Voluntary OHOL Antagonists; The Future of Griefing that OHOL needs

DestinyCall · 2019-12-31 06:54:31

I'm quite fond of Minecraft.

testo · 2019-12-31 07:04:08

Mekkie wrote:

Gomez wrote:
Seems you are looking for black and white in a very grey world....honestly the game is less fun without griefers / antagonists, it becomes mine craft without them imo.
Minecraft has over 100million players... using it as an insult is not very logical. I feel like people who bash on minecraft have never actually played it.. it's fun as all hell.

Haha yeah we need griefers or we would be playing minecraft, and we aren´t nerds are we?.
What a bull load of crap is that argument.

Punkypal · 2019-12-31 08:22:55

Mekkie wrote:

Gomez wrote:
Seems you are looking for black and white in a very grey world....honestly the game is less fun without griefers / antagonists, it becomes mine craft without them imo.
Minecraft has over 100million players... using it as an insult is not very logical. I feel like people who bash on minecraft have never actually played it.. it's fun as all hell.

The flaw there is, the more OHOL becomes like Minecraft, the less reason I can think of for anyone to ever play OHOL. I mean, I could make a unique little cardboard car, and maybe someone might want to buy it because it's different or original, or they just like it better for some reason. But if I make it look identical to a Prius, then why wouldn't someone just buy a real Prius? Especially if I was charging the same price?

Jason's only competitive advantage is being something different.

Now on the flip side. An online server running straight vanilla Minecraft is 100% griefable. In fact it would be absolutely out of control griefing. Everytime you encountered another player they likely would kill you and everytime you logged out you'd return to find whatever you had built covered with a sea of lava. Exploring would be deadly because every kind of trap imaginable would be everywhere, and all that would only last until someone just broke the server with a lag making redstone device. Minecraft is only "ungriefable" because every server is highly modded to not allow any griefing. One could argue that the more Jason allows griefers to operate, the more he's actually just running 2D vanilla Minecraft.

NOBODY likes vanilla minecraft. At least not in multiplayer version. Maybe Jason needs to consider that. Don't be Minecraft, but then at the same time, maybe the main server shouldn't be straight vanilla OHOL either. Vanilla OHOL seems to work fine on low pop servers with a nearly solo experience. With 75 or so people together maybe that isn't so good anymore?

Last edited by Punkypal (2019-12-31 08:26:44)

DestinyCall · 2019-12-31 10:06:23

I don't think there is any real "danger" of OHOL turning into Minecraft if the huge griefer problem is fixed. That feels like such an absurd fear to me. Even if the game was single player only it wouldn't be that much like Minecraft for a lot of reasons.

The real problem is thinking that uncontrolled griefing is a sustainable model for a multiplayer game experience. The more people play OHOL, the more potential griefers join the server. Our playerbase is tiny, but we are still drowning in too many serial griefers. Now imagine if this game was as popular as Minecraft. It would be pure hell. Complete chaos. Even worse than after the Steam sale. So many new players who have no idea how to play, so many bad player killing and intentionally breaking other people's stuff.

In its current state, OHOL couldn't handle real popularity, let alone Minecraft level popularity. It would implode.

Last edited by DestinyCall (2019-12-31 10:08:55)

Mekkie · 2019-12-31 12:12:15

I actually have a private OHOL server that I put up to play with 3-4 friends a couple times a week.. we have a blast. None of us grief, and we have more fun than we do on official. Some of us just like to log in and play and build and not worry about whether or not someone is gonna kill us if we don't hide the bow well enough. Also Minecraft is a terrible comparison anyway, since the only thing they have in common is the keyword "sandbox". If we're gonna compare OHOL to anything it would be like... uhh... i don't even know. The game is unique enough to stand on it's own feet without needing mandatory griefers to keep it interesting imo.

Wuatduhf · 2019-12-31 16:42:13

Punkypal wrote:

If you want to assign people orders to grief in addition to all the regular griefing in hopes that some code can tell the difference between helpful actions and non helpful actions and properly assign or take away "karma" points, then you have lost your damn mind, and I'll invite you to GTFO and go play whatever game you find more fun than OHOL.

What a nice comment!

Spoonwood · 2019-12-31 17:32:47

Wuatduhf wrote:

Punkypal wrote:
If you want to assign people orders to grief in addition to all the regular griefing in hopes that some code can tell the difference between helpful actions and non helpful actions and properly assign or take away "karma" points, then you have lost your damn mind, and I'll invite you to GTFO and go play whatever game you find more fun than OHOL.
What a nice comment!

Yeah. I agree with Punkypal that such code might not work. But, his "GTFO" nonsense was unnecessary and rude.

Wuatduhf · 2019-12-31 18:19:20

Spoonwood wrote:

No. Griefing by definition goes against game design. Validating griefing is not an appropriate response to it. Moderating it though sounds fine.

It goes against game design except when the developer intentionally wants it involved in the game. Jason is essentially using griefing as the opposing force to those that want to build civilization; whether that be destructive actors or bad parents/family/neighbors.

Let's use the wikipedia definition before I proceed down this rabbit-hole.

"A griefer or bad faith player is a player in a multiplayer video game who deliberately irritates and harasses other players within the game, using aspects of the game in unintended ways."

Okay? Jason is aware of the methods that griefers - that he wants as an intentional aspect of the game - use to annoy towns, most often with older changes and only after newest additions have been play-tested. The only window where griefers have unintended methods of playing 'their' game is when bugs occur or with brand-new content that impede movement or have a fast wastage-feedback-loop.

Jason has already validated griefing, and is already moderating it in the sense that he's hands-off. Someone's hands HAVE to be on it, but human hands are not the solution and the players' hands (cursing) doesn't work either.

It's possible maybe a mix of the automated 'observation' system with cursing being tied into it would have to work in-tandem. Again, the issue that has to be worked around is griefers counter-cursing, which was the whole point of bringing this argument up in the first place.

Spoonwood wrote:

Anyways, I'm mentioning this since you mentioned several servers. It looks like the bigserver system didn't do anything for the game in terms of numbers.

...what? You're missing my point, I never said that the BigServer gave more player numbers. My point was that the game is in its 'ideal play state' when on a server with 50+ people, because of the diversity of people you interact with. It was better 'back in the day' because you had multiple servers you could load into with those amounts of players. Like I said, you can only experience that on BS2 and occassionally Server1.

Spoonwood wrote:

I agree with Punkypal that such code might not work.

I wouldn't put it past anyone here that what I'm suggesting is in any ways easy, nor even medium/hard difficulty to implement. Doing it would be an extreme task, probably - no, guaranteed - even higher than the level of implementation it took Jason to get the language system in.

But hey, if we stopped trying to make something work after 2-3 attempts, we wouldn't have light-bulbs at the time we did.

Last edited by Wuatduhf (2019-12-31 18:23:23)

Spoonwood · 2019-12-31 19:27:40

Wuatduhf wrote:

Jason is aware of the methods that griefers - that he wants as an intentional aspect of the game - use to annoy towns, most often with older changes and only after newest additions have been play-tested. The only window where griefers have unintended methods of playing 'their' game is when bugs occur or with brand-new content that impede movement or have a fast wastage-feedback-loop.
Jason has already validated griefing, and is already moderating it in the sense that he's hands-off.

I'm well aware of his old post on the subject. But, he did not validate griefing. In that old post he indicates a belief that griefers can get used as a tool to organize people with respect to civilization building basically:

jasonrohrer wrote:

And it motivates certain pro-social behavior and organization.

https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=6452

He is dead wrong on that though. I've seen plenty of pro-social behavior and organization in places without griefing. And that includes in the large population context. So have others seen such since lives without griefers do happen in the large population context.

His later comments basically expand on how he believes griefing motivates such pro-social behavior and organization, such as:

Also, Jason wrote:

jasonrohrer wrote:

And this is doubly true with the new war swords and language update.

Except that was just him hoping and now we know that such didn't work, and he probably even realizes that his hope there didn't pan out. Things got so bad that he changed swords to the point that they may as well not exist, feral/griefer Eves, The Rift, and all that. Language differences also aren't motivating pro-social behavior or organization now. They're an obstacle to people communicating when different lineages meet each other, and that's about it. The language barrier does have some flavor to it though.

On top of that, Jason probably could be held liable if he were actually to validate griefing as anything more than a tool. I mean, if he promotes the game as being one designed to be about parenting and civilization building that would be false advertising in terms of the service that he claims to provide on his servers.

Wuatduhf wrote:

Someone's hands HAVE to be on it [griefing] ...

No, not really. There's no necessary substitue for 'iphones'. A deep well or even an axe could suffice. The map is enormously large. If getting griefed, your family can pack up and migrate, probably north or south. Griefers can pretty much get ignored that way, at least the ones you saw in your old town. Lineages die from griefers usually, in part because they won't pack up and/or move soon enough, if they would ever pack up and/or move.

Wuatduhf wrote:

Again, the issue that has to be worked around is griefers counter-cursing, which was the whole point of bringing this argument up in the first place.

If cursing is an issue, you run. Honestly, there existed one time, shortly after the temperature-overhaul where I went around fire-griefing and repeating "JASON WANTS MORE FIRE!". Someone said to me once 'sorry, didn't catch the name." I don't think he managed to curse me, because I just ran away from him.

Wuatduhf wrote:

My point was that the game is in its 'ideal play state' when on a server with 50+ people, because of the diversity of people you interact with.

Nope, I don't agree. There is no 'ideal' play state, and the game isn't balanced around any sort of family size, nor should be.

Wuatduhf · 2019-12-31 19:40:44

Legs wrote:

Wuatduhf wrote:
I think what I proposed is pretty conservative.
You may think it's conservative but Jason tends towards radical. A system like this could easily flag players that don't deserve it as griefers. The same way that towns often misunderstand. You kill two griefers in your life and suddenly you're flagged as a griefer too. The sandbox nature of this game really makes it impossible to automate the process. Yesterday someone made every fencepost into a gate to let all the sheep out. I got killed by a naked idiot for chasing them off. You'd see this constantly with a karma system, but automated and unavoidable. Undoing a griefer's work would count as griefing.

There's a lot to unpack in your response, but in general I believe you agree with me. Griefers do a lot of griefing per life-time; the more successful they are, the more they get away with.

That's why I'm very careful when I say that the system would have to be able to track specific conditions when evaluating whether an action is "griefing" or not.

Is a player stabbing another player griefing? Well, that depends.

Are they stabbing someone holding a bloody weapon? (i.e. responding to a murder with more murder)
Is this the second - or more - time they've successfully attempted a murder?

The idea that this revolves around is the fact that griefers commit more 'negative' actions than the regular players do. Ergo, writing out the 'negative' interactions that, along with very few and limited 'positive' interactions.

Keep the positive and negative bars separate; have repetitive "negative" interactions give exponentially more points; on the other side, have "positive" interactions only give single points, seldom. Thus make it hard to 'farm' positive karma, but easy to gain negative if you are repeatedly doing negative interactions.

At the minimum, this means that griefers would have to reduce their griefing by a measurable amount, and in exchange would have to actively hunt for 'positive' interactions to avoid eventually getting flagged by the system.

Legs · 2019-12-31 20:02:01

Ultimately, the point here is to automate moderation. I don't think that an automated system could replace human judgement in this case, especially when even the humans often disagree on what is and isn't griefing.

Gomez wrote:

Seems you are looking for black and white in a very grey world...

This says it quite well.

There's just too much grey area. Let's say that a harmless berry farmer is expanding his fields. He wants to cover the town in berries. Is that griefing? He's helping to feed all the hungry berry munchers. He's also using up all the town's water on a very inefficient food source. If you start staking and tearing up bushes are YOU griefing? It's not as simple as just black and white.

Wuatduhf · 2019-12-31 20:41:27

Spoonwood wrote:

[Jason quote regarding griefers]
He is dead wrong on that though. I've seen plenty of pro-social behavior and organization in places without griefing. And that includes in the large population context. So have others seen such since lives without griefers do happen in the large population context.

I don't disagree that sometimes, on rare occasion, BS2 can have town lives where you don't run into a griefer; perhaps they're asleep, or terrorizing another town over. The issue is that those 'peaceful moments' don't happen enough.

And to further refute, Jason isn't dead-wrong; recognizing griefers' "role" in the game IS validating them, even if he's validating the most radical elements of them. It's still validating them.

Can a person truly understand the concept of "good" in the absence of the concept of "bad"?

In another way; can you understand kindness if it was the only option? Versus a world where people can choose to be kind, or hateful? No.

Griefing is a choice. Anyone of us can do it. The fact that people choose not to, and support other players they meet, is inherently a choice to interact with other people (pro-social) and organize with them. Like every game development company touts, "your choices matter".

Spoonwood wrote:

[Stuff about Jason's ridiculous "war" swords.]
Language differences also aren't motivating pro-social behavior or organization now. They're an obstacle to people communicating when different lineages meet each other, and that's about it. The language barrier does have some flavor to it though.
[hyperbolic argument that Jason could be sued for misleading gameplay features]

As you've already seen me say, I think "war" is a silly silly thing that will never be implemented correctly without radical updates, so I will simply omegalul at the idea that "war" and war swords can be taken seriously in OHOL.

The Language system is a good addition to the game. People can't just roam as easily to other families; they have to spend time integrating, and thanks to the 10% compounding language change, it takes several generations before it's completely gone.

You cannot deny that most villages prioritize "organizing" paper, pencil, and rubber ball to allow "pro-social" interactions between families with language barriers. Or, as of Specialization, White families to do the translating.

And yeah, suing a game developer for "misleading" gameplay features/mechanics in 2019 (soon to be 2020). Lolwat.

Spoonwood wrote:

Wuatduhf wrote:
Someone's hands HAVE to be on it [MODERATING griefing] ...
No, not really. There's no necessary substitue for 'iphones'. A deep well or even an axe could suffice. The map is enormously large. If getting griefed, your family can pack up and migrate, probably north or south. Griefers can pretty much get ignored that way, at least the ones you saw in your old town. Lineages die from griefers usually, in part because they won't pack up and/or move soon enough, if they would ever pack up and/or move.

You're misquoting the context in that statement so I've edited it for viewer clarity. Unrestricted griefing is NOT healthy for OHOL, full stop. I will not shift on that stance and there's no way you would agree to letting anyone grief if they want to.

It's also a very silly argument to say that people can "just pick up the town and move it somewhere else." Queue the Patrick meme.

Spoonwood wrote:

Wuatduhf wrote:
Again, the issue that has to be worked around is griefers counter-cursing, which was the whole point of bringing this argument up in the first place.
If cursing is an issue, you run. Honestly, there existed one time, shortly after the temperature-overhaul where I went around fire-griefing and repeating "JASON WANTS MORE FIRE!". Someone said to me once 'sorry, didn't catch the name." I don't think he managed to curse me, because I just ran away from him.

All you've said here is "just don't get cursed while griefing" in response to my argument about griefers counter-cursing people who interrupt/stab/bow them. You're not addressing my argument.

Spoonwood wrote:

I don't agree. There is no 'ideal' play state, and the game isn't balanced around any sort of family size, nor should be.

We're just going to keep disagreeing on this, so all I'll say is that the point of experiencing the multiplayer civilization-building and parenting game OHOL is to be 'blind' to the people and the town/society you're being into; that's the whole reason Jason added area-bans to spawning.

That's the reason you don't get to 'pick and choose' what mom you're born to, and why Jason has been adamant about not adding that, to the point we barely got him to do a pregnancy preview mechanic but nothing further.

Wuatduhf · 2019-12-31 20:54:17

Legs wrote:

Ultimately, the point here is to automate moderation. I don't think that an automated system could replace human judgement in this case, especially when even the humans often disagree on what is and isn't griefing.
Gomez wrote:
Seems you are looking for black and white in a very grey world...
This says it quite well.
There's just too much grey area. Let's say that a harmless berry farmer is expanding his fields. He wants to cover the town in berries. Is that griefing? He's helping to feed all the hungry berry munchers. He's also using up all the town's water on a very inefficient food source. If you start staking and tearing up bushes are YOU griefing? It's not as simple as just black and white.

Again, you're correct, and maybe it's the way I come across, but I'm not saying this should be a black-and-white system at all. If anything it's further grey in the grey landscape.

Such a system doesn't ban players for getting too many negative karma. It's not saying to send them off to Donkey Town, which is also inherently a bad mechanic because it's separating players from the rest of the community arbitrarily (see: Twisted pre-changes, and the seeming lack of griefers that get sent there anyway).

If Jason took this whole-cloth, the only thing it'd do is give you a grinning face. What do people do with that information afterward? They know how you had to have gotten the face; it'd be like the Black-text cursing system of old, but instead it's an automated system that's set for you to have that face.

Should the town...kill you? That's up to the society to decide on, more "pro-social" interaction. At the very least, it's going to give all of the "anti-griefers" an easier time figuring out who to keep an eye on.

As for how I'd consider that in a karma system:
- Adding lots of berry bushes? Why make that a negative karma? There are far more 'harmful' activities that could be done with those resources than planting berries everywhere, not to mention the time investment and the visibility of planting a shitton of berries.

- Removing berry bushes? Just set the system to check how many berry bushes there are in a 50-block radius; if there's, say, less than 15, consider that a negative action to the town. Removing one of them would be a simple poke; continuing to remove the last berry bushes would exponentially grow. The griefer can get around it by simply playing across ~7 hours removing 2-3 bushes at a time to mitigate the exponential negative karma.

Dantox · 2019-12-31 20:58:08

Gomez wrote:

NOBODY likes vanilla minecraft. At least not in multiplayer version.

just gonna jump right in here to say that i love vanilla minecraft in multiplayer, dont assume my tastes!

Punkypal · 2019-12-31 21:06:46

DestinyCall wrote:

I don't think there is any real "danger" of OHOL turning into Minecraft if the huge griefer problem is fixed.

I'm in the camp that some level of griefing is better than zero griefing, but we are nowhere near "some" greifing. I feel it's currently out of control, so I agree with you on this mostly.

I'm not sure why Jason doesn't just make at least one server have drastic penalties for being cursed. A curse lasts 7 days or whatever. If you have three/five/whatever amount of curses you can't join that server (or automatic Donkeytown). All other servers everyone can run amok as much as they want. The "play nice" server would still occasionally see bad actors, but once they get caught and banished, you wouldn't have to worry about them again for days, as opposed to over and over again every life non stop.

If this is such a social experiment, then let the players decide with where they choose to be. Maybe this "play nice" server would end up dead. Maybe most players in the end would rather take their chances on a server they knew they can't get booted off from. It would be a good way to test what the players actually want from OHOL.

I'm sure many people would opt for the no restrictions server but in the end I think we could have more people playing and having a good time. The game would retain more players because more people would have an experience they prefer. Hopefully instead of one server with 90-100 people at peak times, we end up with two having 60-70. That seems better for server load balance anyway. IDK, that stuff I'm not an expert about y'all know. But as it is now, there seem no reason to be on any server than the main unless you are looking for a solo play experience.

Last edited by Punkypal (2019-12-31 21:07:57)

Wuatduhf · 2019-12-31 21:11:46

Out of curiosity Dantox, had you ever experienced political/civilization-building servers like CivCraft 1/2/Classic? If you find them entertaining, you would probably enjoy a read through the 'history' of a server called CivCraft2.0, regarding an era I partook in the background of:

https://civclassic.miraheze.org/wiki/A_ … tan_Period

Last edited by Wuatduhf (2019-12-31 21:11:57)

jcwilk · 2019-12-31 21:18:01

Dantox wrote:

Gomez wrote:
NOBODY likes vanilla minecraft. At least not in multiplayer version.
just gonna jump right in here to say that i love vanilla minecraft in multiplayer, dont assume my tastes!

Same, I put countless hours into my server with a few friends... Had a computer functional enough to count upwards or downwards via data encoded in a delay loop signal, lots of monster spawners some based on dungeons others just darkness, golem iron farm, self-harvesting wheat farms. Never saw the need for mods, there was already so much to do with vanilla even back when golems were new

Spoonwood · 2019-12-31 23:23:41

Wuatduhf wrote:

We're just going to keep disagreeing on this, so all I'll say is that the point of experiencing the multiplayer civilization-building and parenting game OHOL is to be 'blind' to the people and the town/society you're being into; that's the whole reason Jason added area-bans to spawning.
That's the reason you don't get to 'pick and choose' what mom you're born to, and why Jason has been adamant about not adding that, to the point we barely got him to do a pregnancy preview mechanic but nothing further.

No. Jason makes things that way, I think, because he believes it will satisfy more people to have more variety in their games. That way things stay fresh and interesting to players. That's what he believes.

Additionally, people can pick and choose by /dieing, not only in the low population context, but in the big one too.

Furthermore, Jason hasn't been that adamant as you say. He did once say that he was going to introduce a choice screen a while back. In fact, looking back he uses the term 'thrilled', suggesting that player interest lay behind his motivations:

jasonrohrer wrote:

Thinking about this more, there are two conflicting interests here:
--The experience of brand new players.
--The experience of veteran players.
If you watch any streamer who is playing the game for the first time, they get a huge thrill out of being born into a different situation each time. This is a good mom. This is a bad mom who left me. This is a primitive mom. Whoa, this mom is in a huge city. They play the hand they are dealt, usually live a short life each time (they die due to mistakes), and get reborn into a different situation each time. This is the "attract mode" for the game, and it should be preserved at all costs. It's the "best" experience of the game, and what players are buying. I don't want to undercut it, even if that "best" experience doesn't last forever.
A veteran player, who has played hundreds of hours and perhaps thousands of lives, is no longer so thrilled to be born in a different situation each time. Maybe they've played many hours today already, and already visited most of the major families on the server. Or maybe they only have one hour to play today, and they will certainly play until old age, so they want to make that one hour as good as it can be. They really want to pick the best situation possible either way. and they'll use whatever means available to control where they are born.
I still want those veteran players to "say goodbye for real" and all that. But they want to pick their next life from what's available. It would be nice if that ability was built into the mechanics themselves, allowing veteran players to leverage these advanced mechanics to achieve birth choice.
The problem with building such a system is that it will undercut the magic of the game for new players. They won't understand spreading genes, and they'll die a lot, so they'll find themselves "stuck" in the same family over and over. This is not what they want, and will make the game worse for them.
I worry that the early game, for new players, is too fragile, and I don't want to do anything to upset it.
Thus, I feel like I need to take a bifurcated approach. For new players, the game should behave identically to how it currently behaves. For veteran players, a birth choice option should open up.
I think the most obvious way to handle this is opening up a birth choice screen after a player triggers /DIE. That's an advanced move. It can open up advanced functionality.
Hidden features aren't great, but it's probably the best option here.

https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewt … d=6832&p=2

But also, Jason realizes that there's limits to even what he says there, like when he says 'goodbye for real'. That's just another way that he wants to maintain interest. How am I so sure? Well 'goodbye for real' depends on player population. And it's not 'goodbye for real' always even if playing on bs2 in principle, since you could die at 60 as an Eve, and then get reborn there if you timed when an update hit and started playing early during the reboot of bs2.

I don't agree with much else of what you wrote Wuatduhf, but I'm not so sure there's all that would be worth going into.

Wuatduhf · 2020-01-01 00:24:12

Wuatduhf wrote:

all I'll say is that the point of experiencing the multiplayer civilization-building and parenting game OHOL is to be 'blind' to the people and the town/society you're being into; that's the whole reason Jason added area-bans to spawning.

spoonwood wrote:

No. Jason makes things that way, I think, because he believes it will satisfy more people to have more variety in their games. That way things stay fresh and interesting to players. That's what he believes.
Additionally, people can pick and choose by /dieing, not only in the low population context, but in the big one too.
Furthermore, Jason hasn't been that adamant as you say. He did once say that he was going to introduce a choice screen a while back. In fact, looking back he uses the term 'thrilled', suggesting that player interest lay behind his motivations:

jasonrohrer wrote:

Well, that's the idea of the game, anyway. Thrown into a different situation every life, and making the best of it. The fact that players actively fight that doesn't change the intent.

Ignoring the fact that Jason has been battling back-and-forth with the demons of giving veterans birth-spawn option, I would maybe agree with your stance. But over the course of the forum's longevity he's made it clear he does NOT want the game to be about constantly developing the same place.

If you are not willing to accept that, that's fine, but twisting the narrative to make it look like he's ready to bend on the game design doesn't sit well with me.

The only person that could bring more clarity to his vision is Jason commenting himself. Until then, the way that I understand the "option of where to spawn" is very much that Jason is trying to prevent that; otherwise, we would've had pregnant-belly moms months ago.

Spoonwood · 2020-01-01 01:16:47

Wuatduhf wrote:

But over the course of the forum's longevity he's made it clear he does NOT want the game to be about constantly developing the same place.

No. The Rift existed, was small, and wasn't short lived. Jason knew that the same places were constantly getting developed then (when people weren't fighting griefers), or at least should have if he had thought about and/or read notes by JonySky early during The Rift era here: https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=7543. On top of that, he made it not all too unlikely to find ancient towns on purpose before then. Additionally, he's kept Eve-chaining when population is sufficiently low, and basically if he doesn't, the game loses tons of content for low pop servers or if the game drops slightly below what it was during the darkest periods of The Rift era (we're talking the player count on bs2 being in the teens).

Also, when Jason got rid of The Rift, he didn't show opposition to the same place getting developed over and over again. In fact, he contradicts that notion:

jasonrohrer wrote:

To allow for the possibility of truly ancient places and structures.

https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=8320

Wuatduhf wrote:

If you are not willing to accept that, that's fine, but twisting the narrative to make it look like he's ready to bend on the game design doesn't sit well with me.

Well... look at what Jason did when he reintroduced a 'boundless' world:

jasonrohrer wrote:

To transition away from collective, server-wide arcs, which are too abstract, and focus on individual family arcs.

But, then came race restrictions which moves away from such individual, family arcs. And he had server-wide arcs before.

Wuatduhf wrote:

The only person that could bring more clarity to his vision is Jason commenting himself.

I don't think his vision exactly consistent in the relevant respects we're commenting on. Even if he responds now, that would be his current vision.

Wuatduhf wrote:

until then, the way that I understand the "option of where to spawn" is very much that Jason is trying to prevent that; otherwise, we would've had pregnant-belly moms months ago.

No, he's not. He knows that would be foolish in the low pop context. He also enables /die to exist. He doesn't want it to be easy or a go-to, because if it were, he believes that players would be more likely to lose interest in the game. He doesn't want this feeling to get lost:

jasonrohrer wrote:

If you watch any streamer who is playing the game for the first time, they get a huge thrill out of being born into a different situation each time.

Thing is, he doesn't seem to realize that he doesn't have to try to induce such a feeling. Plenty of people don't always play the same map type in civilization, Rimworld, Oxygen Not Included, and probably many other games. Plenty of people would pick 'random' births if he went with a choice screen as accessible, instead of people using /die as they do now, or multiple accounts.

Wuatduhf · 2020-01-01 02:18:15

Spoonwood wrote:

Rifts

Fuck me, the Rift and Arcs. I left the game prior to that update, and stayed the hell away until it was removed. I think post-Rift Jason said somewhere that it was "just a balancing thing" or something to play off the complete flop that it was. As far as I saw when I came back, he had a lot of balance changes right at the end when he switched back to infinite world, so maybe a small fraction of that is true. But we agree 'balancing' was definitely not the focus.

What matters is that rifts were not Jason's ideal view of OHOL. It was very much what you said, a drastic change in the gameplay loop and jarring to just about everyone, but for whatever reason he kept pursuing it ... to get the 'most out of it' perhaps? He took the community's idea of "Let's just stay in one place and develop that town" to its logical extreme, and perhaps used the Rift to (crudely) punish the community and show them "Yeah, no, you don't actually want that."

He and the community learned that while people do want to go back to the same place often between lives, they don't want to be permanently locked into said places, and eventually want to call a new place "home". Going back to the infinite world, we now constantly move westward at a predictable-ish manner.

Yes, there are "ancient cities" that can be re-visited, but that's just it, they're 'ancient', not 'the town you were just in 15-30 minutes ago.' He's acknowledged going back to the same town in multiple lives, but with gaps of years in-between them, so that you haven't seen it for at least 3-4 generations. That is all consistent with his starting point pre-Rift.

And yeah, there's Eve-chaining, and that feature specifically remains in the game to cater towards the "alternative" mode of playing OHOL, which is the low-pop servers. Low-pop is a game mode just as much as Medium- and Hi-pop, but the actual OHOL gameplay intent is only seen in Med/High. The "dropped in a random town with random people" loop that we've quoted Jason saying now several times.

Jason's mindset on the game will probably keep shifting as he tries to stumble his way towards better versions of OHOL. The original goal of what OHOL is set to give is not going to change though, it is pretty clearly defined as a civilization-building and parenting sim.

Getting to experience the emotional rides of family, making friends, and yes, even playing the game for the first time(s) is 100% on Jason to induce those feelings. It's lazy to suggest that he plays no part in creating the environment that causes those emotions to be experienced.

The sad part is that it's not like I don't want the option to choose where to spawn. I've been on that side of the debate for a while and tried to push for the pregnancy thing, which fell thru... the way I play at the moment is also very much not apart of the intended gameplay loop, I build cities and towns for people to live in. I'm very much ditching the "parenting" loop in favor of the extreme "civilization-building" one.

The game's spawn system has to be re-evaluated if Jason actually wants to explore trading, politics, conflict, etc. Probably something akin to CivCraft's.

Mekkie · 2020-01-01 05:55:22

Spoonwood wrote:

Nope, I don't agree. There is no 'ideal' play state, and the game isn't balanced around any sort of family size, nor should be.

The ideal play state is below 15 people, when racial restrictions aren't activated.. :3

Mekkie · 2020-01-01 06:02:02

Dantox wrote:

Gomez wrote:
NOBODY likes vanilla minecraft. At least not in multiplayer version.
just gonna jump right in here to say that i love vanilla minecraft in multiplayer, dont assume my tastes!

Same here, i've never actually used any mods in minecraft lol xD
Never had griefers on the server i played though, so don't know how well the original point holds up.

petaldancing · 2020-01-01 06:31:11

i'm still having trouble getting over the fact that someone in this thread legitimately thinks no one plays vanilla minecraft.............. and that by not having griefers, this game would somehow become vanilla minecraft??? LMAOOO

Last edited by petaldancing (2020-01-01 06:32:03)

Spoonwood · 2020-01-01 13:49:52

Wuatduhf wrote:

What matters is that rifts were not Jason's ideal view of OHOL. It was very much what you said, a drastic change in the gameplay loop and jarring to just about everyone, but for whatever reason he kept pursuing it ... to get the 'most out of it' perhaps? He took the community's idea of "Let's just stay in one place and develop that town" to its logical extreme, and perhaps used the Rift to (crudely) punish the community and show them "Yeah, no, you don't actually want that."

Jason proposed the finite map concept back in April here: https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=6087 Why? Basically, it's all about trying to get player interest through stories:

jasonrohrer wrote:

Because such things will create interesting and varied stories. There are already lots of interesting life stories coming out of the game, and I'm extremely proud of that fact, and I love those stories. But I want MORE. I want to turn that crazy/interesting story knob until it twists all the way off. I want no two lives to ever be the same. Not even a little bit the same. Not even similar.

Ugh... Jason wrote this:

jasonrohrer wrote:

I think that the new property fences are a step in the right direction here, and I myself have already seen some interesting new stories come out of them.

Except they were the exact opposite. And so was The Rift, since it lead to so much sameness from what I hear.

Wuatduhf wrote:

Yes, there are "ancient cities" that can be re-visited, but that's just it, they're 'ancient', not 'the town you were just in 15-30 minutes ago.' He's acknowledged going back to the same town in multiple lives, but with gaps of years in-between them, so that you haven't seen it for at least 3-4 generations. That is all consistent with his starting point pre-Rift.

Sure, but that's not his bedrock concept. He's doing that, because he thinks it would generate more player interest. It generates more interesting stories. If he starts to think otherwise validly or invalidly, he'll give that up. And it's limited, since he keeps Eve chaining in the low population context, since without Eve chaining in the low population context stories would end drastically more samey. Playing in the same town through various development stages is more interesting than perpetually being an Eve out in the wild.

Jason desire for interesting stories also makes it sort of weird that he has argued with the people who have said 'need content'. When ghost costumes and wine was added more types of stories happened. If we got rockets or robots or seasons, not matter how difficult they might be to implement, they would also result in more interesting stories. I'm not so sure that tool slots and race restrictions similar generate interesting stories. "I got the dropsy and dropped my basket", I don't think is one that people find all that interesting, and very few people apparently have managed to trade for items with other people. Pein isn't finding it interesting to try to tell people how to do an oil rig in game.

One Hour One Life Forums

#26 2019-12-31 06:54:31

Re: Voluntary OHOL Antagonists; The Future of Griefing that OHOL needs

#27 2019-12-31 07:04:08

Re: Voluntary OHOL Antagonists; The Future of Griefing that OHOL needs

#28 2019-12-31 08:22:55

Re: Voluntary OHOL Antagonists; The Future of Griefing that OHOL needs

#29 2019-12-31 10:06:23

Re: Voluntary OHOL Antagonists; The Future of Griefing that OHOL needs

#30 2019-12-31 12:12:15

Re: Voluntary OHOL Antagonists; The Future of Griefing that OHOL needs

#31 2019-12-31 16:42:13

Re: Voluntary OHOL Antagonists; The Future of Griefing that OHOL needs

#32 2019-12-31 17:32:47

Re: Voluntary OHOL Antagonists; The Future of Griefing that OHOL needs

#33 2019-12-31 18:19:20

Re: Voluntary OHOL Antagonists; The Future of Griefing that OHOL needs

#34 2019-12-31 19:27:40

Re: Voluntary OHOL Antagonists; The Future of Griefing that OHOL needs

#35 2019-12-31 19:40:44

Re: Voluntary OHOL Antagonists; The Future of Griefing that OHOL needs

#36 2019-12-31 20:02:01

Re: Voluntary OHOL Antagonists; The Future of Griefing that OHOL needs

#37 2019-12-31 20:41:27

Re: Voluntary OHOL Antagonists; The Future of Griefing that OHOL needs

#38 2019-12-31 20:54:17

Re: Voluntary OHOL Antagonists; The Future of Griefing that OHOL needs

#39 2019-12-31 20:58:08

Re: Voluntary OHOL Antagonists; The Future of Griefing that OHOL needs

#40 2019-12-31 21:06:46

Re: Voluntary OHOL Antagonists; The Future of Griefing that OHOL needs

#41 2019-12-31 21:11:46

Re: Voluntary OHOL Antagonists; The Future of Griefing that OHOL needs

#42 2019-12-31 21:18:01

Re: Voluntary OHOL Antagonists; The Future of Griefing that OHOL needs

#43 2019-12-31 23:23:41

Re: Voluntary OHOL Antagonists; The Future of Griefing that OHOL needs

#44 2020-01-01 00:24:12

Re: Voluntary OHOL Antagonists; The Future of Griefing that OHOL needs

#45 2020-01-01 01:16:47

Re: Voluntary OHOL Antagonists; The Future of Griefing that OHOL needs

#46 2020-01-01 02:18:15

Re: Voluntary OHOL Antagonists; The Future of Griefing that OHOL needs

#47 2020-01-01 05:55:22

Re: Voluntary OHOL Antagonists; The Future of Griefing that OHOL needs

#48 2020-01-01 06:02:02

Re: Voluntary OHOL Antagonists; The Future of Griefing that OHOL needs

#49 2020-01-01 06:31:11

Re: Voluntary OHOL Antagonists; The Future of Griefing that OHOL needs

#50 2020-01-01 13:49:52

Re: Voluntary OHOL Antagonists; The Future of Griefing that OHOL needs

Board footer