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a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building

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#1 2019-05-14 22:28:48

jasonrohrer
Administrator
Registered: 2017-02-13
Posts: 4,803

Ways to make EVERY life precious

This is something that I've never been satisfied about.

Each life is too cheap, too throw-away, and it really doesn't matter, which is why run-away babies, suicide, etc. are so likely.  There's very little feeling of, "This is my one chance, I'd better no blow it!"

Even griefing might be related to this... I can cause trouble, and who cares if you kill me, because my life is cheap enough to replace.

The whole lineage ban thing is related to this.  We can't let you "luck out" and return sometimes, if life is cheap, because that means you can re-roll an unlimited number of times until you force yourself to "luck out."  So even that occasional, cool story is cut out, because too many players would spend cheap lives to make it their only story.


One idea that came up in another thread was a limited number of lives per hour, at least for veteran players (beginners receive some kind of grace period).

Another idea is in-game purchase of extra lives.


I'm looking for other ideas here...

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#2 2019-05-14 22:32:05

Danquebec
Member
Registered: 2019-04-28
Posts: 7

Re: Ways to make EVERY life precious

I like the idea of a limited number of lives per hour. Something like 2 lives per hour.

Would also solve the suicides at the same time.

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#3 2019-05-14 22:34:23

673751
Member
Registered: 2018-08-23
Posts: 45

Re: Ways to make EVERY life precious

I think it be much more precious if we were encouraged to form tight bonds within our familys and with our children. Instead of being encouraged to kill each other and other familys.

Being limited on the amount of lives we can play would probably be the last straw for me.

Really liked the idea suggested of sandbox mode.

Maybe we can have sandbox, free for all, and perma death mode. Or something.

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#4 2019-05-14 22:35:23

futurebird
Member
Registered: 2019-02-20
Posts: 1,553

Re: Ways to make EVERY life precious

New players start with 8 lives per hour, as you play longer the number falls to just 2 per hour. I would like that.

I do think you are wrong that coming back after a break makes it cheaper. Nah. That makes me more invested than ever in the survival of my line. The one time I nearly cried because the line would die out was a line I'd visited twice. So I knew them so well had had such high hope for them...

For me never going back makes me care less. "I'll never see this place again... what's the point?"


---
omnem cibum costis
tantum baca, non facies opus

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#5 2019-05-14 22:37:17

Jk Howling
Member
From: Washington State
Registered: 2018-06-16
Posts: 468

Re: Ways to make EVERY life precious

Nope. Nope. Literally nope. The second you add some bullshit microtransactions to buy more lives is the second I stop playing this game permanently. Keep tossing stupid ideas like this out to the public and you're going to lose people very, very quickly my dude.

Trying to force us to play how you want us to play and only that way is not going to keep your current playerbase, nor will it bring in new players.

I get that infant suicide is an issue, because people are rerolling so they can play the lives they want to play. Forcing us into a scenario we don't want to play is just going to harbor resentment and irritation in the playerbase. I have no doubt griefing is going to rise dramatically from people forced into a life with no other options and simply taking things out on the surrounding players. Either that or people will simply stop playing.

but you already got your 20 bucks so why would that matter lol

Last edited by Jk Howling (2019-05-14 22:37:57)


-Has ascended to better games-

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#6 2019-05-14 22:37:40

A_person_1234
Member
Registered: 2019-04-17
Posts: 13

Re: Ways to make EVERY life precious

Dude. No. No no no no. Are you looking for ways to make people quit? Because this is how you make people quit.

There's not going to be that feeling of 'I have one chance' in this game, because, well, it's a game. The best we can hope for is that players go into every life with an open mind and are rewarded for making the best of whatever situation they're born into.

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#7 2019-05-14 22:43:12

Psykout
Member
Registered: 2018-11-14
Posts: 353

Re: Ways to make EVERY life precious

Just my two cents, but I have had this thought many times and now seems like a good time. It can be a struggle sometime to care about my life, and what I do in it, because of how quickly it all goes away. My hours invested throughout many towns in a day, are gone the next. I am not talking about whether or not I get to enjoy the fruits of my labor, its that nobody does. That bakery a stranger and I built together, gone. That jungle nursery I taught someone how to build, gone. That terrible looking berry patch, why fix it, it will be gone in a few hours unless someone rediscovers it and repopulates it.

It's like going from making a quick sandcastle to making a replica of the venice board walk. Both will eventually go away in time, but you don't put the time and care into making a beautiful sculpture right as the tide is coming, you build a shitty sandcastle you won't remember for months and years to come. Well after building shitty sandcastle after sand castle, I really don't care about them specifically as much anymore, still like making them, but it's not as special anymore. This is human nature.

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#8 2019-05-14 22:44:32

Stylingirl
Moderator
Registered: 2018-05-24
Posts: 142

Re: Ways to make EVERY life precious

* Star Wars Battlefront 2 Theme music starts to play *

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#9 2019-05-14 22:47:17

Twisted
Member
Registered: 2018-10-12
Posts: 663

Re: Ways to make EVERY life precious

Adding in game life purchases would 100% kill the game. Don't do that.

I stick with the life I'm given almost every single time, so changes to this, such as adding life tokens, probably wouldn't affect me in any meaningful way, which means I'm personally not against the system. It would definitely anger some people though.

If I absolutely had to come up with some kind of a system I'd do something like this:


Every new account starts with 100 life tokens.
Every time you spawn you use up a token. No tokens, no spawning.
Every 60 minutes of playtime you get an extra token.
Every time you die of old age you get an extra token.
Every 24 hours of real time you get an extra token.
Every server restart everyone gets an extra token.

That way the life limit wouldn't affect people who are playing the game 'properly' at all, and it would probably only affect people that die or waste their lives on purpose.

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#10 2019-05-14 22:47:21

Oblong
Member
Registered: 2019-01-03
Posts: 98

Re: Ways to make EVERY life precious

...Precious life, eh?
Throwing away lives like none of them mattered, eh?

I still think most of the lives I live are precious. I make sure not to die.

The issue with making lives cost money is that griefers will rule the game. Proceed to wipe out innocent people constantly. The innocents stop playing the game because you’ve ran out of free lives for the day. Griefers won’t care if they die because they have the money and make the choice to spend it buying new accounts for christ’s sake. But not everyone has that amount to spend at any time.

I’ve quit playing this game for a while now due to constantly being murdered as an innocent. Seeing the new update just drives me away from it even more. Please don’t make it worse.

Last edited by Oblong (2019-05-14 22:50:19)


I don’t talk in-game unless it’s dire.

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#11 2019-05-14 22:48:09

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

Re: Ways to make EVERY life precious

Having only one chance in a spot on bs2 is exactly why each life is so cheap to begin with.  There's no investment in something that lasts.  People didn't write 'dick move Jason' on bs2, they wrote it on s12, where people had spend dozens of lives building towns and roads.  Lives were NOT cheap because of many chances.  There existed more invested, and more that could get invested, and that made lives more precious.  I was personally pissed when my Santa Hat and my car got taken on s12 one time, but I wouldn't feel the same way on bs2, because my investment would have been cheap in that I could never accrue all that much fruit from a car on bs2.

Have buttons where people could pick what sort of life they get born into.  Like getting born into an Eve camp or as Eve or some family that has a charcoal pump.  Can get modified by number of play hours, or being hidden in some folder to enable it as Twisted suggested.

Ending/reducing the lineage ban would make more lives more precious, because you might only come back to that spot if the family survives.

Ending swords, since life isn't so precious if you can easily get killed by an outsider.  And disvaluing the life of another by murder isn't endorsing their life as precious.  Swords also doom belltowers and that makes lives cheaper, because people won't end up going to belltower towns as much, or live there as much anymore.  So again, remove swords from the game.

Enable babies to curse, that way there's more control of griefers since a baby can stand on the fire and see what goes down.  Also, enabling people to curse outside lineages would make lives more precious, since any sort of outsider waging war, no matter how the outsider does it, would have consequences for not valuing the lives of others.

Ending walls taking up space, since walls too close below a forge make someone who wants to forge disvalue things around, because of spacing issues.

Also, enabling people to come back to the same spot if they live to sixty.  NO ONE who Eve chains disvalues their life Jason.  Why?  Because they have to value their life to maintain their Eve chain.

jasonrohrer wrote:

So even that occasional, cool story is cut out, because too many players would spend cheap lives to make it their only story.

I'm not sure what you're saying here.  However, if they would choose to play a certain way repeatedly, whatever they are doing is a cool story TO THEM.  Please try to fully realize that what they think is a cool story is NOT what you will think will be a cool story.

Enable yum to carry over from one life to the next if someone lives to 60, since that would mean that their life matters.

Make roads easier to build between towns either by increasing the number of flat rocks... e. g. by removing the "short" object above "tall" object bug/feature... or by having some other quicker way to build roads to connect towns, that way people can more easily journey back to places.  For example, people in Diva Town recently, did NOT for the most part find their lives cheap.  They wrote stories about that place and talked about it on the discord.  Why?   Because they lived there more than once or could see another life there in the future.


Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.

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#12 2019-05-14 23:06:56

Jaona
Member
From: Neckbeard Nest
Registered: 2019-03-14
Posts: 52

Re: Ways to make EVERY life precious

My suggestion is that every time you live in a family to 55+ years, you get a token which you can use to either spawn as eve or choose a mom from a list to get born to.

I have seen the token system being quite fun in a game called Binding of Isaac: every time you complete the final boss and end your run, you get a token which gives you the ability to play as the character Eden for a game.
The Eden character is an interesting character, because in every game they start with random equipment and stats.
Because the game is quite hard, people usually try to get to the end with Eden even when they start with the worst equipment and stats.

If it takes you nearly an hour to possibly get a token, I would see people trying to take their token lives more seriously and try to get as much fun from it as possible because they earned it.

I think rewarding peoples long lives is a lot better option, especially now that it's harder to live a long life thanks to random foreigners suddenly raiding your village.

If you don't want people to start hoarding tokens so they could constantly spawn to their favorite family , you could also just have them last for a certain amount of time.

Last edited by Jaona (2019-05-14 23:17:48)


Mofobert on discord, message me for a good time.

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#13 2019-05-14 23:09:28

futurebird
Member
Registered: 2019-02-20
Posts: 1,553

Re: Ways to make EVERY life precious

Good idea, mofo!


---
omnem cibum costis
tantum baca, non facies opus

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#14 2019-05-14 23:10:26

Dodge
Member
Registered: 2018-08-27
Posts: 2,467

Re: Ways to make EVERY life precious

jasonrohrer wrote:

This is something that I've never been satisfied about.

Each life is too cheap, too throw-away, and it really doesn't matter, which is why run-away babies, suicide, etc. are so likely.  There's very little feeling of, "This is my one chance, I'd better no blow it!"

Even griefing might be related to this... I can cause trouble, and who cares if you kill me, because my life is cheap enough to replace.

The whole lineage ban thing is related to this.  We can't let you "luck out" and return sometimes, if life is cheap, because that means you can re-roll an unlimited number of times until you force yourself to "luck out."  So even that occasional, cool story is cut out, because too many players would spend cheap lives to make it their only story.


One idea that came up in another thread was a limited number of lives per hour, at least for veteran players (beginners receive some kind of grace period).

Another idea is in-game purchase of extra lives.


I'm looking for other ideas here...

You already know what to do don't try to Dodge it wink

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#15 2019-05-14 23:23:01

Luniatji
Member
Registered: 2018-04-28
Posts: 111

Re: Ways to make EVERY life precious

No no and no. Forcing a player to play a way don't work; if you pay for it or just get "so many lives", it just will not work. You got angry people and angry people go griefing. They don't play we're they are at that moment, forcing them to stay is annoying for both the mother ("Oh god this kid KEEPS SUICIDING ALL MY FERTILE LIFE STOP IT"), for babies ("I don't want to be here! I want away! If I can't die you will pay the price!") and for other players. "Oh hi that is that kid that suicided twenty times in a row by picking up a tool and run away far to die!". "Oh hey a Nie- oh dead. Oh a neph- dead. Oh a nie- dead." "I try to smith/compost/bake/whatever but everytime a kid who don't want to be here runs away after breaking my work!".

I had an idea but I have the feeling not everyone have read it, so I repeat:

I posted this idea first in the “Having a child should be a moment of joy… not like getting spam” topic (Post 14, if you want to see the original.)

My idea is to keep thing like they are. Meaning that, like now, you can run away as baby, you can /die as baby, you can run away older. But, the game “remember” your choices. Do you run away as a boy/girl? In an Eve camp? In an city? Do you ignore all your babies? That will all change your next births. I was thinking to give the game more options in how you spawn. Not by asking you “Hey do you want to spawn here?” or letting your follow your mom in her womb, but by making an sort of algoritme.

Then you will get people with different playstyles. Here I name a couple:

- Player A is not keen on playing as boy. If player A suicide by running/die-in enough the game would "learn" that and give him more chance to be a Girl in first change (So that he don't need to suicide.)

- Player B hates to be born in Eve-camps so as Eve or eve-kid. The game learns that and won't let player B born here. Or at least, far less. (So, player B would be born as gen 4 at least.)

- Player C hates the city with lots of people. Meaning that he will be more likely to be born in an Eve-camp or as eve's kids, because that's where he stays.

- Player D playes everywhere, always. Player D won't get a special role, but will be born in the cases where players A, B and C became less likely to be born.

- Player E playes everwhere and always, but has an slight plus towards a boy. Maybe because this player when playing as a woman, let all her babies die. This player will be more likely be spawn in as a boy.

But, player A, B, C and E will also born in all other situations. Meaning that player A will spawn as boy, but less so. But, it will have still less than player D. Maybe the starting chance to play a boy/girl if 50%. If Player A the first fifty times /die does as boy (Or run away, or suicide on another way) there will be a 60%/40% ratio. If player A then keeps suiciding as boy (The 40% he spawns as boy) this will become less likely. It now has 70% chance to play as a girl and 30% as a boy?

But, if Player A decides that he becomes annoyed by playing as a girl, he can work the other way around. Meaning that if he suicide fifty times as a girl, the change will by 60%/40% again to play as girl. The next hundred times he suicide as boy, this will go back to 50%. And, maybe he will even turn into a player E (The player who is more likely to be spawn in as a boy instead!). The same with someone who prefer bigger Cities, they can go back to Eve camps and vice versa.

The new players will be always a Player D. For them there will be no changes, until they start suiciding in  a situation. Or, if they don’t suicide, they will be stay as a Player D!

For older players though, the more they play, the more they start to play in a certain way. They will be less and less likely to spawn in other situations, but there will always be a chance they WILL be spawned into a situation. This way, the players who will be born to you, are more likely to stay with you. Because it’s more likely that they play the way they like to play. In the long run, that will be less /die babies, less running babies and less kids who bring bears because they are angry because you force them to stay.


This maybe sound like an "Just give them an Eve option" but thats not what it has to be. With a button like that you HAVE to be an Eve, what the phrase to "Every life is other, you can spawn wherever and whenever" is false. In my idea you CAN be spawn as eve, but not as likely as in a big city for example. Life will matter because you play were you want to play, you will have less need to grief (Because you're where you want to play, so you should be happy.. at least most of the time) and cities can grow.

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#16 2019-05-14 23:23:37

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

Re: Ways to make EVERY life precious

Jason the idea of limiting lives per hour is dumb and you should feel dumb for even suggesting it. Why?

Have you seen the sword you released into the game? The thing on release was retardedly overpowered and is still overpowered at the moment. Having the ability to basically stop people from playing the game because you decided "Well maybe I'll just kill everyone and make them go do something else." Have you not seen the thread where I've documented the amount of damage I can do to a family when provoked? Now imagine if I was doing this to people randomly. Just walking over to villages with a sword and cutting off 10+ peoples ability to play the game a life, worse yet imagine other people adopting this behavior.

Instead of trying to make every single life precious why not try to make the precious lives the very best they can be? In a game where you play hundreds or even thousands of lives (by live I mean actually live and not /die) you can't make every experience special. Some lives blur together, some suck, and sometimes you get a very special moment.

Lives where I taught someone who came to me and said "no one would even give me the time to teach me" break my heart but those sort of lives are precious. Those lives are truly in the spirit of the game where you spend your limited time trying to teach someone to be their own person, trying to teach them how to help, how to survive, and most importantly how to live. I wouldn't trade these situations for all the "precious" lives you could give me Jason.

I remember the life where my aunt specifically saved me, a little lost baby in the town and raised me. She gave me what she could and tried to help me however she could when someone like me doesn't need that kind of treatment. She made me feel special, she made me feel like my life was worth saving, and she made me feel loved. Something like that is a precious life Jason, not being some random baby who gets tossed in the wild by a mother riding away on a horse.

The life where I was making skeletons dance and doing magic tricks for babies was a wonderful life. While something like that could be seen as annoying (I did get killed for it but I accept that) I had a great time just interacting with the babies by the fire. Hell, I even passed my art on to one of my younger nieces that life where we made the skeletons dance together until someone eventually had enough of us.

On the flip side, lives where I spend grinding out oil for a town are NOT precious lives. These are generally not lives I can say I enjoy as I don't really like doing the oil grind but I do it because it helps the town out. Lives like these are thankless grinds that are anything but precious, they blur together and I wouldn't want to keep doing them but it's a needed part of the game. Hell, most city planning lives aren't exactly precious or worthwhile as these are lives just trying to make the game easier on those who come after me but do I socialize during them? Do I get to know and work with my family? No. These lives are just the in between moments before I reach that next life that makes me realize why I play OHOL and not some other game. 

I cannot get behind the idea of limiting lives, and I'm sure you can understand why others in this thread think the same way.


fug it’s Tarr.

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#17 2019-05-14 23:29:28

lychee
Member
Registered: 2019-05-08
Posts: 328

Re: Ways to make EVERY life precious

I think psykout's sandcastle analogy is a good starting point.

No matter what you do, OHOL is a game, and it's like making sandcastles in the sand.

How do you make people care about their sandcastles?

That's a really, really, really, really hard question.

I think something very important to consider is that players /die for a reason. They die because they're not really interested in playing in the current spawning location, and already from the beginning they're not really at 100% motivation. Is it really a good idea to force people to play for an hour when they weren't really interested in playing?

Most casual people don't have a lot of a lot of time to game every day, and lots of people have said that they /die because they want to make their 1 hour of gaming count. They might think that maybe a settlement at a certain technology level is "boring" or they're not in the mood to play a certain way on a certain day.

You can't force motivation into people when they didn't have that motivation to play to begin with.

People will literally disconnect.

Some days I'm not really feeling totally up for OHOL, and I'll get to age 40 or something -- and I'll feel like there's really not much that I want to do today. Like sure, I could make compost, plant carrots, or go fetch sheep -- but today I just don't feel like it, because I've done this exact same thing dozens of times already. It's nice weather outside and I don't really need to be sitting at my computer right now.

And yeah, I've basically taken off my clothes (in game hahaha) and just run into the trees to starve.

And then go off to do something else because I wasn't really really up for OHOL today.

That's just sort of an inevitable thing, as much as I like OHOL -- because this is what it's like for everyone. Some days we're really hyped to play and other days we're not. People are fickle, and in the end the way that we spend our time is up to us. Social MMORPGs get a lot of this effect; in that I used to play MapleStory and a good fraction of the playerbase wouldn't really *feel* like grinding/bossing today, and instead everyone would sit "hoeing" around the Free Market and socialize -- and peopled LOVED that (and they still loved the game even if they didn't really want to grind every day).

...so sandcastles.

How do you make people care about sandcastles?

You've got to catch people when they're at their 100%.

If a player wanted to /die to begin with, they're not going to give OHOL their 100%.

I think is really important to recognize and accept that.

It's not something that can be forced -- and if it were brute-forced, I think a lot of people would hate it.

Instead, focus on the positive content. Make ways for every life to surprise you -- for every life to be unique and irreplaceable in your memories (since we can't go back). This way, even if you didn't think anything interesting would happen today in a particular life -- maybe something interesting does. Usually, for me, it's my kids who make every life in OHOL unique and special (because every kid is different), and it's the *people* who are giving me the surprises and mixing up the tedium of doing virtual chores (I mean, that's what composting is, right?) after dozens of hours of playtime.

I would love to see you make more ways for the playerbase to make memories with each other.

Examples:
- Random easter eggs with low probability of occurring
- Like consider Don't Starve with like those ridiculous seasonal bosses -- what if there was a 1% chance that something ridiculous like that appears to challenge a given town/village?
- More opportunities for players to interact with each other, whether through marriage, altars, funerals, burials, gifts -- and incentives for why all these things would be worthwhile to pursue

Give us purpose. Don't let any ending to a town ever be the same.

I hate seeing towns/villages die from underpopulation and no more fertile girls.

That should be the absolute worst reason why a town ever goes. I want to see a town die from 100 different reasons.

I want to see my child spend a lifetime attempting to converse with a foreigner, become fluent at translating it, have a cute marriage, and then have bilingual babies. I want to see paper airplanes tossed around, my son crash a car (and be unable to fix it), and my house to catch on fire.

More content! Lots and lots and wonderful and unique and sparkling content and everyone will love you for it.

Last edited by lychee (2019-05-14 23:30:09)

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#18 2019-05-14 23:36:47

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

Re: Ways to make EVERY life precious

Microtransanctions, seriously? What's next, lootboxes? AAA games are collapsing due to this shit, just look at Fallout 76 or Anthem. Timer between respawns is fine, but it should be just long enough to be annoying rather than preventing you from playing (ie under 5 minutes).

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#19 2019-05-14 23:43:08

jasonrohrer
Administrator
Registered: 2017-02-13
Posts: 4,803

Re: Ways to make EVERY life precious

I didn't ask about how to make people care about projects in the game, or about their lives in general.

I said that baby lives are cheap, currently.  Adult lives are not cheap, because it takes investment to get there.  Very few people commit suicide at age...  39.... in the game.

So if something happens to you at age 39, right in the middle of your life's project, you feel it very acutely, and beg for someone to heal you, etc.  That's great.

I wish you felt a baby death that acutely too, somehow.  How do people invest in being a baby?  How do they earn it?  How do they have a stake in it?  Right now, it's as cheap as pressing a button, and it serves as a re-roll mechanic each time.

I added DIE not to appease players who wanted re-rolls, but primarily to help limit the damage they did to their mothers, by allowing a reset of birth cool-down (by differentiating suicide and abandonment).  But a side-effect of DIE was making baby lives even cheaper.  At least before you had to run away and run around for 30+ seconds each time.  At least there was some investment in each one.

Stopping people from playing is probably a bad idea.... but maybe there could be some bonus for playing the life you're handed.  Like... a "super baby" token that you get once per hour, or something...


And yeah, Tarr, you must be right about me being dumb.

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#20 2019-05-14 23:43:54

jasonrohrer
Administrator
Registered: 2017-02-13
Posts: 4,803

Re: Ways to make EVERY life precious

Also, part of you, the community being involved in the design process is hearing my early ideas.

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#21 2019-05-14 23:44:18

paulof
Member
Registered: 2019-05-12
Posts: 45

Re: Ways to make EVERY life precious

Luniatji wrote:

...

My idea is to keep thing like they are. Meaning that, like now, you can run away as baby, you can /die as baby, you can run away older. But, the game “remember” your choices. Do you run away as a boy/girl? In an Eve camp? In an city? Do you ignore all your babies? That will all change your next births. I was thinking to give the game more options in how you spawn. Not by asking you “Hey do you want to spawn here?” or letting your follow your mom in her womb, but by making an sort of algoritme.

Then you will get people with different playstyles. Here I name a couple:

- Player A is not keen on playing as boy. If player A suicide by running/die-in enough the game would "learn" that and give him more chance to be a Girl in first change (So that he don't need to suicide.)

- Player B hates to be born in Eve-camps so as Eve or eve-kid. The game learns that and won't let player B born here. Or at least, far less. (So, player B would be born as gen 4 at least.)

- Player C hates the city with lots of people. Meaning that he will be more likely to be born in an Eve-camp or as eve's kids, because that's where he stays.

- Player D playes everywhere, always. Player D won't get a special role, but will be born in the cases where players A, B and C became less likely to be born.

- Player E playes everwhere and always, but has an slight plus towards a boy. Maybe because this player when playing as a woman, let all her babies die. This player will be more likely be spawn in as a boy.

...

i liked this idea. i would add a system where players create quests for other players, i mean most of the time I committed suicide i wasn't feeling useful for the village. This quest system would work also for future generations, like "finish this" or keep this safe. i don't know what hthe rewards would be...

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#22 2019-05-14 23:59:09

spurofthemoment
Member
From: United States
Registered: 2019-05-10
Posts: 59

Re: Ways to make EVERY life precious

So I posed this question to my sister as a type of riddle, in order to get an outside opinion, and...she says she doesn't think there's a solution. She says that if people had infinite lives IRL, there would be a massive increase in suicides because you wouldn't be able to convince people to stay in one situation when they know they have a chance at a better one. So that's cheery.

I was initially a fan of life tokens, but as people have noted above, I think that's not going to work. The more you try to force people to have fun or to care, the less they will do so, just out of spite. Again, I've seen this IRL in summer camps. It's not a great time.

The only thing I can think of is trying to figure out how to entice people to stay in unfavorable situations. As a player, I try to convince babies to stay right away by using /LOVE or /JOY and saying something like "Yay!" or "Hi!" and naming them as soon as possible, so they at least know I'll be sad if they die. It sometimes works, but clearly we need a larger solution than that.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but /DIE is only a real problem for small towns/Eve camps, right? I mean, it sucks for legacies in big cities, but from what I'm seeing on here, most people seem to prefer playing in a large town or city rather than building up a small/abandoned town or playing in an Eve camp.

So the question becomes, WHY are Eve camps so much less popular? And what, if anything, can be done to change that? What don't people like about Eve camps? Is it the difficulty level of staying alive? Is it standing in front of the fire for minutes on end in hopes of having a baby? Is it the lack of resources?

Once you figure out the most common situation in which people /DIE, and from there figure out what they don't like about that situation, you might be able to come up with some fixes.

So...maybe a poll? Something like...
-How often do you /DIE?
-In what situations do you /DIE?
-What are the top five reasons you /DIE in those situations?

Something like that...maybe more specific.

Last edited by spurofthemoment (2019-05-15 00:00:52)


My name's Ash. And yes, I want to be the very best, like no one ever was.

And no, I've never played Pokemon. It just...kinda happened that way.

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#23 2019-05-14 23:59:56

DestinyCall
Member
Registered: 2018-12-08
Posts: 4,563

Re: Ways to make EVERY life precious

jasonrohrer wrote:

Stopping people from playing is probably a bad idea.... but maybe there could be some bonus for playing the life you're handed.  Like... a "super baby" token that you get once per hour, or something....

I like the idea of rewarding long lives in some way.   I would love to see this idea combined with a lineage continuation mechanic.    Like living a full life gives you a token that will let you "buy" your way back into that family line at a future date (after the lineage ban has expired to prevent chain-incarnations.)    This would give people more control over their destiny and let them invest more deeping in a given family/village without removing the randomness of being born somewhere new most of the time.  Experienced players would get these tolkens more easily since they dies less to random accidents/starvation but each one would be precious to the players who have become emotionally invested in a particular village's fate and want the chance to return before it is gone.

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#24 2019-05-15 00:07:56

paulof
Member
Registered: 2019-05-12
Posts: 45

Re: Ways to make EVERY life precious

spurofthemoment wrote:

-In what situations do you /DIE?

Two situations:

I - when i enter the game planning on doing something specific i can't do in a small town
II - When i want to go back to a specific town ive lived, then i /DIE til i get there or til spawn as eve which i can't /DIE and im too lazy to kill myself


/DIE should never exist, now we are used to that and we refuse to loose it.

Edit: When my mother ask to stay i stay LOL

Last edited by paulof (2019-05-15 00:09:55)

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#25 2019-05-15 00:12:26

Jk Howling
Member
From: Washington State
Registered: 2018-06-16
Posts: 468

Re: Ways to make EVERY life precious

jasonrohrer wrote:

Stopping people from playing is probably a bad idea.... but maybe there could be some bonus for playing the life you're handed.  Like... a "super baby" token that you get once per hour, or something...

Rewarding players for playing long/productive has been requested and discussed by people among the community for months lol. I vividly remember hearing the initial idea well over 6 months ago. But hey, better late than never to reach that conclusion. It's a much better concept than pay-2-play or microtransactions.

Give us a reward for living our our lives and dying of old age. Right now, the more you play the game, the less and less fulfilling it becomes to live to 60. There's little incentive other than "I like this town/area." We should be rewarded for this, even in a small way.

Maybe you can consider your previous idea of the selection screen for our next life, except instead of being enabled whenever you /die, you'd be giving us this as a reward for living to 60. I think there'd have to be additional limitations of some sort, however. A cooldown so we don't just pick and live consecutively, perhaps, or having to live multiple lives to 60 consecutively to unlock this feature..

Some sort of reward, in general, for living with the life we're dealt to 60 would be nice though. Even if it's simply something like a slightly extended life, or a small fertility boost, or something of the sorts.


-Has ascended to better games-

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