Meso's Idea and Discussion Thread

Meso · 2018-03-23 04:02:31

Hello all! I am new to the community, and am anxious to play. In this thread I hope we all can discuss hypothetical items and argue if they would be useful and what effect they would have. Not only that but I would like to talk about various traditions or ways of life that one might employ.

The one thing I would Like to discuss right off the bat is based off of civilization interaction: Currency. I feel as if this would make people concentrate on only one trade and a true division of labor would form. It would be really interesting to see an economy form in this game. Thoughts? Would this be good or bad?

Meso · 2018-03-23 04:38:22

I also would like to add that if currency and trade became a thing, maps would become incredibly useful.

RunnersShade · 2018-03-23 05:57:07

Agreed on the maps, but here's why I doubt currency would be in the game:

In hunter-gatherer societies, there is no need, even, no use for currency. All work must be done--even to the point of ignoring Marxism by just having no money. If the hunters don't get rabbit fur, seal fur, etc-- then people don't have clothes, and that uses up a lot more food resources. If we don't have farmers, then no carrots/wheat/berries get made, and people starve. arguably pie makers and forgers aren't necessary, but by gods do they make everything so much easier. Also, kind of missing in action are the carpenters: I've lived in many settlements, some that have no shelter, others that are decently thought out--but I never once see someone making it.

There's also the flaw of, if there is currency in the game, is there a set amount? or would it be craftable like any other item? if it is, wouldn't people choose that job, to make currency, over others?
To go a step further, there aren't centralized states currently in this game. What currency is good for is determining how much items are worth, as well as the labor. Currently, for some reason, being a CEO is worth millions or billions of USD more than those that flip burgers, although those businesses wouldn't exist without those willing to flip burgers. I'm gonna stray away from further politics, but otherwise currency is only needed if there is a state, at least historically this is the case--monarchs used their "divine right" as a way to collect money, which allowed for lavish lifestyles while those who were poor accepted it (until the enlightenment) because it was seen as gods will
(side note: I know that what I'm talking about is western, and doesn't account for other forms of economic or governmental and historical situations)

last point, I think right now these small communities are fairly self contained, and once we see places that have more than one large settlement, then perhaps we'll see trading, but I imagine that it would be more of a "what do you have/what do I need" situation, and people would trade accordingly. Perhaps one settlement does a really good job at farming and pie making, but not much else--they could trade with another settlement for clothes and other needed things.

/rant over

Joriom · 2018-03-23 08:12:18

RunnersShade wrote:

last point, I think right now these small communities are fairly self contained, and once we see places that have more than one large settlement, then perhaps we'll see trading, but I imagine that it would be more of a "what do you have/what do I need" situation, and people would trade accordingly. Perhaps one settlement does a really good job at farming and pie making, but not much else--they could trade with another settlement for clothes and other needed things.

Thats called barter and that will probably be the first form of trade we get. Its also historically acurate. You have to much of X but lack Y, I have to much of Y but lack X. Lets help each other and trade. We both gain.

The problem is - thats not going to work without the feel of private property or... group property. What stops someone from village few screens away to just come and take X or Y? Most of current communities can't even spot stranger from outside of the village yet. Hell - they don't even know half of their own villagers! How do you want to protect something when you don't know whom to protect it from? And don't even get me me started on private belongings. You basically can't watch your stuff 24/7 and can't stop someone taking your stuff.

After our settlements advance a bit and we start building walls around villages as Jason imagines it - group property can start to form way easier. Still - our current biggest problems araise from our own kids, not from outside - so players don't focus on that.

About the currency:
Don't force modern interpretations and usage on stone aged society. First of all - please read up some on why currency was invented and where it got its value from.

Curreny came to existance when people started producing more and more differet, unique products and it was harder and harder to barter:
"I need a pig and I have to many metals"
"Some people need metal, but none of them have pig to trade."
"Some people have to many pigs, but they don't need metal."
At this point - you would first need to find a link between pigs and metal though other procudts. For example: first trade metal for honey. Then honey for clay pots. Clay pots for clothing. Then finaly clothing for pig. Also - along the way different people valued different products differently high. DDD. So you could actually loose a lot of oryginal value with each trade.
The more products "on the market" - the more steps it sometimes took to get what you want, the more value possibly lost and it was not guarenteed that after you got to the last step, the pig trade was still available.
So people started to look for products that were always used and always in demand. Trading for that was always a good idea because it opened a lot of options for you later. If product would not spoil over time and could be easily divided - it was even better because you could store excess you got or trade parts of what you have. Sometimes those were tool metals, other time oil.
Some communities found it usefull to place value in useless or decorative items that where small enough and lasted forever but were sparse enough so no one person could just collect a lot of those by themselves. For example specyfic stones or seashells.

As communities grew - it was harder and harder to think of recource that could not just be massed by organized group without any notice. Thats how "precious metals" came to the table. In most cases it took combined effort of a big group to find and mine those, mines were not to hard to spot, those metals would last very long time, you could easily split them up. Quite good stuff. So people addopted silver and gold as the common "good" that could be traded.

Also - the ammout of work needed to get a batch of silver or gold gave it value. The hared it was to get gold, the more gold was worth. In areas where gold was abundant - you could get few meal and roof to sleep under. For the same ammount in place where gold was very sparse - you could get entire house and farm.

Precious metals were still volatile form of what we could today call "currency" but they were the best of what people could think of at the time. What you meantioned before: "currency is only needed if there is a state, at least historically this is the case--monarchs used their "divine right" as a way to collect money" is not actually true as you can see from what I wrote earlier. You could call seashells, iron, grain or oil "currencies" of their times. What they needed was community agreement of value for that item, not "the state".

On the other hand I know where you get the idea. State regulation is the next step in our history. The ruling party almost always had relatively way more of "currency" then others. Ability to pay others to do what you want gave power. Hell - you didn't need to pay them in "currency". Just spend your "currency" on supplies and promise to feed people and take care of them for protecting you. Done. You got power. Thats also why ruling parties didn't want sudden influx of what was considered "currency" in random parts of communities. Thats why "private" gold mines in western community were seen as attack on the leader. If you got more gold on your own - you could gather more people around you and challenge the ruler. Thats why rulers started to caputer every every single mine of precious metals for themselves - with armed force if needed. Thats also one of the reasons why they started to mark gold with their seals (the second reason being marking the same exact ammounts of gold).

If gold had kings seal on it - you could most likely be sure of two things. It came from the ruler and it should be the exact ammount that it represented. This made it easier to trade with others. Thats also how "the state" started to be the guarantor of value for the currency. Which was of course soon going to be explited by adding less precious metals to the coins (piece of metal + kings seal = coin). This way king could spend more "currency" then he has just by mixing metals.

So - how did we come from gold and gold coins to currency as we know it now?
Gold had one big problem. It was heavy and bulky. If you wanted to buy something valuable in town you needed to carry all of that with you. It was both hard to do as well as dangerous. Some smart people found a simple fix for that with paper, writing and ink seals (stamps).
Basically - some people started to offer the "gold guarding" service in town. You could leave your unwieldy amouts of gold with them and they would guarentee to give it back to you after you came back with the paper they stamped. They would ofc take agreed uppon part of the gold for the service. You could use that to look around town freely without the cumbersome gold with you, find what you need, come back for gold and go back to buy the item you needed. Over time the cusomers got even better idea. Lets ditch the "go back for gold". Instead of getting one piece of paper - lets get few more but each with smaller value. When we find the thing we want to buy - lets trade the paper for the object. Seller can then go and trade paper back for gold. Win-win.

Supossedly that oryginated in germany and people offering those services were always sitting protected by their guards on long wooden benches - in german sitting on "bank"-s. You got notes from those people sitting on benches - bank notes.

Instead of going to get their gold, people started to pass those notes around - using it as currency and paying for goods and services. And thats how paper currency came to life as equivalent of gold.

As time went by - people started to care less and less about the gold equivalent of paper as in most cases you could just trade those paper pieces. Ofc people started with forgeries as well - thats when the guys from bank started to fight them back by punishing the forgers or adding new safety measurements to the notes. They went for help to the "ruling party" as well - which has seen it as a great oportinity to take the value of currency under its own wings again and not loose importance. Thats how what we call national banks came to life.

As those guys on the banks were the guarantor of value for a moment, "the state" went back to being guarantor with their rule over this new technology - "paper currency".

Thats the state we are in now. The gold equivalency was dropped not so long ago (funny thing is: it was dropped by the USA who realized they made more "bank notes" than gold they have and could not pay Japan who collected all their dollars and wanted to trade back for gold). Our "currency" if actually just figment of our imagination. Its basically equal to as much as we are willing to believe it is. Thats how currency exchange rate works btw. When country gets out of favour and less people want to start business there (thus pay taxes etc) the value of their currency drops. When people flood to country with investments - the value of currency raises. Only because people believe its worh more now and are willing to trade more for that.

One day our currency system might collapse. Which many smart people believe is comming soon. But thats future... not the part of OHOL yet... Back to topic.

I believe currency should not be implemented in game like it is in most games. As arbitraty counter in the corner of the screen. Nor should it be implemented as specyfic item at first. Look how many steps it took humanity to reach what you call coins. We have so much potential to work with what we have in game already - but thats now whats stopping us from trading.

/REAL rant over @RunnersShade

NBonaparte_BG · 2018-03-23 08:39:21

Welp, don't forgot the technology tree of OHOL is still in the mid-ancient era, we should have writing before we get currency and stuffs, so plz think before u post

P.S. Jason is not a sadist, usually developers will ignore most of the users ideas with their strong common sense, in fact, 80% of my ideas given to game developing streamers on live coding.tv are ignored, some even says that my ideas are stupid or crazy.

Because as a game developer, you are making a product that serves lots of people, and most of them aren't adults(18+) or fully educated, so you cant make sure that are you taking a suggestion from a kid or not, and mostly, I bet 75% of the users aren't that experience in programming, so their ideas won't be exactly what u are needed. In the other side, as making a product severing lots of people, each your decision is more than neutral and does not effects your sales.

So I think, ur suggestions are just inspirations, some of them will be taken as an idea, but very few. And u cant say that Jason is a saddist, because he don't scan the entire forum and read your harangues. Plz be patient and im sick of these people complaining.

U have to think as his side, he has a entire family to feed! Welp as some of you haven't experienced being as a father yet, it is hard, and he still have time to read your forums when he has to write his codes and take care of children.

And I just scanned a page about Mr.Roher on Wikipedia, he made lots of games, and he must have been a professional programmer.

Last edited by NBonaparte_BG (2018-03-23 08:56:35)

NBonaparte_BG · 2018-03-23 08:40:33

I won't say that much about it, because I rather help Sammoh.
It's just an advice of mine, u can take it.
If u think im retarted and murders villiages like a stereotype, u can ignore this

NBonaparte_BG · 2018-03-23 08:43:35

and also, long paragraph won't change my mind:
1.It's too long and I don't want to waste my time.
2.Even tho I scanned through your paragraph and I got your message, BUT! I still kept my common sense.

and also, I rather help Sammoh and share him my ideas, not because of his personality.
Its because he also studies history so he can give corrections to my ideas.
And it seems like his idea is not hopeless like yours.

P.S. He didn't bribe me to help him or say this.

Last edited by NBonaparte_BG (2018-03-23 08:44:04)

Joriom · 2018-03-23 08:48:24

@NBonaparte_BG
If you don't want to say much - then don't say it. Also, don't say you don't want to say. Stick to topic.
Also: please dont spam and use edit button. You don't need three consecutive posts.
To the community: please excuse the offtopic, but sadly we're not allowed to send private messages on this found and I can't find better way to relay the message.

NBonaparte_BG · 2018-03-23 09:01:03

@Meso
But at last, I will say currency won't be a thing until like the 1?? update.
but your idea was great.
So sorry that I was arguing with the stereotype Joriom in your forum.
If u have anything to ask, txt me in discord
my discord name is NBonaparte #6629

Currency is developed in Sammoh's server, dying.world
Even tho I tried to persuade him, but he already did the drawing
From his posted basic figure, I can see that his entire modding team has a drawing skill of a primary schooler.
WELP, thats a bit off topic while dissing both @Joriom and @Sammoh.
So TXT ME IF U NEED SOME HELP

Last edited by NBonaparte_BG (2018-03-23 09:03:52)

Kinrany · 2018-03-23 09:50:42

Trading only makes sense if the profits are worth the time spent. Is there ever a reason to trade in the game? Can anyone provide a concrete example of a realistic and reasonably common situation where trading is better than making the thing yourself or taking it without trading?

Also, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barter

Last edited by Kinrany (2018-03-23 10:41:52)

NBonaparte_BG · 2018-03-23 10:01:48

we already got real currency in real world, I can just pay u 2 USD for 10 rabbit pies.

But thats not the point @kirnany
The thing is, comparing to most recent OHOL tech tree, currency is a really advanced thing, @babsy even wanted to add bank which is part of the mechanism back to the late-renaissance to mid industrial era, and currency is also a thing invented by the romans, which at that time, they already have a strong civics which we don't have, (we don't even have writing to start off yet!) Its not Mr.Roher's fault that he doesn't made writing a thing in this game, because he has to go to the GDC(game developer conference) that he won't be workin until Palm Sunday. So we have to keep "protesting" and waiting until he adds writing, otherwise the future development on civics and more advanced things will be a trouble.

Last edited by NBonaparte_BG (2018-03-23 10:09:13)

Kinrany · 2018-03-23 10:10:39

we already got real currency in real world, I can just pay u 2 USD for 10 rabbit pies.

You can, but you won't. If you can buy 10 rabbit pies, it means that they're physically close to you in the game. If they're close, you can just take them because protecting them is not worth anyone's time. But even if you wanted to buy them, it's unlikely that their owner would sell them to you for a reasonable price because performing the transaction will take like 10% of their current life.

If the sum is big enough, they'd probably agree to sell, but that's like being able to trade a rabbit skeleton for a fully stocked farm: your willingness to do it doesn't say anything about the economy as a whole.

Last edited by Kinrany (2018-03-23 10:35:49)

Kinrany · 2018-03-23 10:28:15

To the second part:

The game doesn't have to, and can't, mirror the order in which non-physical technologies were invented in real life.

Everyone in the game already knows the idea of money. You don't need a special "coin" object to have money, carts with pies would work just fine if players were able to and had a reason to use money. If players could reliably own objects and had a reason to specialize, they'd already "invent" money no matter what Jason thinks about it.

Same for writing: players already know how to write. We could write with bones if we wanted to, we could even encode numbers with random items inside baskets inside carts. We have the knowledge, we just can't use it efficiently, not because there isn't a special object for it, but because there is no object that can be used to store information efficiently.

That said, adding a bank goes against the game's design because banks are not physical objects, they're institutions made of people.

Erudaru · 2018-03-23 10:52:02

Someone said we don't have governments or countries but also, we don't even have stable villages and populations. A lot has to be done before trading and currencies should become a thing.

And honestly, I like the customs as they are right now; a vast majority of people want to help and create and share. Carrot farmers don't ask questions when people come and take away the carrots. They don't ask for your clothes in return. They assume you are being helpful elsewhere.

I'd love if we can achieve a society without currency and with abundant resources where people do their jobs and can freely use the products of others. (We already have this in towns where mothers raise children responsibly)

Kinrany · 2018-03-23 11:16:59

Tolkien would be happy!

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#1 2018-03-23 04:02:31

Meso's Idea and Discussion Thread

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