One Hour One Life Forums

I didn't mean it is a literal Skinner Box. It does, however, share many of the features as do most games if you think about it more broadly than a 1:1 analogy.

In OHOL, you could imagine the blinking lights and levers as the various game mechanics, recipes, and ways players interact with the environment and other players.

For example, a higher chance of survival is the reward for successfully pulling the right lever (starting a successful berry farm), or learning from the success and failure states provided by the blinking lights (a player learning to stand on an item to avoid death by bear). When you survive, your rewards are the good feelings that come from contributing to your town, or creating items and achieving things you wouldn't be able to create and achieve if you had died, or making some meaningful memories with those playing around you, etc.

There have been people making comparisons between video games and Skinner boxes for decades now. Some people argue they are not good comparisons, others write whole guides about how to use the things learned from Skinner boxes to make games more addictive. I imagine there are plenty of presentations on the topic at GDC and similar design conferences (mostly how to expand on the basics of a "skinner box" informed design, though some presentations on how to make games more addictive and monetize them successfully are out there as well).

I am merely pointing out that when people say things like "stop complaining, it's an experimental game, after all!" they aren't that far from the truth because so much of pain/pleasure and reward loops that Jason has put into the game (and now magnifies with the rift) have similarities to operant conditioning.

A lot of the things people enjoy doing in the game play off of recognizing patterns in varied circumstances (e.g., finding a good starting location as an Eve among a procedurally generated infinite map), developing useful strategies for how to lay out farms or settlements that are functional and efficient, the most efficient ways to bootstrap a new village, etc.

I think a big part of people's anger is that, as players recognize patterns and figure out what buttons to press and what levers to pull to get their reward, Jason decides the game is too easy or shakes things up so much that those patterns and strategies become obsolete. The rift is a prime example of that, removing a lot of the fun people found with scouting out a new settlement location as an Eve, or exploring in general, or being able to move in any direction and start something fresh if the old village was doomed/etc.

People are frequently saying things like they hate feeling like they are caged in in response to fenced in towns, a frequent response to war swords. People feel boxed in by the game mechanics to live in failing or cluttered settlements because of the new eve spawning mechanics or the way the rift creates easily griefable resources exhaustion, etc.

I just wanted to point out that this is the "experiment" everybody talks about when shouting down detractors. The walls close in ever more, the buttons and levers yield fewer and fewer avenues for expressive, emergent gameplay, and at the core of it is a dev who thinks players suffering and not being able to do the things they enjoy is what will make his game 'amazing' and fun...

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/article … s-Use-Them

https://levelskip.com/misc/Skinners-Box-and-Video-Games

https://steemit.com/gaming/@ahmadmanga/ … abuse-this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWtvrPTbQ_c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G05_icgcrOs

Oops, my bad. Only skimmed that post when reading it on my phone and missed the core topic that they were discussing. Understand now. Thanks.

You presume correctly, and I'm glad you do, because if you couldn't tell that was sarcasm, then you'd be fucking stupid.

Regulating griefing is also what you'd expect in a multiplayer game that emphasizes social interplay, and enabling and encouraging it because it is "inevitable and interesting" is idiotic.

You would have nothing but garbage in your game if you didn't try to curtail griefing.

No. And I never said as much.

Here is what I said: "Having played both, I can tell you it is a fair comparison because both games are a simulation of sorts and both games are sandboxes."

Also, I'm amazed you refer to UO as "that other game."

It was the first massively successful MMO. It pioneered the genre and most of what you and many younger gamers take for granted in the online games and live services space.

To refer to it as "that other game" like it is some nothing title is like somebody who plays an indie FPS game calling DOOM "that other game," or an indie RTS gamer referring to Age of Empires as "that other game."

https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1016629/C … tem-Ultima

https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1024930/C … ima-Online

UO was infinitely more influential and many times better than OHOL will EVER be. Period.

The fact that they look and play differently does not mean you can't compare them based on some of their broader similarities.

They share a lot in common and the fact that you don't know much about UO means you aren't well qualified to say whether the comparison is fair or not.

They both are sandboxes, are both multiplayer games with FFA full loot PvP, both feature a persistent world with dropable items, both feature robust crafting systems where most of the meaningful items are crafted by players, they both feature player built settlements and communities, the main content in both is not themepark questing or killing mobs but rather interacting with the environment and other players.

It's erroneous to conclude they can't be compared based on aesthetics, or single details like being born a baby to a mother, or a time limit on your lifespan, or the extent that you build civilization.

Even though they are vastly different games, I can compare aspects of EvE Online with other sandboxes like Legends of Aria. One is a spaceship game, the other an isometric fantasy based setting, but both share some core features and therefore some of the design challenges will be the same in both despite their stark differences.

It's the same with Chess and GO. Both look different, both have different rules about how pieces move, but at their core they are both games of strategy played on a board where pieces are used to capture territory and/or other pieces. I can compare aspects of both games despite their major differences.

Nothing prevents that isolated griefer from using coordinates and joining up with their group of friends who all grief together, therefore becoming a cooperative group of griefers who can now use the same tools against other groups or isolated non-griefing players.

Especially with the way the rift has condensed settlements and people can use mods and discord to meet up in a relatively short time span, very little stops griefers working together from destroying whole villages.

While many born in a village will just be random players, not in discord or explicitly banding together, a small group of griefers (like complained about in this thread and others) whose sole mission it is to grief will bring havoc to non-griefing players and groups.

Every tool Jason adds to the game is just another thing griefers can use against non-griefing players. Just look at property fences, for example.

People still persist in saying "have you tried using fences?" and don't grasp how gates can be blocked, or fences can be used to trap people or wall off vital resources.

Yes there are ways around this, but honestly look at the recent threads and complaints about the rift and you will see that an organized group of griefers cooperating can make the game so unfun that people stop playing before they manage to thwart these kinds of griefing attempts (and then, their depature tips the scales even more in favor of that group of griefers).

Just look at the many veteran players who stopped playing and have said griefing is way out of hand. As more and more of them quit, it leaves less and less "non-griefing" players to cooperate and stand up against organized groups that will do whatever the fuck they want to do as Gitgood puts it....

If it was an ecosystem, imagine it is a herd of pack animals being preyed upon by wolves. Yes, if the whole pack sticks together and fights, the predators will be thwarted, but they naturally space out, they run, they get isolated (and some just move on to someplace with less predators). This means the pack animals left are fewer in number and more vulnerable to the wolves and the process just repeats over and over again until the game is almost all wolves and just a scant few pack animals left.

Many of those examples were their later answers to these problems.

From what you wrote, I think it's safe to say you never played UO. That game was FFA full loot PvP everywhere (until the town guard stuff was implemented).

So, players always had the type of tools you talked about to police themselves. They could fight the PKs, they could band together to kill them, they could form huge alliances, there was nothing holding that kind of response back. But you know what happened? Thousands of players still left the game and ultimately the scales tipped in the favor of the wolves as the sheep abandoned the game world for "safer" pastures.

The UO devs only implemented the other stuff as a way to try to give their non-PKs a fighting chance.

The reputation system would flag PKs with a red name (so if you encountered them in the wild, you knew to be on your guard... but there were ways to get around this).

The in-game bounty system created a way that players could put up their own gold for the head of a problem PK. It was essentially a bulletin board and mercenaries could read and then hunt the PKs listed on it for considerable profit. And you know what happened? It became a "high score table" of sorts for PKs.

There was even a point in the game where PKs blocked off one of the exits to one of the towns with furniture placed on the ground. The only open exit was a single tile door, so when players would log in to the town and try to leave it, they were easily killed as they exited through the choke point. The answer to that one? The devs made axes able to chop furniture and players logged in en masse, chopped all the furniture and murdered all the PKs.

There were many examples of this kind of ebb and flow. At the center of it all was the already existent and fully fleshed out tools players had to fight PKs. The townguard stuff only applied in cities (safe zones) and most of the game was spent outside of this kind of place, so it was almost totally player versus player with no AI involvement just like you describe. And even so, the community couldn't effectively police itself. That is a laissez-faire utopian pie-in-the-sky dream.

There has probably never been a multiplayer game that gave more agency or tools to players than UO did. It was less a game and more of a simulation of a virtual world. As somebody who actually played it, and fully understands the solutions they tried to address player-killing, I can tell what you think will work for OHOL will not work.

UO was already a robust and fleshed out simulation at the point they started trying the other stuff. It had so many more tools and player-based counters to PKs than OHOL could ever hope to have. The sheer amount of freedom and boundless creativity players had is hard for most current gamers to grasp.

I apologize if the examples I cited don't fully communicate this fact, but I still contend that Jason cannot iterate himself to the point where players alone can overcome rampant griefing.

And, again, one of the biggest contributing factors to griefing in OHOL is the total lack of a persistent ID. Giving people endless anonymity from life to life makes it way too easy for them to grief with impunity.

I never said banning people was the sole answer.

I said persistent IDs would allow the community to start to remember individuals who caused problems and then the community could actually address this kind of behavior.

Like, if you have a baby who is a known griefer (because you remember their persistent ID from a previous bad experience), you just let them starve.... or you keep an eye on them, possibly killing them when they do something out of line, or you warn people they might be a problem, etc.

My point is that the lack of a persistent ID is an example of that "missing content" that you mention, and this kind of an omission is totally a design flaw (because any virtual social space that lacks persistent IDs is begging for griefing and abuse of its players).

Yeah, I understand, but I also understand that you can't iterate enough solutions to totally solve a problem like this.

Other games more robust and vibrant than OHOL (with skilled designers) have tried and failed. They implemented tons of anti-griefing measures (all meant to answer griefing with in-game mechanics that would address various issues), and ultimately it proved an arms race against griefers that devs couldn't win, no matter how many solutions they coded into the game.

Here is a description of what I mean (everything from criminal flagging to a reputation system proved that "missing content" wasn't the sole problem):
https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RaphKos … Online.php

This is why MMO's today lack all kinds of features earlier MMOs had (like the ability to drop items on the ground). Because, ultimately, game developers realized the solution to 99% of the problems posed by griefers was to sadly take away the freedoms and open-ended features that produced so much emergent gameplay (and problematic edge cases).

And here is a snippet discussing the early attempts in UO to "let the community police itself" and the many futile attempts to code countermeasures to player-killing (i.e., the approach that adding "missing content" would solve these kinds of problem):

What a shame that all this amounts to is tit-for-tat name calling and drama.

As with so many times in the past, I cite a design flaw that is the core aspect of what contributes to this kind of griefing, but people steamroll past it to insult people, only to miss the forest for the trees.

Part of the answer to this kind of problem would be persistent IDs and stripping away the anonymity that comes with each new life.

Simply raging at the guilty individuals does not look at the real problem: OHOL's very design empowers this kind of community destroying behavior!

Take away people's ability to start anew and grief a fresh new batch of people with every new life and the broader community can start to remember certain players who always grief, focus on addressing serial bad apples, and might even have a fighting chance to deal with organized griefing when they encounter it.

But, no... these core design flaws will persist because 1) Jason thinks griefing makes for a rich and interesting dynamic and people blame each other for the griefing and don't look at how the game is supercharging it, 2) the game's community seems to turn away from cooperative play and more and more in favor of griefing as non-griefing players quit in frustration, and 3) the few remaining victims would rather sling mud at the bad apples than dig deeper into how the game's flawed design helps to create this kind of toxic exchange.

It seems people are more interested in focusing on the symptoms of the problem and not the disease that causes these symptoms.

Feel free to keep raging at individual bad actors all you want, but until the underlying causes of the problem are addressed, you're merely tilting at windmills.

Don't even know why I bothered with my previous post.  It features a GDC talk where a legendary game designer overtly explains why total anonymity is a huge problem, but people would rather get personal, so it's just a futile exercise.

Edit: Made my post before I saw Slinky's remark about half of it possibly being Jason's fault, so my points don't apply to him/her.

Joking around is one thing, but sarcastically mocking people is something else entirely.

You can dress it up all you want about treating people as equals, but belittling people and pretending it's a joke is just a cowardly thing to do.

This did not come across as "funny" to me, except to the extent that you were making fun of somebody who frustrates you and a lot of other people around here:

Furthermore.... There's the posts to JK HOWLING (and several others) where you mock them for saying they are done with the game.

And players are trying to have a good time. They love(d) playing your game.

People like Tarr made really logical posts explaining the things he found endearing about this title (teaching others, working together, building something great) and pointed out the stark contrasts that stuff has with your recent foray into the so-called "rich and interesting" stories derived from war and murder and mayhem.

Also, I haven't seen anybody say they want you to hate working on it or feel so bad about it that you quit.

You are playing the victim here and putting words in people's mouth, or at the very least, attributing a sweeping generalization to all of us that we think something that maybe only a "vocal minority" of players think or thought.

"I love my players.... BUT...."

So, playing the victim again and now blaming the customer too?

Talking like that makes you sound like just another "woke" pretentious creative who thinks all the blame rests with the fandom. You can proudly join the likes of Rian Johnson, Dan and Dave, Brie Larsen, Alex Kurtzman and all the rest who call their fans nazi misogynists and blame them for their projects under-performing, even when their creative output just wasn't very good.

And to pretend there haven't been caustic critics who destroyed artists since time immemorial is laughable. It's hardly a new development.

Many Platonic dialogues are full of Socrates tearing down his contemporaries (calling philosophers morons, playwrights hacks, students lazy oafs, his fellow citizens dullards), Edgar Allan Poe used to eviscerate his peers when critiquing their works, there used to be riots and bedlam throughout history at various opera and play houses when controversial works were showcased, several Elizabethan critics bemoaned various plays and playwrights (one of them even called Shakespeare a fraud, who in turn castigated critics in several of his plays), fans booed Bob Dylan all throughout his 1965-1967 period when he went electric and "turned his back" on folk music, etc.

While some of those are cases of fans or critics being short sighted, and some are cases where the fans and critics were correct, all are examples that audiences and critics alike have always held various creatives to high standards and were not shy about sharing their dislike or dismay with them, loudly and sometimes even violently.

Perhaps the truth is that creatives have changed over the past 10 years and are just too thin-skinned now. They have gotten very condescending and contemptuous toward their fans, and preachy and tone-deaf to their audience, and are totally out of touch because they operate in a bubble of other creatives like them who do nothing more than agree with each other about how bad their customers are in an echo-chamber of denial.

I think creatives just can't stand that consumers have a voice now and can actually express themselves in a public forum in ways that make waves. I don't pretend it amounts to much more than a tempest in a teapot, but you are the one complaining about how demanding and entitled and angry players are, so fan ire must mean something more than nothing at all.

I find it rich and interesting. Quite a story, indeed....

And now who is the entitled one here? Talking like that, you act like we are only allowed to do one thing when in your august presence: kissing your ass.

And what a crock of shit to compare me or anybody else here to the people who threatened to sue you. In fact, I told that guy to stop being so obstinate and just take you up on your offer to refund, but yeah, I'm totally threatening to sue you somehow because I agree with other people that it makes sense to stop playing OHOL.

It seems that instead of dealing with critical voices, it's easier for you to play the victim and paint us as villains, lumping us in with people we have little in common with and attributing us with the same behavior as the most extreme examples you can point to....

So you bemoan how entitled and demanding fans are, how uncivil people are when they deal with you, but you don't owe people who express their criticism without threats of legal action or crazed rancor a modicum of respect? Guess you don't owe us the same kind of dialogue and civility that you seem to expect from us.... what a hypocrite.

You demand respect and civil conduct from 70,000 people, then lump all critics in with the worst of the worst. Demand respect, but you demonstrate a total lack of regard or respect for us as people or players.

And you act like you are entitled to our praise and fawning and money, but you refuse to show even a hint of respect to us for what many here have brought to your game (and for collectively contributing to your livelihood). Instead, you sarcastically mock us and push our feedback aside like we are the unwashed masses who don't deserve to bother you with our take because we don't have the prerequisite 15 years of experience as a game dev (and you claim you're "just joking" when you belittle people because we take everything too seriously, as if that makes it right to treat people like shit).

As you are just one game dev out of thousands of devs with thousands of games we can chose from....

Voting with our feet is very simple and yes, it is very much the way this works.

People stop playing. They go elsewhere for their entertainment. That's it.

The many players like Tarr who did a lot of QA-type stuff for you pro bono simply moves on and applies his passion and ingenuity to other games, helping other devs, where his insights and time and energy are actually appreciated and not brushed to the side because some narcissistic dev can't take critical feedback.

There is no delusion we are going to "dethrone" you (though using that word again shows that you clearly think you are above us as you lord over us). The comment that it was good to see people vote with their feet was just pointing out that people who brought a lot more to this game than you realize are fed up and they are moving on.

The way you've treated them and have been so callous toward their genuine feedback is shameful and it's a good thing they move on to play something else where the devs actually don't treat them like they are fools who should grovel at their feet. Despite how you act like all the other devs out there just blow smoke up their customer's ass, there are devs who actually appreciate the passion and devotion their players bring to their game.

Until it doesn't work that way.

If you're honest with yourself, most of the people who would play a niche product like this have already bought it, discovered it, and played it. Out of the 70,000 voices with 70,000 different opinions you are so quick to demean, how many stay vs how many leave? When I look at the server numbers, the most I see during peak times is around 90-100 people. Not sure how many that translates to for a whole 24 hour period, but I would guess it's several hundred at most.

So, out of 70,000 people who already discovered and bought your fairly niche game, you retain maybe a few hundred diehards?

Even with new player acquisitions, you really think it doesn't matter when longtime players throw up their hands in anger and give up in frustration?

And isn't your promise to keep updating this game for like two more years? You really think you're on pace to make it like everything in the trailer and have some huge success when you've already alienated the vast majority of the people who were interested in a title like this?

I'm on the planet where I am not one of those THREE people (out of 70,000), but for some reason you keep playing the victim and attributing the unwanted actions of a TRUE vocal minority of THREE unhinged people to the many of us who are merely saying things like "warswords are terrible, property fences are terrible, rift update is terrible, we give up and are moving on!"

"Settle down..." says the guy who sarcastically belittles people repeatedly, mocks them when they post that they are leaving, and plays the victim and acts like every critic is on the level of a mere THREE people who have threatened to sue him.

Why don't you take your own passion/anger/indignation down about 5 notches and really reflect on the heartfelt feedback of your players?

After all, they are only giving it because they want to have a good time while playing your game, right? They want to have fun and be happy. They don't want to waste their time and then be made to feel a moron when they bother to let you know they don't like something you've done.

Yeah, clearly it's not for everyone, hence the "voting with our feet" comment, a sentiment that around 69,000+ people apparently acted on too (even though they supposedly all have different opinions -- funny how they managed to agree on one thing though: that they didn't want to keep playing your game anymore).

I'm all for honesty and real dialogue, which is why I find it so laughable that you excuse away your atrocious way of demeaning people as merely treating them like real people, but go hysterical and liken them to sue-happy entitled brats when they are merely "respecting you enough to tell you exactly what they think"..... It's funny how you claim to dish the truth, but you can't take it worth a damn when the role is reversed.

Hey, it's your call. Everybody knows you will do what you were going to do anyway, but you could at least show that you actually really listen to people and consider what they are saying instead of openly mocking them and throwing it in their face about how laughable you think their feedback is because you think they are taking things too seriously.

People aren't asking for lip service or token gestures. But, they damn sure aren't looking for flippant replies or you treating them like they are beneath you (then claiming you're just treating them like an equal).

If you were doing something that really upset your family, like drinking too much or isolating yourself, would you honestly react to their complaints with hysterics, sarcasm, and mockery like you have here? Even if you thought they were being ridiculous, would you talk to them the way you talk to your players?

"Hey, Jason... I think we need to talk about your sullen attitude and you isolating yourself from us too much."

"OMG YEAH RIGHT! I"M SOOOOOO ISOLATED!!! JUST LIKE RIGHT NOW WHEN WE ARE TALKING!!!! TOTALLY ISOLATED, RIGHT!? WELL THEN, I PROMISE I'LL DO SOOOOOO MUCH BETTER WITH SPENDING TIME WITH YOU BECAUSE A PERSON LIKE ME NEVER MAKES A MISTAKE!!!!!! DO I!? WHO ARE YOU TO DEMAND I SPEND TIME WITH YOU!!!? YOU'RE LIKE THAT TELEMARKETER WHO CALLED ME THREE YEARS AGO AND WOULDN'T LET ME HANG UP!!! AIN'T NOBODY GOT TIME FOR THAT!!!!!"

I contend you don't treat your players as "equals" or "real people," you treat them as just an annoyance you have to deal with to get a paycheck so you can continue to make your art.

Looking at how you talk to us, I think you take your players for granted and don't realize the benefits of the time, energy, and money that they bring to your vision. And that right there is the crux of the matter: YOUR vision.

For, even though you are the sole person making this, and even though we lack 15 years of experience and yadda yadda yadda, this isn't your vision exclusively anymore.

Lucas might have created Star Wars, but that story and those characters are part of the culture now. It has transcended the vision of one man and entered the cultural lexicon as a modern myth that the masses will carry on despite what corporate overlords and "woke" creatives would have us believe. Same with Roddenberry, creator of Trek. Fans kept that IP alive for decades long after it's cancellation. His utopian vision of the future (that hamstrung writers and producers on TNG) ultimately crumbled as his health deteriorated and he passed. This led to the brilliantly dark and gritty aspects that make DS9 so great (or terrible depending on the beholder).

In both cases and many others, there is a point where the "ownership" or vision of a piece of art becomes shared by the broader society. Trek is more than Rodenberry's utopian "Wagon Train for the Stars", including the nonsense that is ST: Discovery and the disappointment that the Picard series will likely bring. And Star Wars can move beyond Lucas' obsession with spaghetti Westerns, Campbell's mono-myth, and Akira Kurosawa samurai movies, and perhaps morph into other things (that I don't much care for) to meet the tastes and fancy of new generations.

You are but one person creating this "vision," but it is a vision that requires many people to populate it, to breathe life into it. You are not the sole dreamer of this dream, but if you want to act like you are and drive people away, more power to you. There was a very special vibe to your game prior to warswords and all the recent changes. It was a breath of fresh air to cooperate and care for others instead of trying to kill, kill, kill.

But, if you insist on being the sole dreamers of dreams and treat your community like disposable ants to be discarded and replaced regularly, then despite your assertions, this will not turn out to be something amazing. It will be a nightmare.

Your rotten attitude and contempt toward your players is why a lot of people leave negative reviews. They might site specific updates or changes, but the way you treat your players like they are beneath you and have nothing valid to add to the dialogue is off-putting.

I still don't understand why you make snarky comments and snide remarks when people make farewell posts, especially people who made a forum account just to voice their displeasure and say goodbye. That is somebody who paid money to play your game, who found something they liked about it, and then you shit all over them and mocked them to their face. It's the behavior of a bully.

Why do you hold us in such low esteem? Seriously, you treat us like dirt and think people's angry reactions are funny.

Well, I'm not laughing and I'm glad so many people are pushing back against you and voting with their feet.

If I had to guess, I'd say you realized you weren't going to sell that many more copies of the game and that continuing with updates and keeping the servers up wasn't worth it, so you're sabotaging your own project. Whatever, that's your choice, but you don't have to denigrate your players and treat them like they don't deserve to breath the same air as you.

Jason's attitudes that a 10% murder rate is just about right is why I don't play the game anymore and haven't for over a month or two.

He doesn't consider that some of the death by starvation/animal comes after a person witnesses a murder spree and suicides in frustration.

If I watch my village killed, and the people I grew to trust savagely decimated, I don't want to keep living there and just starve or go stand on a snake.

And right there is proof that 10% is a lot more murder than Jason believes...

In English, the word decimation is used to express a horrible loss of a fraction of something. It is derived from Latin, decimatus, which was executing every tenth man chosen by lots as punishment.

A 10% loss of something is considered so traumatic there is a word used to describe it. Just let that sink in, Jason.

A 10% homicide rate is NOT normal or just about right. It's terribly high and makes the game unplayable.

Our language reflects that loss by one tenth is horrific, so why won't you accept that 10% is way too high?

But haven't you heard? The murder rate is only 5%... Jason will point to numbers like that over and over again to dismiss people's complaints about the amount of murders.

It's too bad he doesn't consider that the current murder rates in the real world is measured in the number of intentional murders per 100,000.

By region, the Americas leads with 16.3 murders per 100,000 people. In comparison, OHOL's murder rate would be 5,000 murders per 100,000 lives (300 times more than the 16.3 per 100,000 people number)

By country, El Salvador has the highest number of murders per 100,000 people (82.84). OHOL's murder rate of "only" 5% is SIXTY TIMES more than the most murder-plagued country on earth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c … icide_rate

But, yeah... it's only 5%, so quit your whining. It's not like 5% would be insanely high in real life or anything. Nope. Totally normal for 5,000 of every 100,000 lives to end in murder.

And yes, I realize this is comparing a game to real life, but I just want Jason to consider that maybe 5% is still pretty traumatic to people who might think OHOL is simulating civilization, which is one of the answers some people give to complaints about the warsword, btw. ("stop complaining about the warsword and murder, this game is a simulation of civilization" etc)

I think cursing should be a command or a mouse over option (possibly both), but I agree it shouldn't work until you are at least 5 years old.

There have been times when I had a baby a short distance away from town and the baby's first words to me were "U-F-A-G" when I had done nothing more than clothe them and give them a backpack from my dead mother's corpse (who I had been searching for and just found prior to my baby's birth).

So I set the baby down, walked a random direction so they wouldn't stumble upon town and get fed, and when they said "F" I told them no, they say rude things, so they die. They were mad but I'm frankly sick and tired of people who are born and act like total jerks from the get go. It's not funny and it's a waste of my time. They deserve to die and not to have any way to come after me for it.

I shouldn't be cursed for that. If a baby starts right off with homophobic and racist stuff, or just starting drama with people by spelling out "F U" and "U U G L Y" to people, mom's should be able to kill them without fearing retaliation.

I realize the flip side of this is bad mom's (like I had one call me a sex slave, and saw another one naming their kids "N-----"). It would be nice for baby's to be able to curse that kind of stuff, but I think that can still be covered by other players nearby.

This game has a bad problem with a few people spouting racist and homophobic nonsense. I play GW2 (world vs world) and I almost never see that kind of stuff (and this is in competitive pvp maps). Granted, people still rage at each other and there is plenty of drama, but the racism and homophobic stuff tends to earn instant bans, so it's fairly uncommon given the number of players...

Of course, GW2 has a "report" feature and people who actually look into stuff and ban players when there is a legit problem. I understand Jason is just one person and can't do that, but if he's going to leave it up to the community to police itself, the tools need to work better for doing so.