THIS should have been included in the OHOL game trailer on Steam

Sporeburst · 2020-03-16 14:57:34

New Trailer

"As people climb the tech tree, I'll be staying one step ahead of them adding new stuff to the game every week"

There's a few problems with that sentence. The main one is "As people climb the tech tree." The current tech tree keeps getting hindered by the availability of Oil and Water. The latest change forces towns that try to progress in tech abandoned once oil and water have been exhausted... even more so than the previous patch.

I would suggest changing the game trailer to something more realistic like "As you progress through the tech tree, I'll be staying one step ahead of them to prevent them from progressing and forcing everyone to build these small cities only to see them die out because I made it to where they will run out of water faster."

Dodge · 2020-03-16 15:12:28

Players already reached the top, they reach it in less than a day, so no the current techtree is not hindered by the availability of oil and water.

If you're saying that towns get abandonned due to lack of oil and water that's partly true, sometimes towns die out just due to bad luck and circumstences.

One big town is currently abandonned but the oil rig still has plenty of oil...

DestinyCall · 2020-03-16 15:37:17

It would be nice if the tech tree was longer or involved more stages of village development, so it felt like you were progressing up different eras of human development. Twenty four hours isn't that long, even if you take into account the accelerated time-scale of One Hour equaling sixty years. That's just roughly 1500 years to go from hitting stuff with rocks to making diesel engines.

Currently, Jason is focused on slowing down progression by restricting advancement to the upper tiers using race limits. And reducing the availability of water and oil so we are forced to migrate or die out and start over from scratch. But this doesn't really make the content last that much longer or feel any deeper.

I'd love to see more attention put on developing different technology levels. Like the ability to advance beyond using a round rock and clay bowls and an open fire for basic village survival. At some point, these very basic ways of doing things should be replaced by more modern conceptualizations instead of continuing to use the same placeholder interaction from the start to the end. Or slowing down the early village development by adding more depth, instead of putting in more restrictions - like adding a wider variety of stone tools, copper, bronze, iron, etc, with a tiered progression that unlocked more advanced tools and technology options as you obtain the ability to gather and utilize new materials.

Games like Oxygen Not Included have this kind of advancement and it makes the early game FEEL significantly different from the mid-game or late game. There are many important milestones that change the nature of your game as you unlock new ways to interact with the world around you. OHOL has that ... but only up to a point. Once you reach the point where your village has access to iron, sheep, and an upgraded well, there is very little left to do to actually improve your village. Water and oil are the only important resources at this stage. Making them more limited doesn't make the end game more interesting or intense, just more pointless. I'd like to see other resources become important as you reach higher tech levels and start to manufacturer cool new things. Just like how your base in ONI starts off with the need to establish basic life-support and food management, then evolves into needing different critical resources and new management strategies to survive a hundred cycles or two hundred or three hundred. You have new obstacles, new threats, new resources to gather, and new projects to work on as you delve deeper into the game and rise up the tech tree in ONI. You reach a point where you can do things that would have been impossible at Cycle 50 or even Cycle 100. Ultimately, everything is limited and you need to be careful not to carelessly waste precious resources, but you have the freedom to experiment and do new things at every stage of the game. You don't feel trapped or left at a deadend.

Last edited by DestinyCall (2020-03-16 16:04:02)

Spoonwood · 2020-03-16 16:15:52

Dodge wrote:

Players already reached the top, they reach it in less than a day, so no the current techtree is not hindered by the availability of oil and water.

Oh... so do cars and planes exist then?

And where has there existed more technological development?

The tech tree hasn't expanded since radios... even though 'one step ahead of the players' was promised.

Spoonwood · 2020-03-16 16:20:19

DestinyCall wrote:

Currently, Jason is focused on slowing down progression by restricting advancement to the upper tiers using race limits.

That isn't and hasn't been staying one step ahead of the players climbing the tech tree.

DestinyCall wrote:

Or slowing down the early village development by adding more depth, instead of putting in more restrictions

It's also faster than a system where mating was required for every child, except for the second player on the server. In other words mating mechanics could slow things down, and would make things deeper also.

testo · 2020-03-16 17:06:19

Dodge wrote:

Players already reached the top, they reach it in less than a day, so no the current techtree is not hindered by the availability of oil and water.
If you're saying that towns get abandonned due to lack of oil and water that's partly true, sometimes towns die out just due to bad luck and circumstences.
One big town is currently abandonned but the oil rig still has plenty of oil...

HAHA this post made me chuckle, its like trying to stop the rain with your hands. You are actually right current tech tree is reached in less than a day, I´d say in like 6/8 hours tops unless there is a massive population of new players. And yeah techtree is not hindered by oil/water it´s just that besides making oil for a diesel pump nothing else makes any sense (morse radio is laughable, cars and planes are a waste of kerosene and radio is not even worth it´s water cost). Maybe (and this is a big maybe) photo *could* be considered like, you know, almost fun.

Towns don´t ever die because of bad luck, thats silly, towns never ever die for a different reason than lack of people. I´ve seen it so many times, towns dying because people start to sid. Even if there is food. So many towns with actually full pens and cows. I believe I´ve yet to see a real dead town because there was zero food/water. And even if there was zero food, a pond is basically 10 bowls of water or 40 ears of corn or 40 buckets of milk. Its not even that hard.

Jason hasn´t been ahead of anyone since like Newcomen Pump. There is no tech tree, trees have branches and options, you get to make a selection of how to use your resources. Here you have food production and water production, there is no choice: all towns are the same. For a full year we have seen this idea of perfecting core mechanics when in reality it all looks like Jason is just juggling around. I don´t blame him, one hundred items a week was his offering and he can´t deliver, there only so much a lone man can do. However, don´t try to stop the rain with your hands, you can only catch a few drops.

Sporeburst · 2020-03-16 17:29:45

The reason I targeted the oil/water is because with his Trailer video, you'll need to have a large city for that kind of tech. But we cannot even create a large city without resources being exhausted. I've seen large cities become ghost towns. There was plenty of food there, but no water. When you look around, all of the oil sites were dried up. The patch a few weeks ago now makes it to where these resources will dry up twice as fast.

I feel that the trailer is misleading people in what this game is really about. If we're striving to keep towns small with resources drying up in 5-6 days, how do we expect to actually grow as a community? With the latest update (as of today, the Homesick update) it just furthers my point of coming together as humans to achieve something. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it is much harder now. I feel that we're going backwards, not forwards like the Trailer is suggesting.

Solbusaur · 2020-03-16 17:34:16

I'm pretty sure this is the third time I've seen a thread like this. The last few times, Jason has addressed it and pointed out that's when he had someone else help him make the game. Since he's solo, working that fast is impossible. Plus I think he was just exaggerating the fact that he would be adding content every week

Dodge · 2020-03-16 17:34:38

testo wrote:

Towns don´t ever die because of bad luck, thats silly, towns never ever die for a different reason than lack of people.

When i said bad luck that's what i was reffering to...

"However, don´t try to stop the rain with your hands, you can only catch a few drops."

what are you talking about?

jasonrohrer · 2020-03-16 17:39:26

Yes, it became very clearly to me, shortly after the game was launched, that "climbing the tech tree" was never going to be the main, interesting thing for players in this game, no matter how big I made the tech tree.

The tech tree is still huge, and it will get much bigger, but there's no way that I can stay "one step ahead" of anyone.

Well, I mean, unless I put time gates on all tech (like what's in place for the bell tower currently), but I don't think that's very interesting. I could add tech each week that had an artificial 1-week time gate on it, and then I could stay one step ahead. But I decided early on that I wasn't going to do this for most things (all games that say "crafting axe, 45 seconds left" drive me nuts in terms of the way they seem to wantonly waste MY time).

And the reason for this problem is very simple: progress in this game is collective and accumulative. As soon as one person in a village builds a diesel pump, everyone has it going forward. It was a tech-tree challenge only for one person or a small group of people. They essentially "spoiled" it for everyone else going forward. Imagine a brand new player being born in a town where all tech is already built.

This would be like starting a Factorio game and discovering that everything was already unlocked.

But in OHOL, this is the fundamental premise of the game: building on what came before. Obviously, for that to work, people are going to end up building out, not up. Extending the road, not inventing the road.

But even there, WHY extend the road?

Because nearby oil just ran out, and the expert family we were depending on nearby just died out, and we need to extend the road farther to reach more oil and other experts.

There have to be challenges facing you, when you're born into a village that has already invented everything, because that will be the experience of 99% of the lives lived in the game.

testo · 2020-03-16 17:42:24

Dodge wrote:

testo wrote:
Towns don´t ever die because of bad luck, thats silly, towns never ever die for a different reason than lack of people.
When i said bad luck that's what i was reffering to...
"However, don´t try to stop the rain with your hands, you can only catch a few drops."
what are you talking about?

You are just dodging the main idea here. GJ.

Dodge · 2020-03-16 17:58:17

testo wrote:

Dodge wrote:
testo wrote:
Towns don´t ever die because of bad luck, thats silly, towns never ever die for a different reason than lack of people.
When i said bad luck that's what i was reffering to...
"However, don´t try to stop the rain with your hands, you can only catch a few drops."
what are you talking about?
You are just dodging the main idea here. GJ.

There's no idea you just went on a rant

testo · 2020-03-16 18:04:58

Dodge wrote:

testo wrote:
Dodge wrote:
When i said bad luck that's what i was reffering to...
"However, don´t try to stop the rain with your hands, you can only catch a few drops."
what are you talking about?
You are just dodging the main idea here. GJ.
There's no idea you just went on a rant

Even Jason posted something meaningful to the thread. Stop shitposting please.

Dodge · 2020-03-16 18:08:58

testo wrote:

Dodge wrote:
testo wrote:
You are just dodging the main idea here. GJ.
There's no idea you just went on a rant
Even Jason posted something meaningful to the thread. Stop shitposting please.

What was your point again? dont seem like there was.

Can you at least explain why you said to me "However, don´t try to stop the rain with your hands, you can only catch a few drops."

Spoonwood · 2020-03-16 18:18:58

testo wrote:

There is no tech tree, trees have branches and options, you get to make a selection of how to use your resources.

Yes, it's always been odd to hear people talk of a 'tech tree'.

jasonrohrer wrote:

The tech tree is still huge...

No, even assuming such as a 'tree', it's not. Both Rimworld and Oxygen Not Included have larger tech trees.

Kinrany · 2020-03-16 18:37:24

jasonrohrer wrote:

Yes, it became very clearly to me, shortly after the game was launched, that "climbing the tech tree" was never going to be the main, interesting thing for players in this game, no matter how big I made the tech tree.

For me this was never something to look forward to. The reason it was exciting to think about tons of content is that the number of possible interactions between things grows quadratically.

That is, I was looking forward to see unique cultures with unique tech stacks caused by unique circumstances.

testo · 2020-03-16 18:53:34

Dodge wrote:

What was your point again? dont seem like there was.
Can you at least explain why you said to me "However, don´t try to stop the rain with your hands, you can only catch a few drops."

My main point about the game is:

There is not a proper or real tech tree, since most high tech items are not really useful.

Regarding your first post my points are:

a) You extracted a few truths from the gameplay to refute and criticize the opener, while

b) You elude the main point of the opener (The inconsistency in the trailer related to the present gameplay, which has been acknoledge by Jason)

The phrase you asked for means exactly that, since you are trying to niptick the first post and keep posting while adding nothing of value to the main topic. I replied to you already: "You are just dodging the main idea here. GJ." But you don´t seem to get the memo.

Dodge · 2020-03-16 19:06:43

testo wrote:

Dodge wrote:
What was your point again? dont seem like there was.
Can you at least explain why you said to me "However, don´t try to stop the rain with your hands, you can only catch a few drops."
My main point about the game is:
There is not a proper or real tech tree, since most high tech items are not really useful.
Regarding your first post my points are:
a) You extracted a few truths from the gameplay to refute and criticize the opener, while
b) You elude the main point of the opener (The inconsistency in the trailer related to the present gameplay, which has been acknoledge by Jason)
The phrase you asked for means exactly that, since you are trying to niptick the first post and keep posting while adding nothing of value to the main topic. I replied to you already: "You are just dodging the main idea here. GJ." But you don´t seem to get the memo.

From the post and the picture posted it seemed to me that OP was not aware that the techtree doesn't have currently these egg shaped transporter thing and seemed to believe that IF there was less pressure on oil and water it was possible to get to a point where building these was a possibility, so i was telling him that oil and water was not the reason there wasn't any of these advanced technological objects.

Not sure why you jumped on me for that...

Also in the trailer it's explicitly said that civilization is not as advanced yet "maybe one day though"

And about the "one step ahead" thing i never refuted that in any way, even the opposite i said players reach the top in less than a day.

"There is not a proper or real tech tree, since most high tech items are not really useful."

A diesel engine is not useful?

I guess you're right (not really) since you can just travel a little further to find iron, oil and everything you want then nothing is really useful.

Psykout · 2020-03-16 19:11:24

Dodge wrote:

What was your point again? dont seem like there was.
Can you at least explain why you said to me "However, don´t try to stop the rain with your hands, you can only catch a few drops."

For one, I don't know how you can so horribly quote someone when what they wrote is right above you...

To summarize, trying to stay ahead of a living playerbase with the tech tree is like trying to stop rain using your hands. It's an impossible task, and you will look silly trying to do so.

The main point, is that towns are not limited by water/food/oil, but simply player attention. Once a town reaches a certain point, there is so little to do that FEELS meaningful that players abandon the town through SIDS.

To this I completely agree. I loved this game, I put a lot of time into this game, I can't play this game at moment.

Wrote this on the discord last night after trying to get a couple lives in and getting discouraged and playing a different game.

"Suggestions on tasks to tackle? Coming back to the game after a long break, I am always put into a settlement that has all or most of the groundwork done, its rather confusing to what needs attention. Often its dealing with water, but it's not "hey we need an engine" its we need diesel, and we can't even run those machines (race restrictions ftw). I am finding it hard to find a groove that I am down to do for an hour. Back in the day, finding good sources of iron, making decent bakeries, enlarging and managing pens were actual things needed. Now it feels like thats all done and I am lost. I mean I have had a couple lives that I tried to clean up a pen and cycle sheep for mutton and got told to stop because we didn't have water for berry/carrot bowls... wtf, what happened"

This to me is the end result of trying to "slow" down the progression. As Jason wrote, putting time gates on everything wouldn't really be enjoyable, but we really need some sort of time/resource sink. Something that takes a couple days of communal work to achieve, that allows us to start the next level of thing that takes even more days to complete. The hard part though is something of that level (pyramid is a good example) should require a ton of resources, but at no point are we allowed to upscale our gathering methods. Rope and stone are two great examples. There is no way to gather either of these resources differently as tech level moves up. Sure you might be making planes and cars, but if you need some rope, you gotta plant some milkweed like they did in the old days. You might be sticking engines on wells and mines, but if you want to build a few walls, break out the horse cart and a shovel and ride out like your great-great-great-great-Grandad did. Having some of those resources come super cheap later would essentially break the early game, much like being able to make wells on ponds broke water a year ago, but at some point you have to give in. Pretty sure I am sitting in my house on a computer with a fridge full of food (well sort of hehe) because humans have broken the survival game and have moved on to bigger problems.

There is a fine line between not making a 2D minecraft, and removing freedoms to create anything because everyone is struggling over water and attention spans.

Dodge · 2020-03-16 19:20:54

Psykout wrote:

Dodge wrote:
What was your point again? dont seem like there was.
Can you at least explain why you said to me "However, don´t try to stop the rain with your hands, you can only catch a few drops."
For one, I don't know how you can so horribly quote someone when what they wrote is right above you...
To summarize, trying to stay ahead of a living playerbase with the tech tree is like trying to stop rain using your hands. It's an impossible task, and you will look silly trying to do so.

Yeah again that's the thing i never said the opposite i even agreed when i said "Players already reached the top, they reach it in less than a day"

So telling me "However, don´t try to stop the rain with your hands, you can only catch a few drops." doesn't make any sense.

Léonard · 2020-03-16 19:50:50

jasonrohrer wrote:

There have to be challenges facing you, when you're born into a village that has already invented everything, because that will be the experience of 99% of the lives lived in the game.

Léonard wrote:

How about making the next challenge be population growth itself?
[...]
We've seen overpopulation happen in OHOL before, back when the mobile app just became popular in china. Some cities would have up to 20 fertile females at a time.
The berries/pie production couldn't keep up (proving the point that "communism" wasn't sustainable anymore).
If you instead gave us the tools to sustain much larger populations, a city could then have a chance at organizing itself possibly into a primitive form of government to be able to simply sustain itself and avoid collapse.
[...]
Cities in such a state will eventually create a food surplus which would allow people to focus on newer projects such as building structures.
I have seen this happen personally ingame, in one life inside one of those enormous cities (before the fence update) someone came up to me and asked me to help him build his "house".
Ideally, if people weren't bored to death and wouldn't keep suiciding out of those cities, a population growth would happen given that such cities should in theory have more fertile females and that towns are supposed to compete for babies.
If its people prepared and organized the town to accept a larger population, then they have overcome the overpopulation problem.
[...]
If you gave us more things to do, people would be more encouraged to stay in the big cities (as is already being pointed out in this thread).
If you had simply continued to deliver content and staying one step ahead of us, maybe this wouldn't be a problem in the first place.
Maybe we can end up building atomic powered robots after all just like in the trailer.

Gogo · 2020-03-16 20:00:23

If we could build radios, we would communicate what we need in our towns, this + spec way stones and we can even live far away from each other. But we would need time to build them in 3 towns.

Please build me radios, I will bring them back from abandoned places.

pein · 2020-03-17 15:15:28

jasonrohrer wrote:

Yes, it became very clearly to me, shortly after the game was launched, that "climbing the tech tree" was never going to be the main, interesting thing for players in this game, no matter how big I made the tech tree.
The tech tree is still huge, and it will get much bigger, but there's no way that I can stay "one step ahead" of anyone.
Well, I mean, unless I put time gates on all tech (like what's in place for the bell tower currently), but I don't think that's very interesting. I could add tech each week that had an artificial 1-week time gate on it, and then I could stay one step ahead. But I decided early on that I wasn't going to do this for most things (all games that say "crafting axe, 45 seconds left" drive me nuts in terms of the way they seem to wantonly waste MY time).

And the reason for this problem is very simple: progress in this game is collective and accumulative. As soon as one person in a village builds a diesel pump, everyone has it going forward. It was a tech-tree challenge only for one person or a small group of people. They essentially "spoiled" it for everyone else going forward. Imagine a brand new player being born in a town where all tech is already built.
This would be like starting a Factorio game and discovering that everything was already unlocked.
But in OHOL, this is the fundamental premise of the game: building on what came before. Obviously, for that to work, people are going to end up building out, not up. Extending the road, not inventing the road.

But even there, WHY extend the road?

Because nearby oil just ran out, and the expert family we were depending on nearby just died out, and we need to extend the road farther to reach more oil and other experts.

There have to be challenges facing you, when you're born into a village that has already invented everything, because that will be the experience of 99% of the lives lived in the game.

I don't think you can keep up with the players, but you got the wrong idea
it still is very interesting to do something useful for the town, and climbing the tech is the most interesting thing since people got a goal
it's better to work toward something than to work against something
even if you got a goal to produce 10000 bowls, to get a reward, it's still a goal which might happen eventually so your life had a meaning
but working towards the sheer survival and saving the family over and over isn't too motivating

As he said, you slowed down the advancing but didn't add content to the top levels, which might not disturb the new players cause they never reached those levels, but for the veterans just feels tedious to do more work for the same result.

The limits you put aren't reachable cause it's out of the player's hand, they can't reach it cause they can't do it themselves, which feels bad, even if you know how to make rubber you can't do it cause you didn't born that way

The other problem is that you slow down the whole progress, but it's affecting the bottom level not just the top

Lot of times kids ask what to do and I can't answer cause there is no answer. Soil and water is basic level, once the eve manages to make basic tools, farming is the simplest thing anyone can do. But limiting the water limits the bottom level of the tech so there is no need for low-level workers anymore.
The same thing why people made multiple low tech wells instead of one higher tech one. There is no benefit to it. You can add limitations but you also need to add benefits to it. When people upgrade the well the first time, it's the start of a new era. They no longer need to spare the water, they can afford to plant some milkweed. At least it was like that. But now the water is still a major limiting factor. At least buckets added the possibility of making rubber, milk and paint so that's why people want it to make them.

But if you place too much pressure on the water in every single era, then there is no difference in eras.

It should be a clear border where water is not an issue.

Time limitations wouldn't be nice in this game since we can't play forever, only 60 minutes at a time, so time is precious, but there is a difference between increasing the time until it's getting out of hand or forcing people to do something else with a time limit.

If I can do a job alone I won't ask for help, if someone can do it for me I can focus on something else. Forcing people to work together might be needed, but you went with limiting tool slots. I think team jobs would be better, crafting items would require population or 2 people or more working together.

People hate to feel useless, and I admit, being one of the more productive members, I see them useless. Mainly cause there is no point on processing resources, I can do it faster than them, so 80% of the town job is gathering resources, but that's not too fun right now and nobody does it. So minimal time limits would be okay I guess if processing takes longer than the gathering and processing will balance out better.

If I gather clay, and they make bowls, they also got to work a lot to consume the resources, make the fires, cook the bowls. They save me time. Maybe cutting logs into boards can be considered similar, it's still way faster to make floors than collecting the resources.

Other than that, there aren't many activities where people can be useful to others. For example, in a later stage town, gathering 30 adobe vs making a building can't even be compared, I would spend half of my life and they could do it in a few seconds. Also, it's way more fun to use resources than produce them. But the fact that people share resources, means it will happen. Also makes people even more useless if they don't go out of city, so veterans end up serving others, just to make things smooth while others are idle or having fun on the expense of others struggle.

Ideally, the bottom level should always work infinitely, people should be able to use their time to create value. That's why I find it bad that water is always a limitation, it's a low-level resource, same as soil.

The other issue is overproduction. There is no benefit of making too many resources, sure ts nice to have a lot of pies, but then that removes even more motivation. That's why I rarely baked pies. If I do it, others can't have a job, a goal, I do it way faster which would save a bit of kindling, but then they will be idle and start griefing.

There should be a way that resources are converted into other forms that provide benefits in the future. For example, I could make pies, sell them and acquire other resources that can't be produced in other ways.

It's not the same as a strategic management game, but the idea should be similar. Low-level workers should be always busy, creating resources. High-level workers should be needing those resources to refine them into something more valuable.

I guess one way to do would be switch to an upkeep based economy where it doesn't matter as much how much you produce, it matters how well you optimize it.
Water should be always available but the water output wouldn't always cover the needs of the citizens so they wouldn't be able to make higher tier resources. Producing high tier resources would always need an investment of low-level resources, so either iron, water, soil or some other stuff like stone, and some bio-starchy thing like straws.
That would mean that actually processing all the water you got wouldn't be bad, you would get more later, but the excess would be wasted so using it would matter vs not using it.

One thing I liked in surviving mars is the way fuel worked, power was more of a base resource, water could make fuel and then water and fuel made polymers. Or other sci-fi games used starches from farming to make plastics.

Upkeep based economy would need more machines that need to be repaired so it would create profit but would require maintenance. That could be just food spoiling and re-using it as compost material, so it wouldn't be fully wasted but would lose value if not eaten or sold.

Honestly, the game needs more complex elements to be more fun, you cannot make interesting stuff shuffling the current elements.
If you refuse to add health or energy bar, power or other resources, you can shuffle the current ones all you want, it won't make it more fun.
A singular resource, water that can be converted to other resources like soil or tech advancement, but cannot be converted back from other resources, makes the whole economy of the game based on water, and that's not fun.

Even quests that use up water but then provide water back would be decent.

If you don't want to add time to crafting, as a resource that's fine, you could add time as a resource for the "machines", then they would do the work and characters should interact with them to use up before overflows. That was my idea in the other topic with the beds, so they would refill the stamina/energy bar and making them would be essential but it wouldn't be character time to use them, it would be a matter of upgrading them and having enough of them to cover the needs.

You said that you just want temperature and food as the main resource, but there isn't significant enough difference to matter.

The temperature inside and outside isn't an advantage/disadvantage as long as there aren't really rough environments where people need to enter or people would be able to spend time inside doing things that matter.

So shelters should be part of advancing in tech and considered as an element altogether, so certain actions can only be done inside rooms that have certain upgrades to them.

Another thing could be clearing certain areas of the map with very high or low temperatures to provide benefits for the town, or even jobs that require clothing for them, like cutting wood could be only done in checkered shirts and would use it up over time.
Also clearing the map should be more important and harder like it would give more resources and would take more time so free space would be more valuable.

As for food, there isn't really a big difference in consuming raw or cooked food and provides no benefit for doing so.
Sure, it saves water and food pips to make higher-value foods, but players are dumb and they still will consume the raw resources and others can't really prevent that.

But if there would be a better benefit of cooked food, like a certain buff that allows doing other actions while the effect lasts, then people would more likely process food so they can do that action.
For example, some jobs could be only done while having a buff of cooked food, like eating a pie then being able to move heavier items or do advanced tasks, crafting special items.
That would need a bigger difference in raw and cooked food and all the raw food considered tier one and all cooked food considered tier 2 even if they are lower food value, the extra time spent on them should give a benefit compared to raw foods.

Another way to make it matter would be farming tech levels, where certain foods require higher technology but provide higher yields. And the requirements could be glasshouses or planter boxes or fertilizers or tools, so grouping them would matter more.
Instead of single tile farming should be multi tile farming, planting several tiles at once and harvesting more of it, but the processing of food would be also longer so it would be shifted toward processing not just converting resources and technologies could help speed that up.

I think that grouping things would be needed, like the town should be a zone that could provide bonuses to a certain territory and upgrading it would take resources, but provide benefits, and buildings should be upgraded over time to provide benefits.
For example, if the farming is not upgraded, the town can only have 4 tiles of berry bushes, 4 tiles of carrots, etc. later 9 tiles, 16, 25, 36 etc
Also, it could be controlled better for hardships like town-wide low temperatures or high temperatures, catastrophes so stacking
up resources would matter more.

Getting into higher eras should be way more significant and distinctive. Especially that we don't have so many Eve runs now, the game is lacking the pressure of the survival and the challenge. When I started, most games were with a newbie eve who struggles in the forest, then you had to build up a town. Most people had some experience on doing the low tech stuff, like making a farm or a kiln, pottery.
Nowadays people born in big cities and got no clue how to do basic things on their own.

The homesick update forcing people to stay at home, but travelling isn't really fun on it's own, distance shouldn't be a concern on later stages. So a faster way of trade or travel should be also added. Towns could be their own small ecosystems. The expansion would be better if it would have a cost. If cities would be a zone, and eras would be more straightforward, it would even make sense to tier up to a level then switch location by sending out explorers to be able to continue tech development, it would give a better goal than just surviving. Work and live until you make enough currency to buy a new territory. That could also separate the tech levels like tier-one could only have certain tech elements, and people would need to advance into higher realms where other tech is possible. That would provide newbees a low challenge level that they enjoy and a goal to get better at the game.

And the reset switch would be worth it. The population could be also used as a resource, limiting towns ability to split up after having like 24 population above age 14 they could send out travellers and start new.

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2020-03-16 14:57:34

THIS should have been included in the OHOL game trailer on Steam

#2 2020-03-16 15:12:28

Re: THIS should have been included in the OHOL game trailer on Steam

#3 2020-03-16 15:37:17

Re: THIS should have been included in the OHOL game trailer on Steam

#4 2020-03-16 16:15:52

Re: THIS should have been included in the OHOL game trailer on Steam

#5 2020-03-16 16:20:19

Re: THIS should have been included in the OHOL game trailer on Steam

#6 2020-03-16 17:06:19

Re: THIS should have been included in the OHOL game trailer on Steam

#7 2020-03-16 17:29:45

Re: THIS should have been included in the OHOL game trailer on Steam

#8 2020-03-16 17:34:16

Re: THIS should have been included in the OHOL game trailer on Steam

#9 2020-03-16 17:34:38

Re: THIS should have been included in the OHOL game trailer on Steam

#10 2020-03-16 17:39:26

Re: THIS should have been included in the OHOL game trailer on Steam

#11 2020-03-16 17:42:24

Re: THIS should have been included in the OHOL game trailer on Steam

#12 2020-03-16 17:58:17

Re: THIS should have been included in the OHOL game trailer on Steam

#13 2020-03-16 18:04:58

Re: THIS should have been included in the OHOL game trailer on Steam

#14 2020-03-16 18:08:58

Re: THIS should have been included in the OHOL game trailer on Steam

#15 2020-03-16 18:18:58

Re: THIS should have been included in the OHOL game trailer on Steam

#16 2020-03-16 18:37:24

Re: THIS should have been included in the OHOL game trailer on Steam

#17 2020-03-16 18:53:34

Re: THIS should have been included in the OHOL game trailer on Steam

#18 2020-03-16 19:06:43

Re: THIS should have been included in the OHOL game trailer on Steam

#19 2020-03-16 19:11:24

Re: THIS should have been included in the OHOL game trailer on Steam

#20 2020-03-16 19:20:54

Re: THIS should have been included in the OHOL game trailer on Steam

#21 2020-03-16 19:50:50

Re: THIS should have been included in the OHOL game trailer on Steam

#22 2020-03-16 20:00:23

Re: THIS should have been included in the OHOL game trailer on Steam

#23 2020-03-17 15:15:28

Re: THIS should have been included in the OHOL game trailer on Steam

Board footer