Economics of OneLife

PXshadow · 2019-07-22 10:54:57

Notice

I welcome all productive discussion and feedback. I will try and take as much of it to modify and continue to expand on the analysis. The analysis is broken up into 4 main parts, overview, road map, roles, hypothesized changes. Please take the road map to be a compressed and expanded overlook, that is not intended to discredit any of the unique and intricate details of an individual player's life that should be valued.

Overview

One Hour One Life is a multiplayer survival game by Jason Rohrer, that has the potential for strong economics and market incentives. Currently however, the majority of players exist in a state of communal ownership and egalitarian values. Property norms only exist in so far as what people can carry on them (backpack, clothes, food).

Resource Scarcity plays no real role in production capacity. Most production is completely dependent on human labor (eg. scavenging, arbitrary wait times from object transitions). Even on the human labor front, the incentives to maximize it, in order to advance technology for instance, are quite minimal as players are not able to reap the rewards during their lifetime. The game suffers from progression that is multigenerational, preversing incentives for a grand scheme ordeal that does not factor in individual motives enough.

What occurs as you’d most likely expect is a Garden of Eden, where most players engage as caretakers for future generations, with no real system incentive to do so besides role playing.

Road map

From the overview, a standard societal road map is produced every day across multiple game towns. First Eve appears, the experienced, ambitious, and lucky ones survive with a couple of experienced enough offspring. After about 4-5 generations, a sustainable town exists that can manage new children and only a few food shortages occur now. Two generations after and the city now has the ability to support a majority of players no longer participating in agriculture.

Roles

This allows players to take on the following roles. Adventurer/roleplayer, trolls/griefers, smiths, cooks, lumberjacks, cleaners/builders, caretakers, scavengers and finally innovators. Players also switch around their roles in order to fill town needs.

Adventurer/roleplayer role is common. They allow players to live a memorable life with few skills, and serve essentially no purpose economically.
Smiths/cooks/lumberjacks is a set of roles with mundane tasks that rely on abundant materials that scavengers supply to minimally increase societal progression. These tasks increase the efficiency of scavenging itself. For example, a stone hoe unit takes less time to produce than the equivalent twig unit. Another example is a fertilizer unit requiring less labor time on average than the equivalent dirt unit.
Innovator is a rare late game (big city) role against the design of the game. Because of this, these types of players exist in order to engage in an experience, such as building a car, camera , or even a radio. These engagements because of little subjective use value, have no bearing on the rest of the society and serve the equivalent outcome of an adventurer.
Cleaners/builders role is uncommon, and forms by necessity in locally resource abundant large cities.
Caretaker role is also uncommon, and is filled in order to have better odds to continue the lineage by providing resources and/or teaching players.
Scavenger role, the senior role that supports all other roles, with no grounding motive besides role play, hold the majority of the foundation to support a town.

In conclusion, because of the scavenge system almost all senior/experienced players are outside of the town’s perimeter and no meaningful coordination occurs within the town. Stagnation almost always occurs. People get lazy/bored by lack of potential progress, shortages occur, towns produce needless conflict with themselves and their neighbors. Players simply allow the towns to slowly diminish to ruins, opening the floodgates to trolling/griefing players accelerating the process. Killings in retaliation begin and any type of previously perceived order disappears leading to emigration and chaos.

Changes to a Centrally Planned System

Central planning requires the use of coordinated force. With the current PVP system the game incentives retaliation attacks, as once someone has stabbed another player, both characters move incredibly slow and are delayed from attacking. This system with three or four experienced, coordinated players and enough resources makes the group unstoppable against an uncoordinated much larger group. In order to move the game closer to the potential of a planned system, the following steps need to occur:

Lower production time to produce weapons and medical supplies.
Ability to retain control over a given region across lives either by setting spawn, or allowing players to relocate past towns faster.
Ability to incapacitate, move players, and take the items from a player’s body.
Having vital rare resources that can easily be centralized, such as gold throughout history or castles.

Changes to a Market System

A market system has the benefit of producing spontaneous order by individual incentive. Thereby a market needs no central planner or authority to function effectively. The game currently is heading away from this direction, these are the changes that need to occur to move it towards.

Allow players to easily secure/hold resources across lives.
Increase scarcity of all resources in order to shift production away from direct use towards production for exchange.
Add technological progression that would decrease the local scarcity of a material.
Make labor tasks hold a greater efficiency with the division of labor (specialization over generalization)
Tweak land to uphold to the division of land (certain land has specialized uses)
Increase the effectiveness of property protection.
Increase the effectiveness of weapons for defense.
Increase the required tasks/steps for both capital and consumer goods.
Allow players to locate each other if both players desire.
Increase the subjective use value for advanced technology.
Increase the incentives for taking care of children.
Make tasks exponentially more efficient with a group of players versus the same amount of player individually.

Terms

Unit: Quantity of a good or service.
Division of Labor: Separation of tasks in order to specialize.
Division of Land: Separation of specialized land.
Consumer Goods: Products or services used by a consumer.
Capital Goods: Products or services used by a business or partnership in order to obtain more allocated resources.
Property norms: Norms relating to ownership.

Credits
Editor - Mofobert
Reviewer - Tarr

Last edited by PXshadow (2019-07-22 20:34:08)

arkajalka · 2019-07-22 11:15:29

TLDR: The current state of game is communism and people share resourses. Create weapons that work and git gold. Ability to subdue others.

I dont want any of this capitalism in my experience and will revolt hard against any move towards capitalism. I like my communism pure and clean. This is the utopia that i cant have in real world cause people are too stuck on current idealisms and fear of change.

chinacom

Look they even have a black man in there. Multicultural communist china.

Also you forgot the role of organizer/cleaner, which is the most important role in late game states big citys.

Last edited by arkajalka (2019-07-22 11:16:59)

Ilka · 2019-07-22 12:29:20

I repeat 100 times - what we had in the game was a tribal community and not communism.

Do you Americans do not know this concept?

Forgive me, this is a well thought out concept.

Unfortunately, he has one major mistake - you try to match the game with Jason's unreal ideas.

So one by one - we live an hour in this game and then we can not go back to our family (until it's a long time).

So - why do I need some property?

Am I to accumulate wealth and what will I do with it?

I will give back to children? And if I do not have children, or my children are griefers?

Am I to be happy that I hide 5 crowns?

And to have the satisfaction that I am the owner of this virtual wealth?

It's illogical ...

For this reason, trade is currently impossible.

It would be possible if we could produce some luxury goods.

But it is much easier for Jason to make resources to be scarce ..

According to your concept, this game is supposed to be some kind of tycoon.

Only we live in it for 1 hour, so it does not make sense.

And most importantly - I do not know why players are playing this game, but probably not to build their empire?

There are many games where you can do it.

I play because of the nice, charming stories that this game can give me.

That's because sometimes I can make cool contact with other players.

Because sometimes I'm moved, sometimes I'm laughing at playing this game.

Unfortunately, lately I'm mainly frustrated and nervous, so I'm not playing already.

In short, Jason wants OHOL to be RPG, FPS, tycoon and I do not know what else.

A bit of this too much and the effect can not be good.

I apologize for being negative - you put a lot of work into it.

Good luck in solving unsolved problems.

Dodge · 2019-07-22 13:20:32

There is no trade because:

1) Everyone can do everything so nothing has real value.

2) Everyone shares everything so no need for trading.

All villages are tribal because it's the system that takes least effort and it works, so why change it?

There could be individual houses if the map was finite with no culling but even then trading would be trivial.

The only way to have meaningful trading is by having jobs,skill, specialties etc.

The farmer trades with the smith that trades with the tailor etc.

Basically what we have in real life since not one person can learn everything and be good at it.

It takes years to learn a new profession but in OHOL you are born as a baby that already knows farming, cooking, how to make diesel engines, cars and even rocket ships if we had those in game.

ollj · 2019-07-22 15:07:50

there is no significant economics in what little sociual structure ohol has.
depleting oil added a minor oil-tycoon sim to a murder simulator with roads and musrhrooms.

The [/die and random spawning and life limits] completely dissasociate a player from a location/family WHILE reincarnation is the in universe norm.
there is a clash of the reincarnation mechanic and the "you only live one hour" base concept.
unless the player is willig to spend 10-30 minutes per life to travel to the same locale, then your playing a reincarnation motive, and the motive is either warfare, roadbuilding or endtowers, and in the end endtower motive wins this game.
but this all just wastes a lot of time with /die or traveling or building hoards or building with next to no assiciation to whatever you build.

you may believe the wolly, that people only assocuate with the family they are currently bortnj into, btut this is completely false.
people murder their own family, because that player just defended the family against intruders, and those intruders just happened to be the PREVIOUS family of the treasonous murderer.
the random reincarnation just generates a mess of intention and association, that almost certainly ends in pseudo random mass murder, and all warfare ends in suicidal treason, killing 2 towns for one.
but warfare is inevitable, because the game has null viable defensive strategies.

---

Combat is a sad joke, because it has null viable defensive mechanics, that are not a complete waste of time.
imagine realtime strategy games (warcraft/starcraft/mobas) without defensive abilities/strategies/tactics.
imagine team fortress 2 without defensive strategies/roles.
you end up with a multiplayer shooter like quake/doom/UT, it has only tactics, but next to no strategy, besidescapture-the-flag gameplay.

and we have had better games/mechanics in the past, [giants citizen kabuto] and [natural selection] strike me as being more ballanced here, while still being playable with only 9-20 players in one "shard/server".

youre dumb to not constantly attack and murder in such a (ohol like imballanced) game. its a "might makes right" constant zerg rush treason murder simulator BY DESIGN and obviously by Jasons intent.
youre dumb to waste time expanding in such a (ohol like imballanced) game, as it only begs to being attacked, while being the weaker attacker (less flamking capability)
youre very dumb to waste time with non-viable devensive strategies in such a (ohol like imballanced) game.

you can still enjoy an imballanced game, but the more ballanced strategy games tend to be more famous for it.

howto?:

Ohol needs ARMOR classes that get rid of [first attacker always wins with an instakill and then likely just gets revenge killed after 1-6 murders] gameplay.
the "yum-shield" can be used for this, which likely has invaders/massmurderers have a lower yum than females that that dont move as much outside bases.
A knife/bow/sword hit can have the VERY same effect as being stung by mosquitoes, just weaker than that, but maybe longer lasting, and STACKABLE (so multiple kits may just kill you off faster).
Getting hit by weapons may be a lot more like being mosquito-asian, it diminishes pibs temporarily, and has you be hungry and unable to eat for a hile and makes you unable to carry anything.
it costs you a lot of food,m which is easily recouable within a high-yum location, and is survivable without medical procedure.
snake bites (through armor) could be a very slow crippling death, as only very little venom made it trough your fat yummy body under chainmall and leather clothing, almost harmless to old enough players, besides being unable to carry anything.

then, medical procedures may just diminish the effect of all that, remove the effect faster.

---

the cursing system is a sick joke, as there is a permanent curse rating thast determines how long you are in donkey town, and any town of gillible fools can easily send an innocent players to donkey town.
i was only twice in donkey town so far, and my stay has been prolonged by many revenge-cursing players.
in case youre dumb enough to curse someone who can see you cursing. just dont be THAT dumb!
I met a completely harmless newbie player in donkey town once, to prove this statement, i may provide screenshots of your dialog. donkey town hits newbies and long time players much harder than casual players.

to exploit this sick joke of a curse system, i randomly do this; name my children in the middle of nowhere, curse my children, and then just let my children starve.
its not a "wasted curse" vure to the dumb permanent curse score ranking.
that player now spends roughly 5 more minutea in donkey town, should that player EVER get there, which is just a matter of time.
because quads are a thing in this game. and quads can easily curse-snipe anyone, and then a gullible town joins in.
talk about dissassociating from your own family/children.

---

the memerboard gene-rating promotes murdering your mother and family elders all their posessions, as it only rewards offspring, and elders are essentially a waste of food by game mechanics.

---

in conclusion, while avatars look humanoid, the game plays more like a society of heavily armed jumping-spiders, that constantly hunt, sometimws with eggs on their back, eat their mates and eat their parents.
so maybe a reskin to spider-avatars that sdomehow llearned ironworking, horseback riding and steam engine technology makes the most sense by now.

Last edited by ollj (2019-07-22 15:34:26)

The_Anabaptist · 2019-07-22 15:09:59

I would agree that under the current state of the game, there is little incentive to pass anything down to direct family members. Even though they are born to you, they are effectively strangers. Those kids that are competent are the least likely to need what few possessions you have. At that point, at the end of my life, I'm just looking for an under clothed girl in the community that is displaying a work ethic to gift my stuff to.

It would be nice if there was a feature in the game where you could somehow flag another player to be added to a friends list. The purpose being that the subsequent times you were born then if any of them were in the position of a fertile female (and they weren't in your banned map zone) that you could be prioritized to be born to them. This could strengthen the bonds between some players over repeated game sessions. And thus might further encourage the passing on of goods and setting up properties.

The_Anabaptist

pein · 2019-07-22 15:35:09

the focus should be on processing resources, not gathering them

i told this many times, most players live and die in an 50x50 area
that has limtied wood, stone, adobe, etc.

good example my idea of family soup aka stew
static, which is bad, but in a world when people are static, the food value matters more than portability (i wanted a more complex system where this is served at a table but we can always get what we want)
it has a few resources grown locally but a lot of steps
everyone likes it

now just an example from other games:
stronghold crusader had a system where cheese was made from cows, hides made armor and dead cow could be catapulted
wood could make crossbows and sold for profit or used in battle

even better exampel is tropico
while corn, pineapple, banana, meat and milk can be eaten
can also be canned and sold for profit
and some crops like tobacco, coffee, sugar and cacao can not be eaten but to be sold
also further processing makes cigars (hand and machine rolled), freezed dried canned coffee, chocolate and rum
same for logs-lumber-furniture-boats
iron coal steel and cars

some resources solely exist for profit making
which would allow trade to happen, especially if they got a use in unlocking items

the idea of going further and further, movign a whole city, doesn't work, people don't move
the idea of forcing them to move, wont change much if you cant move at once and track each other

if spot A would have a limtied map and you could travel to next location via ship or train, and you got to pay a fee (currency or resources) that would allow sending kids to next area with a goal, and producing cash crops would be optional part of game, but in the bigger picture would create a need of producing stuf to get to a better location

ollj · 2019-07-22 15:37:58

here is a trick. use the hetuv mod, and use the WASD controls to move arund back and forth rapidly, as if you have a stick up your butt.
this is an option to expose yourself as a more expoerienced player, and if 2 of those meet each other as such and remain friendly for 20 minutes, they may claim to be someone from the ohol-discord to each other.
these end up as pseudo-twinning sessions of gret cooperation, usually resulting in a tepmorary baby boom and many carts/pies being made.

or just sign a witty ingame note with a more permanent label.
and always curse people who write a "sbscribe to my youtube channel" note.

Last edited by ollj (2019-07-22 15:39:16)

ollj · 2019-07-22 15:48:41

I once was born to a property-fenching mom, who sayd "we build a house in this fenched area and only grow cash crops"
im all like, wtf, there is no sash crops and no economy in this game, besides people who dare tio trade baskeds of mushrooms for backpacks, which occasionally works without a murder/sheft happening.

I murdered my mom for her stupidity of playing the wrong game is she ever wanted "cash crop" slave children, and 2 of my siblings for being threatening crybabies about the dumb-people-murder.

ollj · 2019-07-22 16:00:03

some people hoard horses or gold, or even lots of decaying cloth.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ … 1_smol.jpg
i mostly hoarded chisels to build bells (and anythign that let me build roads faster), pretty much in the middle of nowhere, in between 12 once famous cities with slightly longer roads at them, now turned to ruins ever since oil-depletion-typo-day, occasionally with sheep pens in very few of them.

PXshadow · 2019-07-22 19:17:22

Well first off the discussion is fantastic, I'll try to go through points that I think I may be able to help increase the potential of this.

arkajalka wrote:

TLDR: The current state of game is communism and people share resourses. Create weapons that work and git gold. Ability to subdue others.

Hey arkajalka the TLDR has an overview of the command economy, but misses out an overview of the market one.

arkajalka wrote:

I dont want any of this capitalism in my experience and will revolt hard against any move towards capitalism. I like my communism pure and clean. This is the utopia that i cant have in real world cause people are too stuck on current idealisms and fear of change.

"people are too stuck on current idealisms" = "I like my communism pure and clean."
"fear of change" = "will revolt hard against any move towards capitalism"

Ilka wrote:

I repeat 100 times - what we had in the game was a tribal community and not communism.
Do you Americans do not know this concept?

The concept primitive communism was developed by Marx to describe how primitive societies act in accordance to communism, feel free however to learn about it, as I wouldn't know I'm an American.

Ilka wrote:

And to have the satisfaction that I am the owner of this virtual wealth?
It's illogical ...

I subscribe to the STV (Subjective theory of value) so I leave whether a desire is logical or not to the philosophy department. I do however from all of the case studies of markets in video games know, virtual goods can indeed be valued. Which you later say is possible with Luxury items, fantastic. And that scarcity needs to play a part in order to bring value, I agree as well and a suggestion of scarcity should be in the post.

Ilka wrote:

Only we live in it for 1 hour, so it does not make sense.
And most importantly - I do not know why players are playing this game, but probably not to build their empire?

Well the 1 hour is the cause not necessarily the problem, if there was some way to carry on life connected resources, even if you only have 1 hour for a life, I think from a viewpoint that is pro-market, push the incentives more towards individual self interest.

"Build their empire", I'm in the current understanding that an empire falls more in line with a command(planned) economy, My other model that I put forward is a market system, which I believe gets a lot of it's strength through decentralization.

Ilka wrote:

I apologize for being negative - you put a lot of work into it.
Good luck in solving unsolved problems.

No worries, and thank you Ilka! I understand, I am passing over alot of other important elements to the game and I apologize. Those elements as I said in the notice are still as important and I appreciate the discussion around them. However for the time being I want to spur all of the economic points for now.

Dodge wrote:

There is no trade because:
1) Everyone can do everything so nothing has real value.
2) Everyone shares everything so no need for trading.

I think your first point is better said here "It takes years to learn a new profession" as it's not an issue that everyone could hypothetically learn anything, it's the incentive structure for diving deep into a single or related fields is there. Which you are right is currently not the case in OHOL, and mechanics would need to added/changed in order to move in that direction.

The second point seems to be addressing the symptom not the cause for it, which I believe is scarcity, but you are right that no trading can occur with out some type of ownership norms.

Dodge wrote:

The only way to have meaningful trading is by having jobs,skill, specialties etc.

Yes exactly! You are spot on, the division of labor is needed for trade as well as market economies and larger societies.

ollj wrote:

The [/die and random spawning and life limits] completely dissasociate a player from a location/family WHILE reincarnation is the in universe norm.
there is a clash of the reincarnation mechanic and the "you only live one hour" base concept.

Yes disassociate is a fair word to use for the lack of motive of a single individual life. I don't want to touch on the rest yet Ollj, I appreciate the discussion immensely though and I understand where you are coming from.

The_Anabaptist wrote:

The purpose being that the subsequent times you were born then if any of them were in the position of a fertile female (and they weren't in your banned map zone) that you could be prioritized to be born to them.

Great idea, to add to that, have it so the player's ages are offset in order to have the lineage continue to pass down with the same players effectively.

The_Anabaptist wrote:

This could strengthen the bonds between some players over repeated game sessions. And thus might further encourage the passing on of goods and setting up properties.

Hey The_Anabaptist, I agree! Persistent valuable resources for a coordinated group will want to protect them, and passing goods makes sense with a group that you actually have a bound with like you said, compared to a group of strangers.

pein wrote:

the focus should be on processing resources, not gathering them

This is an essential point for an interconnected market, that incentives persistent, over looting.
If no increases to processing occurs and scarcity increases you get walled off castles where factions battle and pillage cities for finite resources.
Compare that to an open market with a high level of processing where players specialize and as such looting players carries a major disincentive, market players will no longer make/accept exchanges with problematic players that threaten the order and diminish production capacity for everyone. Not to mention there's even a lack of potential value from the looting it's self via specialization (only specific people have the knowledge to operate the production facility effectively) and decentralization (value is spread across locations and exchanges bring it into existence which would not be possible now). Keep up the good work Pein!

If I missed anything please let me know, and again I really appreciate the discussion, let's keep this going. (I'd love for someone's take on the roles I laid out, or the societal cycle)

pein · 2019-07-22 19:54:18

na h , that marxism is bullshit, marx wasn't even marxist

capitalism was invented as a separate ideology, and lot of governments were called government
there is always someones interest to break the kingdoms and "modernize" countries

what we got now? every communism is bad, and communism lost and blabla, meanwhile USA has banks in every country of the world and taxing them indirectly, and if anyones doesn't want that, they are called terrorists, communists and such

communism is also producing for money, they had plans on expansion, 5 year plans, increasing population, etc.

the main difference in politics, maybe that capitalist countries try to maximise quality in a smaller place and communist try to exploit more territory with more coverage
in this gmae, population is totally uncontrolled and i never seen people walk out to make a new camp cause they are too many people already

sure, there is no property, you can do 99% of work and anyone can take it item ownership and will after death? or ust limit on how many clothes peaople can scavenge at a time?

even if you got money, you need to able to spend on things you want, and do things for it you don't necessarily want

i think the best way would be a premade AI controlled market, you build it from some resources, then you can buy and sell stuff for profit
simulating the transport is not the best mechanic
but as i said, we need more focus on processing items, less on gathering them, the map could be more compact, but with more stuff, maybe completely useles biomes and useful ones, some exotic materials, like 8-16 types

the market would control itself
but the new items would need private ownership or family wide ownership

PXshadow · 2019-07-22 20:32:49

pein wrote:

communism is also producing for money, they had plans on expansion, 5 year plans, increasing population, etc.

I don't want to dive to much into the weeds of politics especially communism because it's not really even economics (as it basically denies scarcity the most important aspect of economics) .But let me just say 5 year plans are centrally planned socialist economies not communist. Communism is for all purposes, is an unreachable utopia of a stateless, classless, moneyless society. Also I'll remove the word, communism and just say egalitarian tendencies and communal ownership from the post, as it seems to be the point that is getting latched onto when there's much more important aspects of the post I think.

pein wrote:

i think the best way would be a premade AI controlled market, you build it from some resources, then you can buy and sell stuff for profit

I disagree strongly, the best way would to let the players solely go about it, in the same mindset of civilization building. AI will push the players to a predefined path for the game, when it should really be open ended and end up in the decision of a player.

pein wrote:

but as i said, we need more focus on processing items, less on gathering them, the map could be more compact, but with more stuff, maybe completely useles biomes and useful ones, some exotic materials, like 8-16 types

I agree another distinction that is important is a change from production for self use to production for exchange. The changes quoted would indeed move the needle more towards a market. Specialization of land also having the pro of exploration regardless.

One Hour One Life Forums

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Economics of OneLife

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