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#1 Re: Main Forum » Hi I'm upset about the unnecessary naming change » 2019-10-10 00:03:35
It was there in the data, from the Social Security Administration, which tracked gender naming trends over the past 138 years. This is fascinating data. I ignored that aspect of the data when I first implemented that system, because I was rushing (shortly after launch) to get the baby names in place as quickly as possible. I also ignored all years except for 2016 originally. When I recently took another look at the data, I discovered that it was tagged by gender. Wow, cool!
Ok.
Do names have gender? Short answer, no. Long answer, also no. So why does OHOL take the stance that they do?
Names inherently are genderless, a fact we all agree and observe because we witness their trends. That's a fact we see in our personal lives and it's reflected in the data. Which brings me to how you misconstrued the public resource. Correlation does not equal causation. 1 million baby "boys" could be named Micheal tomorrow, and despite their gender identity, or sex, "girls" are not precluded from being named Michael. As you mentioned, this already happens, but you disallowed that data in favor of the results you drafted.
There are thousands of boys named Robert, and only 12 girls named Robert, most likely by accident. -- Richard is not a girl's name. -- Mothers in real life never name their girl Richard just to goof off, right?
Legally, in the real world, we make no distinction, so why is it in the game?
Look, I'm about to talk about race here, real quick, because I find people have an easier time of understanding problematic behavior and practices when put into the context of more familiar discriminatory practices--I concede that any of us could not be so brushed up on gender discrimination so... While searching for your data I quickly came across NYC's list of birth names--they keep track too--and I'm glad you didn't find it. NYC not only tracks the year, sex, and name of each baby, but also their "ethnicity" which is often interchanged with race. You could have just as easily found this data set, and since it's from arguably the most diverse city in the world, considered it a great resource for your list. We could have watched you misconstrue that data as well and wrongfully attribute naming trends to race and prohibit players from naming bbs outside their race in order to protect the "beauty" of your game. It's all in the data, you see. I mean, isn't it immersion breaking when you see a black person with name Viking? Or someone with red hair called Tyrone?? Aren't those players merely "trolling".
But that would be ridiculous, you would be suggesting that names have race which isn't true. At least, not in the real world. But you, Jason, would be saying that they do, and you would have coded it into this game's universe as being more than true--only true. However, OHOL isn't the real world and it lacks a lot of the world's problematic beliefs. OHOL has black bodied individuals, but there are no "Black People". OHOL has female bodied individuals, but there are no "women". There is no cultural context for either of those beliefs--no laws, no systems, no nothing--in the game's code. I personally find it incredible that I'm explaining "magic circle" to some one of your pedigree, hence why your points are so obtuse, but OHOL exists in the real world but the real world isn't "in" OHOL. We as players may project our thoughts of "womanhood" or "race" onto the figures contained within the game but that's not any more true than people projecting the usefulness of yum chaining into our imaginary world as well. Players are allowed to make up what these figures mean to them within their own cultural contexts. All players are privileged to this. Well, except for a few now...
So do you Jason Rohrer, believe that names have genders? Yeah.
Even though it's not a real thing. It's a personal belief which you've subjected us to, and taken a stance on by spending workhours coding it into your game's universe, like Lum said. It's a fact of OHOL that names have gender. Of which there are three. You crafted this from data, explained the methodology, and then instituted it. All you, buddy. That is 100% an authorial and authoritative action that you can't simply defer.
Where have I expressed my words or stance on non-binary and trans individuals?
I don't have to read your stance to witness your interaction with them. A trans player voiced their grievance and you dismissed it without even acknowledging them--continued deference to data. Literally, you read their complaint, and that of several others, and said it is more important that boys be named boy names to protect the beauty of your game than how it might have affected them. I will point out here that everyone who has voiced their opinion in favor our your change has noted that the "miss gendered names" were merely an annoyance to them. It would appear one side has greater stakes than the other... using race again, I wonder how many black people would need to voice their concerns before you acknowledge that they were a) black and b) you recognize their concerns.
For those just following this started all the way over here
The OP pointed out that the name Lady was nowhere near similar to the name Laekyn. That's a problem of the way the game chooses the next available name--as all names have to be unique within a two hour window. It's by function, of the game proceeding to the next available "unique" name on the list that this issue arises, as all first names were placed on one continuous list. To us, David is not similar to Davina, though to the game's parameters, it is. Now you could sort the list in any number of ways, its arguable that if I'm naming a child an Arabic name I'd likely be happy if the game produced a "similar" Arabic name that was available instead of something that was just alphabetically similar. You could also sort names by geography trends, yearly ones, or even gender. That last idea wasn't that bad. You can read in that thread that people, myself included, think that's a fine sophistication to the system we had before--surely if you're trying to name your kid a "girl's" name then the game generating Daffodil instead of Davina, is probably better than just switching it to David. But...
I think I'm going to make a new list of first names, separated by M and F, and enforce that when picking a name for you bb.
What's messed up is that this doesn't even solve the first problem we had--Lady and Laekyn are still dissimilar.
If you really hate gendered names in this game, don't use them for your babies. There are 7,917 gender-neutral names for you to chose from.
Revisiting our useful racial "watchdog" analogy this is the same as offering coloured people their own drinking fountains--plenty to choose from just don't use these. For those unfamiliar with racial segregation in the United States... there was a long period of time when white people considered offering a small pittance to negros as a way of showing they were being civil and cooperative. Black people who were upset that they didn't get the same privileges as their white counterparts were regarded as ungrateful. It doesn't matter that they have their own fountain, it's that you've limited them. Nowadays we can all use any water fountain. Most people think that's better as water fountains don't need to be racialized. Likewise with names. If that wasn't clear.
If you're giving your baby a blatantly cross-gender name to be funny.... this is the same as naming your baby Dickhead
I'm not going to get into the entire laundry list of reasons why someone might choose any one name for one person--I think everyone here has enough imagination to picture the scenarios in which they might have a beautiful or unproblematic way of interacting with the responsibility of naming another player--but I will point out how you've not kept the same energy, not even close, for other parts of the naming process in this game.
It's a fact of the universally shared last name list that we have names available to use like Dyke, Mexican, and Troll. It is clear, to all those playing, that these names aren't chosen because they reflect people's real last names or to add to the "beauty" of OHOL. But it arises because the game doesn't take a stance on what's appropriate for a last name, they are all valid names, after all. (I sincerely had to look up Trollerman after coming across it because I couldn't believe there would be enough instances of it to make it onto Jason's culled list of last names--it's a real flipping thing tho) In fact, people can name their kids after the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and now, with the growing the list of names, after Game of Thrones characters... they're real names, that real people now have! (If you wanted to be political, you might not be able to get the name Trump2020, but you could still be Trump) That doesn't mean people are not trolling or grieifng with them but hey, they ARE valid. The game doesn't take stance on their viability. None of them. It does take a direct stance on what Jason consider's cross-gender and that's uncool. Let's replace "cross-gender" with "trans-racial" and see how uncomfortable the sentence is... Somehow the game took the stance that naming your kid "Suzie" is tantamount to naming them Dickhead. Cool.
Above all of this, the clearest way to solve this issue of trolling--again, not even the original problem--is to allow players to change their name. It's probably understandable that we couldn't do this with our last names, though I'm sure there will a process by which we'll be able to splinter off families and create new last names sometime in OHOL's future, but we could at least change our first names. I personally think it's shit when my mom names me Wolf and tells me to bark. Every time someone refers to me as Wolf I'm reminded of that weird encounter and wouldn't it be nice if when I was old enough I could change my first name?? Don't like being called Snow?? Change it to Lady. Your parent was talking and accidentally named you?? Change it to what you want!! You're chill and want to RP your given name?? Leave it alone and carry on with your berry munching--it's your game! You could even preserve the sanctity of naming by allowing players to only be able to change their first name once per day. Plen-ty-of-op-tions!
And what do baby names have to do with it?
Look, I'm not here to change anyone's mind as much as I am to show trans players that there will be people who stick up for them. I think what's weird about this whole thing is that it doesn't fit the game, thematically. Considering the game doesn't care what gender we might identify as, as players, and spits us out into this make believe world you'd imagine that the base of people who were REAL STICKLERS ABOUT THEIR DICKS AND VAGS wouldn't be interested in this game. We might wear a dress because it keeps us warm--we're trying to survive!--and it's cool to see what social constructs break down when you remove all the arbitrary bullshit. So enforced gender binaries don't really fit.
I believe you're making a great game and that it is a huge job developing this game by yourself--I champion for you all over these boards bruh. Yeah, it's weird we got an entire update focused on giving us genders which we have to uphold when, you know, no one asked for it... Literally... an entire forum of people asking for specific content and this is what you gave us. Cool. But also... I get it, the data fascinated you, and it's been delightful to watch you use a public resource and create these massive naming lists--we think that's rad! But, you know, a really bad misstep and a clear fumble with how you're receiving the blowback. That can be fine, you're going to run into interesting problems developing a game that needs to suggest the real world while also not containing the real world, specifically. Sounds tricky. However, that doesn't absolve from what your course of actions have been and I strongly suggest you revisit the idea.
Thanks for your time.
#2 Re: Main Forum » Hi I'm upset about the unnecessary naming change » 2019-10-08 17:26:12
There are thousands of names that can be used for both boys and girls.
The names that are "only one gender" have never been widely used for the other gender in the past 138 years. There's a large amount of real-world consensus about this. Richard is not a girl's name. Penelope is not a boy's name. Sandy is both.
Part of the emotional power of this game is in the narrow channel of player communication which filters out many of the usual hallmarks of "online game." These hallmarks are immersion-breaking.
If you're a girl, and your mother names you Richard, that's a reminder that your mother is an online player who is goofing off, and that's immersion breaking. Mothers in real life never name their girl Richard just to goof off, right?
This is so obtuse...
The argument has shifted from wanting to help players who accidentally named their children the wrong name, to preventing griefing and "immersion breaking" gameplay, all while dodging how inappropriate it is to arbitrarily assign gender roles to names. There's plenty of "real-world" consensus about a lot of things that shouldn't be in the game, and I can't believe it needs to be pointed out that there are several beliefs systems, from past 138 years, that don't need to be in your imaginary world. Like...
Ultimately, it's you, the developer, who has chosen to force us to follow a gender naming system. And I think that's more than uncool.
The problem at hand was the way names were handled--David and Davina are not similar though they are close together when sorted alphabetically. I think a large body of players agree that showing the new names, right away, is great, and that the expanded list is wicked too. If you're concerned that players are getting the wrong names, due to greifing or whatever, you can always allow us to change those names when we get to a certain age. That is such a better way of handling the situation than to force politics on players. You're presently developing a curse system that allows us to determine what's bad as WE decide it AND forcing constructs so that we play the way you want? Just like... use the same energy for both.
I made the point last time, but up next, "boys" can't wear dresses and "girls" can't hold a smithing hammer. We could pull up data on fashions for the last 138 years or job statistics over the decades and throw that in here in case y'all forgot that there's a lot of real world consensus about these things too... C'mon my guy.
OHOL is all I've talked about with my friends and family since I started playing it so it's been real tough reading your words--and your stance--on non-binary and trans individuals. You want to talk about beauty?? It's amazing that the game gives us the opportunity to be mothers, or uncles, and to switch up gender dynamics, and highlight social constructs--all just through game play!! Have you even thought of how that would impact players or what that would mean for some people?? And then we gotta read your thoughts on gender... like... boys gotta be boys because that's how it's gotta be--but it's not my fault!
Names apparently have genders in game now as a RULE OF THE UNIVERSE. No cultural differences, nothing.
And this is the most important--significant--point on the matter. Interact with it, please.
Love the game, and your work, but this is a misstep.
#3 Re: Main Forum » Can Horses run away slower? The 7 second juggle is really annoying » 2019-10-03 03:24:27
How you going to kill the sheep?????????
THEY'LL DIE FROM EMBARRASSMENT!!!
#4 Re: Main Forum » Can Horses run away slower? The 7 second juggle is really annoying » 2019-10-03 02:39:02
You need a saddle to tame a horse. Which requires a knife and domestic sheep to produce.
So no ... that is not a valid reason for denying proper hitching options.
Sheep skin is made with a flint chip, or a knife.
#5 Re: Main Forum » Can Horses run away slower? The 7 second juggle is really annoying » 2019-10-02 22:17:47
Maybe let use tie our horse to a tree or bush or rock?
Or use stakes and a rope to tie it out.
This might have been mentioned elsewhere... but all those options negate the iron age tech requirement horses have--via fences--which opens them up to the early game.
#6 Re: Main Forum » 115 "Speech Box Phrases" you didn't know about! » 2019-10-02 19:07:50
You forgot one:
/NET
Shows network packet stats.
Aha, now my next post can have the clickbait title of one hundred and SIXTEEN speech box phrases you didnt' know about!
Thanks
#7 Re: Main Forum » Naming your kids » 2019-10-02 18:55:08
Up next, only female characters can wear dresses.
In the case where the name is unavailable, I prefer that the auto-name-picker chooses a name based on gender. But I'm okay with mothers selecting any name regardless of gender.
Yeah, if this process is a sophistication of "a similar name will be selected" then David is probably not the closet name to Davina. The player would probably be happier with Daffodil instead. But if the updated list is implemented because "girls have boys names" is seen as a problem, the case presented here, and is solved by using the naming conventions (read: view points) of people from the last hundred and forty years... sounds whack.
It's the assumption that naming the bb Robert was a mistake.
#8 Re: Main Forum » Naming your kids » 2019-10-01 22:39:22
Keyin wrote:wouldn't this lead to things like
YOU ARE GOING TO DIE
being changed to..
YOU ARE GOKU
... I see absolutely no reason why this is a bad thing... XD
Lol, and no--I don't think. You would still have to name someone for this to happen.
"YOU ARE GOKU" is a result of naming someone, it's just that this task (of creating a name and altering your speech bubble) is carried out before your text is displayed--because computers are FAST FAST--and isn't checked against every "YOU ARE X" phrase uttered by the player. What's interesting is that you would find out you named someone BECAUSE your text would change. Right now, if you use one of the special phrases around someone who isn't named... someone made a recent post about 115 of these phrases, I forget who and where tho... that targeted player get's a "goku" name and you don't even realize you gave them one.
#9 Re: Main Forum » 115 "Speech Box Phrases" you didn't know about! » 2019-10-01 19:44:16
Hmm thanks for posting this, I had no idea there were so many options for some of these commands!
And I had no idea about several of the commands! For instance, I didn't know there was a mechanic to just pass things down directly to my kids. Or that I could curse my runner baby!
We're not always going to be update on EVERYTHING but somethings get left behind because we develop such a shorthand for what we talk about, on the boards and in the game. Remembering that, contrary to popular belief, there's new players constantly joining--who might not have been there through all of the updates and know all the tweaks--is important!
Sure, most of these commands are just iterations but I don't play Eve every run and coming up with a name could freak me out. Like, "What was it that they said in the tutorial I played six weeks ago?? How the fuck do I do this?? Oh great! I already have a BB!" It's good that the game has multiple ways of understanding what you're trying to do, most of these commands are important after all, and maybe that particular command phrase makes better sense to you when you write it out this way instead of that.
#10 Re: Main Forum » Naming your kids » 2019-10-01 19:31:39
jasonrohrer wrote:BTW, I could change it so that when your mother says, "YOU ARE PENIS", and then you find your name is PENELOPE by mousing over yourself..... I could auto-process her naming phrases before it is spoken to say YOU ARE PENELOPE. That would improve immersion a bit....
I love that idea.
Double cool in that you would get to see what the server named your kid in all situations. You might think the name was unique and while the list will generate a "similar" name, OP's example is a good case for how different that name could be--even though it's next on the list. That sounds like a nice thing to add, but personally I'm not too pressed about the issue... if I'd even call it that.
The current list is great, methinks, and any efforts for further inclusion and diversification are, obviously, awesome.
#11 Re: Main Forum » Naming your kids » 2019-10-01 03:27:33
I don't see any understandable reasons behind this.
No one is going to name me n****r.
Straight up tho, I'm not going to sit and come up with 14 error names--like a bad username choice--up to 6 or 7 times each time I play a mom because "total naming freedom is just so bad ass". If you wanted to name someone "Lucy" and it's taken, there's 5 names--LUCYANA, LUCYANN, LUCYANNA, LUCYMAE, LUCYNA--with Lucy in it and I think that works for almost all players, present company excluded... obviously.
I get that bigotry doesn't play a big part of your life, but let me tell you, it's real nice NEVER having to be named something pejorative. Why not just buy into the slight variation in names being a family spelling, unique to your lil tribe, and move on with the game? The system that we have BARELY prevents griefing as is. Just look at the most recent batch of Family Names and you'll see that were just inches away from worst case scenario already. There's more than 30 000 names on that list--none of them hate speech--so that's pretty flippin free to me. What's your soap box, guy?
I was 117 seconds too slow to be a first responder...
#12 Main Forum » 115 "Speech Box Phrases" you didn't know about! » 2019-10-01 03:11:54
- Anhigen
- Replies: 13
With the most recent changes to property fences--you can now add boxes to them!--you may encounter fences and the tricky problem of ownership a little more frequently in your up coming runs! There's also been some changes to Cursing--you can now Curse once every half hour!--which means you might see a few more purple texts than you have previously. With all these changes it might be time to bone up on what special phrases you can say, and the power these words/characters have!
Ownership and Cursing, as well as Naming and Emotes, are all "commands" you can do through your speech box. OHOL has 115 unique phrases and commands--47 are used for sharing property rights alone!--and to help you remember them all there is a recently updated wiki!
#13 Re: Main Forum » Naming your kids » 2019-10-01 01:57:00
Names have to be unique. For tracking and command purposes. If your name isn't unique, within the last two hours, a similar name will be generated for you from a list. Additionally, and more importantly, the name has to be on THIS LIST in order for to be accepted in the first place... for... understandable reasons. If the name isn't on the list, a similar name will be chosen.
More info can be found here.
#14 Re: Main Forum » Engine Compromise » 2019-09-30 05:45:41
Why can't walls be floors then?
You build a "floor" with a wall on one end, "interact" with it again and the entire floor rotates 90 degrees, like when you cycle through floor stakes shapes by hitting it with a stone. Building corner pieces requires more materials, building doorways and windows requires specific materials. The wall can then just be at one edge of the floor, making it appear is if it's between tiles. There has to be a way that pathing can recognize that this tile doesn't have access to the tiles on the other side of the "wall", leaving that tile open for players an objects but disrupting paths.
Fencing could follow a similar design, though it won't be as fast as the current model. You could lay fence but then you'd need to hammer it into the direction that you would need, and corner pieces couldn't simply be added by putting two fences on the same tile. But maybe you just have to build corner pieces and then move them into position. That extra step could also help curb some of the more arbitrary fence lines some towns have. Hell you might even have to clear that tree out of the way instead of just laying a bunch of random fences down since you'll create too many right angles.
#15 Re: Main Forum » Hand Pump » 2019-09-29 22:05:05
The current water system is one of the main driving forces for people to rush tech--you simply have to get late game in order to survive. This doesn't leave a lot of room for stone age, or iron age, tech as we have to move past it as quickly as possible. Often the town doesn't become viable until water is solved. You have a diesel engine pumping water but first level domestication??? The tech tree is all sorts of unbalanced and I'm looking forward to it, and our water system, being evened out.
#16 Re: Main Forum » 15 families, wtf? » 2019-09-28 21:30:44
Joseph Stalin wrote:make some sort of way to make new families
Marriage could work if properly balanced to prevent infinite combinations.
Or perhaps a constructable "Eve shrine" that would be expensive and/or time consuming to make ( like growing trees) that, after completion would spawn one eve before breaking. The final step could be such that it would allow players to anticipate the new Eve's arrival. The spawned eve would just be a random player born there instead of to a Mom, so the results would be unpredictable. Players could wait by the shrine with food and supplies prepared to greet (and protect) the new eve.
I'm sure whatever's cooking--like this has been coming for a looooong time--is already in the works. But we (in the collective sense) are just now seeing families start to stabilize and not die out due to RNG. Like, that problem wasn't even just recently solved it MIGHT have been solved like, tuh-DAY. What I'm saying is, I'm sure family fractals will be introduced as that seems like a core vision. 1 Eve starts us all off and then the world just pours out of her. You'll only get that with family splintering but we have a host of technical issues to solve up until that point. It wouldn't matter if you could start your own family if your first nine children were boys, or if you couldn't get kids because only 10 players logged in during your fertility window, and the round robin gave them away to higher populated families.
Interestingly, we'll see what happens to families now that people can't pool into the same villages as easily. Before you could /die out of a family pretty quickly, and wind up where you wanted quite easily, but with more families surviving longer this might not be as feasible as it was before. Also, those families, while very advanced, won't be getting as many bbs as they used to because the bbs are spread out over a great amount of villages/families--this might lead to village sharing or something else, but we're still finding our way to population stability which has to happen before we can experiment with fracturing or splintering those families.
Like, it's coming, it's for sure gotta be coming, but we're still learning from and experimenting with the technical problems you have tackle before hand. 
#17 Re: Main Forum » Important message for the players » 2019-09-28 18:57:35
Jason confirmed vegan
LMAO
Also this was the town I played in and I had no idea what the sign meant. Thought it was the name of the family or something. This is hilarious.
#18 Re: News » Update: The Posse » 2019-09-28 18:50:41
Saw people experimenting with fences today. The box change is giving people ideas--cool to see.
I think the range can be shortened on the white indicator though. It's pretty much on your screen, from some angle, all the time now. Which serves to heighten your anxiety because you have no idea what's going on. Like hearing tires screeching, constantly, but never the sound of cars actually crashing.
#19 Re: Main Forum » 15 families, wtf? » 2019-09-28 18:45:39
I love that Halcom has gained some rep in and out of game. Whenever I spawn as a Halcom I know some deece players have put down before me and they always get a strong run out of me. It's been cool seeing that family name across several arcs now. I wonder what the global stats are for that family name. Whoever's mish Halcom is, you're killing it. Keep up the good work.
#20 Re: Main Forum » Dual Families » 2019-09-28 18:42:28
I mean, this was going to be a post about how much fun it was to play as a dual family, but it got sentimental instead. lol. Really cool was to watch some of the adoptions. One of the other family member's "dad" was in my family. He took care of her and helped ensure their bloodline didn't die off. He eventually wanted to die so he asked me to stab him out in the fields. His daughter was there, I couldn't do it.
I died explaining to this adoptive daughter that he was my blood and I didn't have it in me to slay him. She was mourning him, hat in hand, when I passed away, a mere tile away.
BUT IT WAS SO COOL!
Mono family towns are just not where it's at! I'm telling yall. If anyone gets the idea to split up their town I AM FOR IT! You show up with bbs and need shelter? Imma open that gate! I love this shit! What was really cool is that it made the place feel more like a town. Like I wish I remembered the towns name even. I read it once, when I was kid, and was just confused that it didn't have our family name or something. Knowing what I know now it was probably just the other family's name, but omg! It was just so cool. I can only imagine how much fun this game is going to be once we start building mega cities with representation from all families inside. Going from you lil farming communities to these big as cities with cars is gunna be... AHFWLKEJFLKWJEF. What a run!
#21 Main Forum » Dual Families » 2019-09-28 18:36:37
- Anhigen
- Replies: 6
Aw man, had so much fun playing in the Whistlers today.
My mother gave birth to me in the wild! Scooping me up she told me we were not far from our home. I'd spend the next three minutes never seeing civilization as I watched this absolute legend fully cloth me with pure scavenging skills. When she placed a BP on me she quipped I was lucky. I'd never seen someone multi-task like her. I have literally no idea how she stay fed because I never saw that woman eat--she was a god! She was my hero. I could already fend for myself by the time we got to our "close" town. Up until now it had just been me and mom so when she dropped me off in this incredibly established place my relatives told me I spoke with a funny accent. I've never had family say that to me before.
The place was wicked, stone buildings being erected, multiple pens, diesel pump... some legit players had been through here. And the property was huge--when I first exploring it I thought I had wandered outside of the gate somehow, but no, it was just that big. The rift was on our south side so we must have been in the lower part of the map--my mother could have traveled half the map with me as a bb, idk--AND THERE WAS TWO FAMILIES!
It was so cool seeing another family work along side us, I thought it must have been nice of my elders to let them in. For how advance the place was it had no cows so that became my life's goal. Of course, there's always hiccups along the way... no bow, ok then, I'll just make a... no rope, not a problem I'll just pick so... no milkweed. Right, ok. From scratch it is.
My mother passed on so much information to me, I learned that actually we were the second family here, and she told me of this shrine--lost in the woods--that her and a few other eves made. It was like learning a legend, all the while having my family history completely rewritten--relatives scattered all over the map like stars on the night's sky. My mom was terrified that "we" would die out (she even hand raised my first bb for me), but my second child was still out there, in the world. Funny thing about that little one, she asked me for a the gate pass when she still a bb. I joked that she was gunna run and we laughed. But once she got on her own two feet she did take off--some people are just born with wings--and even though our time was short, I knew she was good.
My mom passed never having met my daughter, which was sad, she even tried coming back while my sister was still of age (I was too old at this point), but was born a boy and made the mistake of /dieing instead of starving. She ran out of lives, maybe, but likely bounced locked herself out.
I eventually did get our village milk--I found a cow, twice, and instead of killing a bison mum, I convinced the domesticated cow to come back to our village with some corn. I also learned that a cow will follow you if you feed it. And in my old age I saw a group of Whistlers, all wearing blue hats, making a fuss in our village. Strangers or maybe wandering stars--the relatives my mom told me tales about as a kid. But I got a funny feeling I knew that wild spirit the moment I saw her. It was my lil adventurer, she'd come "home". Brought her kids with her too. It had been so long--and because of the name randomizer--I had forgotten her name, but not her style.
The village is a fine place to raise kids, and maybe she's ready to settle down, but I'm pretty sure the wind is gunna take her again, once it picks up. That's a Whistler tho, we blow into town--make some noise--then we're gone. Just a tune you'll never forget.
Till then though, they'll all have some nice milk to drink.
#22 Re: Main Forum » Is 63 hours long enough for you? » 2019-09-27 21:11:07
Wow, ok, I had a completely different idea as to what a meaningful interaction was...
Presently I think our meaningful interactions between players are:
Healing--Saving a life or having your life saved. However, these are limited to times when people are hurt and therefore is dependent on how often this occurs.
Being Born--this is the big one. You first moments in the game are figuring out your relationship with your "mom". Are they absent, do they show interest in you, do you get a tour, are you a burden. Not a lot of "points" get exchanged, and it's not really RP, but the way your mother interacts with you, and you with them, will shape a lot of your game play. You get named, maybe clothed. This is the biggest and most meaningful iteration you will have with another play while you play OHOL. Period. Maybe I should have listed it first.
Learning A New Skill--getting taught something by another play is wonderful experience and so is teaching. What's interesting is that the game doesn't have "rift dependent" skills or teachings that need to be passed on. Everything can, and honestly should, be looked up on the wiki. The game has no situations that require information be passed directly from individual to individual. War was like this, but now we have global announcements that require less player interaction. Maybe that's for the good because war could swap so fast and there were too many moving parts for our limited communication options but now we have nothing? What if that changed. For instance, it could be that Milkweed comes in four to five different forms with very slight differences that produce different results. If you pick it like you pick the Milkweed from your last town it won't leave seeds. You'll need to know THIS particular strain, and it's that family knowledge that gets passed down that makes you useful. You get the "basic idea" but if you want to be optimal you'll have to learn from someone or figure it out through tests of your own. Better just to ask then... and if no one is around, it's a good thing someone left a note pinned to the nearby fence.
Help--An interaction that some times occurs is when you are farming and you need a hoe. You make your way to the smith area and see someone is already busy there. Not wanting to interrupt you ask them for a new steel hoe blade. They say they'll make it--or most often they shout that just flipping made one, but proceed to work on it anyway--and you head off to find the long straight branch you'll need. Getting help in the game is a valuable and meaningful interaction--I feel a part of something and like I'm playing with other people when I help them and they help me--so anything that increases those interactions the better. Maybe tasks can't be completed by myself, or require more dutiful attention so I can't readily drop the task and head off whenever I want--I'll need your help.
Fighting/Defending--While not always fun, and usually starts because of something bad happening, yeah, fights are meaningful, sometimes. Eve in your town? She's here to steal, probably. Someone keeps stealing the milkweed, they need to fucking learn who the milkweed boss is (hint, if you didn't plant it, it's not you--knife to the guts!) Curses fall under this umbrella too but considering how limited our present interactions with one another are, they dominate our "meaningful" interactions with other players. If you're not learning from someone else what point do you have to even interact with them unless it's to put a knife in their guts? Your only "meaningful" interaction with another player, outside of being named, will likely be a curse or a fight and that's... disproportionate, I think.
Property granting--I'm hesitant to put this in because it's not really meaningful but it is a command that endows people with abilites. One could make the argument so, here we are. BUT, you don't "become a part of the village" or anything when someone passes you gate privilege. I honestly think with some changes to buildings and how gates/doors work (they should just be automatic for those with rights so that you move with impunity when you have title/ownership instead of this micro door game that NO ONE thinks is fly or interesting) this could become more meaningful but it's effect is to just remove the nuisance of not being able to leave the village. Sure, we could have areas within the village that have private gates, but I'm sure everyone here would agree that the reason were not seeing more of that in game is because it's not practical in the least. The gates are too clunky and the buildings take way too long to build--there is no point in private property, presently. A bakery could be closed off to anyone who wasn't a baker, controlling clutter and food distribution but doors are a pain so you might as well just leave everything open. Water buckets are something to fight over but considering just how rare water gets you can't really have three buckets of water saved in the bakery under lock and key. That's tantamount to griefing with how scarce it is late game.
Thaulous points out some great options but I strongly second the need for Trade between families and towns. I understand that you're only making one game but each town and family shouldn't be able to do EVERYTHING so easily. Maybe near the end of the tech tree, sure, or through global domination, why not, but introducing trading, however it's designed, will greatly increase our interactions with one another on the rift. The first thing I can think of is a "Family Pie". Every family uses the same recipe, maybe, but if you eat a pie made from another family it provides x amount of more food, or yum bonus, or something worthwhile. Loading carts with this pie and heading off to go trade with a nearby village for their family pies can provide people with the need to learn foreign languages or even interact. Maybe they didn't have pies, but I'm sure we'll come up with an in game way of solving how to suggest trading if they don't. This bonus might even be enough of an incentive for people to welcome foreigners into their town as the pies they make will provide a bonus. Spit balling here but yeah, we need trade on the rift.
#23 Re: Main Forum » Make OHOL great again » 2019-09-25 21:08:17
Raw meats could (and should) spoil if left out on the ground for a while. Ideally, if food decay gets added, we should also gain option for food preservation, like salted meats, dried meats, and cold storage (pot-in-pot cooler, ice chest, root cellar, etc)
Like fuck to the yeah. I mean, this has to be in the pipes already, it's just sooooo inconsistent that clothing and items decay but meat doesn't. Salt the meat now and make jerky or if you work quickly you can produce high pip cooked food items. No more spamming rabbits everywhere just for their furs when you also have to have a cooking option ready if you want to use their meat. Like, this will be so much fun. Preserved fish! Lol.
And it will give us so much more tech to build, like canning, refrigeration, drying racks, smokers... I'm drooling just thinking about it. 100 per cent for this idea!
And I mean the problem of things persisting indefinitely creates scenarios where people don't have to have a "job". Previous lives can do all the work for you! While I think their still should be some elements of solo play, it's incredible that if you just played by yourself, you could spend an entire life time baking and making food for you next several lifetimes to consume. That kind of cross generation solo play HAS to be mitigated. No one baking? No pies. No one cooking? Your meat is perishing. Rabbit left in it's trap? It's decaying and spoiling both the pelt and the meat!
This also means we can balance food so that more food is produce per item because it decays over time. For instance, I played in the Tree family today--what a quaint little place, I loved that little town--and we had 9 stew pots along with a huge ass bakery just full of food. 9 pots though? This place was NEVER running out of food. But the cool thing is it created an AREA for food that you just can't do with 1 pot. More food began to gravitate towards these 9 pots and it's eventually where I started putting my buckets of milk once I got my cows up and going. The "space" that that much food made had a noticeable impact and I'd love to see more of that--it's something that people can understand. Food is here. Kind of like how the berry push farm creates a farming space just by it's presence and size alone. The only problem with those 9 pots was that no one was making them. The entire hour I played we didn't have a single baker and we never even tipped a pot; there was just so much food! It would be wicked if you could feed a few people could feed you entire village, but they could only do it for fifteen minutes at a time--or less--so that the food was still just as useful, but now so is your job.
#24 Re: Main Forum » A whoops on the curse radius » 2019-09-25 20:37:47
So basically if you are cursed NW then NW is blocked for you if any of players are there
I like location blocking too. If two people are "fighting" and wind up cursing each other it's probably good, for the village, that both of them get bounced out of that area for a while. This does have the direct problem of both of them being potentially born in the next area they spawn (in the event, like you described, that they both stab and curse each other over some beef) but you could mitigate that with a "Cant be spawned with in x of a person who has cursed you today" rule though.
But locations are interesting because the arcs are more consistent and lasting longer. Towns are staying put along with the work you put into them. Maybe you get a curse and it blocks you out of this quadrant for one day. Get five curses and you're not going to be born in that quad for five days. Maybe the person was wrongly cursed once, but since the town will likely be there tomorrow now, they can be born back to that family when they play again. You caused serious trauma that the family had to recover from? You're probably not being born in that quad, let alone town, until the entire memory of the place is gone and forgotten--maybe even several arcs later, depending on the severity of your offences.
Now, griefers could always just travel to preform their badness if their curses/day blocks were just tagged to the quad they were cursed in. Maybe they're blocked out of being born there today but they just high tail back, their next life, and wrack up a big curse score in the NW whenever they want--high points! So what if it wasn't attached to where you were cursed but where you born? 1 curse is a 24hr ban to whichever quad you were born in. As the griefer get shuttled through the four quadrants (supposing they are effectively cursed in time by their victims which is it's own problem, it seems) then after 4 strikes, they're done for the day. It's hard to imagine a situation where you get into 4 separate fights with 4 separate people in all 4 corners of the map and don't deserve a timeout. In a coordinated attack you might be griefed out of a quadrant as 5 people curse your life/birth place, but it would take a greater effort, and much more time, to have to wait for you to be born in each quadrant THEN curse, to bounce you out of the rift completely. Like, multiple people, online, same time, finding you, over a few to several hours... I mean, I don't know a system that's going to be really ironclad against that type of attack in the first place...
But, if you were born to a town (within a quadrant), and caused a ruckus, you would be blocked for some time, and if you came back to that town while you're still cursed (on block/probation) and cause even more havoc you'd be blocked from the quad you came from too leaving you just two more chances to be born in the rift while you still got curses out on your name. I mean, I think you could write it up so that if you only have 1 available quad to be born in THAT sends you to DT, giving you just three "separate" offences in a day before you're bounced out for at least 24 hours... but likely more if you were out on mission to cause pain and were then cursed by multiple people in multiple areas. Obviously this tracker would extended through arcs as well, which is great, but within individual arcs it would be fantastic. It could be weighted too maybe, so that 1 curse in a quad is worth half a day but 2 curses is more than a full day, 3 curses is almost two full days, so and so forth. Idk, the neatness of a 1 day ban on a quad is attractive--still plenty of quads to play in--but it might be too strong against petty squabbles. Anyway...
The more people you hurt the longer you're kicked out, but minor offences and squabbles don't rack up against you too punitively.
#25 Re: Main Forum » OneLife++ - Milkweed's modded client » 2019-09-25 15:53:25
Now you don't even have to look for something? Just say you enjoy cheating and gooooooo