Discussion about end of lines

Floofy · 2018-11-16 18:05:05

So obviously, the main objective of this game is to setup a really good camp, and then hope to see your lineage get really far. A lot of the fun of this game is to create a really long line. Now the question we can ask ourselves is, why are the lines dying so fast? A long of players complain the game is too hard, or there isn't enough iron, or there isn't enough water, or that there is too many newbies. Personally, i don't think that's the issue at all. The game isn't "too hard".

Let's take an example of a long line that ended at gen 26: http://lineage.onehouronelife.com/serve … id=1563399

If you look at Jena at gen 24.... starting from there... she only received 5 kids, and 4/5 of those became adults, which is pretty good (clearly, she was a good mom). 3/4 of them were girls.

The first girl, Jenna, gave birth to only 4 kids, and all of them became adults... but they were somehow ALL MALES.

The second girl, Joy, gave birth to ONLY 2 kids. One was a male that became aged 60, and one was a girl that died to a boar.

The third girl, Jenny, gave birth to 3 kids. One was a male that became old, and one was a girl that died to a boar.

Now, i'm not claiming those people played PERFECTLY. But overall, 6/9 kids becoming adults is a pretty good score. So clearly, they simply got really bad luck that all 6 kids who became adults ended up being males. And secondly, the 3 girls of gen 25 that became old persons only gave birth to 9 kids together... that's only on average 3 kids per person... this feels very little.

I feel like its not fun that lines ends because of bad lucks like this. The lines should end because they failed to find iron, or failed to get water, or they starved, etc.

My suggestion is this:

As suggested before, possibly have an "on/off" switch for giving birth. Some lines like this are ended due too few kids, while some eves are abandoning half their kids.

Possibly have the Male/Women ratio not be completely RNG based. For example, the first kid could always be a girl, and if you get 2 boy in a row, you could be guaranteed a girl after that.

MultiLife · 2018-11-16 18:10:19

Yeah there have been discussions of tweaking the 50/50 ratio to be more clever, upping the chance for opposite gender little by little in a combo.

Switch? Hmm. Imagine lineages dying to women going "oh oops my switch was off". I like the natural birth control ideas more, eat some herb or flower to be baby free for some time.

If the game wasn't restricting the population like it does with iron, we would have more fertile women in towns so people wouldn't be getting just one girl that dies to a boar, right?
But what exactly would be a long line, a Boots line of over 200 gens? That won't happen without coordination. I think 26 gens is a long line but people think differently. I don't try too hard to make a lasting line as that is very luck based with player skill variation (game is hard, I argue); when you are gone its up to others. My goal is to enjoy each life and develop the place for the next gens, whether they make it or not. I think it'd be silly to make a long line your priority or the only goal in this game when that is just up to others, not you. One of my lines ended to a murdering griefer at gen 9. I don't mind. It always ends after all.

Anyways dunno if you know but women start giving birth to males 100% when an update is arriving so Jason can empty the servers and roll it in.

Last edited by MultiLife (2018-11-16 18:19:36)

Floofy · 2018-11-16 18:19:24

MultiLife wrote:

Switch? Hmm. Imagine lineages dying to women going "oh oops my switch was off". I like the natural birth control ideas more, eat some herb or flower to be baby free for some time..

Then it would be the player's fault. What i dislike is to see lines of perfectly competent players in a perfectly well working town end simply because there was very few babies, and the few there was were all males.

Last edited by Floofy (2018-11-16 18:19:54)

CrazyEddie · 2018-11-16 18:28:39

I like the 50/50 ratio; anything else seems like it would be an artificial and arbitrary decision not in keeping with the game's aesthetic.

I like the idea of lineage-conscious players developing norms around protecting females and risking males. That's part of the emerging-gameplay / social-experiment side of the game.

I'm not crazy about the fact that the norms that have emerged include "abandon male babies".

Aurora Aurora · 2018-11-16 18:34:13

Hah! Only 3 kids? Before steam around 3 was the norm and I think it still should be

Floofy · 2018-11-16 18:35:14

CrazyEddie wrote:

I like the 50/50 ratio; anything else seems like it would be an artificial and arbitrary decision not in keeping with the game's aesthetic.
I like the idea of lineage-conscious players developing norms around protecting females and risking males. That's part of the emerging-gameplay / social-experiment side of the game.
I'm not crazy about the fact that the norms that have emerged include "abandon male babies".

If you look at my example, there was no abandonning of any males. They managed to keep almost all babies ( 6/9 ). But their lines still ended because they got unlucky to have so few babies, and them being all males.

50/50 would be fine if there is enough babies being born. The game shouldn't be a lottery to know if the lone baby you get is a male (end of your line) or a women.

Floofy · 2018-11-16 18:37:09

Aurora Aurora wrote:

Hah! Only 3 kids? Before steam around 3 was the norm and I think it still should be

I haven't played before the steam release, but correct me if i'm wrong, but the key difference is that before steam, it was mostly good players. So if you had 3 kids, most likely at least 2 would survive, and they would both do things after. With steam release, sure we sometimes get like 10 babies, but so many will die for stupid reasons. So when you only get 3 babies that are steam players... that's bad lol

Randomname · 2018-11-16 18:59:27

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but lines don't live forever even if everything is perfect, the reason is updates and server clean ups. When the new update hits you will see lots of Eves, the towns may still exist but the family that lived there before will not have been given any children to get ready for the changes.

If the update that is being predicted is a new biome everything will have to change, meaning all camps will be deleted. I think the longest lines now is 40-50 gens.

Starknight_One · 2018-11-16 19:04:12

Floofy wrote:

CrazyEddie wrote:
I like the 50/50 ratio; anything else seems like it would be an artificial and arbitrary decision not in keeping with the game's aesthetic.
I like the idea of lineage-conscious players developing norms around protecting females and risking males. That's part of the emerging-gameplay / social-experiment side of the game.
I'm not crazy about the fact that the norms that have emerged include "abandon male babies".
If you look at my example, there was no abandonning of any males. They managed to keep almost all babies ( 6/9 ). But their lines still ended because they got unlucky to have so few babies, and them being all males.
50/50 would be fine if there is enough babies being born. The game shouldn't be a lottery to know if the lone baby you get is a male (end of your line) or a women.

This is a probability issue. Just because the odds are 50/50, you won't wind up with an even mix; it all depends upon the random rolls. If I flip a coin 10 times, I'm not guaranteed any heads, but the odds are good I'll get some.

Floofy · 2018-11-16 19:08:17

Starknight_One wrote:

Floofy wrote:
CrazyEddie wrote:
I like the 50/50 ratio; anything else seems like it would be an artificial and arbitrary decision not in keeping with the game's aesthetic.
I like the idea of lineage-conscious players developing norms around protecting females and risking males. That's part of the emerging-gameplay / social-experiment side of the game.
I'm not crazy about the fact that the norms that have emerged include "abandon male babies".
If you look at my example, there was no abandonning of any males. They managed to keep almost all babies ( 6/9 ). But their lines still ended because they got unlucky to have so few babies, and them being all males.
50/50 would be fine if there is enough babies being born. The game shouldn't be a lottery to know if the lone baby you get is a male (end of your line) or a women.
This is a probability issue. Just because the odds are 50/50, you won't wind up with an even mix; it all depends upon the random rolls. If I flip a coin 10 times, I'm not guaranteed any heads, but the odds are good I'll get some.

That's the point of my post -> IT IS a probability issue. The game should be hard because its hard, it shouldn't be based around loto-women.

Floofy · 2018-11-16 19:10:40

Randomname wrote:

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but lines don't live forever even if everything is perfect, the reason is updates and server clean ups. When the new update hits you will see lots of Eves, the towns may still exist but the family that lived there before will not have been given any children to get ready for the changes.
If the update that is being predicted is a new biome everything will have to change, meaning all camps will be deleted. I think the longest lines now is 40-50 gens.

I mean If jason has to update the game that's fine... but there is roughly 2-3 new gens per hour. If he updates the game approximately once week, this still gives plenty of room to have really long lines

Tarr · 2018-11-16 20:08:50

Sometimes you roll real unlucky on your births. I've personally had a lineage killed at Gen 2 multiple times where all my children were just boys. It didn't matter how good or bad the camp was, how many children I kept, or how mismanaged everything was. The camp was doomed from the time I hit forty because of seven children every single one of them were male.

Bad rng is bad rng but it does happen. All these times where I get super unlucky end up sticking hard instead of those times where I got all girls or nearly got all girls. There probably should be some sort of safety net for mothers and especially Eves to not just get a doomed lineage from just bad luck.

Floofy · 2018-11-16 20:11:13

Tarr wrote:

Sometimes you roll real unlucky on your births. I've personally had a lineage killed at Gen 2 multiple times where all my children were just boys. It didn't matter how good or bad the camp was, how many children I kept, or how mismanaged everything was. The camp was doomed from the time I hit forty because of seven children every single one of them were male.
Bad rng is bad rng but it does happen. All these times where I get super unlucky end up sticking hard instead of those times where I got all girls or nearly got all girls. There probably should be some sort of safety net for mothers and especially Eves to not just get a doomed lineage from just bad luck.

Exactly. And when you get like 10 childs during action hours, the odds of you getting all males are extremely low, and i can live with that. But when you only get 2 childs... the odds of getting 2 males are too high. I think a safety net like you said is a good solution.

CrazyEddie · 2018-11-16 20:42:33

Some subtle cheating on the odds would be nice, so that it still feels like 50/50 but in practice gives you a better shot at preserving the lineage. A "safety net" as Tarr put it. Start at 50/50, but for every boy you've had shift the odds 10% towards girls, and vice versa. This would increase the chances of having an evenly split mix of children - which is not what the actual probability would result in, but it's what most people think should happen (since people are generally ignorant of probability), so it won't ever feel like it's wrong.

Everyone complains when they're a statistical outlier (seven boys!) but nobody ever notices or cares if they never become a statistical outlier. Nobody will ever say "Gee, in all of my games so far I've never had seven boys, even though that should happen once every 128 times... something's wrong!"

So we might as well just reduce the chances of being a statistical outlier in the first place.

Floofy · 2018-11-16 21:37:00

CrazyEddie wrote:

Some subtle cheating on the odds would be nice, so that it still feels like 50/50 but in practice gives you a better shot at preserving the lineage. A "safety net" as Tarr put it. Start at 50/50, but for every boy you've had shift the odds 10% towards girls, and vice versa. This would increase the chances of having an evenly split mix of children - which is not what the actual probability would result in, but it's what most people think should happen (since people are generally ignorant of probability), so it won't ever feel like it's wrong.
Everyone complains when they're a statistical outlier (seven boys!) but nobody ever notices or cares if they never become a statistical outlier. Nobody will ever say "Gee, in all of my games so far I've never had seven boys, even though that should happen once every 128 times... something's wrong!"
So we might as well just reduce the chances of being a statistical outlier in the first place.

This does feel like a good idea. In addition to this, i can't think of a good way to do that, but i wish moms would always get given at least 5 babies each.

Starknight_One · 2018-11-16 22:20:59

Floofy wrote:

CrazyEddie wrote:
Some subtle cheating on the odds would be nice, so that it still feels like 50/50 but in practice gives you a better shot at preserving the lineage. A "safety net" as Tarr put it. Start at 50/50, but for every boy you've had shift the odds 10% towards girls, and vice versa. This would increase the chances of having an evenly split mix of children - which is not what the actual probability would result in, but it's what most people think should happen (since people are generally ignorant of probability), so it won't ever feel like it's wrong.
Everyone complains when they're a statistical outlier (seven boys!) but nobody ever notices or cares if they never become a statistical outlier. Nobody will ever say "Gee, in all of my games so far I've never had seven boys, even though that should happen once every 128 times... something's wrong!"
So we might as well just reduce the chances of being a statistical outlier in the first place.

Actually, I might... but it would probably be after the fact. At the time I'd be like, "Wow, lotta boys." but wouldn't worry about the probabilities.

This does feel like a good idea. In addition to this, i can't think of a good way to do that, but i wish moms would always get given at least 5 babies each.

What if there aren't 5 people logging in when you are playing? Or if you're on a server by yourself? I don't think forcing a certain number of kids is the answer. Sometimes, kids should be rare and precious.

Weighting spawns might not be a bad idea, although I think 10% is too much. Maybe 5%, stacking up to 5 times? It would still weight things but not make it a certainty, even after 5 boys or girls. The only problem I see is that it's putting in programming to perpetuate family lines, which isn't really part of the design AFAICT. (But then, I haven't seen the elephant, so I don't know for sure.)

The randomness is a design feature. It's meant to simulate the uncertainty of real life. Of course, our RL social experiment has been running for about 10000 years, so we've had time to establish protections against that uncertainty. And we can pick up more than one thing at a time, so we have that going for us. And best of all, we never log out, so there's continuity.

The other thing to consider is that it's still early days with the new players. They'll improve, and things will get better. In a few weeks, maybe another month or two, we'll be looking back at this period and laughing at how we thought we were totally boned as we eat pie in our lovely buildings.

(Look, I know I often come on here and start arguing against things. I like to debate... please don't take it personally. I just really want the best for this game, so I argue against making hasty changes. Sometimes I'm even in agreement with the OP, but taking a contrary position to make his argument stronger.)

[Edited to remove typo]

Last edited by Starknight_One (2018-11-16 22:22:44)

MultiLife · 2018-11-17 09:33:53

Maybe the baby spawn system should be changed. I heard that first the babies would be spawning through the mom who has eaten best on the server. That was bad and moms were popping kids left and right though. Afaik, now it's temperature, so moms with good temperature get to spawn a baby firsthand. A lot of camps are in cold spots due to newbies settling in grasslands, so they are not so probable to get kids when there may be a desert town with veterans who keep popping out kids.
I like the minimum of 5 if there are lots of people so moms could count that "ok, after this baby, my odds are lower" but I dunno what system would be the best when tracking a mom to birth a baby, maybe not temperature after all.
I saw a woman birth 14 kids, and her sister had 0. It was pretty interesting.

I still don't mind how it is though.

Lily · 2018-11-17 19:34:26

They didn't play perfectly, since they failed to kill the boar. At some point, you need to murder all wild animals around your town. As for prestream, babies died all the time back then too. There was never point in which I was playing, where most people were good good enough to not randomly die of starvation and stuff.

MultiLife wrote:

Maybe the baby spawn system should be changed. I heard that first the babies would be spawning through the mom who has eaten best on the server. That was bad and moms were popping kids left and right though. Afaik, now it's temperature, so moms with good temperature get to spawn a baby firsthand.

Yeah it used to be based on how often you are full, but it actually turns out that the better you are doing the lower your food bar is on average. That is because if you are an Eve in the wilds eating berries, the berries feed so little you can top yourself off every chance you have. So on average you are more full. If you are doing really good however and you got a backpack full of pies, then pies fill an insane amount of boxes, so you would purposely not eat until you are really low. So you would have a really low drop, then just eat a slice of pie and pop it back to full, thus the average hunger is going to be half way down. That was pre-yum though. Now with the yum stuff, it may be a little different. Perhaps even basing it off your largest yum combo might be one idea.

I think it is temperature now, since the idea is that if you have clothing your probably better off.

Psykout · 2018-11-18 09:25:31

Lily wrote:

I think it is temperature now, since the idea is that if you have clothing your probably better off.

Except your are more likely to have a more "ideal" temperature naked and starving on a desert tile than fully clothed foraging a grassland. The temperature feels off in general, grasslands seem way to cold for a biome that is green and full of life vs snow biome, the difference between the two is a teeny bit, but the difference between grass and desert is massive. I understand the whole being too warm is bad and wearing fur in the desert is a bad idea, but since when is running around naked under the burning sun of a desert any better?

This tails onto the thread about making biomes bigger and making each one more viable for a base rather than needing a mix of grass, swap and desert with X ponds, Y dirt and Z cactus to be truly viable. If forests weren't as draining as they are now, why settle somewhere else aside from access to water? Well if you tweak things, its because even though forest with dirt, berries, skewers and milkweed are easy to live off early on, and don't need warm tiles to lower food needs, you would eventually hit a road block and need to go out to find resources. These journeys into the unknown at the moment are only for iron and maybe milkweed if nobody left seeds on the ground when they first picked it up. Clothing outside of rabbit doesn't have the advantages you'd expect. A coat made out of the skin of an animal that lives in freezing cold water feels like it should give more than +1.75% insulation, and thats without touching on that you can only make a coat using seal skin. Same thing to reed skirts and straw hats. I would expect them to shade you and make you not get as hot as fur stuff in the sun, but thats not the case because we have a blanket Hot/Cold and Insulated/Not. You gain no benefit from trying to protect yourself from the sun and are better off stripping off naked, which IRL would turn you into a blistered dried up lobster. There is a reason desert nomads started using very light silk garments that fully cover you...

Lily · 2018-11-18 09:36:39

I would have to look but I am not sure that is actually true, since desert is usually really hot. I think naked in the desert is further from center, then fully clothed in grassland. Though I am not positive.

I do agree grassland should be warmer though.

Psykout · 2018-11-18 10:41:52

Lily wrote:

I would have to look but I am not sure that is actually true, since desert is usually really hot. I think naked in the desert is further from center, then fully clothed in grassland. Though I am not positive.
I do agree grassland should be warmer though.

you are correct about being in the middle of the desert for sure, but to skirt it and be at the most ideal state in the game feels off.... If I am head to toe covered in rabbit fur clothes in a green forest I would expect to be better off than naked on the edge of a desert.

betame · 2018-11-18 18:16:12

Psykout wrote:

Lily wrote:
I would have to look but I am not sure that is actually true, since desert is usually really hot. I think naked in the desert is further from center, then fully clothed in grassland. Though I am not positive.
I do agree grassland should be warmer though.
you are correct about being in the middle of the desert for sure, but to skirt it and be at the most ideal state in the game feels off.... If I am head to toe covered in rabbit fur clothes in a green forest I would expect to be better off than naked on the edge of a desert.

I looked into it a while back, testing things out in tutorial and towns to verify my python heat script:
out of date, see current temperature thread

Naked in neutral             4.8 seconds per pip                    746 food per hour
Coat & all furs in neutral  12.4 seconds per pip (insulation 86.75) 291 food per hour
Naked in desert.             8.3 seconds per pip                    433 food per hour
Insulation 67.3%             8.3 seconds per pip                    433 food per hour
Theoretical 100% ins.       18.0 seconds per pip                    200 food per hour
Perfect temperature         22.0 seconds per pip                    164 food per hour
Worst temperature            2.0 seconds per pip                   1800 food per hour

I'm not sure what you meant by sealskin giving +1.75% insulation, as its weighted insulation is 10.5 as can be seen on OneTech, giving a 4.3% consumption reduction in neutral biome vs naked.

Last edited by betame (2019-02-03 10:23:33)

Lily · 2018-11-18 19:09:58

So clothed in grassland is better than naked in desert. That isn't true if you are standing around on the edge at the perfect location, however if you are standing around on the edge in the perfect location, then you have time to be standing around which implies you are doing well. Of course that isn't always true.

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2018-11-16 18:05:05

Discussion about end of lines

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Re: Discussion about end of lines

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