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a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building

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#26 2019-09-18 16:28:29

Anhigen
Member
Registered: 2019-09-03
Posts: 92

Re: We need more content

MrsDuckGirl wrote:

I would prefer he fixes the ten-uses-and-I-break hoe (I also noticed it for some other tools) than he fixes useless issues.

That's not a bug--Gamepedia Link--and while this article isn't complete, yet, it should help clear up what's going on. I had the same misunderstanding too, and because those stats are not explicitly laid out anywhere for you to see in the game--and mechanics like CTU aren't mentioned, even conversationally, in the tutorial--you'd have no idea that they are going on. I just thought I was using the hoe wrong.

Booklat1 wrote:

How long has it been since last you've seen mango trees? Or rails? How about cars?

Those items, particularly cars and planes, appear to be novelties, as in they're not here to affect the game but still gives us something to play with. I personally think they're show pieces. A quick look through YouTube and you'll see people posting videos about making these items, and it gives a really false sense of how far the tech tree can grow. This bit is a little thorny for me because between the trailer on the website, and some user clips about late stage tech--I really felt there was a whole WORLD for me to explore and bought in not knowing that I could make an engine but not a tunic.

While those items are fun to build, and maybe were supposed to inspire more group play, I think their design is in attracting new players not solving an in game problem or offering a help in producing something. Some "strategic show pieces" are going to be necessary from a developers point of view, after all we do need more players, but considering we already don't have meaningful interactions between players--you just solo play after childhood, truly--having meaningless objects isn't helpful. Lol.

I don't know where to put this in my post but I've only seen a desert biome once, and it was by mistake, and I have almost 100 hrs in OHOL. Is there an Eve who spawns there or something? How are people even interacting with that biome when almost all play, at least on the big server, avoids those areas? Are people building towns there? What's the advantage of cacti?


Everyone talks about how great milk is, no one talks about how many bb cows you must let die...

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#27 2019-09-18 16:54:34

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

Re: We need more content

Anhigen wrote:
MrsDuckGirl wrote:

I would prefer he fixes the ten-uses-and-I-break hoe (I also noticed it for some other tools) than he fixes useless issues.

That's not a bug--Gamepedia Link--and while this article isn't complete, yet, it should help clear up what's going on. I had the same misunderstanding too, and because those stats are not explicitly laid out anywhere for you to see in the game--and mechanics like CTU aren't mentioned, even conversationally, in the tutorial--you'd have no idea that they are going on. I just thought I was using the hoe wrong.

It might not be a bug, but I'd arguethat it is still a problem.   I've had the experience of desperately coordinating the efforts of a small town to build and install a necomen pump on our dry deep well in a frantic race against starvation, farms dry as a bone, food supply dwindling.  The sense of victory when we completed the task toward the end of my life immediately replaced by despair when the well exhausted AFTER THE FIRST FIRING.  We didn't get a single bucket of water.

I told my kids to find a new town, because this one was as good as dead.  All because of a crappy RNG roll that negated years of our efforts instantly.

Ideally, I would like these things to have a reasonable MINIMUM number of uses, not just an AVERAGE.  This would prevent absurd scenarios, like an iron hoe breaking after ten uses or an iron mine only giving five iron or a well exhausting after the first use.    It is okay to have some flex in the upper end, but it really hurts to see this much randomness on the lower end of the curve.

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#28 2019-09-18 17:55:09

Anhigen
Member
Registered: 2019-09-03
Posts: 92

Re: We need more content

DestinyCall wrote:

Ideally, I would like these things to have a reasonable MINIMUM number of uses, not just an AVERAGE.

What you described sounds like a bug tho.

There is a minimum threshold to item uses, for instance a steel hoe has a NOU 5, so there is no way for use it less than 5 times. Those NOU thresholds can feel too low but I think most of that feeling comes from not understanding the background mechanics and stats, maybe, as they're hidden from players in game. Idk. It's why I put tables on the gampedia to show how just one integer change varies the ENU widely. Once you start expecting the hoe to break it doesn't seem to screw you over as much. But ultimately, I'm not sure how effective NOU is for our purposes. Like, intuitively it makes sense, and it has a real life counter-part in that things do break or feel like they have a limited amount of uses before wearing out, but maybe it's not the best approach, in terms of players understanding what's going on and thus frustration. It seems like the NOU is important in industry, you need a black smith to be producing these items regularly, but you could achieve this with timed items. A hoe could only last five minutes--five years--before breaking. (or any time interval, 10, 15, 20) The last two minutes could show that it's about to break. That would feel less frustrating for those who are really bothered by RNG. Tho we would now have people pissed that their piece of steel only lasts a ten minutes when they have a real thing that's important in their real life and this game doesn't reflect that their real thing has lasted longer than it did in this imaginary game. Huff. So, I get what the RNG is trying to reproduce, and appreciate the variance, so I'm not too bothered by it, but any option, NOU/timed/etc, ultimately has it's downside and this is just the downside we have with this option.

But again, the well should have a LU proc that means it's at least usable once to prevent that very situation from happening. That sounds like a bug that JR doesn't want to have happen.

Last edited by Anhigen (2019-09-18 18:00:39)


Everyone talks about how great milk is, no one talks about how many bb cows you must let die...

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#29 2019-09-18 19:38:14

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

Re: We need more content

If the minimum use on a hoe is set at 5 and the average use is around 50, that is definitely too wide of a spread for my tastes.      That is a ten-fold spread between "worst case scenario" and "average experience while playing many lives".   Guarateed to feel unfair and RNG-heavy when you can't even till as many rows with  your brand new hoe as your neighbor was able to manage with a flimsy skewer.

Knowing the math behind it doesn't make me feel any less ripped off.

In my opinion, with obviously teired items like Skewer -> Stone hoe -> Iron hoe, each upgrade should have a solid advantage over the prior tier.    The stone hoe's minimum uses should fall close to or ABOVE average uses for the skewer.   The iron hoe's minimum uses should fall close to or above average uses for the stone hoe.   The basic cost is higher for the upgraded tool.   It doesn't work any faster or allow you to till new things.   The ONLY difference is related to number of uses, so that needs to be a real difference, even in a worst case scenario.

Last edited by DestinyCall (2019-09-18 19:44:34)

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#30 2019-09-18 20:05:00

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

Re: We need more content

Anhigen wrote:
DestinyCall wrote:

Ideally, I would like these things to have a reasonable MINIMUM number of uses, not just an AVERAGE.

What you described sounds like a bug tho.

...

But again, the well should have a LU proc that means it's at least usable once to prevent that very situation from happening. That sounds like a bug that JR doesn't want to have happen.

Looking at the newcomen pump on OneTech, I should ammend my early description.  We successfully fired the pump one time, so we did get three buckets of water out of the well before it exhausted after that initial use.   It just felt like nothing, because I expected a lot more based on the effort we put into making the damn thing.   And we were in no way ready to switch to diesel.

Unfortuately for us, the wet newcomen well has a five percent chance to become exhausted EVERY TIME you draw out the last bucket.   Which means you could fire it five times bdfore it exhaustes or fifty times ... or one time, if you are really unlucky, like me.   I've noticed very few villages using newcomen pumps lately ... they all seem to have deep wells or diesel (or exhausted deep well).   I'm guessing that a lot of villages have experienced a similar experience to my own, but it might have taken a little longer to use the water, so nobody noticed how fast the pump broke anf becsme useless.   A 5% raw chance means that, on average, one out of every twenty pumps will go dry on the first firing.   That is absurdly high.

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#31 2019-09-19 13:05:45

Booklat1
Member
Registered: 2018-07-21
Posts: 1,062

Re: We need more content

Anhigen wrote:
Booklat1 wrote:

How long has it been since last you've seen mango trees? Or rails? How about cars?



While those items are fun to build, and maybe were supposed to inspire more group play, I think their design is in attracting new players not solving an in game problem or offering a help in producing something. Some "strategic show pieces" are going to be necessary from a developers point of view, after all we do need more players, but considering we already don't have meaningful interactions between players--you just solo play after childhood, truly--having meaningless objects isn't helpful. Lol.


When I asked jason about making relevant resources for all biomes so we could either bootstrap there or justify journeying into said biomes he responded something along the lines of "im only designing one game, not many" and gave me the example of ice creams and how novelty that was. (btw, I always said that update was not a good response to the heat update)

I don't think he gets what I actuallu said back there but you definitely will, we need content that matters. Not new content, content that already exists should matter more. Buildings are still completely irrelevant in the game's current build. This in turn affects cows because who even needs paint? There's not a single dog breed that is useful, so why get pigs?


I don't actually have a problem when novelty features are novelty. I have a problem when so many features are novelty to the point there is only one survival techtree and everything else is there without a purpose.

Last edited by Booklat1 (2019-09-19 17:22:41)

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