One Hour One Life Forums

a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building

You are not logged in.

#1 2019-04-01 21:24:42

jasonrohrer
Administrator
Registered: 2017-02-13
Posts: 4,801

Why there are no wars

The lack of wars in this game is a symptom of a larger problem, I think.  There's also no long-term trade, no long term culture, no policy-making, treaties, etc.

Yes, I could bring all the Eves closer together, making space contention more likely.

Yes, I could adjust the map so it's not effectively infinite, making resource contention more likely (imagine if the game took place on a small island, or an island with a rising tide, battle-royal style).


But I think both of those issues and solutions address only the symptom, and not the underlying cause.  "Contention" between which parties?  One village and another village?  Why aren't they just one big village at that point?


Quiz:  You just had a girl baby, and suddenly another unrelated girl baby walks out from the bushes and asks for food.  She's one year older than your baby.  You realize you only have enough food resources for one baby.  Which one do you save?

Quiz:  Your family is running out of food, and your last girl child is about to starve to death, resulting in the end of your family line.  Nearby in the same town, there's an unrelated family that has plenty of extra food.  You ask for some assistance, but they refuse.  You have a knife, and they don't.  What do you do?


In real life, the answer to these admittedly grisly questions would be obvious to most people.  And people might pick the same answers inside of the game, because they are applying real life thinking to the in-game situation.  In other words, because they are role playing.  That's my baby, and I care for her more than some other baby.  I don't want my family line in this town to die out.

But what about real playing?  The truth is, currently, there is no gameplay reason to prefer your baby to an unrelated baby or your family line to some other family line, at least not in the same town.


The core idea in this game is that you care for your offspring because they are the future that gives what you accomplish in the game meaning.  What's the point of building a house, if there's no one around in the future to finish it or live in it?  Furthermore, there is a chance that you will eventually be born back into this village in the distant future, and thus you'll get to reap the benefits of your own future-preservation efforts.  I've put mechanisms in place to prevent this from happening immediately, in your very next life, to ensure that the game has variety, to make your really say goodbye to your lifetime projects (at least for a while), and to prevent the game from degenerating into "Minecraft where you annoyingly get reborn every hour."  So, a few hours need to pass with you living in other places before you can revisit this place again in a future life.  Still, the possibility is there, and that possibility requires the survival of children, grandchildren, and so on.

But, all that said, none of those motivations have anything to do with your offspring, specifically, surviving.  As long as some offspring survive in that area, your physical creations will have meaning, and you'll have the same chance to get reborn there in the distant future.

And I feel like something is missing here, which has been an important factor in human interactions.  The primacy of family, tribe, and nation.  The primacy of culture and ethnicity.  Kinship.

I feel like there is a dramatic arc to the rise and fall of a civilization in the game, but it's a bit of a muted one.  It's disappointing when a village dies out, but it's not tragic.  In that moment of desperation, people are barely motivated to resort to desperate measures.  Where's the heated town meeting where we decide to load up the covered wagons and strike out for greener pastures?  Where's the heated town meeting where we load up the bows and arrows and decide to raid the next village?

Where are the town walls and gates?

And before you say, "We just don't have time for that stuff!", I have personally seen huge trans-generational projects in the game.  Giant farms.  Sprawling road networks.  People have had time to accomplish a lot of crazy things in the game.

Even death-bed speeches have a superfluous role-playing quality to them.  A civilization should live and die by its oral tradition, by the strength of its grand plan as formulated by its ancestors.  This might actually be true in the existing game (that a civilization lives and dies by its grand plan).  It just doesn't matter too much whether a civilization lives or dies.

I've thought about this whenever I play as Eve:  what if I come up with a long-term plan for this fledgling village, and tell my children and grandchildren that plan, and make sure they know to pass it on to the great grandchildren.  That might help my family line to survive much longer than it would otherwise.  But why would I be motivated to do this?  Yes, I can look at the family tree browser, and get some small satisfaction from seeing how long the family that I founded lasted, but it really doesn't matter much, to me, as a player.  How well my family is doing will have almost no effect on my own personal play experience, going forward into my future lives.


Yes, the story is fundamentally comprised of the stories of individuals, and I do think that the dramatic arc of an individual life in the game is robust.  But individuals are also part of a story that is much bigger than themselves, with much more at stake.  That is also what this game is about, and I want those arcs to be even more robust and heart-wrenching.


Currently, the metaphysics of the game may be something like, "The player is a soul that gets born again and again as different people."


What if, instead of being a soul, the player was a chromosome?

Offline

#2 2019-04-01 21:30:10

karltown_veteran
Member
Registered: 2018-04-15
Posts: 841

Re: Why there are no wars

jasonrohrer wrote:

The lack of wars in this game is a symptom of a larger problem, I think.  There's also no long-term trade, no long term culture, no policy-making, treaties, etc.

Yes, I could bring all the Eves closer together, making space contention more likely.

Yes, I could adjust the map so it's not effectively infinite, making resource contention more likely (imagine if the game took place on a small island, or an island with a rising tide, battle-royal style).


But I think both of those issues and solutions address only the symptom, and not the underlying cause.  "Contention" between which parties?  One village and another village?  Why aren't they just one big village at that point?


Quiz:  You just had a girl baby, and suddenly another unrelated girl baby walks out from the bushes and asks for food.  She's one year older than your baby.  You realize you only have enough food resources for one baby.  Which one do you save?

Quiz:  Your family is running out of food, and your last girl child is about to starve to death, resulting in the end of your family line.  Nearby in the same town, there's an unrelated family that has plenty of extra food.  You ask for some assistance, but they refuse.  You have a knife, and they don't.  What do you do?


In real life, the answer to these questions would be obvious to most people.  And people might pick the same answers inside of the game, because they are applying real life thinking to the in-game situation.  In other words, because they are role playing.  That's my baby, and I care for her more than some other baby.  I don't want my family line in this town to die out.

But what about real playing?  The truth is, currently, there is no gameplay reason to prefer your baby to an unrelated baby or your family line to some other family line, at least not in the same town.


The core idea in this game is that you care for your offspring because they are the future that gives what you accomplish in the game meaning.  What's the point of building a house, if there's no one around in the future to finish it or live in it?  Furthermore, there is a chance that you will eventually be born back into this village in the distant future, and thus you'll get to reap the benefits of your own future-preservation efforts.  I've put mechanisms in place to prevent this from happening immediately, in your very next life, to ensure that the game has variety, to make your really say goodbye to your lifetime projects (at least for a while), and to prevent the game from degenerating into "Minecraft where you annoyingly get reborn every hour."  So, a few hours need to pass with you living in other places before you can revisit this place again in a future life.  Still, the possibility is there, and that possibility requires the survival of children, grandchildren, and so on.

But, all that said, none of those motivations have anything to do with your offspring, specifically, surviving.  As long as some offspring survive in that area, your physical creations will have meaning, and you'll have the same chance to get reborn there in the distant future.

And I feel like something is missing here, which has been an important factor in human interactions.  The primacy of family, tribe, and nation.  The primacy of culture and ethnicity.  Kinship.

I feel like there is a dramatic arc to the rise and fall of a civilization in the game, but it's a bit of a muted one.  It's disappointing when a village dies out, but it's not tragic.  In that moment of desperation, people are barely motivated to resort to desperate measures.  Where's the heated town meeting where we decide to load up the covered wagons and strike out for greener pastures?  Where's the heated town meeting where we load up the bows and arrows and decide to raid the next village?

Where are the town walls and gates?

And before you say, "We just don't have time for that stuff!", I have personally seen huge trans-generational projects in the game.  Giant farms.  Sprawling road networks.  People have had time to accomplish a lot of crazy things in the game.

Even death-bed speeches have a superfluous role-playing quality to them.  A civilization should live and die by its oral tradition, by the strength of its grand plan as formulated by its ancestors.  This might actually be true in the existing game (that a civilization lives and dies by its grand plan).  It just doesn't matter too much whether a civilization lives or dies.


Yes, the story is fundamentally comprised of the stories of individuals, and I do think that the dramatic arc of an individual life in the game is robust.  But individuals are also part of a story that is much bigger than themselves, with much more at stake.  That is also what this game is about, and I want those arcs to be even more robust and heart-wrenching.


Currently, the metaphysics of the game may be something like, "The player is a soul that gets born again and again as different people."


What if, instead of being a soul, the player was a chromosome?

If I'm being completely honest I'm not sure what you meant but it sounded cool. I do like the idea of towns being unique and having their own specialties, if that's what you mean. I'm not sure what you're overshadowing.
Is this a hint to our endings? Where does war come in? yikes


.-.. .. ..-. . / .. ... / ... - .-. .- -. --. . .-.-.- / ... --- / .- -- / .. .-.-.-
ˆ ø˜ç´ ƒ®åµ´∂ å˜ ˆ˜˜øç∑˜† å˜∂ ©ø† å∑å¥ ∑ˆ†˙ ˆ†
he xnt bzm qdzc sghr, xnt zqd z enqlhczakd noonmdms
veteran of an OHOL town called Karltown. Not really a veteran and my names not Karl

Offline

#3 2019-04-01 21:31:28

Potjeh
Member
Registered: 2018-03-08
Posts: 469

Re: Why there are no wars

How would a player be a chromosome in a non-superficial way? That would basically require transfer of personality traits from mother to child because that's the only meaningful difference between players, and you can't do that when all players are actual humans.

Offline

#4 2019-04-01 21:36:37

karltown_veteran
Member
Registered: 2018-04-15
Posts: 841

Re: Why there are no wars

Maybe he means that he wants to implement something that will make it crucial that YOUR family survives, above all other families? In your own personal best interest? Like, maybe you can only be born into one family and if that family dies you can't play for a period of time? Although that's not a very good idea, maybe something along those lines...?


.-.. .. ..-. . / .. ... / ... - .-. .- -. --. . .-.-.- / ... --- / .- -- / .. .-.-.-
ˆ ø˜ç´ ƒ®åµ´∂ å˜ ˆ˜˜øç∑˜† å˜∂ ©ø† å∑å¥ ∑ˆ†˙ ˆ†
he xnt bzm qdzc sghr, xnt zqd z enqlhczakd noonmdms
veteran of an OHOL town called Karltown. Not really a veteran and my names not Karl

Offline

#5 2019-04-01 21:39:37

Whatever
Member
Registered: 2019-02-23
Posts: 491

Re: Why there are no wars

I know you wont like this, but this is a solution to the problem you are describing.

Imagine you could go back to a lineage you had a life before.
But only under certain circumstances, in your previous life you had to live to at least to the age of 40.
If X people from your lineage curse and or kill you cant get back in your lineage.

This would make it so people feel more related to their lineage, if they can keep coming back.

Now to support war you could make it so that you cant get randomly born into a lineage that is in war with one of your lineages.
And to further support this mechanic one lineage should have one skin color. This way you can easily detect outsider.

Also described this mechanic and collected ideas about it here: https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=5513

Last edited by Whatever (2019-04-01 21:44:47)

Offline

#6 2019-04-01 21:44:27

Thaulos
Member
Registered: 2019-02-19
Posts: 456

Re: Why there are no wars

The fact that a life only lasts one hour and that you can have infinite lifes whenever you can cheapens the value of life itself.

The cycle of rebirths turn people into either Buddhists letting go of attachments or into savage maniacs who just try to have ever more extreme experiences.

The sad truth is, even if you make a sad face when your in-game mom dies or listen to some death-bed speech, the moment they die the roleplaying finishes and you usually move on right away: there is no real attachment when everything feels immaterial and impermanent.

There is no real emotional investment other than achievements like making a car, plant a new forest or finishing a building. That player you had a great chat with or with who you shared a laugh is no different than any other player, no matter their "blood".

Personally I play OHOL to relax, have a cooperative play with whoever is on at the time and have a laugh or two with other players while contributing to the overall community. I rarely even remember who my sons or daughters are and usually only check if they are even alive when I'm about to die (and even then just as a curiosity).

Offline

#7 2019-04-01 21:46:45

MultiLife
Member
Registered: 2018-07-24
Posts: 851

Re: Why there are no wars

I'd feed my baby and the non-related baby to toddlerhood and kill myself to open food sources for the two young girls.

I don't really get much kinship to families. I live for an hour in one family, an hour in another; if those families would fight against each other, I'd have no side in it as there is no real family to side with. No real biological relation and long term connection with the people. My niece is just as important as the next family's baby. All families may spawn me in and may build even better things. No family is more mine than any other, it's the same people behind the screens 'switching sides' every hour (or less).

I won't play battle royale. This is a game and a game won't get me so serious where I'd be killing others to ensure survival of my gang. I rather die myself.

Last edited by MultiLife (2019-04-01 21:55:57)


Notable lives (Male): Happy, Erwin Callister, Knight Peace, Roman Rodocker, Bon Doolittle, Terry Plant, Danger Winter, Crayton Ide, Tim Quint, Jebediah (Tarr), Awesome (Elliff), Rocky, Tim West
Notable lives (Female): Elisa Mango, Aaban Qin, Whitaker August, Lucrecia August, Poppy Worth, Kitana Spoon, Linda II, Eagan Hawk III, Darcy North, Rosealie (Quint), Jess Lucky, Lilith (Unkle)

Offline

#8 2019-04-01 21:48:30

BlueDiamondAvatar
Member
Registered: 2018-11-19
Posts: 322

Re: Why there are no wars

So here's where I think you are going with this... what if we can overcome the area ban only if someone who is descended from us (or our mother, for men) is still alive?  That could make players more loyal to a particular lineage, and make our "reincarnation" more linked to chromosomes than random chance.

On a related note, have you ever read Glory Season by David Brin?  It has a similar spontaneous asexual reproduction as the Eves in OHOL. But there are also some big differences - because the mothers have the potential to simply clone themselves or get a father involved and produce a more genetically evolved child.  Neither of these options works with the current spawning mechanics, but they almost could... and both would be interesting ways of connecting players to a specific set of genes.

Last edited by BlueDiamondAvatar (2019-04-01 22:31:20)


--Blue Diamond

I aim to leave behind a world that is easier for people to live in that it was before I got there.

Offline

#9 2019-04-01 21:49:45

voy178
Member
Registered: 2018-08-18
Posts: 290

Re: Why there are no wars

See, your game is best played when working together. Conflicts halt progression. We have too many things to worry about and it's impossible to unite a village to do something once it reaches a certain size.

Offline

#10 2019-04-01 21:54:44

Thaulos
Member
Registered: 2019-02-19
Posts: 456

Re: Why there are no wars

If the only way to progress past a certain point was to wage war then it would inevitably happen. Not 100% of the population will want or be willing to fight in a war, just like in real life.

But there will be people who will do it. Or the town/family will die.

Last edited by Thaulos (2019-04-01 21:55:02)

Offline

#11 2019-04-01 21:57:53

Kinrany
Member
Registered: 2018-01-22
Posts: 712

Re: Why there are no wars

jasonrohrer wrote:

Quiz:  Your family is running out of food, and your last girl child is about to starve to death, resulting in the end of your family line.  Nearby in the same town, there's an unrelated family that has plenty of extra food.  You ask for some assistance

Premise ridiculous. Take their stuff without asking.

Offline

#12 2019-04-01 21:59:21

Greep
Member
Registered: 2018-12-16
Posts: 289

Re: Why there are no wars

People react to incentives.  IRL, a parent would care more about their child because we're basically programmed to.  In game, maybe your ability to retain offspring would reduce your lineage ban or something, or losing kids causes a "grief" malady which is harmful to yourself.

In any case, most large scale activities are hampered by lack of communication ability and focus on immediate survival.  IRL, you do not starve during a casual conversation, can say more than 2 sentences per year, and you can actually communicate with someone talking more than 3 feet away.


Likes sword based eve names.  Claymore, blades, sword.  Never understimate the blades!

Offline

#13 2019-04-01 22:00:59

Thaulos
Member
Registered: 2019-02-19
Posts: 456

Re: Why there are no wars

Having a more permanent linkage to a "clan" would definitely make people invest more in people. Like teaching a newbie that got assigned to our clan or trying to make sure your direct descendants would survive. This would probably ruin the randomness of living each life with different starting conditions.

I'm not sure how you can have both emotional attachment and randomness at the same time. Might be impossible.

Offline

#14 2019-04-01 22:02:13

MultiLife
Member
Registered: 2018-07-24
Posts: 851

Re: Why there are no wars

voy178 wrote:

See, your game is best played when working together. Conflicts halt progression. We have too many things to worry about and it's impossible to unite a village to do something once it reaches a certain size.

This.
If I am busy surviving and providing for one hour, I have basically no time for talking, connecting, planning or learning. We are racing against death and any conflict is detrimental or even fatal so there is no space for that. Even talking is punished by hunger dropping.

Personally I just want epic PvE but people seem rather hellbent on PvP.


Notable lives (Male): Happy, Erwin Callister, Knight Peace, Roman Rodocker, Bon Doolittle, Terry Plant, Danger Winter, Crayton Ide, Tim Quint, Jebediah (Tarr), Awesome (Elliff), Rocky, Tim West
Notable lives (Female): Elisa Mango, Aaban Qin, Whitaker August, Lucrecia August, Poppy Worth, Kitana Spoon, Linda II, Eagan Hawk III, Darcy North, Rosealie (Quint), Jess Lucky, Lilith (Unkle)

Offline

#15 2019-04-01 22:06:05

Averest
Member
Registered: 2018-12-04
Posts: 164

Re: Why there are no wars

So something weird happened recently, which I'll relate:

I actually Eved for once, which is weird and I was really close to signs of a small village that had died out. I had a kid and then suddenly other eves nearby come out of the woodwork! Like three eves in just one small cluster around a village.
My kid turns out to be a jerk. Most of the other Eves lines are more interested in RPing some drama or whatever while I'm hustling getting enough food to feed this rapidly growing population. At 35+ish I just roll my eyes and die because I am so done with this town. I haven't even bothered to look back because an otherwise cool thing of finding an abandoned village was just a crappy pulling everyone along experience. I'm sure there was going to be the inevitable stabbing circle and all would be for nothing. Why bother?

Last edited by Averest (2019-04-01 22:07:37)

Offline

#16 2019-04-01 22:15:34

Tarr
Banned
Registered: 2018-03-31
Posts: 1,596

Re: Why there are no wars

I mean there's multiple reasons why we don't have any real fighting in this game.

-In the current game you have zero idea who murdered your sister/brother/mother until they died. In the old days before the lineage ban if someone murdered them they likely returned and would tell you who just killed them. I have a very clear memory of my family living in Ovenpost and when a young girl game from a neighboring village asking for supplies we just ended stabbing her for begging our family for stuff. When she was reborn to our camp I explicitly remember hearing baby speak T-A-R-R B-A-D. She then led bears to the city and killed herself. She was then reborn to her home village where her lineage came over with weapons and fighting broke out in Ovenpost. You can't have conflict if no one knows.

-You have zero idea where anyone is in relation to your camp/city/village. Ducks had two different sister cities and that place was constantly griefing/stabbing/murder for hours. A combination of people knowing where the three cities were in relation to each other, being born to the different cities to return to the ensuing conflict, and the bad reputation of the city led to tons of violence all around. How can you have war or fighting in a game when you never know where anyone else is? I can guess where other towns are in relation to a bell or a day later check in the lifelogs but by the time I know where people are it's much much too late.

-The only permanence in this game is the towns we have and those only last so long before being completely lost. Why would you ever care about a family if you both know the surname is likely to be lost in a few hours after you play and a few hours after that the lineage is likely to just be dead. We can't even get a lineage to last longer than two days without it being wiped out to griefers/rng/sids so it's hard to really care about a family unlike a town which you might come back around to visit within the week before it gets culled. We have no reason to work against other players in this game and in fact doing so just hinders both parties so why fight besides for roleplay or fun?

In the case of walled cities we don't generally build them because they're deathtraps. I've done a private city on the public server with a small group of players and while that works with coordinated players inviting in others just leads to chaos. Having an Eve find the unlocked city and watching how they haphazardly started to build (bushes were outside of the walls away from our diesel engine, ovens were everywhere, cow pen was dismantled along with sheep pen, half of a house inside a WALLED city, etc) you sort of wonder what or if some of these players are even thinking. You can leave a perfect blueprint for future generations to follow but unless you are there to see the project to finish you can and should expect people to mess it up.   

In the current system the fighting is very one sided as most players aren't going to be expecting to have to deal with the roaming griefing parties, and especially not when they're their own blood.


fug it’s Tarr.

Offline

#17 2019-04-01 22:27:49

BlueDiamondAvatar
Member
Registered: 2018-11-19
Posts: 322

Re: Why there are no wars

Averest wrote:

So something weird happened recently, which I'll relate:

I actually Eved for once, which is weird and I was really close to signs of a small village that had died out. I had a kid and then suddenly other eves nearby come out of the woodwork! Like three eves in just one small cluster around a village.
My kid turns out to be a jerk. Most of the other Eves lines are more interested in RPing some drama or whatever while I'm hustling getting enough food to feed this rapidly growing population. At 35+ish I just roll my eyes and die because I am so done with this town. I haven't even bothered to look back because an otherwise cool thing of finding an abandoned village was just a crappy pulling everyone along experience. I'm sure there was going to be the inevitable stabbing circle and all would be for nothing. Why bother?


You just described what happens right after the servers reset for an update.  Multiple eves show up near an old town, and immediately have babies.  Resources are short, and there are some people working like crazy without any coordination while other people flail and/or grief.  Was it Friday night?  And yeah, the quality of play during reset this week was TERRIBLE. 

We gotta find a way to make resets less painful.


--Blue Diamond

I aim to leave behind a world that is easier for people to live in that it was before I got there.

Offline

#18 2019-04-01 22:55:18

Kinrany
Member
Registered: 2018-01-22
Posts: 712

Re: Why there are no wars

jasonrohrer wrote:

What if, instead of being a soul, the player was a chromosome?

Yay! I've been suggesting this since almost a year ago big_smile

So we want to encourage players to care about their descendants. Two questions: how, and what does it mean?


Starting with the second one, here's a relatively simple proposal.

1. Alice is an Eve -> Alice's genes are 100% Alice.
2. Bob is Alice's daughter -> Bob's genes are 1/2 Bob and 1/2 Alice.
3. Charlie is Bob's daughter -> Charlie's genes are 1/2 Charlie, 1/4 Bob and 1/4 Alice.
4. Alice spawns again as Charlie's daughter -> Alice's new genes are 1/2+1/4 Alice, 1/4 Charlie and 1/8 Bob.

The general idea is that every time a new player is born, their genes are 50% (or any other ratio) their own and 50% their mother's.
This way we can track how much player A's current character is related to any of player B's previous characters.


Now for the second question: how do we encourage players to care about having more characters with their genes?

The most obvious idea is to make it possible to tell how much someone is related to you by writing the percentage next to their name.
The next obvious idea is to have leaderboards sorted by the aggregate amount of genes in all the characters currently alive.

The older idea is to change the "magic" parts of the game: spawns and karma. For example, genes could be used as the chance that the player is allowed to be your mother this time. For another example, genes could be a karma modifier: you have more influence over your descendants, and they have less influence over you.


P. S. A not directly related, but interesting article about evolution: No Evolutions for Corporations or Nanodevices

Offline

#19 2019-04-01 22:58:22

happynova
Member
Registered: 2018-03-31
Posts: 362

Re: Why there are no wars

Interesting thoughts, Jason.  I'm not entirely sure where you're going with them, but I am curious to see if they lead to something.

jasonrohrer wrote:

Quiz:  You just had a girl baby, and suddenly another unrelated girl baby walks out from the bushes and asks for food.  She's one year older than your baby.  You realize you only have enough food resources for one baby.  Which one do you save?

I'd feel bad about it, but I'd save mine.  Because I do feel at least a somewhat stronger interest in my own line.  I love coming back to refresh the family tree and seeing how my family is getting on. If I get to see generations and generations of direct descendants, that's the greatest satisfaction. If my own line dies with grandkids and my sister's or my cousins keeps going, that's also great to see, but a little less of a personal thrill.

If I've got no girls at all and a girl baby walks out of the woods, I'm going to be overjoyed.  It does feel like it gives meanings to things, and I will happily stalk her family tree instead and root for its success.  I'll feel connected to her and invested in her, possibly quite significantly.  But forced to choose between my baby and a strange baby, before I've made any connection, and all other things being equal?  I am probably going to selfishly choose mine.

jasonrohrer wrote:

Quiz:  Your family is running out of food, and your last girl child is about to starve to death, resulting in the end of your family line.  Nearby in the same town, there's an unrelated family that has plenty of extra food.  You ask for some assistance, but they refuse.  You have a knife, and they don't.  What do you do?

This is a question that seems to me to make no sense in game terms.  If there's food in town, there's food in town.  I go over to where the food is and eat it.  Why do I need to ask for anybody's help?  Do they have this food locked up?  If so they're clearly in the wrong, because the town's food is the town's food. It's not like the Smiths and the Joneses have separate farms and bakeries, because that would be dumb.

Now, if it's a separate nearby town, that may be another matter entirely.  Although the answer to that one is probably that I just steal some of their food.

jasonrohrer wrote:

I feel like there is a dramatic arc to the rise and fall of a civilization in the game, but it's a bit of a muted one.  It's disappointing when a village dies out, but it's not tragic.  In that moment of desperation, people are barely motivated to resort to desperate measures.

I'm not sure, but I'm wondering if perhaps big part of that is the lack of any real difference or distinction between one town and another.  Yes, individual towns, once they evolve far enough, can take on a certain amount of individual character when it comes to the shape of the buildings and such, but when you get down to it, it's largely cosmetic.  For the most part, there's no distinct culture or character that's being lost, because the next place to spring up will look and work pretty much exactly the same as the last one.  People do try to create variations and cultures -- inventing "religions" for instance, or baby-naming traditions -- but those are pretty much grafted on, and to a lot of people they feel silly or frivolous.

For my part, I find that possibly the saddest thought when it comes to an old town dying out is that now there will be no one to read the notes that earlier inhabitants left.  Even though, lets face it, most of those notes are pretty inane, they are at least unique.  They're something that can be genuinely lost and that will never exist again.

jasonrohrer wrote:

Where's the heated town meeting where we decide to load up the covered wagons and strike out for greener pastures?  Where's the heated town meeting where we load up the bows and arrows and decide to raid the next village?

Where are the town walls and gates?

And before you say, "We just don't have time for that stuff!", I have personally seen huge trans-generational projects in the game.  Giant farms.  Sprawling road networks.  People have had time to accomplish a lot of crazy things in the game.

I'm still gonna say "We just don't have time for that stuff!"  A multigenerational road-building project is easy.  Someone comes across a half-built road and does the obvious thing of extending it.  Once a building is started, it's not too hard to see how to finish it, even if the builder dies in the middle, and eventually someone is going to come along and just do it, probably without a lot of discussion.

But things that involve a lot of communication, a lot of social organization, that's a different matter.  What it doesn't feel like there's time to do is to stand around talking, especially given how limited one's ability to speak is.  I actually have had "the heated town meeting where we decide to load up the covered wagons and strike out for greener pastures."  And I've had the debate take so long that by the time we came to a conclusion, I was too old to make the trip.  And in the meantime, nobody was making food.


jasonrohrer wrote:

hat might help my family line to survive much longer than it would otherwise.  But why would I be motivated to do this?  Yes, I can look at the family tree browser, and get some small satisfaction from seeing how long the family that I founded lasted, but it really doesn't matter much, to me, as a player.  How well my family is doing will have almost no effect on my own personal play experience, going forward into my future lives.

You don't do that thing where you keep reloading the family tree, nervously watching that bottom row to see if too much time has elapsed since the most recent deaths to give you hope for the line continuing, and combing their last words for clues as to whether they actually finished that sheep pen you were building?  Surely that can't be just me, right?  I find it a fun way to sort of keep playing the game, even when I don't have time to actually keep playing the game.

Offline

#20 2019-04-02 00:45:45

Baker
Member
Registered: 2018-03-06
Posts: 445

Re: Why there are no wars

I don't really understand what you mean Jason, What have you been smoking?


If you want wars, Towns are gonna have to be a bit more permanent. Loosen up that lineage a little, Let us be reborn to grandkids or something. Still, there is never really much cause for war, Takes too long to get other towns to be worth it. Even if I felt the need to plunder another town, I'd have a hard time recruiting others for my militia.
People fear wars because they view it is griefing, Perhaps it is currently.

Attacking another town is almost certain death for you and your soldiers. You kill, Get stabbed by other teams, Your team stabs them, and so on. Field medics maybe?

Last edited by Baker (2019-04-02 00:53:27)


"I came in shitting myself and I'll go out shitting myself"

Offline

#21 2019-04-02 00:48:21

Winkupo
Member
From: Spain
Registered: 2018-05-12
Posts: 10
Website

Re: Why there are no wars

Tarr wrote:

I mean there's multiple reasons why we don't have any real fighting in this game.

-In the current game you have zero idea who murdered your sister/brother/mother until they died. In the old days before the lineage ban if someone murdered them they likely returned and would tell you who just killed them. I have a very clear memory of my family living in Ovenpost and when a young girl game from a neighboring village asking for supplies we just ended stabbing her for begging our family for stuff. When she was reborn to our camp I explicitly remember hearing baby speak T-A-R-R B-A-D. She then led bears to the city and killed herself. She was then reborn to her home village where her lineage came over with weapons and fighting broke out in Ovenpost. You can't have conflict if no one knows.

-You have zero idea where anyone is in relation to your camp/city/village. Ducks had two different sister cities and that place was constantly griefing/stabbing/murder for hours. A combination of people knowing where the three cities were in relation to each other, being born to the different cities to return to the ensuing conflict, and the bad reputation of the city led to tons of violence all around. How can you have war or fighting in a game when you never know where anyone else is? I can guess where other towns are in relation to a bell or a day later check in the lifelogs but by the time I know where people are it's much much too late.

-The only permanence in this game is the towns we have and those only last so long before being completely lost. Why would you ever care about a family if you both know the surname is likely to be lost in a few hours after you play and a few hours after that the lineage is likely to just be dead. We can't even get a lineage to last longer than two days without it being wiped out to griefers/rng/sids so it's hard to really care about a family unlike a town which you might come back around to visit within the week before it gets culled. We have no reason to work against other players in this game and in fact doing so just hinders both parties so why fight besides for roleplay or fun?

In the case of walled cities we don't generally build them because they're deathtraps. I've done a private city on the public server with a small group of players and while that works with coordinated players inviting in others just leads to chaos. Having an Eve find the unlocked city and watching how they haphazardly started to build (bushes were outside of the walls away from our diesel engine, ovens were everywhere, cow pen was dismantled along with sheep pen, half of a house inside a WALLED city, etc) you sort of wonder what or if some of these players are even thinking. You can leave a perfect blueprint for future generations to follow but unless you are there to see the project to finish you can and should expect people to mess it up.   

In the current system the fighting is very one sided as most players aren't going to be expecting to have to deal with the roaming griefing parties, and especially not when they're their own blood.

Can we give Tarr an Amen?

Offline

#22 2019-04-02 01:17:17

Redram
Member
Registered: 2018-08-16
Posts: 113

Re: Why there are no wars

I think there's two issues at play here: incentives for war/trade, and incentives to care about your lineage.   I'll talk about the lineage first.

If you want people to care about their lineage, you need to actually incentivize them to care.  There's just no real reason right now other than the pride of seeing your family survived X generations.  And  - not unlike real life - I think the best incentive is the dearest resource of all; time.  What if every subsequent life you lived in a given family, your total next life was extended by some amount of years?  Would that not make your particular family line important?  The more times you can come back to that family, the longer a life you can live?  Maybe up to 100 minutes? If you went up 5 years at a time, it would take 8 generations lived in the same line to extend your life to 100.  And then it just goes at 100 from then on.   I think that would potentially be a powerful incentive.  And just to be clear, the added time needs to be in the middle of the life.   Nobody wants to live an extra 40 minutes at 5 pips.

Of course, with such an incentive would come gamey-ness.  First off, it would need to be stipulated that the lives are non-consecutive.   None of Tarr's 'suicide at 40' tactic.  You have to die, and be lineage-banned from that family,  to make sure you're not suicide-chaining in the same family.  Otherwise you don't get the generational life bonus.  There may also need to be some sort of stipulation on variety of accounts or something, to prevent the 'closed circle of friends' gamey-ness.  It may also be interesting to stipulate that you must live the life to 55 years of age at least,  in order to qualify for the bonus in the next one.  This makes your own life worth a bit more, in terms of avoiding being murdered.   

It may also be useful to actually allow the player to choose to be born into a past lineage, if they qualify for the generational bonus.  So if the ban time has passed, and the line is still alive, then the player gets an option to be reborn in that family.  If you don't do that, then the incentive will be even stronger to just suicide through a bunch of lives till you hit your preferred family, which is really just annoying honestly.   Down the road, extra-old players might have even more wizened faces or something, to distinguish them as extra-elder. 

I think it would be a very interesting incentive - I don't think there's anything most people would love more than extra time.

Offline

#23 2019-04-02 01:28:54

pein
Member
Registered: 2018-03-31
Posts: 4,335

Re: Why there are no wars

jasonrohrer wrote:

The lack of wars in this game is a symptom of a larger problem, I think.  There's also no long-term trade, no long term culture, no policy-making, treaties, etc.

Yes, I could bring all the Eves closer together, making space contention more likely.

Yes, I could adjust the map so it's not effectively infinite, making resource contention more likely (imagine if the game took place on a small island, or an island with a rising tide, battle-royal style).


But I think both of those issues and solutions address only the symptom, and not the underlying cause.  "Contention" between which parties?  One village and another village?  Why aren't they just one big village at that point?


Quiz:  You just had a girl baby, and suddenly another unrelated girl baby walks out from the bushes and asks for food.  She's one year older than your baby.  You realize you only have enough food resources for one baby.  Which one do you save?

Quiz:  Your family is running out of food, and your last girl child is about to starve to death, resulting in the end of your family line.  Nearby in the same town, there's an unrelated family that has plenty of extra food.  You ask for some assistance, but they refuse.  You have a knife, and they don't.  What do you do?


In real life, the answer to these admittedly grisly questions would be obvious to most people.  And people might pick the same answers inside of the game, because they are applying real life thinking to the in-game situation.  In other words, because they are role playing.  That's my baby, and I care for her more than some other baby.  I don't want my family line in this town to die out.

But what about real playing?  The truth is, currently, there is no gameplay reason to prefer your baby to an unrelated baby or your family line to some other family line, at least not in the same town.


The core idea in this game is that you care for your offspring because they are the future that gives what you accomplish in the game meaning.  What's the point of building a house, if there's no one around in the future to finish it or live in it?  Furthermore, there is a chance that you will eventually be born back into this village in the distant future, and thus you'll get to reap the benefits of your own future-preservation efforts.  I've put mechanisms in place to prevent this from happening immediately, in your very next life, to ensure that the game has variety, to make your really say goodbye to your lifetime projects (at least for a while), and to prevent the game from degenerating into "Minecraft where you annoyingly get reborn every hour."  So, a few hours need to pass with you living in other places before you can revisit this place again in a future life.  Still, the possibility is there, and that possibility requires the survival of children, grandchildren, and so on.

But, all that said, none of those motivations have anything to do with your offspring, specifically, surviving.  As long as some offspring survive in that area, your physical creations will have meaning, and you'll have the same chance to get reborn there in the distant future.

And I feel like something is missing here, which has been an important factor in human interactions.  The primacy of family, tribe, and nation.  The primacy of culture and ethnicity.  Kinship.

I feel like there is a dramatic arc to the rise and fall of a civilization in the game, but it's a bit of a muted one.  It's disappointing when a village dies out, but it's not tragic.  In that moment of desperation, people are barely motivated to resort to desperate measures.  Where's the heated town meeting where we decide to load up the covered wagons and strike out for greener pastures?  Where's the heated town meeting where we load up the bows and arrows and decide to raid the next village?

Where are the town walls and gates?

And before you say, "We just don't have time for that stuff!", I have personally seen huge trans-generational projects in the game.  Giant farms.  Sprawling road networks.  People have had time to accomplish a lot of crazy things in the game.

Even death-bed speeches have a superfluous role-playing quality to them.  A civilization should live and die by its oral tradition, by the strength of its grand plan as formulated by its ancestors.  This might actually be true in the existing game (that a civilization lives and dies by its grand plan).  It just doesn't matter too much whether a civilization lives or dies.

I've thought about this whenever I play as Eve:  what if I come up with a long-term plan for this fledgling village, and tell my children and grandchildren that plan, and make sure they know to pass it on to the great grandchildren.  That might help my family line to survive much longer than it would otherwise.  But why would I be motivated to do this?  Yes, I can look at the family tree browser, and get some small satisfaction from seeing how long the family that I founded lasted, but it really doesn't matter much, to me, as a player.  How well my family is doing will have almost no effect on my own personal play experience, going forward into my future lives.


Yes, the story is fundamentally comprised of the stories of individuals, and I do think that the dramatic arc of an individual life in the game is robust.  But individuals are also part of a story that is much bigger than themselves, with much more at stake.  That is also what this game is about, and I want those arcs to be even more robust and heart-wrenching.


Currently, the metaphysics of the game may be something like, "The player is a soul that gets born again and again as different people."


What if, instead of being a soul, the player was a chromosome?

i give you an example:
we had a crazy girl who had a knife
she stabbed a lil girl and didn't fed her kids
i couldn't kill her cause then we die out, we were 2 old ladies who were experienced players
even talked to each other before game cause we were doing the stdout coordinate tracking so both of us were  workign on horse carts just we were occupied with kids for too long

she had a kid and i was pissed, worried
i stabbed her to drop knife then the kid suicided so i told other lady to save her
so we take her knife and hope for next girl, we get rid of her when she is 40
all other kids suicided cause she was so toxic

i took a horse cart i made and ran to other city which was like 2000 tiles away
they didn't even cared
i had different name, told them im from other city

lot of people cant even comprehend what that means or that i travel 20-40 minutes to find them

i think a family emblem would be nice, a flag of some sort or some jewelry
some kidn of qr code like thing, like the colors and shapes are randomly generated based on the name
you got a lot of names on list so the possibilities are endless

but at least some sort of multi coloring, each family would have other color , maybe when you meet someone new, an animation would show up showing her family emblem, her/his name
so some popups each time a kid is born
maybe on some sort of side bar
"Hope Dolly has born"
same way if someone dies, a message that "your daughter Rose passed away at age 27: starvation"
maybe not on an instant but like in 10 min so you don't have to search for it

the other thing is your vision: you are against awbz but a few things are s essential to do higher level designs: 1.5 zoom
a decent setup for a pen or berry farm takes up minimum 7x7 tiles
it looks nice from above, looks decent from normal client
people were so impressed with my berry farms with plus hsape or x shape roads with cisterns on middle
looks nice great function with great design

on a normal zoom is just a bunch of bushes anyway, a 7x7 pen? huge
people walk around it but they can only imagine what it is
then the no free tile rule for new players: they put everything everywhere, they never go out of city, they  turn back once they see no roads or no items
now if you don't make a road, they rarely even find a kiln or a pen
and what they do? make a road
it's so annoying for us veterans that they do roads everywhere
but quite understandable if they want to leave a mark, a road is something that kind of permanent

same goes for outposts, they don't understand why i make a pen on an old camp while we got a pen on the city
they got a 2x3 size pen, why you make a pen?
why you make new city? why don't you make old city better? cause i cant, im tired of fixing errors while others make more errors
i just make new kilns new pens new cities, not fixing old stuff
when is done i invite people over

this might be personal opinion but: everything looks kind of the same
like how much of the map are we using? how much of the center of the map are we using? 5%? 1%?
everything looks kind of the same
rng creates some nice places, but you got to choose one fast, you are an eve, you got kids, you settle
now i had a nice map on s12 where it was 2 swamps on both sides of a green biome
left was better right had more space, deserts were good that time, left looked better long term after you clear it out with axe and shovel but right was clear. we had like 30 cactus there
that alone could feed us, but we did food, pen , i could get back multiple times just as 2-3 others
we had a lot of fun, but it's so rare that i find such clusters
lot of reed? we can make adobe house
3 iron veins? we can make lot of steel, possibly a car

while 80% of games is like: this map sux, looks good at first, you got green biome, pretty big, but oh, no branches
big savanah, but no rabbits
might be because the biomes are too small so items don't really generate, or maybe because some items are worse than others
like i would be happy for 40 flat rocks if i don't need to go far for them, i could make a road with it
or for 50 stones, nice
but this things arent worth much long term
now lets say i find 30 bushes on a screen? or 30 cacti?
i had a fun life with no water at home, but we had tons of cactus
i was grinding quite hard to make a cistern home and a road to water, different type of game, you bring the water and have the soil
you got food but you lack ropes
lot of people play generic, i adapt quite a lot
like  different materials for buildings. stone pen or adobe based on what we got around us

the map is so similar to each other, like there is no good spots, i would like really good spots with regenerating materials, like goose gives eggs, we could have some iron regenerating
we could have plenty of soil but not much water, or plenty of water but not much soil
some sort of preset map parts, like grouping them together, so there would be good choices and bad choices and rewards based on it

i would save the smarter baby, i had times when my daughter was an annoying prick and we were travelling so i had a new kid and she was standing still, said hi, followed me properly and i just starved the previous one
everyone expendable, human lifes worth nothing in this game, i don't even care if people kill each other
when the map is destroyed, like trees are cut, permanent old buildings, misplaced stuff, huge berry fields, i feel so bad about it
like "yet another city wasted"
like i might feel a bit sad for a daughter who was stabbed or a kid who stepped on a snake but 5 min alter i don't even know their names

here comes the communication part: you nerfed shovels, burials are expensive , time wasting, , like people do a grave for their mom? that's nice in theory but he uses resources , tools, and toddlers try to figure out what that city needs
people starving and others are proud that they made a grave for their mom, then the line dies
like give us an option to bury the loved ones, first of all, suicide babies and the ones who starve 2 minutes after you don't breastfeed them, they don't really deserve a burial
like i cant really think  that you can be so grown on a kid who cant even spell 4 letter. like, ok, she can say "mom, ily" but it isn't some long relation, you both stand near fire, you don't know if she is a psychopath who killed 15 people or a lazy bum who just eats and does nothing, and maybe your uncle just saved the city killing a griefer, all you see is a killer with bloody weapon
so the babies who gave up on life or didn't had enough skill to reach age 10 at least, doesn't really contribute much to the city
they should have small bones, and maybe put it in a clay urn and burn it
kind of no brainer that i rather use the shovel to produe soil which keeps my kids alive rather than bury people who i didn't even know for 5 minutes.

and all our culture, ceremonies are made up, we would neeed totems, art, sculptures, paintings, some sort of art to express unique families.

one football game had an interesting sistem
had 4 clubs. each division same club
you choose one, you were rewarded for loyalty, it isn't that much of a competition, there is a waiting screen where you run inside a city, shopping for items, and cosmetics, you join a club, chat with others, then you go ingame with your team
you can meet up with your friend in city show others that you 4 are a team, find 4 others who got other colors and match with them
some sort of unique thing about your family could work this way
your eve is white you can have only white kids, the neighbour is black, you see it right away that  they other family
i mena is dangerous with the skin tones, already a lot of racism happening
but in a roleplay side when all your kids are hispanic black hair girls and a snowhite ginger popps in, it's quite funny
i made a nudity mod where people wear leaf panties, we could have some sort of that
so if you are in a family, everyone has red lingerie, if you meet other family, they got blue lingerie
now there is a bit of competition, you want the red lingerie to win, cause you born there, some sort of pride, you could adopt a kid but she would always work against you cause no matter what, she has blue lingerie kids
not sure what could be the unique item
belts? medals? headgear? like naruto had factions where each village had ninjas, each ninja had a headband but each hadband differed from other vilage
something that is common but it's still unique

i would be okay with wars and we had some sort of honor system to recognize forum users, the experienced players, the ones with no bad intention
but curse system became a meme where the griefer claims that you did something and if does it before you, others might believe it
people are judge , jury, executioner
i quite enjoyed dealing with bad guys, or be the bad guy from time to time, not like killing off a family, but duelling with other guys, both of us bored, havign a weapon, testing our skills, if we die, no one loses a thing, if one of us lives, appreciates more what he got

i remember people talking about wars. Ducks city had roads, walls, people came over, killed the men and took the roads and pen inside carts big_smile
then the revenge was sending men with weapons back
we could have some sort of war where males got to fight in arenas or on open field, maybe generate a maze between 2 families and both needs to send 5 males, inside they got weapons and only one team can leave alive, the reward would be some sort of family bonus
maybe some people don't like to kill or don't like to fight
then you could use war/diplomacy/trade points to get a permanent family bonus
for example: you could sell 30  mutton pies for 1 point
the family would have an option to build a trading spot
the village elder could activate a bonus
-cold resistance: members of this family line don't get cold as normal in ice biome
-heat resistance: maximum overheat is 90% instead of 100% (0.9, which would help surviving mosquitoes)
-born survivor: members of this family get randomly loin cloths or skirts at birth
-supply pack: each time an old person dies, the shrine gives 5 random items which can be iron, stone, adobe, flat rock, etc.
-high fertility: each female has extra chance to give birth more often, maybe extra chance for women
-kids on demand: the family has an option to hold a festival, resulting the chosen female will have kid until the end of ceremony controlling the time of the kids
-lower area ban: each member of family who died older age, can come back sooner

this isn't a personal level system, it's a family wide reward system
as you say chromosome, the genes become stronger by certain quests
the family works hard to produce food, then they can go longer without food or have more babies than other families
the family works hard to produce material, so they got higher affinity to make cars and planes
the family clears out a swamp so gets a random respawn on it

i can also think of special items:
-golden pickaxe: last for 10 minutes, allows to remove ancient walls to rearrange them 30x uses or 30 minutes
-golden shovel: allows to rearange bells, dig in our out bones for 30 minutes or 10x of uses than normal shovel for other actions (time for potato planting)
-animal freezer: stops animals allowing to build a pen around them, re-arange a pen- lasting 30 minutes
-mosquito killer: kills bugs forever, turns them into onions big_smile
-rabbit refresher/fertility booster: 30 rabbits return into the nearest savanah or refills the biome with a high chance of rabbit holes

now my only issue is who is using it, ofc everyone would want to, but the most popular person is often not the most experienced one
maybe people should hold an election, some apm based stat would decide the contenders but they would also need to apply and a voting on them would start for 5 minutes

this items could be gained when you reach a certain amount of stuff (make 500 pies) or reach a generation level (30th gen girl just grown hair)
this items would be use it or lose it, giving permanent advantages to the family
sure if others live along you they could do benefit from it or even boost each other
maybe some sort of territory based component, where you need like 60% of your family to be direct related, so you control the area

other idea:
some sort of non lethal combat system like boxing or rod fight
some sort of sport in an arena, like a combination of hockey/football
this arenas would be like monoliths, predefined positions with teleports to it, or either bells with markers.
the families send explorers and the families fight for points for their own kin (teleports better as it would transfer them there temporarily, maybe make marker and they could go back)

this kind of things would be fun, like we had the tutorial map, some predefined structures like cave system, oasis, endless rabbit fields (some kind of map where you could snare all you want for 10 min then would transfer your explorers back to base)
iron deposits, this sort of stuff, unique things which are highly valuable and worth fighting for

the only way to make relations between families is
-make them different
-make them uuncompatible (even if you adopt someone, she/he will always be outsider and don't get your bonuses directly and doesn't contribute to your bonuses)
-better communication and new system (buff letters, like make them cheaper, faster)
give news about the girls births and deaths, maybe some sort of tracking between each other to allow a nomadic or explorer style
-some sort of non lethal competition

i guess most of this ideas have a lot of potential to be abused, like if one family has raw pies and others steal it, take home and cook it, or just hand t over, it will boost the others cause they did the last step?
so some kind of territory based thing or point tracking or just higher numbers to reach so it doesn't worth doing such things


https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=7986 livestock pens 4.0
https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=4411 maxi guide

Playing OHOL optimally is like cosplaying a cactus: stand still and don't waste the water.

Offline

#24 2019-04-02 01:31:28

Spoonwood
Member
Registered: 2019-02-06
Posts: 4,369

Re: Why there are no wars

jasonrohrer wrote:

The lack of wars in this game is a symptom of a larger problem, I think.

No.  The lack of wars comes as one of the better points of this game.  It's nice to have peaceful games.  I say this as someone who has played plenty of war games... and if you don't believe me, well I have some on record: http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ3/stats.p … 1863&go=Go

jasonrohrer wrote:

Quiz:  You just had a girl baby, and suddenly another unrelated girl baby walks out from the bushes and asks for food.  She's one year older than your baby.  You realize you only have enough food resources for one baby.  Which one do you save?

Huh?  You can feed children up to 4 years old by picking them up (or is it 5?).  Carrots, corn, and green beans take 4 minutes to grow, and something probably can get cooked fairly easily in that time.  Wild berries regenerate and so do cactus fruits.  Your premise that you only have enough food for only one baby instead of two seems implausible.

jasonrohrer wrote:

Quiz:  Your family is running out of food, and your last girl child is about to starve to death, resulting in the end of your family line.  Nearby in the same town, there's an unrelated family that has plenty of extra food.  You ask for some assistance, but they refuse.  You have a knife, and they don't.  What do you do?

You grow or cook more food.  You provide food for your people.  Hunt a turkey and use it to slice the turkey.  Or slice bread.  Or carve up a sheep for it's meat.  Or slice potatoes into french fries, etc.  Knives are for cooking or getting rubber from rubber trees!  Attacking others comes as counter-productive.  In the real world plenty of food has gotten squandered because of wars.  Outstanding buildings have gotten destroyed in wars.

jasonrohrer wrote:

In real life, the answer to these admittedly grisly questions would be obvious to most people.  And people might pick the same answers inside of the game, because they are applying real life thinking to the in-game situation.  In other words, because they are role playing.  That's my baby, and I care for her more than some other baby.  I don't want my family line in this town to die out.

Huh?  You seem to assume that many or even most wars got/get fought for practical reasons.  There was an account by one of the Russian people at the end of the second war.  The account goes that they found the German people were living opulent lives (minus the bombs falling on them, of course).  The Russians felt baffled as to why the Germans were at war, when according to the Russian they were living in huts. 

jasonrohrer wrote:

I've put mechanisms in place to prevent this from happening immediately, in your very next life ...

That's a mistake on your part.  People playing this game do not die in real life, and some of them enjoy projects that take longer than an hour.  Personally speaking, I don't have an interest in playing on the bigserver at the moment (which isn't to say that I don't play elsewhere), because I'll most probably see a place once and that's it.  I won't see how it develops over time.  I won't see each water stage from pond, to wells, to deep wells, to beyond.  I do NOT know the story of my family.  Sure, in real life you won't get to know what things will be like after you perish.  However, history does exist.  I can go back and read about how my ancestors did things.  There is NONE of that in this game.  I have no idea what happened with my ancestors and basically can't.

My favorite moments of when I've played on the main servers (before the bigserver... I didn't have this happen on the bigserver as I only Eved once on it I think)?  When I would play Eve, and then get to see other streamers on Twitch play the same spot.  And even get born back in to my family.  Heck, even getting murdered as a young man in my own family at least had the upshot of seeing the village I helped to create a little bit later.

jasonrohrer wrote:

to ensure that the game has variety

Variety comes as ensured by the people playing the game.  I have seen several villages on servers1 through server2 and I assure you that no two villages are the same.  Heck, I've made two villages on one server, both of which still exist, and neither of them is the same either.

jasonrohrer wrote:

Where's the heated town meeting where we decide to load up the covered wagons and strike out for greener pastures?
Where's the heated town meeting where we load up the bows and arrows and decide to raid the next village?

It's not easy to talk like that at all within the scope of the game.  Serious meetings?  Those take hours in real life, not just two or three minutes.


jasonrohrer wrote:

Where are the town walls and gates?

They aren't useful and could come as counter-productive.  That said, I have seen a town surrounded by plaster walls and doors on a low populations server.

jasonrohrer wrote:

I've thought about this whenever I play as Eve:  what if I come up with a long-term plan for this fledgling village, and tell my children and grandchildren that plan, and make sure they know to pass it on to the great grandchildren.  That might help my family line to survive much longer than it would otherwise.  But why would I be motivated to do this?

Why would you do that?  The other people have their own independent lives.  Parents use to dictate more of the terms of their children's lives.  Arranged marriages have existed.  But, for many people these days, arranged marriages come as looked down upon.  For many people these days, parents come as expected to have their children live their own lives and make their own decisions.

jasonrohrer wrote:

What if, instead of being a soul, the player was a chromosome?

That sounds like the player would be duller and less creative than at present.


Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.

Offline

#25 2019-04-02 01:46:46

Redram
Member
Registered: 2018-08-16
Posts: 113

Re: Why there are no wars

Now as for war, like Tarr said lack of awareness hinders the carrying out of war greatly.   But beyond that, there's not much reason other than rp/personal vendettas.  Nobody can really control any particular resource, and that's the main cause of war irl.   In general terms everyone and every spot has access to the exact same set of resources.   And the only truly important one is iron, because it's required for life, and it's limited.  Yet all the iron mines will eventually run out.   This is not analogous to the real life march of civilizations.  This is analogous to the world of The Walking Dead, where everyone is just scavenging whatever they can get of essentially a finite set of resources. 

One potential solution would be for the game needs to have resource nodes that can continually be exploited, and several of them.  All required for certain aspects of the game.  Then you might end up with trade, or war, if people can find each other.  And that's a critical point.  The radio would be very useful, because you could broadcast to the world that you have perpetual iron, but need copper.   And the people with a perpetual copper mine could respond.   But without being able to find each other, that's useless.

Now beyond this, if you REALLY want war, then I would say set up a Civilizations-style wonder system.  Your town can build a great wonder with great benefits; but only one can exist in the world at a time.  So now if someone else wants that wonder's benefits, they're either going to have to trade you for it, or fight you for it.   Depending on how your deep tech tree goes, some resources could potentially even be accessed only through wonders, so if anyone else at all wants that resource, they have to go through you.   But - similar to previous post - time might be another good motivator.  Build a certain wonder in your town, and the life of all citizens born to that town get an extra year or whatever of life (what exactly 'born to that town' means I'm not sure - possibly born to one specific family?).  Things like sanitation, anesthesia, penicillin, etc.  Maybe general life-safety tech like a firehouse, or evac chopper, or ambulance.  If they have to be limited to a tile it might sort of limit what makes sense, but you get the idea.  These wonders might also act similar to bells etc, in terms of acting as a beacon.  So they have benefits, but they have the downside of making you a target.    You'd need to allow for multiple markers though.  It's already bad enough having your home marker replaced with bells. 

If it does come to war, the attackers can destroy your wonder, and replace it with their own.  But they cannot just steal the wonder - that'd be too easy.

So ya, that's my proposal to make trade/war more viable.

Offline

Board footer

Powered by FluxBB