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#26 2019-10-23 19:09:27

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

Re: I trust in Jason's decisions

Spoonwad, even if you are an ex-player, you continue to get way more than your $20's worth of entertainment value in the forums.

Now that's what I call great customer service!

If this was a restaurant, you would indeed be my most loyal and dedicated customer.  You're here everyday, rain or shine!

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#27 2019-10-23 19:37:01

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

Re: I trust in Jason's decisions

oh come on, it's not about opinions and shit

Jason is a rebel, he doesn't do things as others, he has a more direct approach to the community, which I can respect.

Sometimes he goes overboard on uniqueness. There are unique things, there are realistic things, and things that make good gameplay.

Honestly, there is no reason to be all unique, features that work well in other games could be implemented, overall the game would be still unique. Realism is good until a point where makes sense to gameplay as well, honestly, I would prefer magical terms, and more rules rather than be too realistic, people play the game to escape realism so rather be somewhat simplified, something that can be accomplished in-game time than to be fully realistic. Like one item has 3 steps, the other item can have 3 steps as well, even if that won't make much sense realistically but is better for balancing.

There were plenty of times when Jason choose realistic things over good gameplay elements and he is still refusing to fix them. Pine panels and rope making are a pain in the ass, letters and signs are very hard to make. At the start of the game, a lot more things were hard to make, food became very easy compared to that. Meanwhile, he made harder the buildings and the iron gathering, but other parts of the game are way too easy.

I don't think that the majority is always right, most often than not it's not true, but what he does is going straight against the majority, which is quite annoying to be fair.
Most of the people liked to be at the same camp, to come back as a kid of his own granddaughter, one single guy said he doesn't like to be in the same place, so Jason introduced lineage ban. That was one of the dumbest thing ever. Instead of 1% of the community would have to quitt a life, he made 90% of the community suicide over and over again as we were forced to leave projects behind and do the same boring work in other camps over and over and never get back to already optimized camps.

The other was the duel change. Basically the worst change ever. Instead of having a balanced fight, attackers got all the advantage, it's just a choice to kill others or annoy and bully them all their lives. Some players are just too dumb, too lazy and too bad intended, giving them the magic aim helped griefers to whatever they want. I don't like to be a hero nor a martyr, I just want a chance to defend myself. When the reason is skill-based and the end result is final, the duels should be skill-based. The noob griefers who can't make a weapon for themselves and can't fill a bowl under a minute can kill players who are more experienced than them just because they want it to.  We still don't have hp bar and we got a worse system than before, which didn't solve lag or the griefer problem, just made a weird system where framing and griefing, stealing is way too easy.
They still flexing that they killed you after their 3rd attempt, where they were hiding 30 min of their life, they still mess up the camp and they don't care so they are I advantage. Back before at least we had duels for fun and nob griefers were killed 99% of the time. There was a risk that if they attack, they can die. Most griefers don't take risks, they just annoy others and run away when they aren't in an advantage.

And there are players who can pretty much predict that something will or will not work, before the rift, quite a few of us predicted that map is way too small and won't work. Playing experience is important when new things came in mind and quite a lot of players are able to identify problems before introducing features.
I don't see a point of insulting Jason, you can criticize what he says as long as you are logical. People aren't always angry, and just because we disagree, doesn't mean we want to be right or wrong. The big picture right now, is that we got too many changes regarding a very small set of objects. I don't see much point in having 0.1 heat bonuses from buildings, and I don't see how is bad that people made 23 wells during an arc. i Understand that a city shouldn't have 2 or more wells right next to it, but not that 120 or 160 tiles away a well should be blocked cause of this.

Having higher-tech would solve the lower-tech issues.
But he is very much set upon the principle of "everything running out" which isn't a fun mechanic. Also, everything seems to be reversed, players need to do this and that and not really "wanting" to do something. Most people are so aimless inside the game.  Most people don't know or don't care about the higher-tech so veterans need to do it. Meanwhile, the whole town gets messed up by newbies and generic berry planters.  Just because people want to make stuff, doesn't really mean they are doing it well. And nerfing things to the ground won't help.

We liked the small content changes, I remember when corn was introduced, everybody was making popcorn and the city looked way different, a lot of people came back to play just cause of the corn. We need content, even if it's just visual, just decorations, I don't really care if the well takes 10 minutes möre to make or I can get now fewer rabbits than before. I want to do different things, challenging things, actual choices, win conditions, goals, things to do.

The game never meant to be a thousand-hour game, but itss multiplayer, people can make it fun for each other. Lately, it just feels like the content is stretched by making the same thing harder, not making more things that would make those things less important. Kinda the same thing producing less water or using more for advanced things.

Is it so really hard to make some content? seems like Jason got too lazy to draw new sprites.


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

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

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#28 2019-10-23 19:55:27

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

Re: I trust in Jason's decisions

Dodge wrote:

OMG are you still talking about those ridiculously tiny spikes in players?

Not ridiculous, and not tiny.

Dodge wrote:

Are you blind or can you not see that the numbers are going down over time no matter what was done.

Not blind.  The increase happened correlating with content updates.

Dodge wrote:

Do you want me to draw it for you? Maybe il add a rainbow and a sun with a smile if you are nice smile

I referred to the actual graph, not something that I made up as you seem to want to do.


Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.

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#29 2019-10-23 19:58:23

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

Re: I trust in Jason's decisions

jasonrohrer wrote:

But yeah, why don't I ask you what you want?

Because actually---brace yourself and gird your loins for a truth you don't want to hear---you don't know what you want.  You think you do, but you're most likely wrong.

This is a simple fact of human nature.

This is the sort of thing that people say who don't want to listen to others about what they say they want.  It's complete rubbish, and sometimes thought by elitists who believe that they know more than other people about human nature.

jasonrohrer wrote:

How many people are playing Noita right now and say they WANT gold to not disappear on a timer?  They see gold blinking and disappearing in a given moment and they think, "Hey no, I don't want that gold to blink and disappear!"

Don't know, and don't care.  It's not relevant.

jasonrohrer wrote:

What you WANT and what you actually NEED are two different things.  It's my job to figure out the difference.

No, it's not.  It's your responsibility to listen to people telling you what they want.  They know their desires and needs better than you do, that's for sure.


Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.

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#30 2019-10-23 20:01:05

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

Re: I trust in Jason's decisions

jasonrohrer wrote:

Spoonwad, even if you are an ex-player, you continue to get way more than your $20's worth of entertainment value in the forums.

Now that's what I call great customer service!

If this was a restaurant, you would indeed be my most loyal and dedicated customer.  You're here everyday, rain or shine!

The forums aren't your game, and I don't find this particularly entertaining.  More like saddening.  Additionally, someone recently said 'I guess this means Spoonwood is back', which means that such a person hadn't seen my comments in a while.

Furthermore, whatever the case with the forum, it has nothing to do with the game.  So, it's not relevant.


Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.

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#31 2019-10-23 20:07:41

CatX
Member
Registered: 2019-02-11
Posts: 464

Re: I trust in Jason's decisions

Jason, maybe you're right and we don't know what we need, but we do know when we're having fun. wink

And, well, maybe you're a bit too immersed in the many lines of code you've produced. Maybe you know your game a bit too well so that it is hard for you to take a step back and get a clear view of it. Because sometimes it feels like you introduce a change in order to fix one problem without care for how it also changes something else.

(I know some authors talk about how they need to put their projects away for half a year or more in order to be able to see it with fresh eyes.)

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#32 2019-10-23 20:30:28

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

Re: I trust in Jason's decisions

jasonrohrer wrote:

Spoonwad, even if you are an ex-player, you continue to get way more than your $20's worth of entertainment value in the forums.

Also, there's no 'even if' here as if I stated some contrary to fact situation.  I haven't played the game since sometime in June I think.  Maybe sometime in July... at the latest.  Haven't bothered to update the game since then.  I have no interest in coming back with the state of the game right now, nor with the 'everything runs out' idea getting put into place more and more.


Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.

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#33 2019-10-23 20:45:25

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

Re: I trust in Jason's decisions

Well, forums are only "officially" accessible to paying customers, so they are part of the $20 price tag.  Welcome back, Spoonmeister.


CatX, I 100% believe you about that.  You definitely know WHEN you're having fun.  But you might not be clear on WHY you're having fun, or what would actually make the game MORE fun.

Fun is a subtle and sometimes-mysterious thing.

Maybe it's a bit like "funny".  You know when you're laughing, and you know what's funny and what's not, but that doesn't mean you know how to write a better joke.

I make my living by writing a better joke.  By dissecting "fun" and figuring it out.


And I also believe you that I'm too close to the game to see it clearly.

Which is why I discuss the game and design problems constantly with other game designers.

It's also why observational playtesting is so important.  I definitely don't do enough of that.  I really don't have much opportunity to do it, and for this kind of game, it's especially expensive (b/c people play for many weeks).


But it's a bit like a comedian testing new material.  They perform in front of an audience and note which bits make the audience laugh and which other ones fall flat.  They DO NOT ask the audience afterward for ideas.  They do not ask the audience what they WANT to hear as jokes.  They don't look to the audience for suggestions about how to improve their jokes.


Observational playtesting is like that.  How they behave is what matters.  What they say or suggest is usually irrelevant.

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#34 2019-10-23 20:46:25

WalrusesConquer
Member
Registered: 2018-07-11
Posts: 492

Re: I trust in Jason's decisions

I mean I've already paid and got my money's worth a Hundred times over. The rift isn't that bad. Overall I'm really happy with this game and will probably keep playing it for a while - its the only game of its kind and I personally rwally like the concept  and genre!


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#35 2019-10-23 22:22:17

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

Re: I trust in Jason's decisions

jasonrohrer wrote:

You definitely know WHEN you're having fun.  But you might not be clear on WHY you're having fun, or what would actually make the game MORE fun.

And I also believe you that I'm too close to the game to see it clearly.

Which is why I discuss the game and design problems constantly with other game designers.

It's also why observational playtesting is so important.  I definitely don't do enough of that.  I really don't have much opportunity to do it, and for this kind of game, it's especially expensive (b/c people play for many weeks).

But it's a bit like a comedian testing new material.  They perform in front of an audience and note which bits make the audience laugh and which other ones fall flat.  They DO NOT ask the audience afterward for ideas.  They do not ask the audience what they WANT to hear as jokes.  They don't look to the audience for suggestions about how to improve their jokes.

Observational playtesting is like that.  How they behave is what matters.  What they say or suggest is usually irrelevant.

For me and a lot of others, fun means balanced gameplay, just the right amount of hard, so you feel accomplished after it. Since this game is a maximum of 60 minutes, some things have to be done under 60 minutes or we feel bad about it. Sure, over time it can be done much faster. For example pen making. I've done it so many times, I look at the map and already know where I can trap the most sheep in the lowest amount of time.
y5NSYc4.jpg
Made this on an Eve camp, from scratch, alone, 40 tiles away from the main camp. We had no axe when I was born, so I focused on helping the smith. Then I was exploring a bit until I saw these trees near a spring.
Just tired of fence pens and as I saw the trees, and the maple branches, I just thought I can make it fast. Kinda exciting when the randomness of the world gives such an opportunity. Overall I was a bit selfish but still useful to the camp as I made the first cart, first tools, first horse, first spindle, shears, the needle with yarn, etc.

Took me like 5 lives the first time around, took me a full life later on. Then for weeks, I was making pit pens over and over until it became meta. People did the same thing after. They tried to make 11x11 or 13x13 etc. Kinda every life I spent getting sheep, smithing, getting a mine, one or all of above, gets a bit repetitive and boring. Not the same excitement now.  I still do it, cause I can make faster than others so it gives more time for them to do other stuff. I don't mind if others just farm or role-play, a lot of times, when I work fast motivates people to help me. Like I start boards around the farm and they help finish it.

I like the early game cause I can decide where things go, I feel like later on, we don't have enough materials. Gameplay becomes less fulfilling, as the resources run out too fast, people like to build things but it's too much focus on materials and too little focus on the work. Similar in Rust, you can spend tons of time chopping trees and stone, and build huge bases anywhere with the right motivation. When resources respawn or are plenty, the game is more fun. People like to build, but they don't like to gather, that's what I noticed.

Also they like when I tell them what to do and feel useful for doing it, I tend to give good jobs as I know what comes next and what possibilities we got.

I feel like adapting to the map should be more important, that would be true if the world would have more cluster of things, maybe higher elevations, trees that block an area, rivers that limit movement.

The exploration game is also a bit boring. The first time is exciting going out when you know that you won't die, you can find food outside and get back. But the more time you do it, the more boring it becomes. The world is pretty much the same everywhere. Maybe some unique resources could change that.
I liked jungles cause it came after the weeks of bugfixes and tutorials. It was no content for weeks and I was pretty much pro at all jobs and items. So I was digging out bushes and making roads in the middle of them, splitting the berry oceans as Moses did with the tomato soup.
The mosquito minigame was quite fun, and I loved perfect heat jungles. I think we should have a tiny perfect heat area in some places. Our bells and designed berry farm was first cool building in San-Cal. Something like this:
nAGXz3x.jpg

I think new content is important to bring back old school players, even for a day or two, good to meet old friends.

I play a lot of games, everything is more fun the first time around until you learn it. Good diversity and randomness is the key to keep people playing for hours. The most fun feature I see in games is probably the new player generation and transfers in Football Manager. They always decent young players, you can train them how you want. Owning things, trough success and failure. The other was relationship-based events in mount and blade. It was very complex, the sieges and the trading and the fights and everything. Skill-based combat is better than intention-based combat. Mindless shooter games are decent but even turn-based combat can be more fun.

Other games I found the quests good are just progressing trough eras and maps with a team. Some sort of motivation for the ultimate reward.

generally, best is the adaptive difficulty, like pro evolution soccer has, the more time you do the same moves, the same style, the more it won't work, so variety is  rewarded.

Other games just change values on items creating a meta. I think you could easily change food values from time to time or give some adaptive food values. hidden recipes. The best random is when small elements build up bigger ones, and the order matters and the combinations are almost endless, as the human DNA.

Some of the best random I saw were plant strains in a Mars colonization game. Combinations made a new combination of bacteria strains then combining further and further made more optimal plants but you never really knew what you will get.

There are many good ideas here, many smart people on forums, just give a thought, make a twist on their ideas and implement some to keep people shut. People suggest things cause they like the game, happy players make others happy. Win-win.


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

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

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#36 2019-10-23 22:44:18

Coconut Fruit
Member
Registered: 2019-08-16
Posts: 831

Re: I trust in Jason's decisions

jasonrohrer wrote:

But it's a bit like a comedian testing new material.  They perform in front of an audience and note which bits make the audience laugh and which other ones fall flat.  They DO NOT ask the audience afterward for ideas.  They do not ask the audience what they WANT to hear as jokes.  They don't look to the audience for suggestions about how to improve their jokes.


Observational playtesting is like that.  How they behave is what matters.  What they say or suggest is usually irrelevant.

It's not a good comparsion, people can't tell you what jokes will be funny to them. You may know about game development but you seem to know nothing about business and that's why you have so little playerbase now. I couldn't tell what jokes would be funny to me but I could tell you what I would enjoy in the game. People tell tou what they want, that's the beauty of this business. You can predict what will be good and what will be not. If our needs are irrelevant to you, you will most likely fail. 40-50 players playing on average? That's a joke number, but that's what you deserve.


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#37 2019-10-23 23:29:09

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

Re: I trust in Jason's decisions

Wait, a guy who knows nothing about business single-handedly made a game that grossed $1.4 million in sales over a 20-month period?

It's the craziest story ever told!

And 20 months later, it is still grossing $22K per month.

Yes, you're looking at the world's greatest business failure right here.  A guy who is doing everything wrong.  A guy who made a game that is a total financial and design failure!

This complete business idiot somehow was successful by pure chance.  Like a monkey banging on a typewriter until he randomly spit out Shakespeare.

You know that people have played OHOL for 1.3 million solid hours, right?

I guess that's only $1 per hour at the end of the day, which isn't very much money!



Coconut, I bet you couldn't tell me what you'd actually enjoy in the game.  Name one thing that you're sure you'll enjoy.

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#38 2019-10-23 23:31:57

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

Re: I trust in Jason's decisions

Also, what percentage of $20 games have more than 40 concurrent players after 20 months?

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#39 2019-10-23 23:46:02

antking:]#
Member
Registered: 2018-12-29
Posts: 579

Re: I trust in Jason's decisions

jasonrohrer wrote:

Spoonwad, even if you are an ex-player, you continue to get way more than your $20's worth of entertainment value in the forums.

Now that's what I call great customer service!

If this was a restaurant, you would indeed be my most loyal and dedicated customer.  You're here everyday, rain or shine!

even though he comes, he doesn't order any food, just critiques it


"hear how the wind begins to whisper, but now it screams at me" said ashe
"I remember it from a Life I never Lived" said Peaches
"Now Chad don't invest in Asian markets" said Chad's Mom
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#40 2019-10-23 23:50:46

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

Re: I trust in Jason's decisions

He likes the smell of the food, I guess.

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#41 2019-10-24 00:25:11

Coconut Fruit
Member
Registered: 2019-08-16
Posts: 831

Re: I trust in Jason's decisions

Game sells well because it looks great at first sight. If it was so good people wouldn't leave it so fast, you could earn much more with game like this.

I would enjoy cooperation.
I don't yum because it's time consuming, but I would enjoy if I had to yum in order to make family thrive for longer. I would enjoy if newbies could learn how to play and cooperate without spending tons of hours, this would open a way to make game harder which is enjoyable to me. I would enjoy chat box in a game where we need to work and cooperate to thrive. Yesterday I was reading your post http://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=63 and I liked it but I was thinking this won't work without actual communication with family members, that's why I posted an idea about making a chat box.

Your success may turn out to be a short term success if all that game gives is a good first look. You will earn nothing if game dies out, and it is going to this direction because you don't listen to people.


Making own private server (Very easy! You can play on it even if you haven't bought the game)
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#42 2019-10-24 00:35:44

Hoax
Member
Registered: 2019-07-26
Posts: 10

Re: I trust in Jason's decisions

jasonrohrer wrote:

Also, what percentage of $20 games have more than 40 concurrent players after 20 months?

Do you have any intention of attempting to reverse the downward trend of concurrent players in this game, and if so, what changes do you plan on making to achieve this goal? If not, does that mean you are considering moving on from the OHOL game?

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#43 2019-10-24 00:46:18

StrongForce
Member
Registered: 2018-03-09
Posts: 474

Re: I trust in Jason's decisions

Spoonwood wrote:

You merely wish that people didn't have the right to say things that you don't like to hear.

Not at all its more about respect. And that demanding change in a rude way will only cause him to not even consider your proposal.


Baby dance!!

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#44 2019-10-24 00:58:26

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

Re: I trust in Jason's decisions

Hoax, I'm busily trying to make the game more long-term interesting.  That is what the arc and rift experiment is about.  That is what oil running out long term is about.

I believe player numbers declined because the game was never good enough.

Though there's also something fundamentally unsatisfying (for most people) about the premise.  You only live an hour and say goodbye to your projects at the end of your hour.  That is much less likely to "hook" people than a game you can play all night, working on the same project.  Many of the players that have become hooked on OHOL have done so by routing around this limitation, either by playing on empty servers, using (now blocked) coordinate exploits, or (now) simply knowing their way around the rift.

Maybe that premise will NEVER appeal to millions of people.

But my job is to make it as good as it can be.  And I don't think I'm done with figuring that out yet.  How do you make a game where you die every hour and say goodbye to everything insanely compelling?  How do you make what players do in that context matter?  This is the stuff that I'm working on.

I'm not sick of working on it..... but even if I was....

...why would I walk away from $22K per month?


There's no good reason to stop working on OHOL right now.

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#45 2019-10-24 01:07:34

Dantox
Member
Registered: 2019-04-28
Posts: 213

Re: I trust in Jason's decisions

jasonrohrer wrote:

Wait, a guy who knows nothing about business single-handedly made a game that grossed $1.4 million in sales over a 20-month period?

It's the craziest story ever told!

And 20 months later, it is still grossing $22K per month.

Yes, you're looking at the world's greatest business failure right here.  A guy who is doing everything wrong.  A guy who made a game that is a total financial and design failure!

This complete business idiot somehow was successful by pure chance.  Like a monkey banging on a typewriter until he randomly spit out Shakespeare.

You know that people have played OHOL for 1.3 million solid hours, right?

I guess that's only $1 per hour at the end of the day, which isn't very much money!



Coconut, I bet you couldn't tell me what you'd actually enjoy in the game.  Name one thing that you're sure you'll enjoy.

With comments like these it makes me sad that you are not that much different from some other shady gaming companys, i mean, as long as it keeps selling that means its good, right?

even then i dont think they mean "bussiness failure" in that sort of way, the main premise is pretty good and the trailer is pretty convincing to make anyone play the game which is pretty good "marketing" (if you want to call it that way), i think that has been said enough in this forums, however if you are not able to keep it up and if you let the playerbase going down it will be just a matter of time for the game to just die when it had potential to be much more. i would call that a bussiness failure. (Take Minecraft for instance, made by a single person and it became to one of the most recognized faces of gaming)

The current trend is that players are going down and nothing that you have done has being able to fix the problem as far as we can see, so that might be the reason that people are calling you that.

Winning the lottery is pure luck. What separates these winners are the ones that are able to keep the money flowing upwards.


make bread, no war

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#46 2019-10-24 01:30:02

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

Re: I trust in Jason's decisions

I'm working on it, Dantox!

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#47 2019-10-24 02:03:06

Hoax
Member
Registered: 2019-07-26
Posts: 10

Re: I trust in Jason's decisions

jasonrohrer wrote:

Hoax, I'm busily trying to make the game more long-term interesting.  That is what the arc and rift experiment is about.  That is what oil running out long term is about.

I believe player numbers declined because the game was never good enough.

Though there's also something fundamentally unsatisfying (for most people) about the premise.  You only live an hour and say goodbye to your projects at the end of your hour.  That is much less likely to "hook" people than a game you can play all night, working on the same project.  Many of the players that have become hooked on OHOL have done so by routing around this limitation, either by playing on empty servers, using (now blocked) coordinate exploits, or (now) simply knowing their way around the rift.

Maybe that premise will NEVER appeal to millions of people.

But my job is to make it as good as it can be.  And I don't think I'm done with figuring that out yet.  How do you make a game where you die every hour and say goodbye to everything insanely compelling?  How do you make what players do in that context matter?  This is the stuff that I'm working on.

I'm not sick of working on it..... but even if I was....

...why would I walk away from $22K per month?


There's no good reason to stop working on OHOL right now.

jasonrohrer wrote:

Hoax, I'm busily trying to make the game more long-term interesting.  That is what the arc and rift experiment is about.  That is what oil running out long term is about.

I believe player numbers declined because the game was never good enough.

Though there's also something fundamentally unsatisfying (for most people) about the premise.  You only live an hour and say goodbye to your projects at the end of your hour.  That is much less likely to "hook" people than a game you can play all night, working on the same project.  Many of the players that have become hooked on OHOL have done so by routing around this limitation, either by playing on empty servers, using (now blocked) coordinate exploits, or (now) simply knowing their way around the rift.

Maybe that premise will NEVER appeal to millions of people.

But my job is to make it as good as it can be.  And I don't think I'm done with figuring that out yet.  How do you make a game where you die every hour and say goodbye to everything insanely compelling?  How do you make what players do in that context matter?  This is the stuff that I'm working on.

I'm not sick of working on it..... but even if I was....

...why would I walk away from $22K per month?


There's no good reason to stop working on OHOL right now.

Thank you for your answer, that's very candid and in-depth. I appreciate it.

I don't play very often but I do like the game. I personally think the lives I live in the game now are more fun than the ones I lived when the game was released on Steam, so I do think this game is getting better overall in the long-term. I'm just worried that if trends continue, the playerbase will die out before this game can reach its full potential.

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#48 2019-10-24 02:21:59

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

Re: I trust in Jason's decisions

jasonrohrer wrote:

Though there's also something fundamentally unsatisfying (for most people) about the premise.  You only live an hour and say goodbye to your projects at the end of your hour.

There is no premise in the code.  You are merely trying to inject your ideas onto the code, when the game has never worked that way in practice.

jasonrohrer wrote:

  That is much less likely to "hook" people than a game you can play all night, working on the same project.  Many of the players that have become hooked on OHOL have done so by routing around this limitation, either by playing on empty servers, using (now blocked) coordinate exploits, or (now) simply knowing their way around the rift.

They aren't routing around such a limitation, because it doesn't exist.  They know about Eve-chaining, something you coded Jason.  They know about the size of the The Rift.  Something you coded Jason. 

jasonrohrer wrote:

 

But my job is to make it as good as it can be.

No, that's not your job.  If it were, then you were failing from the beginning, because the very existence of Eve-chaining implies such as not working in the code.

jasonrohrer wrote:

    And I don't think I'm done with figuring that out yet.  How do you make a game where you die every hour and say goodbye to everything insanely compelling?

You've never made such a game Jason.  It also wouldn't be a good idea.  It wouldn't be compelling, because time limitations on projects like that aren't something that interest gamers.  A break at the end of one hour is one thing.  A project that completely ends in one hour, isn't appealing to gamers, and not anything that the players signed up for or agreed to.  Plenty of players have tried to tell you that.  But, you won't listen, because you would rather gaslight those players and don't trust them with respect to what they like. 

I know personally that I quite enjoyed watching my towns in later generations (on Twitch) after I played as an Eve, Eve-chaining, and getting reborn into one of my families, precisely because I wasn't limited to one hour in what I saw or helped develop.  That's something that *already* has happened, and I *already* know.

You said that people became hooked on OHOL working *around* that limitation.  But, you haven't acted accordingly.  You've insisted that you know better than the players, even though as you described what players DO, involves having a longer time than just one hour for projects (just not completely continuous).

jasonrohrer wrote:

   

How do you make what players do in that context matter?  This is the stuff that I'm working on.

No, you are not working on such or you're delusional.  Eve chaining has existed for a long time.  The Rift is too small for people not to have a way back to the same place.  So, were you serious, you wouldn't have The Rift, and all towns would be very far from each other, people couldn't get born back into the same lineage ever, and Eve chaining wouldn't exist in any condition.  But, you haven't done that, so you aren't serious about what you say, or you're delusional. 

Again, I'm going to emphasize this:

jasonrohrer wrote:

Many of the players that have become hooked on OHOL have done so by routing around this limitation

Again, you don't seem to what players DO Jason in your so-called 'development' of this game.  You've insisted on a concept, which you never fully tested in practice, and insist that it can works in spite of the partial tests which suggest that it won't work, goes against what players have done in the past, and probably isn't consistent with human psychology either.


Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.

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#49 2019-10-24 04:08:25

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

Re: I trust in Jason's decisions

jasonrohrer wrote:

And 20 months later, it is still grossing $22K per month.

(22,000 / 20) = 1100.  Jason has claimed here that 1100 new players purchase OHOL every month, or (1100 / 30) = 36.6666... new players per day.


Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.

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#50 2019-10-24 06:25:45

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

Re: I trust in Jason's decisions

It's not $20 worldwide on Steam.  It gets as cheap as $10 in certain countries.

But yes, there were 1128 Steam purchases within the last 30 days, and 129 purchases made off-Steam, for a total of 1257, for an average of 41.9 per day.

There were 537 unique players in the past 24 hours and 1732 unique players in the past week.  There were 4442 unique players in the past month.

There were 1136 players who lived their first life in-game sometime in the past 30 days.  That means that, during that time, 121 of the new players couldn't get the game working, or gave up before completing the tutorial, or bought the game but never even tried running it, etc.  I.e., 1257 people purchased the game, but only 1136 got to the point of living a life (tutorial lives aren't counted).

Also, $22K gross was just an estimate.  The actual gross over the past 30 days is:  $22,578.

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