a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building
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the skilled distant relations matter more to overall survival than my newbie mom does.
1 - Arbitrary unscored factor X matters more to overall survival process Y
2 - Overall survival process Y leads to scored family member survival (and, perhaps, scored family consumption of my produced goods)
3 - Therefore, arbitrary unscored factor X matters to the score, and is effectively scored indirectly
3 is only true if 1 and 2 are true, in other words, if your family benefits from the community building you do then you're still scored as a good family member (assuming the balancing and everything works out)
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People being selfish or doing things for their own gain are a liability for society. Hiding pies for example. Unless you made the every facet of that item (plates, bowls, soil, berries, carrots, wheat, rabbits, kindling, adobe kiln) you are essentially borrowing from society. To think you have the right of ownership because you put in a small percent of effort in that process is naive.
Yeah I was thinking what % of the process you were involved with would be your "share" of that pie, so if you did half the steps you only get half the benefit as if you did all the steps, so you get no benefit from stealing pies outright, some benefit from kinda stealing pies, and the most benefit from not leeching materials. Keep in mind this is in addition to many other factors, so there would only be a small additional incentive to be family-greedy.
Likewise, if you're the farmer for the whole village then you'll automatically get a portion of credit for all the food eaten by your family. Same with water gatherer, etc. The most essential ingredients that are for the most things that will get used quickly (ie by your immediate family, not your distance descendants) would earn you the most points. You're more motivated to cook and grow ingredients for a village where your family resides than one where they do not, and you're very motivated to keep your family alive in a village you've invested heavily in since as they survive they'll not only give you survival points but also consumption points.
Last edited by jcwilk (2019-11-18 00:02:03)
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Basically the "best scoring behavior" becomes something like... pop out a million babies, keep them alive, figure out which village resource is lacking (ie, no competition) and fill as many of those resources yourself and get them into the village pipeline asap and instruct your children about how to use those resources to maximize the chances of them being utilized quickly. That seems -way- more compelling of a top tier player behavior in terms of best genetic score than the current behavior, which, in an already functional village is basically... try to clothe them and keep the afk ones alive but otherwise cross your fingers.
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In order for the baker to "own" the pies that he bakes unilaterally, he would have to buy the plates and all the ingredients he used to make the pies. And pay the village for the water he used. And either buy or lease the property where his bakery is located.
Chances are very high that he didn't do any of those things in a typical OHOL village.
So what right does he have to keep the pie he baked using village resources entirely for himself alone?
I'd argue that he contributed to the making of the pie and he does deserves to eat. But so does everyone else in the village. They all should be able to eat the pies that were made possible by their combined efforts to bring the village water, wheat, plates, kindling, firewood, knives, mutton, compost, carrots, berries, iron, and clothing.
Without everyone contributing to the village in their own ways, those pies wouldn't exist. The baker's contribution was important, but was it really any more important that the smith who made the steel hoe that the farmer used to plant the carrots that the shepherd used to feed the sheep that provided the mutton which filled the baker's pie?
Last edited by DestinyCall (2019-11-18 00:34:46)
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In order for the baker to "own" the pies that he bakes, he would have to buy the plates and all the ingredients he used to make the pies. And pay the village for the water he used. And either buy or lease the property where his bakery is located.
Chances are very high that he didn't do any of those things in a typical OHOL village.
So what right does he have to the pie he baked using village resources?
Lol not sure how we got to capitalism, but getting back on track... I was imagining that every time you execute a recipe it would store your id in the resultant item(s?) as well as the ids stored in the ingredients, perhaps it would even display this information somehow. So a more concrete example:
##
pick up stone A from natural spawn point (drawing the distinction here between picking from nature and picking from a box in a village, which should not award credit): stone B (natural stone A gathered by jcwilk)
use B on big rock: sharp stone C (stone B sharpened by jcwilk (natural stone A gathered by jcwilk))
use C on buried wild carrot: wild carrot E (unburied with sharp stone C by jcwilk (stone B sharpened by jcwilk (natural stone A gathered by jcwilk)))
##
So basically in this case I took part in 3 out of 3 steps involved in producing the wild carrot, so I would get 100% of the production credit for someone eating it if that person is a close enough relative. If someone else did the last step then the data might be like: wild carrot E (unburied with sharp stone C by DestinyCall (stone B sharpened by jcwilk (natural stone A gathered by jcwilk))) - in which case DestinyCall would get 33% of the possible production credit if DestinyCall's family member ate it, or I would get 67% of the possible production credit for it if one of my close family members ate it, or if we're close relatives we'd both get our shares if a close relative ate it. It would likely be a very small amount of points for the individual carrot being eaten so it's not really enough to motivate people to go way out of their way to hide a little food, but it means if your gameplay is directed around producing essential things then you'll be rewarded many times with small amounts.
And to be clear I'm not suggesting that wording exist in the game, or that it necessarily be visible at all... Clarity is certainly a challenge here, it would be super awesome though if you could see a breakdown on the genetic history screen somehow of how many points you've gotten from carrots, from pies, etc...
(edited nesting to make it easier to read and clearer about the structure)
Last edited by jcwilk (2019-11-18 01:14:44)
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So what right does he have to keep the pie he baked using village resources entirely for himself alone?
I'd argue that he contributed to the making of the pie and he does deserves to eat. But so does everyone else in the village. They all should be able to eat the pies that were made possible by their combined efforts to bring the village water, wheat, plates, kindling, firewood, knives, mutton, compost, carrots, berries, iron, and clothing.
Without everyone contributing to the village in their own ways, those pies wouldn't exist. The baker's contribution was important, but was it really any more important that the smith who made the steel hoe that the farmer used to plant the carrots that the shepherd used to feed the sheep that provided the mutton which filled the baker's pie?
This changed a bit after I replied, but my last message is basically answering this anyways. Yeah, exactly, every person in the chain should get some genetic score credit when their own family is benefiting from their work, regardless of whether they were the first or the last person in the chain, and proportional in some way to how involved they were.
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So like, imagine if a town was running low on water how quickly an eve-desiring player would scramble to supply it when they know that pretty much everything that is produced will involve water somehow. Once there's plenty of water there isn't genetic score incentive to keep spamming water anymore cause they'd be competing with the existing water stores for which one gets used so it's better for them to work on more urgent, underserved resources, as they should anyways.
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I worry about certain skill systems being exploitable or promoting unhealthy behavior. If you get points for planting carrots for example. What's stopping someone from planting a million carrots outside of town to farm score.
Its a sensitive balance to promote work without making it exploitable. If picking up wild iron gives points someone could just go around picking up and dropping iron to catalog it to themselves.
Maybe something that promotes diversity could be good. Perhaps each diverse task checks a box for your total score bonus each life. An issue i could see with this could be that it doesn't promote specialization. So if you exclusively farm, bake, or smith you wouldn't be optimizing your score.
A good thing could be that it would promote diversity of baking and farming. Each different type of food made or every type of plant planted could count towards your score. I would be worried about smithing because it could promote tool spamming and wasting steel.
Perhaps smithing would get multiple ticks for processing iron and steel while farming and baking would only get one tick for each diverse item made.
Just spitballing but i like the idea of a system for tool slots that reflects player ability over parenting capacity. Current genetic score is a very narrow view of what players contribute to the game. I do not think tool slots should be limited by factors that have little to do with them. You dont even need to use a tool slots to gain genetic score. You just have to live to sixty and hope your kids do too. Its a cheap system and shouldnt be used to define a players worth.
Last edited by Toxolotl (2019-11-18 01:54:05)
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I think the core of the problem I have with "genetic score" is that it is trying to force a play-style, rather than rewarding optimal play, whatever that might be.
Jason wanted us to value our immediate family more than our neighbor's family. Not because they are our virtual family and we care about our family in real-life, but because our own fake children were really "worth" more to us than another person's fake children in the game itself. That was the original purpose of genetic score. It gave a value to how well you took care of your kids so a "good mom" would have higher score than "bad mom".
BUT .. it feels like cheating. We still don't care about keeping our family alive for in-game reasons. The genetic score is an external value that shouldn't mean anything to our little villager in his little village within OHOL. It feels really artificial to me and reminds me that I'm a gamer, playing the role of "villager" in a computer game, rather than a part of my own little village taking care of my little family. Genetic score is not part of the game world, but something that is force into it from the outside.
Like the a laugh-track during a sitcom, telling me when someone said something funny. I really don't like it.
I really don't like how it pulls you out of the game and encourages you to think about which villager is with "worth" something to your genetic score. Personally, I find it very immersion-breaking.
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I agree completely destiny. Personally i wish tool slots would go away. Genetic score should just got back to being a periphery thing. Tool slots are far too limiting for my liking and having them tied go such a fragile and clunky system only makes them more annoying.
Operant conditioning is never a satisfying element in games imo. I hope we start moving away from systems like that and start seeing more tech ceiling growth and refinements in those regards. Lately things have been incredibly stifling and it has extinguished most of my motivation to play.
Last edited by Toxolotl (2019-11-18 02:15:47)
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Its a sensitive balance to promote work without making it exploitable. If picking up wild iron gives points someone could just go around picking up and dropping iron to catalog it to themselves.
Well the key is that you only get credit for it if it's eaten, specifically by genetic relatives. So if you go out of town pop out a bunch of babies and feed them all wild carrots created exclusively by you then you'll get some points for that yeah but then they're probably going to die because they're off in the woods, or their kids might, and family survival should still be the backbone of your points... Maybe the production bonus is like a multiplier?
Maybe whenever your relatives die the amount of points they give you from their long life is multiplied by some value derived from how much of what they consumed was from you, something like that, so if you produced every single part of every thing your 10 kids consumed across their 60 years of life then you ought to get a pretty handsome reward for that, likewise if you have 10 kids but you barely do anything aside from sit around afking and they end up having to keep you alive then you should get less points for their survival since none of the stuff they consumed had your involvement at all. Same if you drop a baby off in a foreign city, they might keep it alive but no thanks to you. Still deserves you some points but not as many.
Maybe something that promotes diversity could be good. Perhaps each diverse task checks a box for your total score bonus each life. An issue i could see with this could be that it doesn't promote specialization. So if you exclusively farm, bake, or smith you wouldn't be optimizing your score.
Well, I think that diversity in what a player does is less important than having the player fill an unfilled need... Whether that's many different needs or one critically missing ingredient that many other things are waiting on, and then once it gets filled your other family members/villagemates will make a bunch of things with it that will work back to rewarding you if your family members are among the eventual recipients of the end products. If you spam too much of something that there's already plenty of then it's less likely your immediate family members will be the ones to consume its end products originating from you.
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I think the core of the problem I have with "genetic score" is that it is trying to force a play-style, rather than rewarding optimal play, whatever that might be.
I think these two things are exactly the same thing, just worded differently or more or less strongly. Nothing's being forced though, players can do whatever they want if they don't care about being one of the rare eves, etc. Ultimately the question that's trying to be answered here is "how do we select which players should be eves?" and perhaps also mothers, women, etc. There's a huge portion to being a great family starter that is simply unscored in the existing system. This proposed system doesn't perfectly solve it or anything, but it seems like it would be a huge step closer compared to simply looking at life durations.
Jason wanted us to value our immediate family more than our neighbor's family. Not because they are our virtual family and we care about our family in real-life, but because our own fake children were really "worth" more to us than another person's fake children in the game itself. That was the original purpose of genetic score. It gave a value to how well you took care of your kids so a "good mom" would have higher score than "bad mom".
BUT .. it feels like cheating. We still don't care about keeping our family alive for in-game reasons. The genetic score is an external value that shouldn't mean anything to our little villager in his little village within OHOL. It feels really artificial to me and reminds me that I'm a gamer, playing the role of "villager" in a computer game, rather than a part of my own little village taking care of my little family. Genetic score is not part of the game world, but something that is force into it from the outside.
Like the a laugh-track during a sitcom, telling me when someone said something funny. I really don't like it.
Prepare to get your mind blown, but we have mechanisms like this in real life - instincts! Instincts punish us by making us feel terrible when we're being bad family members and reward us with warm fuzzies when we're keeping our children and parents and siblings safe. It's not altruism or being a good person, it's instincts manipulating you. These same instincts don't give a shit about, or not nearly as much of a shit about, little squiggly characters on the screen so we need analogous mechanisms to guide the player community, on average, towards what human instincts would normally guide family members towards.
But that's just if you give a shit about earning the right to be eve and whatever else, someone who just wants to build civilizations and doesn't care about family or birthing or anything like that doesn't have to give a shit about any of this, and the system will politely lower them in probability of participating in those things accordingly. If you -do- care about those things, you don't even need to think about the scoring system, it will automatically raise your probability for participation in family mechanisms due to your good family behavior with or without your knowledge of it happening. Or, if you're the kind of player who does like chasing scores then you'll coincidentally be performing as an exceptional family member in the process.
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I really do like the idea. I worry though that it might be a huge headache to implement something so complex. My main concern is that so much time and effort is being put into these systems that may or may not add to the overall experience of the game. Even potentially taking away experiences that make the game great. I know thats subjective but i think with the level of outcry that has resulted from the last few updates its a potential that the changes have threatened what others enjoy about the game. At the very least i know it has for myself.
I would really like to see more changes in progression and time put forth to refine those aspects instead of systems that limit players and potentially damage the experience of the game. Every hour jason works on these systems digs us deeper into the hole. If he goes too deep we may never get out. Its selfish to expect him to throw all his hard work away when hes devoted weeks to tool slots and family specialization but i do think its the best route. The further we go into this rabbit hole the more likely we are to be stuck in it. It may not be fixable and it may never be as satisfying as the previous version.
Last edited by Toxolotl (2019-11-18 03:14:09)
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I really do like the idea. I worry though that it might be a huge headache to implement something so complex. My main concern is that so much time and effort is being put into these systems that may or may not add to the overall experience of the game. Even potentially taking away experiences that make the game great. I know thats subjective but i think with the level of outcry that has resulted from the last few updates its a potential that the changes have threatened what others enjoy about the game. At the very least i know it has for myself.
I would really like to see more changes in progression and time put forth to refine those aspects instead of systems that limit players and potentially damage the experience of the game. Every hour jason works on these systems digs us deeper into the hole. If he goes too deep we may never get out. Its selfish to expect him to throw all his hard work away when hes devoted weeks to tool slots and family specialization but i do think its the best route. The further we go into this rabbit hole the more likely we are to be stuck in it. It may not be fixable and it may never be as satisfying as the previous version.
Yep, all valid points. I could imagine it being straightforward to implement but I could also imagine it requiring countless code backflips because of how many things it would touch... So yeah, pretty unlikely to come about but it's nice to dream.
I don't have too strong of an opinion about what directions he takes or how he prioritizes, cause it's his baby, only thing is it's kind of a bummer to see that content progression has been pushed so far down the list when that was one of the biggest promises of the game, continuous content. But I also feel like the non-content parts of the game are unfinished and the content may suffer from the mechanisms beneath it shifting down the line if/when things get better balanced/incentivized... So it's real tough, I certainly don't envy having to see complaints about me every day I know that much lol, his skin must be half inch steel by now
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So we would see people hauling carts full of pies that were baked before they were born to be dumped in the distant wilderness so that they could replace the pies in the kitchen and by the fire with pies baked themself to game the system and boost their own score?
The current system is not perfect, but it's better than this. If the village is low on water while waiting for tech to advance, a person who hauls a cart of water buckets from ponds is going to help their family and the rest of the village survive by doing so, regardless of who uses the water they brought (unless it's stolen and taken elsewhere). It will have a positive effect on your score to have brought the water over not bringing it. Will you have 3 babies who die young and also give birth to one griefer? Who knows, maybe. Or you might give birth to 2 good players who live to 60 and one new player you can supervise and teach to keep alive. I think this element of randomness bothers people about genetic fitness, but what's important to realize is these luck components cancel out over time; everyone gets about the same luck in the long run and all that's left as the influencing factor on score is the actual contributions you made to your family surviving. Sometimes maybe your contributions might help someone else more than you, but the only consistent presence in anyone's lives is themself, so by bringing a positive impact every life you are helping your own score the most in long run.
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So we would see people hauling carts full of pies that were baked before they were born to be dumped in the distant wilderness so that they could replace the pies in the kitchen and by the fire with pies baked themself to game the system and boost their own score?
No, because it's more time efficient to find a missing need and fill it than it is to grief a village into needing something and then filling it. Plus if you only baked the pies then you'd only get one step credit out of the many step credits involved in creating a pie. It would be just as many points to find a missing need at any part of the pie pipeline and fill it as it would to do the last step, probably more points since baking pies is a few clicks per pie compared to setting up a water or oil pipeline, or creating tools which is many clicks but which will put your name into many, many items.
Also, it doesn't pay to piss your neighbors off. If someone sees you throwing tools away and remaking them or something like that then you're gonna get kicked to the curb hard. Go find the posts about optimal play for genetic score and tell me that any part of that is better than risking some selfishness over tools.
And the current generic score system does absolutely not cancel out over time, there are many complaints about people grinding endlessly to get it up only to lose days of progress from one shitty griefer baby. That's what happens when you only use one limited metric to measure overall competence for something as critical as playing eve.
That's probably exacerbated due to Jason's choice of algorithm for the scoring system though. I was trying to talk him into thinking big picture and start with desired results rather than starting with a solution and trying to force it to work via surface level tweaks but he wasn't interested in hearing it, and now we're stuck with the top 50 players being determined by fleeting luck until he gets around to redoing it.
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My least favorite thing about genetic score is how I lose score when I am abandoned at birth. I had three deadbeat moms in a row (two were riding on horses) and by the time I found a mom who would let me live, I had lost a tool slot. I didn't use /die. I ran after my mom as soon as I could walk. I had literally no chance to live. And still my score takes a hit. How is this my fault? Deaths under three should not impact your genetic score. You are a helpless potato.
...
On a more positive note, my most hilarious motherhood fail was this time I was born to a mom riding on a horse through a jungle right next to a grizzly bear. She didn't stop, so it was just me and the bear. Unfortunately, the bear was not ready to be a mother and she panicked.
It's okay, mama bear. I forgive you. Human babies are too fragile.
Last edited by DestinyCall (2019-11-18 21:38:11)
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Deaths under three should not impact your genetic score. You are a helpless potato.
This pls. Punish the mother not the kid. The other way around if the kid /die's.
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I agree. I don't think I would mind genetic fitness as much if it didn't directly effect gameplay. Having a low score is incredibly limiting, having a high score is better but its still very limiting. Personally i wish it would just go away. I find it more annoying and i have yet to have it aid in my experience.
Like DestinyCall mentioned it reminds me that im in a game and breaks immersion. Every life we live is unique and its up to us as the player to evaluate if it was a good one or not, not some clunky score system. It forces players into a playstyle and limits freedom. The life limit already encouraged people to not /die but with genetic score ruling over all /die is off the table if you want to keep your tool slots up.
Personally i wish we would move away from limiting systems. Player freedom and ability was one of the things i loved about this game. When i first started a player could be born any gender any race to any mom. A player could pick up any tool and help however they could.
The learning curve was daunting and i loved the concept that the only limiter was your knowledge and skill. This unfortunately has completely changed and players are now severely handicapped. I understand creating more adversity for players but there are more exciting and interesting ways to implement something like that.
The more annoying the challenge doesn't make it more exciting to overcome, especially when the result is lackluster compared to the degree of struggle. If someone puts an incredible amount of effort into something and they receive a mediocre reward the person is likely to loose motivation each time, until it erodes into disinterest.
So whats the difference between an exciting struggle that creates a quality experience versus one that is agitating? I dont have the answer to that question and im sure its different for all of us. What i do know is, before the tool update eve runs were what i loved. It was raw, unforgiving and fast paced.
I have yet to do an eve run since the tool slot update. Im afraid to, i dont want to experience my favorite part of the game ruined by this tool update. All i know is the latest restrictions have not created any form of exciting abrasion for me. In fact they have taken away elements of the game i adored.
I felt like the game was balanced before tool slots were introduced and once the rift came down the game was finally feeling like it was getting back on track.
Its felt like the game has been having an identity crisis lately. Its felt like instead of release content to grow the tech ceiling once players reach it (like the trailer mentioned) we instead are given extreme limiters to keep us from reaching that ceiling. The limiter updates do not create and exciting struggle or an interesting life. They threaten the fabric of the game and what makes it great. At least for me.
Im all for creating more adversity and struggle as long as it feels good. Pre tool slot eve runs felt good. I know that for sure. The challenge of finding a good spot, keeping your family alive, and rushing steel tools feels outstanding. When you can die at sixty with your family working hard around you, the steel tools you crafted actively used, and a farm and bakery ramping in production it feels amazing. Knowing you built a foothold for your family and propelled them into a stable existence.
These latest limiter updates are more like throwing sand on the fire than making things exciting. I want more excitement like eve runs, excitement where you make a huge impact for future generations. Struggling to find another family so you can get some simple resources is not exciting. Having to balance your tool slots while a town is struggling is not exciting. You do a few thing and suddenly you are stuck doing those things for the rest of your life. It makes things stale and it feels like you are fighting against and invisible wall trying to contain your potential.
These have been my experiences since the limiter updates have been released. Genetic score shouldn't matter. People should be able to play how they want to, that's what makes for an exciting and diverse life. Its sad to see the game go this direction and i hope jason comes to his senses.
Last edited by Toxolotl (2019-11-19 04:51:53)
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I agree. I don't think I would mind genetic fitness as much if it didn't directly effect gameplay. Having a low score is incredibly limiting, having a high score is better but its still very limiting. Personally i wish it would just go away. I find it more annoying and i have yet to have it aid in my experience.
Like DestinyCall mentioned it reminds me that im in a game and breaks immersion. Every life we live is unique and its up to us as the player to evaluate if it was a good one or not, not some clunky score system. It forces players into a playstyle and limits freedom. The life limit already encouraged people to not /die but with genetic score ruling over all /die is off the table if you want to keep your tool slots up.
It does serve an essential role though, it seems pretty important to the overall flow of the game to make shitty family members less likely to be eves... The existing cobbled together system seems to achieve that adequately (as far as separating the top 10% from the bottom 90%) even if there isn't a clear path to getting eve as player due to the unreliability of it (terrible at separating the top 20). But yeah, it shouldn't be used as an overall OHOL competency rating as is and players shouldn't have non-birth gameplay degraded for blowing it off.
I mean the tool slots thing does generally make sense, no one can master all the skills required to run a village in one lifetime, nor would there likely even be a personality which fits into all those roles, but yeah limiting it further based on your motherly fitness is odd at best.
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Ok, here's the thing. No one has the right to force someone to live a certain way. Just because it bothers you it doesn't give you the right to take away choices from people.
If someone wants to be a shitty mom i think they should have the right to do so. Having kids die is enough punishment imo. If they dont care they are truly a sociopath, and guess what, we have people like that irl too. The beauty of this game, and why i love it so much, is that it capitalizes on the human element better than any game ive ever played. By limiting the ability for people to express themselves we limits the overall diversity of experiences, good and bad.
Eves should still be random, its not easy to get a lineage and town going from scratch and most often they die off. If the eve is truly unfit, let that trial by fire be the testament.
This is a vicious game and it shows a deep spectrum of human behavior. Limiting players to what is "acceptable" only limits the representation of that diversity. Genetic score only highlights one playstyle and if someone wants to eve or have many tool slots they are fixed into that playstyle. Its bad for diversity and its bad for the game. Im fine with it being a periphery thing but no score system should govern how people play. Making us all play the same way defeats the purpose of this game imo.
Putting everyone in a rigid structure with no flexibility is only going to promote a monotonous experience. Maybe some people like it and maybe some people hate it. What we should really be focusing on is trying to capture the broadest spectrum of behaviors. The more diversity in lives the more interesting and exciting it is. Being abandoned as a baby hurts emotionally, in the current system it cuts even deeper. It makes people feel that unless they play a specific way they are failing and will continue to be restricted in the diversity of how they want to play.
I dont care what the opposing reasoning is. Limiting players and putting them on a fixed path is bad. We have entered into that territory and its disgusting. We thought the rift put us in a box, but tool slots and family specialization truly have.
Last edited by Toxolotl (2019-11-18 23:47:50)
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Ok, here's the thing. No one has the right to force someone to live a certain way. Just because it bothers you it doesn't give you the right to take away choices from people.
This is factually incorrect, it's why we have child protective services. It's literally not a right to choose to let your child die (medical reasons excluded, etc etc) or to kill yourself (why we lock people up in a rubber room, not to say that we should or shouldn't, but we do... and helping someone kill themselves is a crime). But that has nothing to do with what we're talking about, just thought it was funny that you used the exact opposite of the truth as a segue to your point.
I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that you didn't mean that Jason has no right to do this or that with his game, which would be entirely out of touch with anything resembling a shared reality.
If someone wants to be a shitty mom i think they should have the right to do so. Having kids die is enough punishment imo. If they dont care they are truly a sociopath, and guess what, we have people like that irl too. The beauty of this game, and why i love it so much, is that it capitalizes on the human element better than any game ive ever played. By limiting the ability for people to express themselves we limits the overall diversity of experiences, good and bad.
Eves should still be random, its not easy to get a lineage and town going from scratch and most often they die off. If the eve is truly unfit, let that trial by fire be the testament.
The main thing that makes things impossible to Just Work in OHOL like they do in evolution is that genes are -not- passed down from generation to generation. The genes, which is to say the things dictating the behavior and fitness of an OHOL human, are the user. Users can't be spliced together and mutated like they do in evolution, and they can't multiply. My point is that you have to just walk away from the idea of trying to make it exactly like evolution because it's simply not possible. Survival of the fittest as an organic mechanism that just naturally arises (rather than being explicitly represented in an abstract way with programming) like it does in real life is not possible. Making things kind of in some ways similar to the context that evolution takes place will not make evolution Just Work unless you pick the exact things it depends on, which are absent here.
However, we -can- still judge genetic fitness via other means, and we can still use genetic fitness as a guide for surfacing survival behavior to the front of the pool. We just can't do it using the same mechanisms that real life does. It's not about, or perhaps it shouldn't be about, judging player behavior as good or bad, but rather as judging it as competent mother capable of giving players a good experience (starving as a baby is neither interesting nor challenging) or not. If they don't give a shit about children, great, they'll end up having fewer of them and won't have to bother with starting a whole new family of them.
But yeah as is, it's kind of situated as more of a judging the player about their behavior overall and punishing their overall experience accordingly, which I tentatively agree is no good... However, it does kind of in a weird way mimic instincts. Instincts can be ignored but there will be internal consequences that your brain will impose on you with the memories of what you did, as with the punishment mechanisms, you can ignore them and while it may slightly nerf you, you'd still be perfectly able to play and if you're mostly just fucking with people it's unlikely you'd even notice the tool slot penalty. The family specializations thing is trickier but that's another thread.
But yeah we're just looping at this point. You don't like games with constraints, I get it
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We also have jails and governments in real life. Do you see those in ohol? The whole point of the game is to have it be self governed by the players. We create the society and that's what's beautiful about it. To expect a society in the stone-industrial age to magically have laws, restrictions, and stuff like child services is silly.
My main point is that restricting diversity is only going to limit experiences in game. Say my mom is an eve for example and she cant sustain any more kids and explains to me that my death will enable future generations to live on. I would find that to be a moving and unique life, even though it was a short one.
I know i have no right to tell jason what to do. I agree its his masterpiece and he as the artist gets to choose where things go. All i can do is express my interpretation and hope it has an impact. He gets to choose if it matters or not, im perfectly fine with that. Its the beauty of being an artist. I meant more that we as players have no right to expect inescapable structures enforced on other players so they play they way we want them to.
I think more player freedom equates to more diversity and i think structures that limit those things are bad in any regard. I think the rift limited diversity but i saw its merit in terms of testing the game. I worry that tool slots, genetic fitness, and family specialization has limited the game so much that we only see a limited view of the diversity potential of the game. Only acceptable playstyles reap rewards and players are walled off from playing how they want to or accessing the true spectrum of diversity this game can provide. I find this sad and i hope things change in these regards.
Last edited by Toxolotl (2019-11-19 01:25:24)
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