are hard to detect, because there is also an insane amount of clutter and lack of organization.    Because of these shortages, big towns can be just as fragile as small towns and die just as easily.   In fact, it an be hard to notice when the town is in serious danger, because the large size means people are more spread out.   Easier for people to leave or die without their neighbor noticing.  By the time you notice that the town has no children ... it is already too late.

I wish more people cared about big towns.   I'd like to see a city survive a long time.   Not just a few days.

But how could that happen without using external information to the game since updates kill all lineages?


Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.

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#20 2019-12-14 21:32:11

arkajalka
Member
From: Eesti
Registered: 2018-03-23
Posts: 492

Re: So is it actually possible for a town to progress into higher tech?

i've literally had a  house on top of west well of 2 bell towns now, and it never ran empty. People are just blind and dont know what they are doing. Towns dont actually even starve out that hard, its just that some people never even leave the town and if the towns cisterns dry up they are helpless.

*dyes out of starvation backbag full of pies*

Also people just make terrible decisions. Just was in eve camp where people farm milkweed... Literally 6 ropes worth of milkweed in the same biome and you decide to farm it, wasting early farm pond water on ropes that are already in the same biome XD


If end tech is useless it will never see daylight. Buff kerosene longevity on cars and planes to make em viable!


I am Sheep, the lord of kraut, maker of the roads, professional constructor, master smith, bonsai enthusiast, arctic fisher, dog whisperer, naked  nomad and an ORGANIZER. Nerf sharp stone it's op.

"BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" -Jaleiah Gilberts
"All your bases are belong to us"-xXPu55yS14y3rXx-

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#21 2019-12-14 22:46:40

Wuatduhf
Member
Registered: 2018-11-30
Posts: 406

Re: So is it actually possible for a town to progress into higher tech?

Also keep this in mind: why is the Eve town setup so well-known compared to end-game towns?

Yes, there's a lot of content available, but that content is still there in the late-game! Even more-so, there is not an intense pressure baring down on the player to "Keep gathering food or die" that they face in Eve camps. And also, there is, I would argue, more content that isn't accessible in the early-game of towns!

So why is there not so much 'direction' in the late-game, then, if there's still lots of content?

The reason is simple: People aren't used to "getting that far" compared to Eve camps. Well-developed and over-supplied towns is something that the newest wave of OHOL players have never been able to experience for themselves. Even for a lot of newbie veterans, experiencing the "Endgame towns" is new territory, and just as easy to get swept up in and distracted by all of the various possibilities.

I believe that players have to be exposed to the late-game stages of OHOL enough for them to truly grasp what they are able to do to sustain the town's longevity, because numbers-wise, as long as the town has horses, there is 0 reason that a fully-developed town cannot survive.

Under the current EZ-Mode food/hunger stats, a single individual takes an average of 12 bowls of soil and 12 bowls of water to keep alive via Gooseberries. End-game towns have ridiculously better food than that. Thus, the end-game is no different from the early-game, except that the speed at which the Villages/Towns that players live in are on a much longer "doomsday" clock until their next batch of Kerosene flows in.


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#22 2019-12-14 23:15:50

DestinyCall
Member
Registered: 2018-12-08
Posts: 4,563

Re: So is it actually possible for a town to progress into higher tech?

Yeah, I think many towns are basically doomed by ignorance and apathy.   People want to do stuff,  but all the early game stuff has been done already and all the late game stuff feels strange and out of reach or pointless.

Late game progression suffers from too much complexity and poor organization.   It is hard to figure out what you can do OR what you need to do, so people get lost and discouraged.   They want to return to the familiar fast-paced early towns where the dangers are better understood and easier to fight.

Also late game towns have a tendency to get so broken that it would take a whole lifetime to fix one important shortage ... only to have the next generation get wiped out by one bored guy with a knife.  It is frustrating.

I think part of the problem related to game-balance.   Late game survival requires many pieces working together.  The towns reach a point where one person can't keep them alive by themselves.   They aren't able to carry a town full of dead weight and back-stabbers.

Last edited by DestinyCall (2019-12-14 23:18:44)

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#23 2019-12-15 00:26:05

Kinrany
Member
Registered: 2018-01-22
Posts: 712

Re: So is it actually possible for a town to progress into higher tech?

It looks like we have veteran players who know what to do, but no way for them to teach other people?

Let's assume the hierarchy system will actually work, and Alice, a veteran player, will become everyone's leader. What would be the best way to organize a town full of noobs? Again, assuming that they only know basics but are willing to do what she tells them to do.

If ~30 minutes of teaching is not enough, and she'll get more done by doing everything on her own, then maybe we need to make training easier. What would be the perfect tool for teaching people really fast?

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#24 2019-12-15 00:27:46

Kinrany
Member
Registered: 2018-01-22
Posts: 712

Re: So is it actually possible for a town to progress into higher tech?

I guess we also have ~0 veteran players with management skills right now.

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#25 2019-12-15 00:31:19

Kinrany
Member
Registered: 2018-01-22
Posts: 712

Re: So is it actually possible for a town to progress into higher tech?

...Jason, do you by any chance have any friends who have worked as CEOs?..

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