a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building
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I would be fine with this being changed. I'm happy with being able to cheat a animal by just standing on an item, but I have to admit that it is very silly. I would add tho, if this is done, I'd like bear caves to be changed so they can't just be triggered be someone clicking on them, since that also feels silly and while were at it make it so someone can't just lure a bear, maybe make it so every now and then randomly be bear will lunge or something like that so luring a bear would be very dangerous, let's be honest bears don't really follow people in real life, at least not "forever".
Maybe cars should come with keys...
No, please no, keys/lock in this game are nothing more than griefer tools, that would include car keys/lock.
Even knifes don't belong to the person that is carrying them, knifes are tools, just like any other tool, they are the towns tools, if you are walking around with "your" knife and not using it while sheep are piling up or bread is going uncut, then you are hurting the town, the knife is not a heirloom, USE IT, if the baker is a competent player and they don't have a knife, if the sheep herder is a competent player and doesn't have a knife and you have a knife and aren't helping them, you should GIVE THEM THE KNIFE.
Also even thought this is a community game, be considerate of individuals, if you took a basket just to separate soil so you can plant something, when you are done with that if you don't need the basket anymore, maybe bring it back where you got it from? Sure nobody might have been using it right now, but someone might be expecting the basket to be there and now you are making them waste time going around town to steal someone else's basket. You take kindling from the forge pile to cook your stew, how about later on when you get a chance you bring back a bunch of branches to turn into kindling and add unto the pile. You take a bowl from next to the stew pot, which is clearly meant for the stew so you can use it to resoil and water the crops, when you are done with that how about bringing the bowl back, you never know someone might be starving and is on the way to get the stew because they know there was a bowl next to it and BOOM, now they are dead because you took the bowl away.
You don't always have to do this, like for example I'll take a sharp rock to use for something else a bit further away and not bring it back, because the tile right next to the sharp rock I took there was another, but it shouldn't be hard to know when you should "pay" people back.
About your tool suggestion, don't take shovels away from the pen or compost area, that is essentially the only place a shovel should be.
Take take the saw away from cart making area, usually advanced towns will have a certain area that is where people build carts, saw, froe, mallet and wood logs will be found here.
Putting the tools in their correct area or leaving them in their correct area is much better then putting them in a central location, because these tools usually need other stuff and room to be used. The only tools that are okay to be boxed up in a central area are the adze, chisel and maybe the file (but that is usually left by the forge, because theses are tools that aren't used as often, in fact it's much better to have a box near the forge for these extra tools, when they break you have to bring them to the forge anyways (And PLEASE bring back broken steel tools to the forge, they can be used to make new tools), so they might as well be there when not in use.
I also don't totally agree with your central spot for raising children, unless there is a babysitter it's a waste of the mothers time and waste of the towns town, you can easily take care of your baby while you do your work, the only one that can be a problem is smithing, but you can do much more good that if you see the smith has had a child in the middle of active work, you take the child and take care of it for the smith while they finish their current active job.
If people can't /die they will just suicide and potentially mutliple times in a lineage they just don't want to be part of.
This is the reason the die command exists in the first place. If I don't want to play in your camp no matter what you do I WILL be able to kill myself, there is nothing you can do against that. Before the die command was added what would often happen is that a camp would get littered with bones of babies that didn't want to live there, not only that but babies that wanted to grief could run to the forge and continuously die there, messing up all the forgers work. With the die command babies that don't want to play in your camp will only create ONE pile of bones AND you get to choose where to dump them, you don't even need to find a basket, just walk into the snow throw the bones there and move on. Mother's suffer almost zero consequence from a suicide baby, at most what would happen is, they lose one pip of food, a few seconds and maybe they had to stop doing what they were doing for those few seconds, which is only really an issue for a forger and that's partly the forgers fault anyways, if you are doing something time extensive, you can leave your baby on the ground for a little bit before you have to pick them up, they don't starve instantly if you don't pick them up withing 2 seconds of them being born.
Let's also not forget that that the die command actually HELPS you, without the die command your baby would run of to die and you would be on baby cooldown, with the die command that cooldown is immediately reset and you can get another baby again the moment the suicide baby entered the command. Now there are some very rare cases where because of your age the suicide baby causes your lineage to die, because for example no other players are trying to be born at that moment, but these are far less common than people would like to believe. If you are worried about that do what Tarr has been doing, tell the baby what is happening before you pick them up and they have ability to suicide. "OMG, last girl, please don't suicide", I guarantee more players would stay if that was the case, just don't lie otherwise we will start to not believe you and we will be back here again. I for example don't like to play in too advanced civilizations, because I know I will just be bored out of my mind, but if the lineage depended on me, I would stay just to help that family out. Once I have given them enough girls or reached 40 I would go die so I can play more to my liking.
Also if every single baby keeps suiciding on you, you need to consider why they might be doing that, maybe your camp is horrible and they would rather not suffer through having to live there (stop making your farms away from water, your farm should be near water, not directly under the forge and 20 tiles away from water, not only do you make using the forge horrible you also waste so much time having to go for water every time)
Yeah, I just played a few lifes and I was thinking what the best way to deal with mosquitoes is at first I thought, just make buildings, put your kitchen and forge in a building, maybe put walls around other things too, but then I realized that would mean increasing temp of an already warm biome and that wouldn't be such a great solution, so then I thought just build walls/fences to prevent mosquitoes from getting to town. If we are able to get towns built up again, putting walls around them would allow us to get the benefit of jungle without the downside of mosquitoes.
Your issue with mom's not taking care of their babies or mom's abandoning boys will resolve itself once the spiked steam population from release has learned to play. The issue right now and the reason so many babies are getting abandoned is that there are just way too many people that don't know what to do and for the most part just eat up and waste food by not trying to get a yum bonus and eating inappropriate food, thus causing there to be a lack of food, which in turns make it so we have less or no food to feed new babies. As the new player base learns things we will be able to keep almost all babies, since almost all of them will be productive members of the camp.
It has it's up and downsides and in my opinion the upside outweighs the downside. Having a baby born to a injured mother in camp can be very beneficial if not save families altogether.
I'm sure you can go much longer, just build up a huge yum bonus, stand on perfect spot and go till like the baby is 30 or something.
The issue in my opinion is that it's way easier to grief than it is to be productive.
For example the old fence system, to make a fence you had to: find straight branches, make them into long shaft, use a adze, get a stake, stake the ground, find a shovel, dig the stake and finally put in the fence. (This is skipping all the small steps needed to do all the things, like creating the tools.)
What does it take to grief the pen? Just click on the fence, done all sheep escaped.
Okay you fixed this, let's take at something else that is still in the game.
Medic system. So you want to prepare for when someone gets stabbed, here's what you gotta do:Shear sheep, find a bowl, fill it water, put it on coals, put balls of yarn in it and then put it in a bowl.
Now if you want to grief that what do you have to do? Grab the pads and dump them on the ground, that's it, now go stab someone and watch people freak out that someone dumped all the pads.
Seriously? Why can't the medic apron carry sterile pads in the pocket for example?
There's tons of things in this game like this, sure in general in every game it's easier to grief than to do something productive, but how OHOL is right now the balance is just way too far on the side of griefers.
Glad you guys made it, I was the old lady you guys came across that told you you were almost there. My family came from at least 1.1k NW (at least that's how far we were when i was born), mom kept having babies on the way and we kept on moving, in the end mom and my last remaining sibling a little brother, got bit by a snake not too far away from the town and I was the only one that made it to the town.
Best Town:South Town (or four cities if that is a valid choice)
This is a much better way to handle it, especially allowing babies to ban themself from that lineage, since that in my opinion is what causes mass suicides and putting all the mothers in one town on cooldown, thus potentially dooming that town. This way you only put one mother on cooldown (and not even that since you seem to have thought about that) and the baby player gets to opt out of that family that no matter what they were not going to play anyways. Forcing them to stay or as it was before having them suicide over and over and over again was just annoying for both sides. Forcing them to stay annoys the player that would rather opt out of that family/town and having them have to suicide over and over again would annoy the people in the town by littering bones everywhere.
I'd prefer if you had it that the mother kept the baby bones in her hands, make it like dead baby sheep, dead baby sheep can be carried by hand but grown sheep bones can only be carried by basket.
With this option I would even be okay with the timer staying at 3 minutes to be honest, I don't mind a mother trying to convince me to stay even though I didn't have intentions to stay initially. Also I think if possible having a limit or cooldown on this command should be considered , say maybe only able to use it 3 times withing 10 minutes, just so people can't use the system to guarantee they will spawn where they want. Put it on cooldown after 3 uses, on the fourth life the baby might stick around for a little bit to try to wait out the cooldown AND who knows during that 10 minutes they might consider staying after all. Also I think you should allow the command to be used AFTER the initial one minute/year, again with the intention of convinces SOME people to stick around anyways.
In essence, give players this ability BUT don't make it TOO easy (players shouldn't be able to instantly type "/die" the moment they spawn), balance it with the ability of the mother to be able to convince the child to stay (This could even add more emotions to the game, you try your hardest as a mother to try convince the child to stay, but they still choose to skip out. At least it's much better than *Pop* baby *Crush* baby bones) and don't allow the players to skip out of every life except the ONE life they want.
They are MILK COWS. No beef.
If that is the reason, then give us the ability to raise Beef Cows. Bowl of Corn Kernels+Cow= Milk Cow. Bowl of Grass+Cow= Beef Cow.
Maybe make it so you have to feed the cow three times, once every 5 minutes in order to get a beef cow and we could use crushed wheat (Wheat+Round Rock= Crushed wheat, Crushed wheat+bowl= bowl of crushed wheat), so you don't have to add a whole new other item to the game.
Don't build roads right under Forge/oven or through Forge/oven.(You think you might be helping but it makes working on these stations very annoying.)
Don't just try to "help" someone build a building if you don't know what they have planned or what you are doing.(Had to break 6 pickaxes fixing someones fail)
Don't build buildings too small. (had someone help me build a kitchen, by making a 3 by 5 room, which is too small for almost anything)
Don't put just one entrance to a building. (Having more than one entrance, makes it more difficult for a troll to block the building.)
IMO it should be in the front, though, and take the clothing slot. No apron while wearing a baby, but that person out hunting rabbits doesn't have to leave their backpack full of traps or food or whatever they're carrying for their job behind so they can wear a baby sling in case they have a kid
The reason I would be against a front sling is because I don't want baby feeding to be automatic, feeding babies should be an active task and not just something you start and forget about. I think having it take the backpack slot while also being a small item that can be stored in a backpack or basket is the best, that way you can carry one with you just in case. You store one in backpack while working, if you have a baby you take it out put it on fill the backpack with the supplies you been gathering while you raise your baby, in most cases your child will be willing to give you your backpack back afterwards, especially if you were using it to get supplies.
Yes I believe I've heard someone say that he sends the info with every email update you get.
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I like what you are saying here, I'm thinking that the reason people might be more connected is that they actually get to see more then just the typical tour and more importantly they connect to their mother's work and are more likely to follow in their footstep, like how you are saying laying roads, hunting rabbits and collecting iron, a child might be much more willing to continue in the mother's footsteps if they know where their mom worked or what their mom was working. For example I can remember sometimes as I was making buildings and had babies if i told them something the lines of "I'm building a bakery" there is a good chance the child will stay with me or go get resources to help build the bakery. Same for say hunting rabbits "I'm getting backpacks for everyone" or "I'm making clothes for people". This way a child knows very early on a job they can do (maybe in a little bit once they have enough hunger to not have to hover around the berry field the whole time) that someone else isn't already doing, it's a much better way to find out "What job should I do", when you can just see it, you just know that when your mom gets old or dies that the job they were doing is no longer being done or being done by one less person.
Maybe the baby sling people have been talking about could help here, baby sling takes backpack slot (maybe allow it to carry a single item so it's not completely useless when you don't have a baby), baby is carried on the back, so no automatic breastfeeding and this way you are a little bit more free to work while raising your child and your child gets to see what you are doing AND also possibly learn a new skill just being on your back. Can see all the steps it takes to make pie, this would barely give a small advantage over what you can already do now and just watch someone make pies.
I don't like towns because of lack of challenge and novel things to try.
Adding disease could easily help with this. Since in real life once people started living in cities, they had to contend with diseases, so many people all bunched up, lot of people dying in one area. Having animals so close to where lots of people are. A whole lot of issues happened simply because of how towns and cities worked and these had to be dealt with.
For the game you could have it that early camp don't really have to worry about this, because the numbers just aren't that high.But as you progress things start getting stacked up against you, things that if you don't deal with them will cause a wipe, but if they area dealt with are relatively easy to manage.
Each person increase disease odds.
Each domestic animal increase disease odds.
Slaughter animal increase disease odds after X time. (So only slaughter what you will use now, don't slaughter and just leave the remains on the ground)
Bones of all kinds increase disease odds. Proper disposal of bones would be required. Allow for alternative method of disposing of bones during disease wave (cremate the bodies)
This would also allow for expansion of the medic, giving the medic face mask item which is used in head slot, but needs to be taken off before eating is possible. Allow for medics to create tonics against disease.
The only real way to prevent these types of suicides is to lock the person to that family, while it's not very elegant and could be annoying, this would keep the random aspect of the game.
Maybe instead of rewarding/punishing players by messing with life expectancy, it should instead be a yum bonus reward/punishment, this way the game keeps it's One Hour aspect. So if you suicide too often you get a hunger penalty, if you live for long, you get a hunger bonus, I dunno maybe something like 5 "extra" hunger bars. Could be especially useful early on, even if it's not a "permanent" boost, just starting out with say 5 extra food bars, maybe after you are three years old, to make fight for make sure babies survive early on still a challenge, that alone would be a massive boost, allows you to do just that little bit more and go that little bit further as a child, so you could be a bit more useful and then maybe as you age the bonus slowly decays, starts at 5 and goes down by 1, possibly as you age till you are 8 years old.
However all this is trying to solve a problem without actually solving the symptom and doing that might risk not solving the problem in the end or making things worse. To truly be able to solve this, you need to figure WHY people are suiciding. I believe figuring that out and possibly fixing/combating that would have a much better outcome.
Here are some of the reasons I suicide when I suicide. (no particular order)
1) It's a Eve or someone that is clearly in a very very early camp and I don't want to burden them by having to take care of me. Say they are out just now gathering milkweed, by having to take care of me, they have to either drop their basket with string/ropes and bring me to camp or we have to do the hopscotch dance and slowly make our way back to camp.
2) Mother that is way out in the middle of nowhere (almost always don't even have a name yet). The perfect example is a mother that doesn't have anything but is walking through a large snow biome. Again I suicide to help them out, this way they don't have to stop and freeze and costing more food, etc.
3) Again someone that is in the middle of nowhere, but this time they aren't early game, they actually have horse cart, but now they have to get off their horse, name me and play hopscotch again. Again I think it's much better for me to let them do their work instead of having to deal with a baby and possibly the horse running away. (maybe an idea here for a lead rope? Which you can use to lead the horse while carrying your baby and tie a horse on a tree for say 30 seconds before they break free?)
4) When the camp/town is horrible. To give an example, back a bit ago when goose town still existed, I HATED that town, the town was bad, before it was griefed, while it was griefed (was particularly bad then) and even after the town is just bad. I rather not waste my times in horrible settletments
However more often it's smaller camps I have issues with, why are you guys building the farm 10 tiles away from the closest source of water?
Why do you guys keep stealing my soil that I am trying to use to move the farm to a better and closer to water location?
Why do you build everything so close to each other? Why do you keep moving things so close to other stuff even though you see me move it out of the way, thus forcing me to curse you?
Why did you build a 5 by 3 building when I was trying to build 5 by 7 building for the bakery, thus forcing me to have to break 3 pickaxes to fix your mistake? AND why did someone re-add the walls to the 5 by 3 building after I died, thus forcing me to break another 3 pickaxes?
There are bad camps that sometimes are still enjoyable to try and make fix, but then other times it's just a waste of your time and I would rather not play in that camp. (could we maybe have a construction site marker or something? (take skewer slice them into 3-5 thinner sticks which you can use to mark a area. Take one skewer, a flat stone and a berry and be able to draw simple symbols on the flat stone then lean it against the skewer? Or heck even just letting us use a skewer to draw those simple symbols in the dirt.)
1h30 real time, So you can leave and come back after that and if you are lucky you might get back to your previous camp.
If you live for longer than 30 minutes (30 years) in one family the game will prevent you from spawning to that same family for one hour and thirty minutes. There are some things that change this, for example a Eve if they make it to old age are able to spawn back to the family they started ONCE and if there are fewer than X number of players on a server the family ban time will be shorter.
Keep in mind that this ban is family based and not location based, so if you were to twin eve (or more) with someone else, the two of you will not be related to each other, so once you die (let's assume you didn't make it to old age) you are able to spawn to your friends family without having to worry about the lineage ban timer.
You had the advantage of being a Eve though, so you could do and say more, it's a bit much to expect a child to wait till they are 4 (and waste food by you having to feed them) so they can say they don't want to stay and suicide. If you are a girl and you don't see any other related girls, then you should stay and at least give the family a girl child before suiciding, but if you are a boy or you see they have plenty of girls suicide away, just don't do it on the forge or oven area, that's just annoying.
I don't like the Bison being used, the animal is just too damn big, I would be okay with a different horse though or even a different cow (maybe just bison but resized).
Like the person on reddit said, infinite soil would be broken, so it shouldn't just use whatever ground it's standing on. Something that could work is being able to load in say baskets of soil and the plough would use the soil or really I would even be in favor of having to put soil down and you walk over the soil and it ploughs the ground you walk over that has soil on it.
However having said all that as the game is now, I don't want this in game, it's not too difficult to till rows right now, adding this would make it too easy, we would need new tech tier before something like this is added in my opinion.
Donkey Town only punishes the dumbest and most simple forms of griefing, if you want to grief and not get sent to Donkey Town at least put some thoughts in your griefing, at least that way it's interesting for both sides.
The way you guys grief is by killing someone in broad daylight in front of the police station and then you expect nobody to do anything about it. There is a reason people like the North Hollywood Bank robbers, Al Capone and Jack the Ripper fascinates the people and in some ways are admired, because at least they put some thought into their crimes.