a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building
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In case this ends in a draw, why not both?
Options 1 and 2 have little to do with probability and are more about pump transparency. They let villagers determine how much water is left. These solutions confuse me, because they seem to be addressing another goal entirely.
I agree. What if a Diesel Pump could fill a Water Cart or Buckets and a Kerosene/Charcoal Pumps could only be emptied with a Bucket. All run for a set duration that increases with tech level and all give unlimited water whilst running, with a chance of breaking on going dry/shutting down. Water Cart could only directly and completely fill an Empty Cistern. I think this would require the fewest new assets and changes to existing transitions, and keeps the learning curve lower. The water cart can absolutely be a part of a later update too if time doesn't allow, the only critical piece at this point is unlimited water for a set duration and a probability based counter to determine exhaustion status.
I'm also perplexed that there have been no extremely long or even eternal family lines.
I don't think population drop is the central cause:
It never really drops below 60 people. That's a lot of people. Enough for at least 3 towns to survive through the night.
I'm not sure how to say this without causing offense, but please know none is intended. Jason, I feel that you don't have an accurate perception of the average players in-game. If you have hidden stats that contradict what I am about to say then I concede my point. But my many hours of observations in-game seem to clash with your perception of what is happening in-game.
I completely agree that 60 semi-competent players is enough to keep 3+ towns flourishing without issue, and even combat the efforts of griefers. But I feel the root of the long lineage problem lies in the distribution of experienced players to new players and griefers.
Out of those ~60 players each night, spread across lets say 3 towns and I'm guessing 2-5 Eve camps, where are the 15 or so players that actually know how to keep a town alive? What about an hour later? I've been born into plenty of towns that are completely stocked with resources and food by people who clearly knew what they were doing, just to end my life in the same town with food running out, no compost piles, no iron, dry wells, fields of carrot seeds and dying berry bushes, etc. because there was a population boom and very few actually contributed meaningfully or potentially even knew how to.
As a mother I do my best to ask every one of my children how much they know as I give them village tours, and offer to teach them anything they want to learn (assuming we are not in desperate need of food or resources).
From my observations, at any given time out of the total population: (yes this is a bit generalized)
~30% know a few random things well (compost, farming, smithing, or cooking, etc.), but that is about it
~25% know most things or are competent enough in-game to easily figure new things out themselves (probably the majority who are reading this fit here)
~20% are effectively completely new and know virtually nothing (50/50 chance they can tend berries)
~15% don't react when talked to, beyond basic TY or HI, and just wander around eating without meaningfully contributing (maybe just language barrier?)
~10% are intentionally griefing for "reasons"
***A means to know these percentages for real would be awesome, especially if you could correlate it with the end of each lineage***
Yes this is absolutely dynamic and there are times when seemingly everyone is contributing meaningfully and towns flourish. But more often than not the 25% who actually know what needs to be done are running around trying to keep the town alive and unable to stop long enough to properly teach anything to the new people, or the town fails. Also of that 25% I'd venture to guess that at-least half have spent multiple lives teaching the same thing to many people, which gets monotonous so they just don't anymore. As a result those not taught properly experiment and often do things considered griefing without knowing any better and some are even killed for it. That experienced 25% also has to try counterbalancing the 25% that are effectively just food sinks, or outright harmful intentionally.
RNG births in any given town can easily result (I've seen it happen dozens of times) in an entire town of 6+ without a single other player that knows how to do more than one selective task. As I run around gathering resources, smithing needed tools, making compost, etc like a madman because someone needs to if the town is going to survive. I have no time to teach someone how to do any of it in that madness. I try to delegate some easier tasks, but when you need to stop for 3 years and explain the simplest of things for the 100th time.... you just don't. You do it in 2 sec and move on because time is probably the most valuable resource in OHOL.
My suggestion if the goal is longer lineages: find a way to more evenly distribute your experienced players. For example, like the mandatory tutorial, have a mandatory "survey" on your first login each week/update. Takes <1 min to fill out and would allow you to "distribute the knowledge" more evenly across the server. A simpler way is just a 1-10 slider on the login screen for players to set their "perceived experience level". It should be relatively easy to tie that into the baby spawning decisions, just try to maintain a balanced "collective experience" in all villages. If a village/lineage falls below average they automatically get experienced players (or those who claim to be) spawning, instead of brand new players. On the flip side, villages that are above the experience curve probably have the bandwidth to actually teach their children properly, so they are ideal places for new players to spawn. This would certainly curtail what I believe accounts for at least half of all lineage collapses.
Statistically every lineage will encounter an entire generation of "new" players at some point and when that happens there's a high likelihood that lineage fails soon after.
I also like the idea of some form of consequence or limits for /DIE, as that alone can easily end long lineages.
Please be careful adding additional monetary requirements to play the game. I understand that if designed properly "good" players should never need to pay, but new players would have to pay every time. So I imagine that would only serve reduce active player counts further.
first you accept the way how OHOL deals out death while being killed, ALWAYS with only one single stroke & ALWAYS 100% successful
& then you criticize my formulation
this is not helpful
No. Only the knife is currently a broke way to easily kill someone (yes needs changing eventually). Bows are easy to dodge if you are paying attention. Attempts at murdering me are far from 100% successful. I would say 20% of bow wielders manage to kill me by surprise, and maybe 80-90% of knife wielders. It is pretty obvious if someone has a knife out and is walking toward you...just run away.
Criticize what formulation? I do agree with a lot of what you have said, but all you are offering are complaints about how unfair life is. I haven't seen you suggest a single solution to the problem aside from giving us a peaceful/non-violent way to combat the problem. You already have two: "Sir please don't kill me" or just run away if you see potential danger. If any other peaceful/non-violent ways of dealing with murderers exist please do share.
...adds another opportunity for more griefing by, again, another addition of another option to victimize players
The murder and griefing problems have plagued this game since release and Jason is obviously aware that it is a problem, but he has repeatedly said that he does not know a way to implement something that allows only those "in the right" to take action on those "in the wrong" without those "in the wrong" being able to victimize those "in the right" with the same mechanics. Yet again if you have any suggestions please do share.
you assumption that OHOL is a historically acurate game was rebuffed by Jason, he meant that it's not the case
I never claimed this game was historically accurate, it is far from it; however, it is absolutely analogous to RL societal development. After rereading the last 3 months of Jason's posts it is clear that Jason is trying to simulate the "human experience" as close as possible. He has also said it is not a game to develop a civilization from scratch, but to rebuild a civilization post-apocalypse. Regardless in it's current state, with max settlement population around 20, it is much closer to stone age tribal cultures than any other RL time period and that is why I reference it as such.
also your opinions how things worked in stone age & "primitive societies" are pure speculation, please just talk about what you know for sure how it works IRL instead to speculate while you just imagine things as it pleases you, i rather doubt you are an actual archeologist or anthropologist, so it's pure speculation without even any solid knowledge behind.
I am a well educated individual with a deep understanding of fundamental physics and the scientific method, as well as a passion for history and philosophy. They are not my opinions, but a distillation of facts into a sound hypothesis. We know as fact that primitive tribal cultures the world over frequently murdered each other in competition over resources (it is found both in their own historical accounts and physical archaeological evidence of ritual sacrifice and mass graves of slain warriors). We know as fact that isolated human cultures cut off from the outside world that still exist today (I am very familiar with at least one in the deep Amazon emerging in recent years) lead significantly violent lives as they struggle to survive(taken directly from the mouth of these people when they were questioned about why they fled the jungle...a competing murderous tribe already killed many of their people). Is it pure speculation that early humans in nearly identical societal environments to these modern primitives would have to deal with similar violence in competition for resources? I think not, I consider that a well founded hypothesis. If you don't consider the evidence enough to support my hypothesis then please don't believe it, that is your right as a free thinking individual. But please don't assume my statements are pure whimsical speculation if I simply choose not to go into a detailed explanation. Yes I may be wrong, and I would openly accept that, if someone were to provide evidence that disproves my hypothesis.
there is no options of prevention, protection & cure
also no options of random misclicking, no cases of unsuccessful attempts to kill, no backfiring either
Yes there are currently some limited actions that can be taken to reduce your chances of being murdered like running away at the sight of a knife or bow, or pleading for your life, etc. And yes there are options of random misclicking an object on the ground instead of the person because they just moved and now the knife is free game if your quick enough. I have definitely picked up a knife this way and chased my murderous cuz out of town. Would a 50/50 hit rate with knives and bows really improve the game? Now bears take on average six shots, sometime more. Rattlesnakes now kill 50% of people that try to knife them. Sounds fair to me considering bears and snakes kill WAY more players than other players do. But yes I agree that more gameplay options would be nice.
one cannot want to have a peaceful game while not giving every player, even those violent & aggressive players, the freedom to protect themselves against the violence of players who think they have the right to be aggressive & violent
Who ever claimed this is supposed to be a peaceful game? If someone is doing something that is endangering the survival of my family I best be able to do something about it, the only solution if they will not listen is to kill them before they kill us all. One cannot create a successful human society without first addressing the dark primal instincts that turn men into beasts. Jason adamantly supports murder in OHOL as an unfortunate but realistic problem that all societies must deal with, and rightfully so. Without someone committing crimes in the first place for people to condemn, not a single law would have ever been written and laws are a large portion of what defines modern society.
either everybody has the right to protect themselves or the whole system is unjust, skewed & corrupt
Sadly this is not the case in many portions of the world today. I would argue that large portions of our current world population live in societies that give them virtually zero right to protect themselves from injustice and corruption. So why should OHOL be any different.
i am not killed now either, because i don't play the game anymore lol
So what are you doing arguing about the current state of murder in the game if you no longer play and can logically have no idea what the current state of murder is? This game changes significantly on a weekly basis so using old experiences to justify "potential" current problems is just wrong. I feel your frustration with the topic and can relate as I have had multiple great lives ended prematurely by some evil doer. Unfortunately life just isn't fair IRL or in OHOL; in both you can be walking down the street on the greatest day of your life and get shanked by some dude that really liked your backpack. To really instill that "human experience" that Jason is striving for, interactions like this should be part of the experience. That OMG moment when you realized you just died to a stranger for no reason should have a comparable emotional impact to such an event happening IRL. That is the intent anyways, but for those of us that have played the game a lot and those that don't buy into the story they are playing the emotional impact is null and simply replaced by anger and frustration. If you find yourself not enjoying the game then take a break for a few months and wait for more changes to be made, then login and try them out before complaining about how broken the system is. The only "broken" thing right now in regards to murder is knives are nearly impossible to defend against, but more than likely they only kill one person before starving to death thanks to recent updates which is a significant consequence and serial murder prevention mechanism. Bows are no longer a huge threat because they need to be within your vision and a bow is pretty easy to see someone holding, so easy to dodge. IMO griefing/inexperienced players kill significantly more people than murderers do.
AstroTitan wrote:3. Cure for murder? Umm your already dead...
ad 3. NOPE
Murder: the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another. (by definition murder can't be cured unless you get resurrected, so in a way OHOL already cures murder regularly...)
I do however wish there was a cure for injury. But our stone age society hasn't figured that out yet I guess. It would be nice if we had some form of primitive bandage, or plant extract ointment; but in those primitive times most serious wounds were fatal regardless of the treatment.
IRL people are not born recalling pleasantly successful killings from their past lives & do not proceed doing the same as soon they can hold a knife stolen
Some people swear they do... hence the need to lock them up in asylums or prison (I'm not justifying it, just using history as example of how the problem was dealt with)
Yes I think we should have some means to tie people up temporarily and escort them to a jail we fashion and they are unable to leave that jail for the remaining hour of their life(reborn back into same body for 1 hour). Yet again we are just out of the stone age so anything more than stockades or iron handcuffs that prevented them from picking things up would be ahead of their time (still not sure how we figured out steel tools before iron ones...).
one stroke & the victim falls from perfect health to being dead, this is not how it happens IRL
IRL not every attempt to murder is successful
Without modern medicine it would be rare to survive more than a few weeks with a serious flesh wound. (which equates to the death squeal and few seconds of life we get now after being gibbed)
I agree it would be awesome if there was an easy way to prevent someone from stabbing you (maybe stab is no longer instant but could give you a sound and then 1-2 sec to click on the assailant to make them drop the knife then a scramble for it ensues and repeat until someone fails to defend themselves.) Bows are annoying but can be dealt with by running for your life. If you don't stand still they can't hit you.
what ethics is this ?
The ethics of primitive human societies and it's fascinating because OHOL is playing on our primal instincts to simulate it without us even knowing.
ad 5. & following - NOPE
i am not a helpless victim IRL, even if someone would try to murder me, i have many options to protect myself,....then i could take precautions even against idiots with bow & arrows trying to hit me
I believe you would be very capable of defending yourself, but even the most hardened warrior can be taken by surprise by a bear, or the man hunting him. In real life if your standing next to a stranger armed with a bow, you best be ready to bob and weave until you know if he is friendly or not.
civilizaiton needs peace, the only civs without peace are depicted in fiction, there is not one RL example of a civ which managed to thrive without peace, every society blossoms after violence is reduced to a manageable, marginal occurance - compared to RL is OHOL's violence out of hand, would this be happening IRL, people would flee out of country
Define what you mean by peace. I would agree that civilization requires stability, but not peace. Peace is a goal of most civilizations and as a state not easily maintained, significant effort goes towards keeping the peace. Nearly every civilization in existence today have had horrifically non-peaceful times in their past and many have been founded immediately following some large horrifically bloody conflict. History if full of examples of civilizations collapsing due to war and the remnants flee to different areas before starting a new independent settlements. Yet again OHOL is still in the stone/agricultural/bronze age right now where murder was more commonplace relative to today.
I believe the primary issue right now that is contributing to some peoples frustration with murder rates is the number of active players on official servers. With 60-90 simultaneous players average, when one lone person decides they feel like murdering picture people they are now able to kill 5% of the population directly and 20% indirectly over the few hours they decide to play. Considering people are habitual animals I'm willing to bet those that are complaining the most just happen to play regularly during times when the frequent murderers do. With less than 100 people playing only a few murderers can essentially ruin the game for everyone else. If there were thousands of people playing regularly I think everyone would have less complaints about murder rates even with the current system. But until populations increase it would be nice if one dude didn't have the power to ruin the game for so many others.
i am complaining about NO protection from murder, NO prevention against murder, NO cure for murder & NO consequences for the murderer
i am complaining about the complete helplessness of a murder victim & the favouritism of killings in OHOL
i do not know one single game where the killers are being favoured while the victims are being misled into the belief that the game is not about killing
Considering OHOL is meant to be analogous to real life (with artistic interpretation), why don't we see how murder is dealt with in real life:
1. Protection from murder? A robust legal system discouraging it and the ability to arm yourself for self defense
2. Prevention against murder? Its called properly raising your kids to know murdering is bad, or if they still think it is good then medicate them heavily and lock them away (Asylums existed for a reason). Also a legal system that waves consequences in your face.
3. Cure for murder? Umm your already dead...
4. Consequences for the murderer? If you get caught, penalty under the law can be severe. But a surprisingly large fraction of murderers get away with it with no consequences at all.
5. Helplessness of a murder victim? Absolutely helpless unless the victim is armed or within earshot of an officer of the law or a heroic individual.
OHOL is designed as a society/civilization building simulator with extremely unique gameplay that AFIK has zero truly comparable games so just throw away your preconceived "killing game" vs "non-killing game." The only murder protection, prevention, consequences, etc. that exist in real life are those developed by members of that society. Hell "Thou shall not kill" is one of the ten commandments from "God" yet murder is still a daily occurrence even in the most devoutly religious societies.
Jason fully intends us members of society in OHOL to create these systems of law and consequence to deal with the murder problem. Unfortunately the state of the game currently is not conductive of this kind of complex social organisation because everything is word of mouth atm. Once we start getting a robust long term communication solution, like books, the implementation of such a legal system might be more feasible. Until that happens, concealed carry ftw.
Your food bar changes throughout your life. Starting low and climbing to a stable number for most of your adult life, then dropping again as you get into old age. At all times you can see a ghostly image of the entire food bar, but only the darker ones are available at any given time. Food cannot be consumed past max currently available.
That's the point. It was an easy to notice oversight that could have been corrected prior to live update if the community had a chance to give feedback. I also dabble in programming, and it is pretty standard practice to properly debug your code before you deliver it as a finished product.
Dedicated Beta Server = OHOL Community Debugger
If anything you want your experienced players trying out the changes. If the game is designed to be as hard as possible, then it would make sense to test for what is possible and what isn't. Balancing will always be needed based on how the community handles the update, but 95% of the time truly dedicated players will be able to tell what is workable vs broken. Simple example, the fact that a Reed Basket decays way too fast but add a bit of string and you get a Reed Skirt that never decays. Simple issue/oversight, and easy to fix with some prior insight; but ugly, incomplete, and "broken" when it goes live for all players for an entire week.
Also it gives advanced players a place to experiment with the new content. So next time something like the Apocalypse Update happens, it is only the beta server that gets wiped every 5 hours.
Now that server cap has been raised to 200, only 3-4 of the 15 servers are used at all. Heck, I check the reflector stats regularly and in the last two weeks I haven't seen over 200 total players playing the game at one time.
What if one of these unused servers became a beta server that allowed Jason and players to preview how updates will effect the state of the game. A separate beta client could be downloadable for those that want to participate and every Thursday the beta version becomes the live version.
Many people are upset when "game breaking" updates occur like the Apocalypse or Riches to Rags and many quit the game for good while leaving negative reviews. If a "stable" and enjoyable version of the game remained live on main servers everyone could keep playing and enjoying the game, while the beta server and those who choose to try out the upcoming changes would be able to give Jason enough feedback to fix the "game breaking" problems before they effect 90% of the player base. For a game of this size, that is reliant on server population to function, it is a very bad idea to force 100% of players to try something that has a high likelihood of making them dislike the game.
Don't get me wrong. I think the Apocalypse was a necessary step, and the decay changes are great in principle but had some serious bugs and unplanned negative impacts. I am fully supportive of many large and challenging gameplay changes going forward, but not if they keep making the game "unplayable" for the majority of the player-base. The few players that remain are either very loyal to Jason's vision of the game(me included), or new players that are being exposed to "broken gameplay" and as a result leaving bad reviews about wasting $20. If updates like these keep happening to live servers then this game will be completely dead in under 6 months due to community outrage and bad publicity. Jason, please don't let this game die!
I love this game so much that I have purchased it twice and have encouraged three others to purchase it. In my eyes this was all money well spent. However, given the current repeatedly "game breaking" update mechanism I cannot recommend it to anyone or even enjoy playing it myself. I paid for a finished game that promised "endless" expansions; however, it feels like I purchased a beta key to that game instead. If this is in fact a game in beta testing please advertise it as such, or risk significant negative reviews and a continued drop in concurrent players as more and more players are leaving disgruntled. OHOL has so much potential, and I want it to succeed, but I am probably taking a break until things get more stable...
"fertility" = (EveFactor)*(RecentChild)*(AgeFactor)*(MalesFactor)*(FoodFactor)*(TempFactor)*(HomeFactor) = (0~1)*(0~1)*(0~1)*(0~1)*(0~1)*(0~1)*(0~1) = 0~1
I don't think it needs to be too complicated.
I agree. I was trying to conceptually show how a very complex determination, involving many factors, could be made using very simple formulas. I would expect that any implementation would be far more simple. I still think at least three factors are important: temperature, local male population, and time between births for same mom. This math structure is extremely easy to append in the future, so if additional factors need to be accounted for just add them(well...multiply) without needing to rewrite the whole thing.
Please remember that not everything needs to have "full effect" on everything else.
I've seen someone propose "simple" calculation like: FactorA * FactorB * FactorC * etc... where all the factors are btween 0.0 and 1.0
Thats a good idea just needs a small tweaking.
Lets say "FactorD" is having male around. Instead of making it a value between 0.0 and 1.0 make it between 0.9 and 1.0 - and make it on something like logarythmic scale - the more males around the closer to 1.0. This way it still has some degree of effect but most of the time its hardly noticable.
That was entirely my point. I was simply showing the max range possible in the equation. Ideally all of these factors would logarithmic in nature. In theory all of those factors could be set to vary between 0.99 and 1.0. The result would be indistinguishable from the completely random system now. However; by changing the outputs of each factor's equations, you can modify independently how each impacts the whole. This allows for easy balancing going forward. If the highest "fertility" on the server gets the baby, does it matter if your highest value is 0.99 or 0.00000021? No, because it is still the highest.
"male detection" range could be just high enough that males can "impregnate" from offscreen so... Having male becomes kind of "passive trait" of villages rather than "come honey" event.
I completely agree.
Jason, we don't know each other, but I like you. I like this game. I like your attitude, and I don't want to change you too much. Never lose sight of that 10,000-ft view, whatever it is.
I couldn't say it any better! Jason, it is truly amazing that a single person was able to conceptualize so many deep truths about the human condition; then somehow manage to hard code the basic framework of a relatively simple game, not to explain those truths in any way, but to let you discover them along the way. Truly astonishing work, sir. I simply wish to give the artist some new paintbrushes; hoping he will create a masterpiece for me to enjoy.
It was because you ate a mushroom. But there is currently a bug when you die under the affects of a mushroom it persists after death and rebirth. Jason knows about it and said he was working on it.
I admit that is the only thing I'm struggling to make work. It would have to be a combined equation taking into account whether or not your an Eve and males in area.
So maybe something like this:
MaleEveFactor = 1 / [{1 / (# Males Nearby+1)} / (Eve Check)] = 1 / [{1/(1~100)} / (1~2)]
Assuming no logic errors on my part, this would give Eves preference over non-Eves; however, with a few males around, non-Eves will be preferred over the Eve.
Example Given Non-Eve & No Males: (Baseline)
= 1 / [{1/(1)}/(1)] = 1
Example Given Eve & No Males:
= 1 / [{1/(1)}/(2)] = 2
Example Given Non-Eve & 1 Male:
= 1 / [{1/(2)}/(1)] = 2
Example Given Non-Eve & 2 Males:
= 1 / [{1/(3)}/(1)] = 3
A lot of good ideas so far. My thoughts:
- Gradual "fertility" increase over time based on life circumstances. (Factors: Eve, nearby males, age, recent children, etc.)
- Highest "fertility" on the server gets the new baby.
- When baby is born "fertility" should be set to zero.
- Eve modifier needed to offset male contributions to the gene pool.
- Home Marker should be significant modifier if not requirement to have baby.
- Goldilocks for food and temperature should be a significant modifier.
Example: (exact equations to determine each factor TBD)
"fertility" = (EveFactor)*(RecentChild)*(AgeFactor)*(MalesFactor)*(FoodFactor)*(TempFactor)*(HomeFactor) = (0~1)*(0~1)*(0~1)*(0~1)*(0~1)*(0~1)*(0~1) = 0~1
So prime candidate mothers that have everything going for them are almost guaranteed to get a new baby each time they are able to have another child. But those in non-ideal circumstances (pretty much everyone) get distributed children based on who is doing the best at the current moment. This would also help with new (to game) mothers getting overwhelmed with babies. Until they learn how to take care of themselves, they don't need to worry about taking care of multiple kids. Those more knowledgeable in the game should receive more children than new players, so hopefully they actually pass on some of that knowledge to the next generations instead of needing to ask their newborn children how to do basic tasks...
I also noticed something weird about coordinates today. Occasionally I would get a normal looking random high number set, but more often than not I am spawning within (0-100, 0-100) according to coordinates but I am clearly not in the same location. Yes I have a specific official server set as custom address and activated.
So I also came to the conclusion Jason must be trying to break the coordinate system people are currently using. To be fair it was never intended to be part of the game, and it does detract from the deep immersion that seems to be the intended design philosophy behind the game.
I would be fine if coordinates were no longer available on official servers. For the certain subsets of the player base that needs/wants coordinates to play the game, then join a private server with coordinates turned on.
I hope this post helps clarify some of the confusion regarding horses. All of the examples and methods described below are based on 4-5 lives (over course of a week) that I dedicated to learning how to most effectively use them. These are the conclusions I have been able to draw:
[If your wondering, yes each of these lives I had to argue with village residents to stop stealing my horse and returning it to the "designated" fence for horse storage. Even after demonstrations of what I've learned to prove that I wasn't crazy, I would often still be called an idiot or a griefer. Once I was even killed by an old man who watched me bring back three carts of firewood in rapid succession only to tell me I didn't know how to properly use a horse and then he shot me... Gotta love know-it-alls...]
HORSE BEHAVIOR: No horses DO NOT run off at full speed in a random direction to never be seen again if dismounted. They DO wait ~2 sec immediately following dismounting before running a set number of tiles in a random direction (roughly to the edge of your screen East/West and two screen heights North/South), and then they pause for another ~2 sec. Then they move the same distance again in a random direction (sometimes right back to you), and it repeats. It always moves in straight line a set distance, so if you can just catch a glimpse of it running off the screen you can judge where it will stop to rest for a few seconds, giving you a chance to catch it. From my experience the "random" directions the horse runs in often cancel each other out, so the horse often stays relatively close to where you last saw it (sometimes over many minutes even). I purposely let one loose and followed for several minutes and it remained within a ~5 screen width square centered around where I lost it. In fact if I had simply stood where I let it loose, I would have seen it run by me several times over five minutes. (not sure if it is centered on lost location purposefully, or if that was just a quirk of a sample size of 1). Very rarely will one run in same direction more than twice in a row (1/8)x(1/8)=~1.5% chance it runs in same direction twice, so look around.
UNHITCHED HORSES ARE NOT currently USELESS!!!! There is plenty of time for someone with coordination to fill or empty an unhitched horse cart without the horse moving. The best sequence is to swap horse with item you want to pick up and then double click on horse, first click adds item to cart, second mounts horse again. Nearly instantaneous with practice. Unloading is a bit trickier, but totally possible. Loading/unloading baskets and basket contents from unhitched horse cart is way too complicated to do consistently well. But loading/unloading four full baskets of anything is really quick and easy.
Now that being said ALWAYS HITCH HORSES WHEN ABLE! Self explanatory I hope...
I actually spent one life successfully making about a dozen independent fences for hitching posts all over a large settlement using an unhitched horse with cart to build them all. Lived 60 years and didn't lose the horse once (twice when panicking to eat, it got out of sight but I found it very quickly).
To MAKE A FENCE quickly WHILE RIDING an UNHITCHED HORSE do the following: get horse drawn cart filled with Adze, shovel, and pick up 2 long branches to make fence (leave untrimmed to transport). Have a stake, round rock, and sharp stone in backpack with some food. Essentially you do one action at a time, hopping back on horse in between(once you get the sequence down its pretty easy). So unload adze, mount horse, unload shovel, mount horse, unload wood, mount horse, setup stakes, mount horse, shovel post holes, mount horse, trim poles, mount horse, stack poles and make fence kit with adze, mount horse, put fence in hole, put stakes in bag or drop(or u can't mount), mount horse, hitch horse to fence, and take a breath your done. If done with grace the horse never moves from the chosen spot and you build a fence in under a minute, yes it is possible, I did it "perfectly" at least twice after I got the rhythm down.
Additional NOTES:
1. I would not recommend anyone try this until you have had some time to get used to using the horse regularly. (Start with just filling an empty cart while maintaining control of horse)
2. CAREFUL OF GROUND CLUTTER. If you are fumbling with tools on ground clutter your going to be chasing a horse a lot. Also the horse sort-of occupies a space when dismounted, so you pick up the item in that space. (this can easily send you scrambling if your trying to get food or something quick)
3. DON'T PANIC if the horse runs, just run after it IMMEDIATELY. You will ALWAYS be able to catch up if you caught so much as a glimpse of the direction it ran a second ago.
4. Sometimes its better to not try to mount immediately when you catch it, because it probably is about to run again, so just run with it and you will have plenty of time to get on next time it stops.
5. Horses can revolutionize goods transport, so PUT in a few FENCES to hitch to IN LOCATIONS WITH LOTS OF RESOURCES. Very powerful tool if used correctly.
6. Horses are VERY EASY TO LOSE if handled incorrectly. So practice handling somewhere safe like a town instead of middle of nowhere.
7. LISTEN: if you have stereo headphone you can tell where horse is off screen based on sound of it running.
8. ALWAYS KEEP FOOD IN FIRST ACCESSIBLE SLOT IN BACKPACK, lets you dismount, eat, and mount again without the horse running (if coordinated of course...). Eating was probably the hardest part to master, I just started accepting I would not catch the horse after first time it ran, so I just followed and second time it stopped I got on every-time without fail.
So by that logic our real lives are not worth living because "a random bozo" (in a white house maybe) just happens to have access to a red button that resets us all to the stone age. Even if you accomplished great things in your life it would all be meaningless if he decided to push that button. Now why has this "bozo" not yet pushed the button, because society as a whole really doesn't want that to happen and luckily we have somehow managed to prevent it. The same logic should apply here.
This game is less of a game and more of a cultural development simulator. SOOO many parallels can be drawn between interactions and story arcs in this game and real historical events (not physically accurate, but it captures the essence of the human experience and decision making process unlike anything I have ever seen). I honestly see AI learning to develop complex social comprehension algorithms by playing this game in the future. To understand basic humans morals, how our survival instincts impact our behavior, how we form and break social bonds, the essence and motivations behind betrayals, all of this and more are given to you in unique experiences that take place in under an hour.
Even as a middle aged human, over the last two weeks I've played, I have had more Eureka moments than I can count. (For example: How lucky are we that our ancestors decided to feed our relatives instead of feeding them to the wolves because food was scarce that year? Statistically I can guarantee you that lone decision has been made many thousands of times in your/our family tree, and if a single one said "SORRY BABY, NO FOOD", then you or I would never have been born.)
I also had not yet reached the top of the current tech tree but honestly there wasn't much motivation to learn forge with tools laying around everywhere and people doing nothing but spamming carrot farms. I love the concept of a total wipe because it forces everyone to learn the basics again and develop new strategies instead of just meagerly improving some failed civilization that has no chance of being successfully revived because they decided to build it too far from water. Many people know pieces and parts of the process but they don't know some of the basics because they have never needed to learn them. Why do I need to know how to make stakes when I find dozens of them laying around? (Answer: Because someone will decide to help by making another stockpile of snares....)
You also need to account for the timescale of the game universe. In 24 hours real-time, 1,440 years pass in the game. So if real history is any indication we should be getting apocalypses about 3 times a day (~500 years between say Napoleon and Hitler). I am not saying I think that would be a good game design strategy for increasing a player base, but you can't really argue that it is unrealistic or too easy if it is going to take a dedicated group of players upwards of eight hours to cause an apocalypse after starting over. The only reason the requirements were achieved within 5 hours of release was because everything already made and only needed to be collected together at a monolith.
Jason I love this solution to the griefing and stagnation problems. If you continue to push the "button" further up the tree weekly I think I would work out nicely. Theoretically should get 0-2 server resets per week depending on how achievable it is atm. To further promote the development and spreading of culture now that it has a decided termination point, may I suggest facilitating better learning environments. Right now the simple struggle for survival is the primary objective for 95% of players, experienced or not. When I get kids that don't take interest in learning how to survive properly, it quickly becomes a game of run around trying to minimize their damage while also feeding everyone. Leaving no time to properly teach anything. When I get kids that do take interest in learning I do my best to give them all the info I can before I die; however that's usually when I come back to find zero food in camp because I wasn't making it and my previous three babies that I have given the same very informative lessons and did my best to make them successful have either ran off or died for no good reason. If early game hunger stability was somehow improved it would allow mothers to properly teach the kids while being able to maintain themselves it would help develop more culture. Also if the stars align a single 60 yr life can let you accomplish a lot. However, more often only the last 20 years are able to be spent learning new crafting and recipes because the first 40 are spent dealing with the baby making machine gun between our legs. Those who do pursue crafting early do so at the expense of the colony because food generation is like 90% of the game-play right now if you want the next few generations to survive.
I don't have an answer, only suggestions: maybe alter temperatures for biomes to reduce hunger from cold, or increase max age to 100, or something like a rudimentary desk that allows you to type paragraphs while sitting at it, or an easy way for babies to be part of mothers activities and learn from example instead of needing to be held or at fire for hunger reduction.
Thank you for all your dedication to this game!
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