One Hour One Life Forums

Preface:

   Before I begin, allow me to say I'm still a very new player. I've only been playing for about five days. But because the Coronavirus has ruined many of my plans for my vacation in Thailand, I've spent most of my wakeful hours playing this game nonstop. So despite being new, I already have a firm grasp of almost all the game's mechanics and crafting progression. So with that said I want to first give an honest and constructive review of this game in it's current state. So that I can first build context for why I am about to suggest the additions/changes I am.

   I understand that you are the sole developer of the official title Jason, and as such I've given careful consideration to how you could effectively address multiple issues with one fell swoop, in addition to making this game far more inviting to new players (thus potentially renewed interest/sales to help fund further development).

First Impression:

   I discovered One Hour One Life through the YouTuber, Twisted. I wasn't a subscriber of his, but I believe I was advertised the game due to being a fan of RTS, resource mangements, & sandbox games. I had heard of/seen videso about One Hour One Life years ago, but never bothered because, to be frank, the graphics disgusted me, (The irony is I spent half a decade building mega-structures in Minecraft.)

   At any rate, after watching several of Twisted's videos I decided to give the game a go, to see if I'd actually enjoy it, and I have to say I absolutely love the concept! The MS Paint graphics be damned Jason, the experience your game provides is enthralling and the social/player driven events keeps each playthrough feeling unique, lending to my ability to play 6 full lives in one night and have to force myself to close my laptop before pulling an all night binge.

   Okay let's be honest, I binge played my first two days to the extent that I logged nearly 30 hours in two days..

My Experience: (Yes it's a lot, but it is to provide context for the Suggestion/request, jump to "my conclusion:" for TL:DR)

   Glowing about how much I enjoy this game aside, looking back at my first few hours in the game I have to say.. it wasn't exactly fun. Why? Well for starters, the tutorial isn't exactly helpful..

    Why do I say this? Because unlike traditional sandbox games, where you'd spawn into a new world, building from scratch, in this game, you can spawn into a town that's already pushing end game technologies. Which was my first experience. Sure I knew how to sharpen a stone, craft a hatchet, and even start a fire. But all those milestones were not only achieved, but long surpassed by my village when I first spawned in. So what did I do my first life? I walked around aimlessly trying to make heads or tails of what everyone was doing and how to play the game.

    After my first life, All I had learned how to do was kill sheep. Which is apparently a HUGE NO NO. To be clear, this is not exactly obvious to new players. I can get 50 sheep on Minecraft in my first 10 minutes of playing. But in One Hour One Life my attempt to help my town by being a butcher got me cursed by no less than half my village and was then chased out of town. Obviously, I had no idea how big of a deal being cursed was, instead I was just annoyed that my village went mob psycho on me. But hey, it was an entertaining way to start my journey in OHOL!

Things got ugly my second life however, when I re-spawned in the same village. Now I'm sitting in the village, listening to half the village label me a troll, demanding the remaining villagers curse me. So I decide, 'you know what. If they want a witch hunt, I'll give them a hunt!" So I made it my goal to start hiding things around the map. I got caught pretty quickly, and this time the mob murdered me with a bow. Which was fair enough, as I decided I was going to intentionally be an evil character so I wasn't actually upset with the outcome.

   What did upset me however, was my third life. I spawn in a different village, and it's at this point I learn that not only is this game's player base virtually non-existent, but that when someone curses you it marks you so they know who you are. Obviously, I don't know this, and didn't learn this is how people figured out I was the sheep slayer until my second or third day of playing. Now to be honest, I had no intention of being a griefer in this game when I first started. But after not even being given a chance to try and play on my third life, i said fuck it "fuck it, if they want a griefer. I'll give them one."

   So I spent my 4th through 8th lives doing everything I could come up with to make other players lives as miserable as they had made my first 3. After which I got bored of not being able to actually play the game and decided to play on an empty server. Where I actually learned how to play. After about 4 or 5 Eve playthroughs, I felt a bit more competent and decided to try playing the game on the normal server again. Thankfully with my expanded understanding and most/all of the crybabies who had cursed me being offline, I was actually able to enjoy the game, as it's intended to be played.

   So all's good and well right? I had become a reformed player because of the curse system. WRONG! I became a reformed player because I wanted to actually experience the game. The curse system actually pigeon holed me into being a griefer and adopting a play style/role I would have other wise not embraced. And in fact, the only reason I was able to reform my play style, was because I played after the people who had cursed me and were instantly targeting me on my new playthroughs had logged out for the night.

   Now in the time between the people I had originally played with logging out, I actually became an EXTREMELY productive player. I've always been a min/max gamer in everything I do, so I made it a point to figure out the optimal ways to perform every job/task a player can. Such that on day two, I farmed over 300 rabbits, crafted approximately 60 bags, gathered well over 100 adobe, and at least twice as much clay, stockpiled dozens if not tens of dozens of each seed and after all that still managed to find time to learn how to do cooking. Granted that was spread across all villages I spawned into, but most was done in the same three villages.

   So obviously, after putting in so much work, I felt entitled to make a more impactful mark on the towns I was playing in. How did I choose to do this? By building what I intended to be a resource storage hut. Because across all the towns, no one had built a resource storage unit, where items could be stored neatly, and I was tired of towns more or less looking like garbage dumps with items littering every tile. What a great idea right? Build a nice structure to grow the town, with the intent that it'll help make it more aesthetically appealing and productive, since people would have been able to easily find the items they want.

   Yeah, if only that's how my fellow players had seen it. Instead one of the paper dolls who had cursed me the night before, just so happened to log in and spawn in the Xena village I had spent all day farming resources for and building up. He begins exclaiming to everyone that I'm a greifer, because of what I had done the day before, and demanding everyone curse me and calling me every derogatory name he could muster. But instead of engaging with him, I just dismissed him and continued on building my structure.

   And honestly, if he was only flaming me for my choice in how to spend my time playing this game, I wouldn't have even been upset. But no. He started screwing with my build, taking resources from me, running my cart away from me, ultimately griefing me. All the while he's calling me a griefer, the irony was painful. And ultimately my character died of old age with my building only being half completed. This was the point I took to discord and started criticizing the player base for their virtue signaling and hypocritical behavior.

My Conclusion:

   Because the curse system visibly tags a player through multiple playthroughs, it both breaks immersion and encourages toxic behavior, both from the curser and the cursie. I've learned that this toxic behavior is so prolific and that people curse each other over such petty things that it has effectively turned the game from a 'family lineage' game into a ironic blend of virtue signaling, overt to blatant racism/sexism & covert griefing. In short, I love the essence of this game, but feel the curse system doesn't in fact protect from griefing, but is actually the key promoter of griefing.

While I understand why the curse system was implemented, it was actually the wrong approach to take to handling griefing. Ultimately what you have done Jason, is instead of blaming your poor foresight into how players would abuse your game world, and adding bumper rails to protect against such, you instead have implemented a system where you blame a considerable portion of your player base.

My Suggestions/Requests:

REMOVE UNIQUE IDENTIFIER FORM CURSED PLAYERS

    If someone knows the character they are engaging with is someone they've cursed, they IMMEDIATELY become toxic to that person. I've not only been on the receiving end of such, but watched it happen half a dozen times now to other players. The tag system needs to be done away with completely as it promotes toxic behavior on both sides.

SEND DONKEYS TO A SEPARATE SERVER

   As a clincal psychologist, I have an absolute laundry list of issues with the existence of the curse system. But with that said, I think DT is actually a brilliant idea. But I think you need to take it a step further and force Donkeys onto one of the other official servers. If players are cursed by too many different players across too many different play throughs, stick them on a cursed server, where they play with other cursed players for 30 days. Then your player base is separated entirely. And you don't have to deal with DT players finding clever ways to continue griefing normal players.

ENABLE EVE SPAWN AS AN OPTION

   Outside of the curse system, this suggestion is actually to help reduce future new players from having experiences similar to my first life which results in them being labeled as a griefer and thus having their first few hours in the game ruined by the veteran player base who is painfully quick to label people as griefers/trolls. In fact, I think the game should be set default to have players spawn as Eve, and have the players uncheck a box to have the option of spawning into an already existing family.

   This suggestion shouldn't just be extremely easy to implement into the game, but would provide a massive quality of life improvement for both beginner players and veterans alike. Veterans no longer have to deal with new players screwing up late game builds/progress (because they don't know the first thing about the tech tree) but new players are also going to get to experience the game, from it's effective starting point.

   Before I went on the empty server, I spammed /die as many times as I could to try and spawn as Eve, because I just wanted to experience the game from it's start so I could learn the tech tree by playing through the game. But alas, apparently you can only spawn as an Eve on an empty server, or if you get cursed enough to be banished to DT. Incidentally, this was also an incentive to me to grief until I learned Donkey eve's don't get to have children, so there's next to zero chance of them ever revisiting their town on another life.

ENABLE FAMILY LOCKING

   My final suggestion is to give players the option to be reborn into the family they previously played (assuming a female is of age). This will do so much good, both for how players experience the game, as well as how players interact with their families. In the game's current state there is zero sense of family loyalty because, well, you're almost always born into a different family from your previous life. This leads to people spamming /die until they spawn in the town the want, or worse, trolling the town they spawn in, because they hate the location/race.

   From a more long-term perspective, this feature would also allow you to get really creative with the races and how they interact with one another. Sure trade is fun, but why have war swords if your family has no incentive to wage war. After all, waging war against another family in the game's current state just means you're likely screwing yourself over on your next life.

Final Thoughts:

   I really do enjoy this game and despite a few complaints with how overly complicated the crafting system is, with no in-game resources (aside from other players, who, speak, like, this, with, five, sec, ond, delay, betw, een, every, few, let, ters) I feel the curse system and standard spawn into existing family systems are the greatest detractors to both new and old players.

   After having joined the discord I get the real sense that most griefers are actually griefers because in the game's current state, griefing is the only way for them to experience the game in the way the want to. Ie, a fresh start. I'm actually certain it's not about those players wanting to play alone, but rather them wanting to have more action/combat in addition to being given the ability to start a civilization from scratch.

   With all my praise of how much I actually enjoy the game, being a community driven game, unless at least the last three suggestions are intended to be added to the game in the near future; I'm contemplating requesting a refund for this game... though still keeping it on my radar in case you decide to add the above in a later update. I genuinely do enjoy the concept of this game. But as it stands, I just can't make heads or tails of why you decided to go the route you did with handling 'griefing' which is really just paying customers choosing to engage with the game's mechanics/systems in a way you, as the game's creator, enabled them to do. As someone who's played online RPGs for just about two decades, this is the first time I've ever witnessed such an absolutely toxic and broken system.

   I used to think League of Legend's player tribunal was bad, but I can at least give them credit for having moderators review the tickets player's deem punishment worthy.. you don't even take that safe guard here (obviously because you don't have the time/man power to review such, but that's still no excuse for handing absolute authority of punishment over to the community at large).

   As it stands, the last three options/changes I'm asking for would require very little effort to implement and the quality of life/community boon such simple additions would make might actually draw both old and new players back into the game. New players because it will be more inviting/easy to pick up, and old players to find out how the changes have shifted the game's meta. Hope this review/suggestion is helpful. I'd love to see this game see an increase in new players so you can afford the time to commit to much more grandiose updates to the game in the future..

Best Regards
~Jayed