"Everything runs out" - maybe it actually should

Potjeh · 2018-05-19 14:37:42

Despite the everything runs out philosophy, there's plenty of core resources that are infinite if managed properly. Initially I thought this was kinda cool, but the more I play the more I realize they're just creating tedium. From the very start where you're standing around waiting for milkweed to fruit to the late game where you're carting around water from faraway ponds because wells suck. And some technically finite resources borrow this scheme, which just creates headache (carrot seed plot management for example). It also decreases child life expectancy, because the natural job for a kid is farming and in anything but the tiniest settlement the nearby ponds will be low so kids will have to trek out for water and this is when most of them starve. And I think that gameplay that is about not doing something (draining ponds, picking seed carrots, picking non-fruiting milkweed) is inherently less fun than gameplay that is about doing something (making an axe, building a well, baking pies). Plus, the whole reliance on having a ton of ponds makes it too hard to find a good spot as Eve. And finally, because the early resources are infinite later stuff has to be kinda crap for balance reasons, which is why instead of getting a productivity increase as tech advances we actually get a productivity decrease. This means that the push to advance tech isn't as strong as it should be to fit Jason's vision here. So I think that the game should be changed so *everything* runs out and tech advancement replaces some jobs instead of just adding more. Some ideas on how it might work:

- WATER. Ponds shouldn't regenerate, at least not on a timer useful for a village. Regenerating after 8-12 hours might be necessary to allow reclaiming failed towns. Instead the main source of water for fourth+ generation should be wells. And since ponds are nerfed, wells can be made a lot better. Of course, they should still be finite to keep with the everything runs out philosophy, but they should have a lot more uses. What this means is no auto recharge on wells and hence no waiting for them and guessing if they're ready. Instead there'd be a number of uses than you can freely take whenever. Perhaps a well has two or three stages of fullness and there's a random chance to drop to the next emptier stage whenever you draw water. Of course, with these changes empty wells should still be upgradeable or we'll run out of stone way too soon. But to prevent permanent loss of space and give a sense of urgency to well building, maybe dry wells should collapse into a pile of rubble in half an hour or so. You can mine the rubble to reclaim some stone, or it disappears in another half an hour. Even with reclamation and upgrades stone is eventually going to be scarce, so we also get a niche for a stone quarry tech tree in advanced stages.

- SOIL. Composting makes this one infinite, so composting has to be fairly complex for balance's sake. While I like the general idea of composting, I think the current implementation just takes too much time and is a bit too complex to effectively teach to others with the limits of in-game communication. So I think the process should be simplified (just straw and poop for example, no extra berries or water), but a bottleneck should be placed to limit composting by resources and keep the everything runs out theme. I'm thinking sheep are a good point for that. What if instead of constantly spewing lambs sheep had to be given a piece of salt to spawn a lamb? Salt can be a stone/desert gatherable, and we can have a while salt mining tech tree later on. But I digress, my main problem with soil is actually the carrot management, it's just not fun and gets you pissed off at other players constantly. IMO it'd be simpler and more consistent if carrots consumed soil even when harvested before seed. This makes farming more newb friendly because active measures (getting soil/making compost) are more interesting to them than preventive measures (not picking seed/picking non-seed on time). Of course this massively increases soil requirements, but simplified composting should balance that out. Though we'd likely need a pre-sheep method of composting that's fairly limited, and I think thule reeds fit the bill. Just make the alternate recipe reeds and bowl of berries.

- RABBITS. Same deal as with water, no regeneration on a practical timescale. Because it's not fun to have to go snaring to gear up no matter what stage of civilization you spawn in. Give us rabbit hutches instead so we can farm rabbits.

- BERRIES. I'm kinda torn on this one TBH. Wild berries (and cacti) can be crucial for surviving famine, but they break the everything runs out rule. I think we should turn a blind eye here. There's a concern with wild bushes making sheep feeding a bit too easy, but in reality I've found they're mostly never full anywhere near town. As for domestic berries, they're a whole other thing. I'm not a fan of the current berry farming where you basically create a resource that's infinite if properly managed but the management is a nightmare because damn kids keep eating and not watering. I'd turn this whole thing around, give berry bushes finite number of uses (high chance to advance a stage in aging whenever watered), but make them faster and more resilient. Something like no drying out after harvest, you simply need to water an empty bush and it produces a harvest in a couple of minutes.

- IRON. This one is technically finite, but practically it's not. Your average stone biome has way more loose ore than a town can reasonably use in 10-20 generations (which seems to be your average town duration). The consequences of this is that mines suck and are pointless. IMO it'd be better if there was very little loose ore but mines were more common. Getting the initial tools would be harder, but as long as you're smart and make pick as your second or third tool getting iron should be more fun than it is right now.

- MILKWEED. No respawns, so no more standing around waiting to fruit (unless you're going after seeds). Wild milkweed can respawn on same scale as ponds and rabbits for reclamation, but farmed milkweed should be single harvest. Because it's no longer infinite, milkweed can be buffed so you can farm some thread in a reasonable time. I'm thinking something like two or three stalks instead of one out of a milkweed farm tile.

Last edited by Potjeh (2018-05-19 14:41:09)

YAHG · 2018-05-19 15:24:06

No thanks.
Inevitable doom isn't fun, there is no point investing in the future if it is predetermined, either good or bad.

TrustyWay · 2018-05-19 15:53:34

The game is already enough tedious for most of players.

All we can do when playing is mostly farming food wnd it's getting pretty boring.

Potjeh · 2018-05-19 16:12:28

That is precisely the point. As stuff runs out you shift to different techs, instead of always doing the same water runs in every village.

Silvses · 2018-05-19 16:31:11

I agree to a certain extent. When at tribal stage it should be difficult to manage all the food production and such however once you unlock better tech food and whole sustainability should be less of a worry which would allow to focus on other things. This game shouldn't be just stuck on the whole tribal stage.

jasonrohrer · 2018-05-19 17:23:43

Yeah, I probably need to do all of this stuff!

This part of the game design is very hard. I definitely didn't have it right at launch, and I still don't have it right as of now. It's way closer, though.

Actually, on the day of launch, ponds did NOT regenerate, at all, but there were no wells. When everyone started starving, I scrambled to make them regenerate.

Soil is not currently infinite because of iron, stones, and saplings eventually running out, and you need those to till soil after growing carrots, and you need carrots for compost to get more soil. In practice, though, iron never runs out before a town dies due to folly (or boredom, in the case of the Boots family).

This other problem I'm facing is that making these kinds of changes, which are necessary in the long run, makes players very angry in the short term.

It's hard to implement a "boiling a frog" approach with some of this stuff. Though most of it is trans-generational (ponds take a long time to refill, milkweed takes an epoch to regrow, etc.), so most players wouldn't notice.

I agree that a lot of the gameplay focuses on "not doing something," which is not very interesting. I never thought of it that way, but "don't pick the non-fruiting milkweed, don't drain the pond, don't drain the well, don't snare the non-family rabbit, don't forget to water the languishing bush" do kind of create a walking on eggshells feeling. I've drained a pond by accident, picked milkweed at the wrong time, etc, and I always feel like an idiot when I do this. I want players to teach each other things, but mostly that teaching should be how TO do something, not a long list of what not to do.

My friend says that only the top level tech should be infinite at any stage. So, for example, ponds are infinite at first, but then once I introduce wells, ponds become finite, and wells become infinite. Then I introduce infinite hand pump wells, and the old wells become finite. Then I introduce combustion engine pumps, and the hand pump wells become finite.

BUT... I feel like any kind of achievable steady state is boring. Once you get there, there are no more decisions to make.

I really want every civ to crash, in the end. Not as a certainty, but as a looming and growing pressure across generations.

YAHG · 2018-05-19 19:09:10

jasonrohrer wrote:

My friend says that only the top level tech should be infinite at any stage. So, for example, ponds are infinite at first, but then once I introduce wells, ponds become finite, and wells become infinite. Then I introduce infinite hand pump wells, and the old wells become finite. Then I introduce combustion engine pumps, and the hand pump wells become finite.
BUT... I feel like any kind of achievable steady state is boring. Once you get there, there are no more decisions to make.
I really want every civ to crash, in the end. Not as a certainty, but as a looming and growing pressure across generations.

If you make the upkeep of the higher and higher tech complicated, with intertwining inputs
that players have to balance then it can be engaging instead of tedious.

Like soil management for example, the current math afaik is positive given water as your only input.
You can farm enough skewers to keep carrots flowing into the system, or you could just do partial seeding
to destroy the soil each cycle so you don't have to bother with tilling at all.

Crashing in the end as the complexity overwhelms our ability to manage it across larger and larger groups
of real people is cool and fun and seems like an interesting part of the game. It can be unlikely in practice to
have indefinite civilizations, but as long as it is possible to do so, then it makes it into a fun challenge as opposed
to a useless struggle.

Eventually.. someone will drain the wells or forget to seed or shear the sheep and it will all go to shit. I don't
think THAT is in question ..

Once there are more and more complicated interdependent systems then we will approach statistical inevitability
of failure. As long as it is statistical rather than fated it should be fine .

Makes me think of "I Pencil"

http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/r … ,%20Pencil

jasonrohrer · 2018-05-19 19:57:10

"I Pencil" was a major inspiration for this game.

See this video which is on the home page for OHOL:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5Gppi-O3a8

And yes, intertwining complexity at the higher levels is the idea.

Baker · 2018-05-19 20:04:07

jasonrohrer wrote:

"I Pencil" was a major inspiration for this game.
See this video which is on the home page for OHOL:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5Gppi-O3a8
And yes, intertwining complexity at the higher levels is the idea.

Oh I I see so the Pencil is at the top of the tech tree, This is our end goal.

Kinrany · 2018-05-19 23:58:33

jasonrohrer wrote:

I agree that a lot of the gameplay focuses on "not doing something," which is not very interesting. I never thought of it that way, but "don't pick the non-fruiting milkweed, don't drain the pond, don't drain the well, don't snare the non-family rabbit, don't forget to water the languishing bush" do kind of create a walking on eggshells feeling. I've drained a pond by accident, picked milkweed at the wrong time, etc, and I always feel like an idiot when I do this. I want players to teach each other things, but mostly that teaching should be how TO do something, not a long list of what not to do.

At least there should be loud, clear and immediate signal that you goofed up. Accidentally dropping your keys down the drain just sucks, accidentally erasing a production server is a disaster.

jasonrohrer wrote:

My friend says that only the top level tech should be infinite at any stage. So, for example, ponds are infinite at first, but then once I introduce wells, ponds become finite, and wells become infinite. Then I introduce infinite hand pump wells, and the old wells become finite. Then I introduce combustion engine pumps, and the hand pump wells become finite.

This!
And it only needs to be potentially infinite, not practically infinite. It's good enough if players will eventually accidentally kill themselves. Angry bees, pollution, grey goo, etc.

jasonrohrer · 2018-05-20 03:01:43

Wells are potentially infinite, but I see a lot of dry ones around. In practice, someone messes it up.

Left4twenty · 2018-05-20 05:31:19

A bell rings at 2:12 in that video, hopefully I can find it's origin, or at least my children will

Last edited by Left4twenty (2018-05-20 05:31:59)

Kinrany · 2018-05-20 11:29:54

Actually there needs to be only one thing that eventually runs out, right? If you have nothing to eat, it doesn't matter that you can turn air into oil.

Anshin · 2018-05-20 19:42:14

This shouldn't always be the case though.
We drive cars because they are better than horses, not because we ran out of horses.

If anything, we had too much horse poop:
The Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894

Last edited by Anshin (2018-05-20 19:47:04)

Left4twenty · 2018-05-20 20:20:56

We would run out of the space required to keep horses though possibly. And society is switching to more renewable energy sources because the fuel we use for cars is limited. The "fuel" for horses is too because of land constraints.
On a side note I've seen villages that were farming wool and poop became an issue

pein · 2018-05-21 08:32:23

i love managing games, and i dont mind that something is hard, and others shouldnt either
if that is the case people are the fault

but it should be a smart balancing
you dont plant carrots, you plant cabbage if has better properties
you dont do it because carrot runs out, you do it because cabbage grows faster
this is just an example

lets say you introduce cabbage, with a growign time similar to carrots now, increase carrot growing time, and one more plant like potato. ideally people can choose between multiple things, with different risk/reward
one risk is time, that should decrease with tech, you can farm faster
the other risk is nutrition value. even if it takes same time, people would choose higher wielding plants
what about several levels of seeds? for example a new plant that has different results, lets call it potate. if you find a big potato, you can replant it, instead eating it, then the seeds made from it, yield bigger potatoes
at least 3 levels of size increase would make this process more fun, a goal.

the other thing needed is limitations. if you need to make a special tile to plant this new things, so its limited while low tech is not
so even if something would be hard to make but would have auto watering function (pipes from a cistern) and would grow slow, but no risk of picking incorrectly

so always should be a risk, a way to screw up, but different one

also a dont do this, dont do that thing is very bad. wells can go dry, then will go dry, people make mistakes and no way to correct it, it should be a way to fix any mistake, which would still lose time but wouldnt be permanent burden.
essentially the griefers replicate mistakes, because fixing them requires much more time than making them
if you put one item into a pit, griefers wont put 19 items to let sheep out, cause its a tedious job to do, they look for easy ways

then teaching would be better, variety, effectiveness, and decisions based on what you want to archieve.

same for rabbit, domesticate them, feed them, kill them. fur shouldnt be an issue later on. but new clothing types would make ineffective to wear it. currently wool is worse but wont decay. more complex clothing should be warmer, or push temperature towards middle, instead of increasing it.

the lack of building materials and the lot of waste product from dung/grain is kinda most annoying for me. the hunger rate is too high to teach people, especially if lagging, people just eat all their short life.

i remember before updates, seeing rooms for every family, raising kids separately in rooms, making pies separately, now is just a big mess compared.

Potjeh · 2018-05-21 16:52:20

jasonrohrer wrote:

This other problem I'm facing is that making these kinds of changes, which are necessary in the long run, makes players very angry in the short term.
It's hard to implement a "boiling a frog" approach with some of this stuff. Though most of it is trans-generational (ponds take a long time to refill, milkweed takes an epoch to regrow, etc.), so most players wouldn't notice.

That's why you distract the players with shiny new things. Make new content OP on release and nobody will care about nerfing old content because they're all too busy fiddling with the new stuff.

My friend says that only the top level tech should be infinite at any stage. So, for example, ponds are infinite at first, but then once I introduce wells, ponds become finite, and wells become infinite. Then I introduce infinite hand pump wells, and the old wells become finite. Then I introduce combustion engine pumps, and the hand pump wells become finite.
BUT... I feel like any kind of achievable steady state is boring. Once you get there, there are no more decisions to make.
I really want every civ to crash, in the end. Not as a certainty, but as a looming and growing pressure across generations.

That sounds like a perfectly reasonable approach. Mind you, all that's needed is practical infinity (ie enough of a resource to last an active town 24h), not theoretical infinity. Going back to my wells suggestion, if they gave like 20 water on average for shallow and 50 for deep, and you could recycle half the stones from an empty deep well, there'd be no excuse for running out of wells before the town naturally collapses.

And yeah, you're right on steady state. I hate it when I'm born into a town that has sheep, it means there's nothing I can do to significantly improve the civ on my own. IMO the best moments in the game are crafting a fire set for your Eve mom and making the first bowls, or smithing the first axe. Such large meaningful achievements become scarcer as civ advances. There's enough big projects to do, like making signs or wells or walls, but none of it is of much practical benefit, you're mostly just doing cosmetic stuff. If wells were a must and there was a need for every generation to build a couple, at least there'd be something impactful to do.

jasonrohrer · 2018-05-22 00:04:39

My main goal here is to eliminate the "be careful or ruin stuff forever" feeling. That feeling is separate from whether stuff runs out or not.

These are the changes that I'm making in this direction:

1. Ponds refill slower, and a dry pond isn't fatal (it's just one final state of emptiness that refills at the same rate).

2. Wells are bigger than ponds, refill faster than ponds, and deep wells refill way faster than ponds. A dry well is no longer fatal (just a final stage of emptiness from which they refill at the same rate).

The idea with 1 and 2 is that the rate at which you can farm food is more limited if you are using ponds, and water-generation is wasted if a well is left full for too long, meaning that cisterns become useful to even out water production. Maybe I will boil the frog here and keep slowing down ponds so that wells become even more necessary.

3. Milkweed never regrows, regardless of when it is picked. However, milkweed seeds can still be gathered infinitely from one fruiting plant (as always), but now milkweed seeds last forever. They can be easily disposed of in a fire.

4. Loose iron is 10x less common, but iron vein is 2x more common, and iron mine produces 40 iron (instead of 20) on average.

Changes 2 and 4 are also aimed at making wells and mines more necessary for an advanced civ, but also helping to make iron run out a bit more.

5. Tilling tools now have 6, 20, and 50 uses instead of 10, 40, and 100. Iron/stone is supposed to be the limit on food production, in the end, so I'm tightening this up gradually as part of boiling the frog.

Changes to rabbits will come later, once I add domestication.

I'm not sure that carrot farming really needs to be fixed any further, aside from increasing the iron pressure. Carrots require tilling, tilling breaks tools. Soil requires carrots. Changing the way soil works won't change the arguing over which carrots go to seed.

Domestic berry bushes are okay for now. They don't break the main rule, because they can't be screwed up by doing something. They can be screwed up by not doing something (neglect) which is okay, I think. They are infinite, but I can't think of a way to change that that makes sense, given that they are bushes...

dana · 2018-05-22 00:09:38

Jason, if you're going to restrict Milkweed regrowth in the distant future, remember that we need milkweed to make clothes! We'll probably going to need an alternative if you don't want naked civilisations

jasonrohrer · 2018-05-22 00:18:51

Farm milkweed?

Knitted clothes require no thread, right?

Anshin · 2018-05-22 00:27:17

Hemp. Makes stronger thread that makes clothes last longer.
Weaving....

jasonrohrer · 2018-05-22 00:35:45

Note that these changes do not make water finite.

I'm still not sure about this. "Everything" can run out without literally making every single resource run out, as someone just pointed out in this thread.

But doesn't an infinite resource mean busy-work with no decisions to make? Having the resource respawn at a given rate still allows for decisions (you only have X per hour, and that's finite). But it does create a kind of busy-work feeling where you're waiting for the resource to respawn. The alternative (if the resource never respawns) is looking for more of it or building more tech to get a larger finite supply of it. Both are more interesting and dramatic than waiting around for it, or coming back to the same spot over and over to see if more is there.

This game, in general, has instant, no-wait crafting. Most crafting games have a timer, where it takes 30 seconds to make an ax, or whatever. Here it might take 30 seconds, because you need to carry out the steps. But there is no timer.

There are a few things that do take time, mostly for thematic reasons. Making charcoal, growing plants and animals. It would be weird and confusing if you planted carrot seeds and instantly got carrots. But maybe this game should work like this. Waiting isn't interesting.

Waiting for a pond/well to refill is even less interesting than waiting for carrots to grow. But I guess I'm having similar thematic trouble here.... is this a world without rain? How can a well never refill?

There's also something different here, because a well/pond refills over and over, and all without you doing anything. No resources are spent, no decisions are made. Growing carrots also takes time and waiting, but it's not automatic, and it uses resource along the way.

YAHG · 2018-05-22 00:44:16

jasonrohrer wrote:

2. Wells are bigger than ponds, refill faster than ponds, and deep wells refill way faster than ponds. A dry well is no longer fatal (just a final stage of emptiness from which they refill at the same rate).
The idea with 1 and 2 is that the rate at which you can farm food is more limited if you are using ponds, and water-generation is wasted if a well is left full for too long, meaning that cisterns become useful to even out water production. Maybe I will boil the frog here and keep slowing down ponds so that wells become even more necessary.

Fuck yeah!

I LOVE wells... so I am super biased :$

Potjeh · 2018-05-22 00:58:48

Iron change is spot on. Water is a huge improvement, but I'd still prefer it if wells had to be rebuilt occasionally (like once in three generations) just so we can continually have that sense of accomplishment that we get from building one. Farmed milkweed really needs a buff because we just need so much of it for everything.

Berry bushes can be screwed up by doing something, and they get screwed up almost constantly. Somebody picking a single berry from a bush renders it useless for a generation, and taking the last kills the bush. Berries are the prime example of having to teach kids not to do something rather than teaching them to do something. And it totally makes sense to give bushes a finite number of harvests. IRL a gooseberry bush is only productive for 12-15 years. Aging with use rather than with time makes more sense gameplay-wise, though.

As for carrots, I think it'd just be more intuitive if all crops always consumed soil. It'd force newbie farmers into learning the full growing cycle rather than them just mindlessly watering and picking everything and never learning proper soil management. Also, I think that not consuming soil makes carrots just OP and doesn't leave much room for other crops. Wheat is kinda shit in comparison because it always uses soil and it takes so much work to process. It'd be a bit more even if carrots didn't have the soil advantage. And the easier composting that this change to carrots would require would also make it balanced to go back to five seeds per row. Currently, the main problem with seeding is that somebody taking a single carrot from a seed row is effectively ruining almost half of the soil in the plot. And it's super easy to pick that single carrot by misclick. If somebody takes second, well, seeding that row is a huge waste and so the farmer will just pull it all out. If the soil was always used and the number of seeds was equal to the number of carrots, it wouldn't really matter how full the rows you're seeding are - at most you'd be losing some space efficiency. If tilling tools are the issue, they can be easily included by requiring tilling of freshly placed soil before it can be planted in. I mean, realistically, you'd need to work the compost into the ground IRL.

Last edited by Potjeh (2018-05-22 01:01:23)

dana · 2018-05-22 01:00:01

jasonrohrer wrote:

Farm milkweed?
Knitted clothes require no thread, right?

You can't make wool pants, so everybody will be pantsless at best and give up on clothing entirely at worse (also can't make backpacks without fur and milkweed, so no portable storage either).

EDIT: One soil = one milkweed, so if respawning milkweed is not possible it's just an extra drain on soil resources. The new meta will probably end up being 'plant as many domestic bushes as possible and then die because soil will become so scarce that anything that isn't infinite will not be tenable'.

Please don't do the 'milkweed doesn't respawn thing'. Unless there's an alternative to it, it'll just be a disaster in the making.

Last edited by dana (2018-05-22 01:10:26)

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2018-05-19 14:37:42

"Everything runs out" - maybe it actually should

#2 2018-05-19 15:24:06

Re: "Everything runs out" - maybe it actually should

#3 2018-05-19 15:53:34

Re: "Everything runs out" - maybe it actually should

#4 2018-05-19 16:12:28

Re: "Everything runs out" - maybe it actually should

#5 2018-05-19 16:31:11

Re: "Everything runs out" - maybe it actually should

#6 2018-05-19 17:23:43

Re: "Everything runs out" - maybe it actually should

#7 2018-05-19 19:09:10

Re: "Everything runs out" - maybe it actually should

#8 2018-05-19 19:57:10

Re: "Everything runs out" - maybe it actually should

#9 2018-05-19 20:04:07

Re: "Everything runs out" - maybe it actually should

#10 2018-05-19 23:58:33

Re: "Everything runs out" - maybe it actually should

#11 2018-05-20 03:01:43

Re: "Everything runs out" - maybe it actually should

#12 2018-05-20 05:31:19

Re: "Everything runs out" - maybe it actually should

#13 2018-05-20 11:29:54

Re: "Everything runs out" - maybe it actually should

#14 2018-05-20 19:42:14

Re: "Everything runs out" - maybe it actually should

#15 2018-05-20 20:20:56

Re: "Everything runs out" - maybe it actually should

#16 2018-05-21 08:32:23

Re: "Everything runs out" - maybe it actually should

#17 2018-05-21 16:52:20

Re: "Everything runs out" - maybe it actually should

#18 2018-05-22 00:04:39

Re: "Everything runs out" - maybe it actually should

#19 2018-05-22 00:09:38

Re: "Everything runs out" - maybe it actually should

#20 2018-05-22 00:18:51

Re: "Everything runs out" - maybe it actually should

#21 2018-05-22 00:27:17

Re: "Everything runs out" - maybe it actually should

#22 2018-05-22 00:35:45

Re: "Everything runs out" - maybe it actually should

#23 2018-05-22 00:44:16

Re: "Everything runs out" - maybe it actually should

#24 2018-05-22 00:58:48

Re: "Everything runs out" - maybe it actually should

#25 2018-05-22 01:00:01

Re: "Everything runs out" - maybe it actually should

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