Edit: He plays a life after that and is shortly out of lives again.
]]>So now you introduce two models:
The regular purchase of the game which lets you bank 18 lives.
The Freemium model where you can only bank one life, but can pay $1 for another life after that. New players would also get to start with the 36 intro lives, to get them hooked of course.
Smart idea heh. No really, it's not a bad idea at all to let people just try it out.
]]>Lily wrote:The one concern I have with this, is that it is fairly normal to die a bunch of times in a row through no fault of your own. Often times you start playing and die a few times to bad parents before you have a good start. I do think the number is high enough that it isn't going to be an issue for most people, though I could see a newbie who plays a lot possibly reaching it.
Personally I never had to retry more than 4 times before I find a decent family to live with. If you run into shitty families ten times in a row it's probably not your day to play OHOL. Perhaps it's time to go outside lol
Well I was talking about with a newbie who dies fairly often. So you might die a bunch of times entirely because it is your fault and you are new and also get a bunch of bad families that has nothing to do with you. The combo of the two, and then playing for like 3-4 hours in a row.
]]>The regular purchase of the game which lets you bank 18 lives.
The Freemium model where you can only bank one life, but can pay $1 for another life after that. New players would also get to start with the 36 intro lives, to get them hooked of course.
]]>Implementing life token system = I think you will find its a null effect
It's not a null effect, it has made a massive difference and improved the quality of the game significantly IMO.
]]>The one concern I have with this, is that it is fairly normal to die a bunch of times in a row through no fault of your own. Often times you start playing and die a few times to bad parents before you have a good start. I do think the number is high enough that it isn't going to be an issue for most people, though I could see a newbie who plays a lot possibly reaching it.
Personally I never had to retry more than 4 times before I find a decent family to live with. If you run into shitty families ten times in a row it's probably not your day to play OHOL. Perhaps it's time to go outside lol
]]>Implementing life token system = I think you will find its a null effect (unless you do the unthinkable and take your game from pay-to-own all the way to Farmville timers and pay-to-play-more).
Instead consider: rewarding players with a meaningless metagame stat based on their average life span. For example, The stat is simply the average of all your life spans. Thus 60 would be a "perfect" score, while someone who /die's all the time might have something in the single digits. Show the player their own meaningless stat when they log into the game, on the home screen, before starting a life. This has the best kind of effect, it gets the player valuing what you as the game designer intended/hoped for them to feel/value.
]]>I think the focus should be to minimasing lethal griefing, and including other means like nonlethal combat.
Imagine if that girl that threathned to kill me over me marrying the boy she loved, would have initiated a slappy fight with me whenever we saw eachother?
I do still believe that at least a few people causing trouble now and again is an important ingredient for an interesting and varied and well-rounded game. It gives you something to come together over---a shared challenge that is different every time (whereas the shared challenges provided by non-human elements in the game are more the same every time).
That said, I'm certain that part of the game doesn't feel quite right yet, which is (I believe) the actual reason why people complain about it and wish it could be removed (even though it is impossible to remove). The dancing griefer is a perfect example of this. I will continue to work on this in the future, bolstering safety in numbers, enabling real detective and police work, etc.
I mean, a game about peaceful village life that everyone once in a while turns into a compelling murder mystery.... if the game actually worked that way, it would be splendid indeed.
]]>Also, Donkey Town may be removed this week, but I need to think about it.
FYI, one of the game's biggest all-time griefers currently has 0 lives.
You should keep the inverted speech bubbles though. Allows griefers to be sorted out quick
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