Struggle

Booklat1 · 2020-02-28 14:53:01

This is a message to all the community, players and Jason alike. The game has been seeing less and less people online for a while now. I haven't been playing much since tool update. Racial specialization was then the last nail in the coffin for me.

I'm not here to talk just about that. I came to discuss how the current state of the community doesn't allow us to give input to Jason in any way that can be helpful to him. You see, it's a known fact now that Jason would rather see input on what's broken than random ideas on how to fix problems/add new features. But it is also true that sometimes Jason puts together features that are made to fix problems they just fail to fix/that end up making gameplay far less interesting. And the way we respond to that is very not helpful. Sure, there are exceptions, personally I find that Tarr and Destiny are very straight to the point when gving criticism as many others are, focusing at first on why the newly added system might fail/have failed. But still, the general reaction is usually just outbursts that cause Jason to completely ignore the issue at hands for entire months at times.

Please, players and Jason alike, lets start a new trend of better communicating these issues. Instead of giving solutions to every new feature that we feel are broken can we please focus on the communicating why we feel it's broken part? In the end jason will find the solution that mostly suits his idea of the game anyway.

I think there is so much that we should get revisited, so many features that got rushed over and that we keep trying to redesign for Jason intead of just saying "hey jason, i really dont like this".

personally I'd love to see racial specialization completely removed and tool slots expanded to fill that design void of family specialties but this isnt the point, the point (to me) is racial specialization sucks enormously and I haven't had joy with this game ever since it was added.

So please Jason, while I think it's absolutely great you're now again back on the "resource balancing" stage of development don't forget to clean the enormous mess that some past updates have turned the game into, a few weeks over redesigning some player hated features should help. We'll all profit from this and from the community trying to make peace over past wrongs

Dodge · 2020-02-28 15:04:01

Tool slots are getting expanded check live dev changes.

So your post is about better communication and not saying "hey jason, i really dont like this"

But you basically say "hey jason, i really dont like this"

Can you expand a little bit on why specialization bothers you that much? what elements?

Booklat1 · 2020-02-28 15:50:54

Dodge wrote:

Tool slots are getting expanded check live dev changes.
So your post is about better communication and not saying "hey jason, i really dont like this"
But you basically say "hey jason, i really dont like this"
Can you expand a little bit on why specialization bothers you that much? what elements?

You misunderstand. Racial specialization was an example because it's being reason of a lot of talk ever since it was added.

The post is about saying "i dislike this because of x"

instead of

"try this new idea i had to fix this "

I think specialization has one major problem that is just a dealbreaker for me and few other issues. not so big post ahead on the main issue. thanks for asking btw.

The main big problem is how it mechanically seems to perceive and treat ethnic groups. We could get in this huge academic debate on wether or not an ethnic group can be attributed x or y characteristic, if it's even ethical to go throwing stereotypes on individuals based on their genetic backgrounds, or how much variation there actually is inside a group and how that relates to the other two questions. I don't think that we need to get this much in depth on why it is an accurate or inaccurate mechanic as a representation of what ethnical groups can be, because there are two details that I think makes it more obviously inaccurate and obviously deterministic. All races are not only more adapted to a biome, but have the ability to use items that others don't, a cultural characteristic rather than a biological one. Not only that, but every family of a race group has the same characteristics. So why is it so bad? Because culture is learnable, so race restricted knowledge makes no sense, and because genetic background doesn't necessarily relate to a expected cultural background, thus making all people of the same skin color tied to the same cultural features also is inaccurate. As someone who teaches biology I just can't agree with this idea of skin color determining so strongly one's culture and environmental adaptability. Probably the best example ever of environmental adaptation in humans is how skin color affects our resistance to sunlight and even then there would be simpler ways to implement this rather than "everyone else is absolutely miserable regardless of anything while being in the desert".

To conclude the main issue and the message I get from it, but I think it's a bad fit for the update that added it to be called family specialization and then focus on ethnicities rather than families themselves. Why are the red haired folk from way up north the same culturally as the folk south? Why is it almost for families of the same ethnicity to find each other? Not only that, but some families end up being more useful than others and in a very predictable system.

You could honestly ask what doesn't bother me about this feature.

tarr has also absolutely great points on how it restricts our accessibility to features rather than making weaker content needed. This in addition to tools slots (which isn't even a bad mechanic, just one that Jason could've been more careful when adding to an already running game) ends up greatly limiting how often you can play with features you'd actually like to.

Dodge · 2020-02-28 16:03:13

So your main point is because it's logically unsatisfying?

That's not really a deal breaker tbh, planes have wings made of sheep wool and nobody makes a fuss about it.

About the argument of "content restriction" there isn't much restricted content like not even 1% of the tech tree, other races can still use the latex or sulfur or wathever once it's out of the biome and slashing trees for rubber is not really something to be mad about being restricted, i guess fishing and snowballs is a little bit more upsetting but really not much.

Spoonwood · 2020-02-28 16:07:37

Dodge wrote:

Can you expand a little bit on why specialization bothers you that much? what elements?

I don't speak for Booklat. However, those restrictions are built on trying to make failure more common (one interpretation of probability is relative frequency). Why the hell wouldn't people be bothered when parts of the game got set up to make failure happen more often?

jasonrorhrer wrote:

"If we had to start over from scratch, but kept all of our knowledge, how long would it take us to get back to iPhones?" where iPhones are a placeholder for whatever sufficiently advanced tech we can imagine.

jasonrohrer wrote:

In recent times, I've been throwing in a few monkey wrenches that make failure more likely.

The restrictions concern trying to regress players from getting back to a suitable replacement for 'iPhones' (radios). Elsewhere, Jason even recently recommended that hypothetical players who had problems with finding other races abandon their town, go make another camp, and that would regress things. Basically, that reduces players to focusing on mere existence, which is less creative and less sophisticated than helping get to or making something that is a suitable replacement for 'iPhones'. Also, I'll note that no one in a single life has ever made any of those replacements which are as new as when an oil rig first came out.

The restrictions are sort of a way of saying "don't play the bs2 game well."

Spoonwood · 2020-02-28 16:20:05

Dodge wrote:

So your main point is because it's logically unsatisfying?

Booklat repeatedly emphasized empirical referents of the real world, not logical problems with them. In other words, race restrictions aren't realistic.

Dodge wrote:

That's not really a deal breaker tbh, planes have wings made of sheep wool and nobody makes a fuss about it.

Dodge, you asked for his viewpoint. You got it. You just implied that such isn't a deal breaker for him/her, when Booklat just told you such was. You failed to take what he/she wrote seriously.

Same goes for your "not really" comment.

You can feel and view things as you like. But, if/when you ask for someone else's opinion, receive information on how they feel, and then tell them that's not how they feel, you've communicated that you weren't interested in that person's perspective in the first place.

Dodge · 2020-02-28 16:20:28

Spoonwood wrote:

Why the hell wouldn't people be bothered when parts of the game got set up to make failure happen more often?

So players should be mad about being born as a baby and not a full grown adult?

Increasing the odds of failure is called a challenge btw

jasonrohrer · 2020-02-28 16:36:54

Book, unfortunately, I'm not looking for political objections to any game design elements.

If the game turns you off for political reasons, well.... I guess that's where we'll have to part ways.

If we want different groups of people to have different abilities, than the most straight-forward way to implement that in game is to have those people have different appearances, so that the abilities can be recognized visually, given that you will be actively seeking out a player with this or that ability.

Furthermore, in real life, the people who live in an area DO have more knowledge about that area, and are appealed to as experts. Travelers do hire local guides for a reason. Furthermore, the people who live in different areas of the world do look different. This, to me, is no big deal, and not offensive. It's a beautiful and amazing part of the world, also known as diversity.

This isn't represented perfectly in the game, but it's represented in a way that people can understand, based on their experience from real life.

Now, separate from the political objections...

Is there an objection to the mechanic of different players in the game having different innate abilities?

Obviously, it tends to short-circuit your pre-formed plan for what you want to do in this particular life. "Dammit, there's no way I can make X in this life, because I wasn't born as the right type of person."

Obviously, that's part of the point, because this is not meant to be a game where you have full control over your upcoming life. This is a game, in part, about relinquishing control, based on your unique surroundings and situation.

You also might want to make a car in your life, but then get born into a town where they don't even have Newcomen tech yet.

DestinyCall · 2020-02-28 16:48:38

jasonrohrer wrote:

Obviously, that's part of the point, because this is not meant to be a game where you have full control over your upcoming life. This is a game, in part, about relinquishing control, based on your unique surroundings and situation.
You also might want to make a car in your life, but then get born into a town where they don't even have Newcomen tech yet.

Question ... why let us choose our tool slots?

Couldn't we just be born with a random pre-selected set of tools at the start of each life and we just have to figure out what to do with the cards that we are dealt by Life's lottery?

If this is a game about relinquishing control, why give us the illusion of choice?

Spoonwood · 2020-02-28 16:53:38

Dodge wrote:

Increasing the odds of failure is called a challenge btw

No, increasing the odds of failure is not called a challenge.

Spoonwood · 2020-02-28 17:09:04

jasonrohrer wrote:

Book, unfortunately, I'm not looking for political objections to any game design elements.

Jason here mis-characterizes what Booklat said, since he didn't have political objections. He had biological ones, and objections that such wasn't realistic.

jasonrohrer wrote:

If we want different groups of people to have different abilities, than the most straight-forward way to implement that in game is to have those people have different appearances, so that the abilities can be recognized visually, given that you will be actively seeking out a player with this or that ability.

Family trees and lineages clearly predated racial groupings. Also, oftentimes families are named, and family name is visually discern-able information.

jasonrohrer wrote:

Is there an objection to the mechanic of different players in the game having different innate abilities?

Such mechanically treats ethnic groups. It's inaccurate with respect to how ethnic groups are. It goes against the fact that culture is learnable. Skin color in the real world doesn't determine culture and environmental adaptability.

All of that I get from reading Booklat's comment.

jasonrohrer wrote:

This is a game, in part, about relinquishing control, based on your unique surroundings and situation.

I'm pretty sure that /die exists. Were this game about relinquishing control to the degree that Jason claims it does, /die wouldn't exist.

Tipy · 2020-02-28 17:34:00

jasonrohrer wrote:

Book, unfortunately, I'm not looking for political objections to any game design elements.
If the game turns you off for political reasons, well.... I guess that's where we'll have to part ways.

If we want different groups of people to have different abilities, than the most straight-forward way to implement that in game is to have those people have different appearances, so that the abilities can be recognized visually, given that you will be actively seeking out a player with this or that ability.
Furthermore, in real life, the people who live in an area DO have more knowledge about that area, and are appealed to as experts. Travelers do hire local guides for a reason. Furthermore, the people who live in different areas of the world do look different. This, to me, is no big deal, and not offensive. It's a beautiful and amazing part of the world, also known as diversity.
This isn't represented perfectly in the game, but it's represented in a way that people can understand, based on their experience from real life.

Now, separate from the political objections...

Is there an objection to the mechanic of different players in the game having different innate abilities?
Obviously, it tends to short-circuit your pre-formed plan for what you want to do in this particular life. "Dammit, there's no way I can make X in this life, because I wasn't born as the right type of person."
Obviously, that's part of the point, because this is not meant to be a game where you have full control over your upcoming life. This is a game, in part, about relinquishing control, based on your unique surroundings and situation.
You also might want to make a car in your life, but then get born into a town where they don't even have Newcomen tech yet.

Family specialization could bring a lot to the game but the current implantation just makes the game boring. What if instead of needing all races to get the resoucres needed for one thing one race could make a finished product and then trade it for another finsihed product. This way you can have the ''rich social interactions'' that you want so much and not take away the fun from us. Wanting to make something fun but failing because you need X from Y family and you spend your whole live travaling to find Y (travel is very boring in this game btw it needs some improvement), then you need magic paper to communicate and when you finally get X and return home you die and can't make the thing you wanted.

Sure you may excuse it by ''not eveyrhting irl has to be fun, some things just need to get done'' and yes that's true but this is not real life, this is a video game and well we play video games to have fun... and if your game isn't fun then people won't play it

Maybe it would be better if families had everything to make X but needed to trade X with Y for Z. Also different famillies could have benefits too as well as restrictions. Brownies are better cooks, they are better at producing food (Maybe when a borown makes food it's special and gives more pips or more yum) and they also have a lot of resoucres to make unique food in the jungle, their special biom. However dark chocolate people have an advantafe at makin Z stuff and so on.

On top of that a race's special biom should be hospitable to them and they should be incouraged to settle in this bioms. Like brownies have perfect temperature in jungles (or have a better temperature than the other and can do stuff to get an even better temperature vale as the wheel of progres spins) Are immune/can kill musquittos and have cheap building matterial like gingers have for snow.

Heck this way families have a reason to NOT merge together! A dark chocolate person cannot live with the brownies in the jungle but a brownie and a dark choco could settle together in a green biom if they wish but as a drawback they won't enjoy the bonuses of their home envirorment.

Also a cool thing it would be if the different families could make different style clothing, structures, gadges etc. Like Brownies make more tropical styled stuff, black choco more tribal african, gingers more Siberian or Nordic and whites (if they get a special biom)

This all sounds like fun. Yes I understand that it would require a lot of work and content added but wouldn't it be worth it? Everybody is whining about family specialization and begging for new content. If you ask me this would be a better adittion than yet another shohorned change nobody asked for that takes fun away and trying to bandage it over would take away your concentration from adding content and so on

FishRfriendsnotfood · 2020-02-28 19:16:51

Spoonwood wrote:

Dodge wrote:
Increasing the odds of failure is called a challenge btw
No, increasing the odds of failure is not called a challenge.

This is the direct definition of a challenge=a task or situation that tests someone's abilities.
"the ridge is a challenge for experienced climbers"

So by the very meaning, increasing the odds of failure...would be more challenging. Spoon....you are tripping over your own illusory superiority.

Spoonwood · 2020-02-28 19:42:52

FishRfriendsnotfood wrote:

This is the direct definition of a challenge=a task or situation that tests someone's abilities.
"the ridge is a challenge for experienced climbers"
So by the very meaning, increasing the odds of failure...would be more challenging. Spoon....you are tripping over your own illusory superiority.

I don't know where your definition of challenge comes from. I don't think it's a poor definition though. You think what you said refuted what I had denied about what Dodge had said?

Again, Dodge said:

Dodge wrote:

Increasing the odds of failure is called a challenge btw

He's thus made a claim about what a challenge is by definition.

Is increasing the odds of failure synonymous with a task or situation that tests someone's abilities?

No, it's not.

Thus, Dodge's claim is not correct by the definition you posted Fish.

The_Anabaptist · 2020-02-28 19:44:08

Booklat1 wrote:

...
Please, players and Jason alike, lets start a new trend of better communicating these issues. Instead of giving solutions to every new feature that we feel are broken can we please focus on the communicating why we feel it's broken part? In the end jason will find the solution that mostly suits his idea of the game anyway.
...

When the player base offers suggested improvements, it is because they want to be part of the continual improvement process. This process typically is most effective when more than one voice speaks and is heard. You are effectively advocating for one (Jason's) voice. That is your right to do, but I for one believe it leads to a poorer end result.

The_Anabaptist

testo · 2020-02-29 01:10:48

Booklat1 wrote:

I came to discuss how the current state of the community doesn't allow us to give input to Jason in any way that can be helpful to him.

The community hasn´t really changed for months in terms of functionality. I´d say it is amazing that people still take time to add up to the game.

Booklat1 wrote:

I think there is so much that we should get revisited, so many features that got rushed over and that we keep trying to redesign for Jason intead of just saying "hey jason, i really dont like this".

But really, sometimes a mechanic is just bad or poorly designed (hierarchy system took about 2 weeks of development and adds like zero value to the game). Toolslots are not a bad idea in itself but restricting to 6 tools is too much and the link to the leaderboard is pathetic, may as well run a dice before the game to tell me how many tools can I use. A ranking with an almost random outcome adds or takes 2 toolslots. Thats it.

Booklat1 wrote:

personally I'd love to see racial specialization completely removed and tool slots expanded to fill that design void of family specialties but this isnt the point, the point (to me) is racial specialization sucks enormously and I haven't had joy with this game ever since it was added.

And this has been largely talked about, racial specialization just dumbs down everyone instead of giving an incentive to cooperate. We don´t get a bonus for playing in our special bio, we get cut from everything else. Thats just nonsense, and given the amount of content that needs mixed resources it is pretty much the cause of everyone getting in the same town.

Bottomline I completely disagree with your opening. There are at least 4/5 threads of people saying the same thing as you do. At this point if you like racial specialization you are either a masochist or someone that doesn´t really play the game *.

For me the problem behind all the latests updates and "ideas" is the lack of design. OHOL is not a survival game once you get to rubber which it just depends on the races playing at this point. It is clearly not pvp and not a farming simulator. It hardly qualifies as a parenting game because clicking on someone 10 times in 3 minutes and saying "you are booklat" is not really parenting. It is not civilization building because the amount of content doesn´t allow to develop customs or anything related to civilization. A few optional buildings and a farm is not a village, they are all the same. Is it a crafting game? Well, we are just being told it is not and it won´t ever be.

The last wave of new players is just fading away after the steam sale. Most of them just played a few times and didn´t even get to make a steel tool. When they tried to explore the game outside of town they just didn´t even understand that they couldn´t carry stuff everywhere. They had to deal with us (old timers) telling them what not to do instead of teaching them because teaching is expensive (toolslots and time). They had to deal with people yelling them gibberish and cursing them out of nowhere. They could stay next to a berry farm to not "lose". But it was boring. So they left.

Léonard · 2020-02-29 01:46:27

testo wrote:

It is not civilization building because the amount of content doesn´t allow to develop customs or anything related to civilization. A few optional buildings and a farm is not a village, they are all the same. Is it a crafting game? Well, we are just being told it is not and it won´t ever be.

This. That's what I've always said.

There's also always people pushing around the agenda of making the game even harder than it already is and it doesn't help.
In my opinion it's a naive way of thinking. Nothing to do in big towns, that must mean the game is too easy yet again!
Life getting easier is necessary. For culture to arise people need the free time that comes from a developed village.
It's a necessary step in the evolution of a civilization.
Anyone remember san-cal? Or this village with the casinos?

The cause for boredom in big towns isn't lack of challenge, it's lack of content.
Lack of MEANINGFUL content.
What do you do after oil? Nothing.

jasonrohrer · 2020-02-29 01:53:09

DestinyCall wrote:

Question ... why let us choose our tool slots?
Couldn't we just be born with a random pre-selected set of tools at the start of each life and we just have to figure out what to do with the cards that we are dealt by Life's lottery?
If this is a game about relinquishing control, why give us the illusion of choice?

That has been suggested many times, and I've definitely considered it.

You know, your mother specialized in baking, so you inherit her baking skill.

And yes, some version where you're "good" at a random subset of tools has been suggested.

One problem is that "good vs bad" is hard to implement in this game. What's a good pile of kindling vs a bad one? The engine doesn't implement stats like that. All piles of kindling are equal. All clay bowls are equal. A good bowl doesn't hold more water, and a bad one doesn't leak.

So then we end up with "can do" vs "can't do," instead.

There's also a messaging problem with any kind of procedural subset. How do you know what you can do? Where do you see the list? Trial and error? Even in the simple case of inheriting a baking skill from mom, how do you find out that you have this skill?

If you pick your own tools to learn, we don't have that problem. And if there are static, well-defined subsets (like for the family specialty biomes), then there's no messaging problem, because everybody knows (and if you don't know, you quickly notice that you get sick in that biome, and there isn't actually anything you can't do, aside from walk in that biome... you can freely work with rubber products outside of that biome, for example.... there's no mysterious WHY IT NO WORKING thing happening).

By the way, from my perspective, the tool slots are the bit of the design that I'm lukewarm about and not totally satisfied with. The family specialty biomes are pretty much perfect and exactly what the game needs.

I worry that many of the objections to family specialization are politically motivated, more than mechanically motivated.

Just like many of the objections to property fences are politically motivated (for those who want to live out their collectivist fantasies in a game).

Léonard · 2020-02-29 02:13:44

jasonrohrer wrote:

I worry that many of the objections to family specialization are politically motivated, more than mechanically motivated.
Just like many of the objections to property fences are politically motivated (for those who want to live out their collectivist fantasies in a game).

No, I'm all for capitalism and specialization/culture in OHOL.

You're just not gonna get any closer to it with these simplistic and gimmicky mechanics.
And even then such clunky mechanics are never going to give rise to something that feels authentic/natural and/or satisfying.

Spoonwood · 2020-02-29 02:54:07

jasonrohrer wrote:

I worry that many of the objections to family specialization are politically motivated, more than mechanically motivated.
Just like many of the objections to property fences are politically motivated (for those who want to live out their collectivist fantasies in a game).

If so, Mr. Rohrer hasn't been listening or reading what people have said on the forums, or not taking them seriously.

But I suspect that this is another of his lies. And there exists evidence of him lying elsewhere: https://archive.is/AJKoW

JasonY · 2020-02-29 03:34:55

Need to add content, Same way you need to air out a room.

The game is stagnating.

Last edited by JasonY (2020-02-29 03:35:40)

sigmen4020 · 2020-02-29 03:48:33

Spoonwood wrote:

jasonrohrer wrote:
I worry that many of the objections to family specialization are politically motivated, more than mechanically motivated.
Just like many of the objections to property fences are politically motivated (for those who want to live out their collectivist fantasies in a game).
If so, Mr. Rohrer hasn't been listening or reading what people have said on the forums, or not taking them seriously.
But I suspect that this is another of his lies. And there exists evidence of him lying elsewhere: https://archive.is/AJKoW

Why link to an archive instead of the thread? Are you worried that it’ll get deleted lol?

Last edited by sigmen4020 (2020-02-29 03:48:50)

Cantface · 2020-02-29 04:00:52

The mechanics of race restrictions was never an issue, even though they were definitely wack when they first came out and suddenly we couldn't do everything anymore which I understand but oof it was a BIG change. It's a 'fun' issue. Mood went from confusion to annoyance and then reluctant acceptance.

If the special biomes get more fun content like new animals/clothes/food etc then it would be better. I've seen multiple ask for arctic foxes or bunnies and extra fun things to flesh out the biomes more. It doesn't look like anything like this will happen any time soon though.

I still think a fart emote would help us all. Maybe the struggling would stop then.

Last edited by Cantface (2020-02-29 04:03:23)

DestinyCall · 2020-02-29 04:47:50

Cantface wrote:

I still think a fart emote would help us all. Maybe the struggling would stop then.

It will never happen, Cantface. Jason loves struggle and hates farts.

Coconut Fruit · 2020-02-29 06:32:00

jasonrohrer wrote:

The family specialty biomes are pretty much perfect and exactly what the game needs.

They would be perfect if we could enjoy them :P Yeah, you gave us a "challenge that not always can be solved", too bad it's an annoying challenge.
It also took away other fun things... like playing in beginning towns, I loved it.

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