a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building
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I don't think, either, that space is the main reason that walls are not constructed more frequently. However, maybe if only walls could be augmented with a cabinet or shelves, the extra storage might be another reason to make buildings. Also, two-story buildings would be cool and useful if space is limited.
Weather such as occasional rain seems like a great idea for a mechanic that encourages building more shelter. I also think seasons would be interesting, with meaningful implications for farming and storage, along with variable need for shelter. Fundamentally, I think the game currently needs more challenges/problems to solve, and, thematically, seasons and weather seems essential for a game with a focus on farming and body temperature.
I'm in favor of the more radical approach: after an initial cooldown for new players, it's one hour, one life. It fits conceptually (it is what it says on the box). I don't think this is necessarily commercial suicide -- if players have more enjoyable experiences they are more likely to tell their friends, and there is marketing value in the one hour one life idea. For me (and I might be in the minority here), it would give the game more of a rogue-like feeling.
If you want people to care about their kids more than the neighboring village's kids, the solution is really simple. Your children are your future ... literally.
Change the lineage ban mechanic, so you are MORE likely to be born to your own descendents after a short cooldown. This would allow you to return to the same village more reliably, but only if you have kids or close relatives still alive there. Keeping your lineage alive and helping the village remain sustainable would be more important because you can expect to return to that same village in a generation or two, if all goes well without you. Ignoring your kids or prioritizing a different family over your own might compromise your lineage and reduce your chances of getting back before the village dies out entirely.
This is an excellent idea. It would instill an in-game reason to look after your own kids over your cousins' and those from other families. Although bonding over the parent child relationship happens initially, the effect wears off (for me at least) after having played the game for a while, leading to communal, impersonal nurseries. The main problem is that one hour is simply not long enough to form a meaningful human relationship such that you actually care about your offspring. Destiny's proposal here, and my less fleshed out suggestion elsewhere
https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=6292
could solve this by the reward of potentially being reborn to your household. To my mind this is much more tangible reward than a price pool or the current indication of lineage depth on the family tree.
In addition, it should be impossible to be reborn in a family except by direct descendents (children's children etc) of your most recent life in that family. In this way, if you don't have any successful children you cannot return. There is a bit of ambiguity about how this would work if you are born as a male; would it, simply, be impossibly to go back or could there be some way of marrying into having children. By way of anecdote, I got (conservatively) married once in game, moved into a property, and we had (surprisingly) many children, which was an interesting experience but all role play.
If a system like this were implemented, the outcome would undoubtedly be more competition within families, which I think would be a breath of fresh air. Properties would be a meaningful way of increasing the fitness (ability to survive and reproduce) of you immediate relatives -- leaving behind a house full of pies for your children would make it more likely that you can return.
What if, as an additional incentive to look after and care for your kids, you could potentially get reborn to the same family but only as a descendent of your most recent self? If it only happened occasionally (birth randomly drawn from all valid mothers), it wouldn't break the core experience of the game, but it might be sufficient to drive a change in behaviour.
Maybe we could combine the experience and biome specialization ideas such that you unlock biome-specific activities by spending time there. Ie. you need to have spend x number of minutes/years in prairie to unlock the ability to notice and hunt rabbits. This would mean that villages located in certain biomes will have a tendency to specialize while at the same time being flexible enough to allow people to do any activity (eventually).
How about an ocean- and river-based system where ships enable a fast travel mode (like in Fallout 2 or the original Sid Meier's Pirates)? This would enable traders to bring goods back and forth in a reasonable time for them to make a profit within an in-game lifetime. Exploring and charting a map for terrain and settlements would be an interesting goal and bring value to the village, so would constructing a ship. Seafarers would have to bring food on the trip -- perhaps there could be a representation of the ship interior -- a cramped collection of tiles with storage -- while in travel where people could interact and eat. Historically, much of early trade was conducted by sea. For example, pottery trade by ship was quite common in ancient Greece. A similar system might work well with the airplane, enabling charting a map of the surrounding terrain and villages. Given the prior interest in maps of villages here on the forum, it would demonstrably be quite exciting if it was possible to discover these as an integral part of the game.
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