What's a sword between neighboring towns?

jasonrohrer · 2019-05-07 23:37:26

Still thinking about how to prefer your own current family over other families in your current life (without depending on cross-life effects). If you have to choose between two kids, you should always feel a gameplay reason to choose your own. If there's a neighboring town, you should hesitate to share valuable resources with them for very real gameplay reasons. You should not WANT to wander away from your town and migrate to some other town to continue a trans-life personal project. You should want to build a wall around your town for real reasons. Towns with walls are interesting. You have to negotiate to get inside from the outside. Negotiation is interesting.

These considerations don't currently matter, most of the time, because towns are spread out. But towns are spread out mostly because I don't have good solutions (yet) to the above problems. Without the above issues solved, towns would just "mush" together into a big, indistinct mega town without any interesting interactions between towns.

And if we ever did get a war here and there, the curse system, along with the murderer-slow-down system, would make the whole thing a painful joke.

So...

What if other towns really were OTHER to you in a very important way?

First of all, you couldn't curse them. Keep cursing in the family.

Second, what if there was a special weapon with no slow-down effect that you could only use on outsiders. Call it the sword (keep the knife between friends---it's more close-range).

This would allow for wars between towns, or raiding, or whatever. It would also be a real gameplay factor that would solve all of the above issues. People would build town walls for real reasons, and then trade with outsiders cautiously. Bandits and all the rest outside the town walls.

And probably, I'd switch the child-race code to keep the family in one race, so you could easily distinguish members of the next town by appearance.

Anyway, that's just one idea.

I'm looking for other ideas to give the "otherness" of other families some gameplay consequence. Property fences are an optional way. I also thought about a natural spring head that was only usable by one family, somehow...

Thaulos · 2019-05-07 23:50:35

My first reaction was a big resounding LOL irl.

I don't completely dislike the idea of items having different effects depending on the actors' families. Might actually be fun.

Combat, such as raiding or fights, need to be counterable though. Ideally you would still be able to heal people as a sort of a medic.

Perhaps one effect of such a sword effect could just put you on the floor bleeding and a medic could use a medkit to stabilize you. The victim would still need pads and needle after that but they would no longer be stuck on the floor while dying.

Maybe doors could only be used by the family that created them? And maybe the sword could be used to tear it down during attacks.

Maybe the same would go for any item that was placed. Such as fences. Other families couldn't uproot or change the fence to a gate, but they could come in with a sword and do damage to it.

Maybe you couldn't use a pickaxe on walls from other families but maybe you could use a "hand ram" to tear it down.

EDIT: It could be that even if the sword didn't slow you down you would still have the same effect as the murder effect (holding the bloody knife for a certain amount of time), but walking at normal speed.

Last edited by Thaulos (2019-05-07 23:58:27)

Ari-ori-412 · 2019-05-07 23:52:52

Thaulos wrote:

My first reaction was a big resounding LOL irl.
I don't completely dislike the idea of items having different effects depending on the actors' families. Might actually be fun.
Combat, such as raiding or fights, need to be counterable though. Ideally you would still be able to heal people as a sort of a medic.
Perhaps one effect of such a sword effect could just put you on the floor bleeding and a medic could use a medkit to stabilize you. The victim would still need pads and needle after that but they would no longer be stuck on the floor while dying.
Maybe doors could only be used by the family that created them? And maybe the sword could be used to tear it down during attacks.
Maybe the same would go for any item that was placed. Such as fences. Other families couldn't uproot or change the fence to a gate, but they could come in with a sword and do damage to it.
Maybe you couldn't use a pickaxe on walls from other families but maybe you could use a "hand ram" to tear it down.

im pretty sure this is where jason wants property fences to be used lel

Thaulos · 2019-05-07 23:55:38

Property fences seem to be more directed as personal property rather than family property and I don't think they are worth having right now besides area delineation.

jasonrohrer · 2019-05-08 00:01:19

Well, if the neighboring village might come through with swords, would that make property fences worth having?

futurebird · 2019-05-08 00:06:48

Property fences are too hard to keep secure when fencing a large area. One part (behind a tree?) gets rickety and they fall apart. They don't even work well as sheep pens except provisionally.

I've been in towns and tried to keep a large sheep pen made of fences working and it took forever to hit all the fences and I missed one behind a tree. Sheep got out.

I wouldn't use them for security of whole town. They work kinda OK for small areas. But even then, the next generation forgets about it... when it's the sheep ... who will keep the town walls intact when it's basically most of your life boinking them?

Thaulos · 2019-05-08 00:07:24

No. The sad truth is that property fences are essentially just roleplaying items and offer no real benefit to anyone.

If a group of people came and we hid on a property fence we could be shot via arrows. Also property fences too work intensive to be worth maintaining over long periods of time.

While differences between lineages are probably a good thing. We are still missing the core component of societies: families. My children should matter more than my cousin 4x removed's children. Even my nieces shouldn't be nearly as important as my daughters.

Most drama should probably happen within the same lineage. The internal politics and conflicts are strongest between members of the same tribe and that's where the vast majority of interaction happens.

Last edited by Thaulos (2019-05-08 00:09:30)

Tarr · 2019-05-08 00:15:17

jasonrohrer wrote:

Well, if the neighboring village might come through with swords, would that make property fences worth having?

No, I don't think so. It might make property gates worth having considering you can stand on one that is closed and be unattackable lmao. Can't really have pvp like updates when you have something so abusable around.

Fences are flawed because given the chance the average player cannot design something remotely usable (too small, on the wrong biome, etc.) which means fences are never used for anything useful besides hoarding. When I tried to use fences in a more proper manner my kids would basically just leave and go live at the town. I had a huuuge estate in Diva town which wasn't even completely visible at max zoom which kept getting raided between lives so I started putting up a fence to keep people out but I couldn't ever keep kids interested in a self sufficient area.

I really think fences should be costly and harder to knock down like buildings rather than the mess they are. After originally making small fenced areas in Diva town I upgraded to permanent structures (stone sheep pen, large heated bakery with heated hallways) and only put up a fence in attempt to keep people from taking things.

wio · 2019-05-08 00:19:37

I really like this the philosophy behind this idea. The reality is that we care about our genes in a way that is difficult for OHOL to replicate with its current mechanics.

jasonrohrer wrote:

First of all, you couldn't curse them. Keep cursing in the family.

This is a two way street. It's a bad thing you you can't curse someone, but it's a good thing that someone can't curse you. I would say overall this does incentivize ingroup preference, since griefers are the main people worried about cursing.

I think the ability to exile others from the family could be a replacement for cursing if it could be done right.

jasonrohrer wrote:

Second, what if there was a special weapon with no slow-down effect that you could only use on outsiders. Call it the sword (keep the knife between friends---it's more close-range).

While this doesn't incentivise anything directly, it indirectly incentivizes ingroup preference based on the fact that your ingroup can't kill you as easily.

jasonrohrer wrote:

I'm looking for other ideas to give the "otherness" of other families some gameplay consequence. Property fences are an optional way. I also thought about a natural spring head that was only usable by one family, somehow...

One thing you can do is have it so that when two people of separate families occupy the same tile, there is a small chance that one of them gets sick. The idea is that the ingroup all carries diseases to which they've developed immunity, but because of different immunities between groups, commingling will cause health issues.

I wonder what other ways there are to accomplish this goal of ingroup preference.

Last edited by wio (2019-05-08 00:20:26)

jasonrohrer · 2019-05-08 00:19:38

Not sure how tapping something with a rock once every two hours is labor intensive.

I hear you about trees blocking, but that's probably what the axe is for.

And what are you all talking about with the bow and arrow example?

Just tested it, and property fences block arrows, just like walls.

So yeah, I know you hate property fences Futurebird.... but.... c'mon. They're the least labor-intensive thing in the game, and the tree problem is easily solved.

futurebird · 2019-05-08 00:20:54

I agree Thaulos. You want conflict give us more ways to link up family trees: like gold rings for partnerships and marriage that would create a family link in the tree and let men be less useless in that part of the game (I don't like to play as a guy because I can't feel good about the number of dependents I have. )

Here is something neat.

-you can marry/partner any gender
-you can only marry/partner with one person, you both need to agree and be over IDK 16 or something
-you can only marry/partner with someone with a different last name.
-a marriage lets people in the now united clans curse each other. (This is much more like how it used to work for early humans, marriage was a way to make an alliance)

That alone will create HEAPS of drama.

Make gold or some other rare resource need to make a partnership? and now you have another thing for people to go after...

I don't hate the sword idea but it's a mechanic searching for a purpose... And I think it's day will come. But I don't think adding it would start anything except for maybe a few mass murders, for griefers who like to walk and just want to wipe out a town for no reason.

Which to me is kinda boring. I want the invaders to be after something ... or someone.

futurebird · 2019-05-08 00:25:08

Jason the labor comes from the fact that you can't hit the corner from the inside, from the fact that you have to hit each one in a reasonable time frame or they start falling apart in a staggered way which is bad. And from the fact that, even with a sheep pen people just don't take care of them. Or if they do, as I did, they miss something and *one* mistake breaks the whole fence and you need to wait to get it running again... not too bad for sheep, very bad for anything critical.

IDK make a fence that is about 10x10 and see how you like keeping up with it... I always get annoyed.

jasonrohrer · 2019-05-08 00:25:59

Yeah, the idea is essentially to make "potential griefers" out of everyone outside your town.

The exile thing is interesting... a way to handle griefers this life. But if we're talking trans-life, we're right back to the same problem, because banishing them to some other family means they will be in YOUR family next life (because of lineage ban, which is still needed to ensure variety, ensure saying goodbye for real, etc.)

Spiegel · 2019-05-08 00:28:06

Language! What if people from town A were incomprehensible to people from town B?

futurebird · 2019-05-08 00:30:24

Spiegel wrote:

Language! What if people from town A were incomprehensible to people from town B?

This is interesting. And the only cure is a marriage.

Spoonwood · 2019-05-08 00:32:03

jasonrohrer wrote:

Still thinking about how to prefer your own current family over other families in your current life (without depending on cross-life effects). If you have to choose between two kids, you should always feel a gameplay reason to choose your own. If there's a neighboring town, you should hesitate to share valuable resources with them for very real gameplay reasons. You should not WANT to wander away from your town and migrate to some other town to continue a trans-life personal project. You should want to build a wall around your town for real reasons. Towns with walls are interesting. You have to negotiate to get inside from the outside. Negotiation is interesting.

Jason, your insistence on people not having multi-life projects makes even less sense than before. Seriously, go into a town which doesn't even have an engine yet with players who don't understand the whole engine, oil, and diseel water pump process. See how much you get done in a life. Before this update you might dismiss making a diesel water pump as a personal "pet" project, since towns could rely on a charcoal pump. It's not anymore though, since towns will need the water from a renewable source locally, or import water. Either way, the diesel water pump clearly improves the status of a location now beyond mere convenience to a point of sustainability, making doing that anything but a personal pet project.

Additionally, NO, towns with walls are not interesting because of the walls. I've spent time traveling in and out of a town with plaster walls on a low population server. The doors come as annoying to open and close, and since the walls mark the territory of the town, it's clear that the walls don't work out so well anymore, since there's no spring inside of the city's walls.

Also, as Tarr has rhetorically asked, why play for your family if you can't get born there again?

Furthermore, you're just wrong with your shoulds. I should feel however I want to feel about the game and do what I choose so long as I am not harming others. If that means that I don't like my family because the town looks rather bad, and I see my neighbors town and it seems more functional/efficient, then I should NOT hesitate to take resources to them (from the wild... not from my family).

jasonrohrer wrote:

These considerations don't currently matter, most of the time, because towns are spread out. But towns are spread out mostly because I don't have good solutions (yet) to the above problems. Without the above issues solved, towns would just "mush" together into a big, indistinct mega town without any interesting interactions between towns.

None of the above indicates any sort of problem. People can play as they like and enjoy the game as it is. You also don't end up with more unique situations by trying to force towns into some sort of pre-deteremined mold. If players want to have towns with walls, that's fine. But, if they don't, leave them alone and realize that they have their own minds.

jasonrohrer wrote:

Second, what if there was a special weapon with no slow-down effect that you could only use on outsiders. Call it the sword (keep the knife between friends---it's more close-range).

Then killing an outsider trying to help your town out, especially one who is good, would be griefing. Outsiders trying to help out a town are NOT intruders. You're not proposing a change that would make people feel their families more important, just one that makes griefing good help *to the town* easier.

jasonrohrer wrote:

This would allow for wars between towns, or raiding, or whatever. It would also be a real gameplay factor that would solve all of the above issues. People would build town walls for real reasons, and then trade with outsiders cautiously. Bandits and all the rest outside the town walls.

No, because the outsider might come with gifts and since that person traveled in the wild they probably can help the town out more than some of the other people in your family. Look, I traveled between towns a few times carrying rope and/or iron before you *destroyed* the ability of the hetuw mod to locate other families. Do you think the families didn't want the iron or rope? Would some weapon make it so that they don't want the rope or iron?

The biggest problem comes as that what you propose isn't a way to like your family more. It's more along the lines of liking other families less. And that doesn't entail people will like their families more, it just comes as likely to create more animosity towards people in the game. One can hate all families equally. Disliking another family is NOT liking your own family.

Tarr · 2019-05-08 00:32:51

jasonrohrer wrote:

Not sure how tapping something with a rock once every two hours is labor intensive.
I hear you about trees blocking, but that's probably what the axe is for.

And what are you all talking about with the bow and arrow example?
Just tested it, and property fences block arrows, just like walls.

You can shoot over a fence by standing in certain spots in relation to where people are inside the fence. Generally you need to be diagonal to another player to shoot them.

jasonrohrer · 2019-05-08 00:32:54

That's a good one, Spiegel... hmm

That would make trade rather difficult, though...

Thaulos · 2019-05-08 00:34:19

Maybe you could learn the language somehow? Maybe by staying in close quarters for a while.

jasonrohrer · 2019-05-08 00:35:29

Tarr, that's some kind of server-side bug in the path sampling for the KILL action.

The same should be possible through walls. Yes, just tested it, and the same thing happens with walls.

So even walls don't protect you from arrows. Whoops on my part.

But thus, again, not a weakness that is particular to property fences.

I will fix it, obviously. I'm guessing this has been reported, but I have a huge backlog of Github issues.

Spoonwood · 2019-05-08 00:38:47

jasonrohrer wrote:

Yeah, the idea is essentially to make "potential griefers" out of everyone outside your town.

I'm quoting this for emphasis. That is NOT people caring about their lineages more. It's just distrust of outsiders. One might even call it xenophobia, and perhaps that's the best term for what you propose.

Spoonwood · 2019-05-08 00:39:47

Tarr wrote:

jasonrohrer wrote:
Not sure how tapping something with a rock once every two hours is labor intensive.
I hear you about trees blocking, but that's probably what the axe is for.

And what are you all talking about with the bow and arrow example?
Just tested it, and property fences block arrows, just like walls.
You can shoot over a fence by standing in certain spots in relation to where people are inside the fence. Generally you need to be diagonal to another player to shoot them.
http://i.imgur.com/rsaJzUS.png

Hunting Da False again, are we?

futurebird · 2019-05-08 00:42:42

Thaulos wrote:

Maybe you could learn the language somehow? Maybe by staying in close quarters for a while.

I'll say it again: marriage. Then both families could understand each other... and it would make who is getting married to whom EVERYONE'S business since it would change who you could curse, who you could understand etc.

I would quest for other towns were I a guy if I thought I could have kids that way. Not all players would, but I like to have kids and see how they do and if they have kids. It gives a way for guys to participate in that aspect of the game.

Let's not avoid it because kissing is icky or whatever.

Dantox · 2019-05-08 00:43:21

you will need to make a lineage-ban for the ones who murdered you with a sword aswell to prevent trying to sabotage those who raided you in the first place

futurebird · 2019-05-08 00:46:19

Spoonwood wrote:

jasonrohrer wrote:
Yeah, the idea is essentially to make "potential griefers" out of everyone outside your town.
I'm quoting this for emphasis. That is NOT people caring about their lineages more. It's just distrust of outsiders. One might even call it xenophobia, and perhaps that's the best term for what you propose.

I have to agree. And just because you don't like outsiders won't make you like your family more automatically... And I would be really resistant to such a mechanic unless balanced with ways to bind people together.

If you can pick a partner and make a connection with them that's "official" on the family tree you WILL care about that person because you choose them. And as always I think that partnerships/marriages need to be between different last names.

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#1 2019-05-07 23:37:26

What's a sword between neighboring towns?

#2 2019-05-07 23:50:35

Re: What's a sword between neighboring towns?

#3 2019-05-07 23:52:52

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#4 2019-05-07 23:55:38

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#10 2019-05-08 00:19:38

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#14 2019-05-08 00:28:06

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#19 2019-05-08 00:34:19

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#20 2019-05-08 00:35:29

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#21 2019-05-08 00:38:47

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