Anti-fence meta

Redram · 2019-04-18 21:35:19

Thaulos wrote:

You are talking about different times entirely. The "middle ages" in Europe are not the same as ancient times before there was money. In Europe a family would own the "communal oven" and rent it out to whoever needed it.

You said there was no "centralized bakery", not that 'there was no centralized bakery that was owned by everyone'. Money has nothing to do with it, nor who 'owned' it (and it was not always an individual, sometimes it was the government - thereby communal). Either way it was still a centralized communal oven, in the sense that the whole community used it. You paid with a portion of your bread, or whatever else the baker might want.

The reasons of efficiency and time saved (even skill to some degree) were the same in ancient times, the same in medieval times, and are the same in game.

jasonrohrer · 2019-04-18 21:51:11

Amon wrote:

But also a gocer's intention is to earn money, not to feed the village.

What do intentions matter here? The result is that the grocer feeds the village.

jasonrohrer · 2019-04-18 21:54:49

Yeah, I imagine that when you brought your grain to the "central mill" to be turned into flour, the miller would get some of your grain in exchange for the use of the mill. The same with the bakery.

If it really was a commonly owned resource, it would go to hell pretty quickly.

Redram · 2019-04-18 22:00:50

jasonrohrer wrote:

What do intentions matter here? The result is that the grocer feeds the village.

I think his point was to point out that the rl grocer has different motives than the game baker.

The game baker is motivated to feed the village. There's nothing to trade for in any real sense.

The rl grocer's motive is to profit. Whether that be money or barter or whatever.

profit and private property go hand in hand. Feeding the village and private property don't really. They can coexist, but feeding the village does not require private property.

Twisted · 2019-04-18 22:53:48

jasonrohrer wrote:

Also, I should say that mixed into the balance are aesthetic considerations. I want this game to feel like making things. It is very realistic, at least on one axis. Carrots are pulled out of the ground one at a time, by hand. Potatoes are dug with a shovel. You also have to mound the plants in the middle of growth. It's just the way potatoes work. Getting rid of any of those steps would make them not feel like potatoes. They aren't just brown carrots.

I don't think this argument holds water at all.

Sheep don't need to be fed and they just pop out babies forever, pigs never shit and their meat is inedible, cows don't have meat whatsoever.

We can't figure out how to eat raw tomatoes or onions, but we can make steam engines out of branches and rocks.

We can make cars out of wooden boxes, and make planes out of them just by adding wings. And that plane takes up less space than two corn kernels.

Also, shovels break after digging out like ten potatoes. That is NOT the way shovels work.

Saying that you can't fix potatoes because it would be 'unrealistic' is an extremely poor argument.

Spoonwood · 2019-04-18 23:13:04

jasonrohrer wrote:

There are various suggestions for "fixing" potatoes, but they all involve short-circuiting the way potatoes feel to grow. I could amp up the food value of potatoes to compensate, but I don't think I have enough room to do that even if I wanted to (if each potato gave you more food than the best pie, it still wouldn't compensate for the iron usage). But besides that, potatoes wouldn't feel right to eat if they were a super food.

No Jason you are wrong. You cannot eat iron in this game. It does not contribute to fertility. Lack of iron is not a cause of death of a person NOR of a family. All of the newcomen multipurpose engine technology ultimately comes as inferior in terms of fertility mechanics to even decaying clothing sets getting replaced which often enough can provide more sources of yum (for those who don't know rabbit pie, carrot rabbit pie, berry rabbit pie, berry carrot rabbit pie) given that people took they time and care to attend to organization of that and re-organization of that. Charcoal pumps, and/or importing water from more distant sources along with local cisterns can suffice for the local water supply. 40 some iron used up on potatoes? The bias against potatoes is so deep, that no family I suspect has done that. Enough people would just rather play around with newcomen multipurpose engine technology than do more basic blacksmithing, cooking, or village organization that they will insist on this myth that 'not enough iron' kills families. That way people remain confused and believe that iron makes for a serious problem beyond enough to maintain basic blacksmithing. Potatoes DO compensate for the iron use. Making more shovels just isn't what people want to do with the iron. Or people want to eat things to contain or try to eliminate wheat all over the place or rabbits all over the place, so they eat things other than potatoes.

Last edited by Spoonwood (2019-04-18 23:14:18)

futurebird · 2019-04-18 23:13:08

I don't think that the unused items are a big issue. It makes it more of a novelty when you see them and there are a LOT of items, if you always saw everything that would make places too samey-samey. Really both I and Destiny have been pushing for even more ways to make villages unique, and a vast catalog of items will help that to happen. Not every town has a casino.

I do think that there needs to be more integration but "fixing" the balance isn't about everything being used evenly. Also, calling it "fixing" kind of trivializes the task IMO. It's not like this is a bug, it's a matter of design in a game designed to evolve over time. It's tricky and non-trivial.

I *will* however band waggon on the complaint that some of the items feel like discarded toys, like potatoes which would be easy to make a bigger part of the game, we all know what's wrong with them, but the issue just kind of lingers. I think a lot of us are pushing for more mundane (on the surface) updates: stacking, better potato harvesting, pig poo, etc. maybe put a week in the calendar where the goal is to add NOTHING new and just work on tweaking the existing game?

And to address spoon... you are right about fertility, but I don't think many people are playing to keep populations alive. I think some people play for tech or building. But, fertility is key that and having enough simple foods to keep more generations alive. Maybe we do need an "oldest line" contest to drive the point home.

1. Who can keep a town running for the longest number of hours?
2. Who can have the most generations? (these are not the same!)

I would like to see what happens when more people focus on these two goals.

Last edited by futurebird (2019-04-18 23:17:34)

BladeWoods · 2019-04-18 23:18:25

jasonrohrer wrote:

There are various suggestions for "fixing" potatoes, but they all involve short-circuiting the way potatoes feel to grow. I could amp up the food value of potatoes to compensate, but I don't think I have enough room to do that even if I wanted to (if each potato gave you more food than the best pie, it still wouldn't compensate for the iron usage). But besides that, potatoes wouldn't feel right to eat if they were a super food.

No, many of them don't involve that at all. One solution:

Digging a potato could only use a shovel usage on the last potato. Putting down a potato shouldn't use a shovel usage.

Last edited by BladeWoods (2019-04-18 23:20:53)

futurebird · 2019-04-18 23:23:58

... have any of you grown potatoes? I have them on my roof garden (I do live in NYC) and uh... I dig them up all at once with my bare hands. I pull the whole plant then sort the seed potatoes from the ones to store and eat. This reminds me I need to get the garden going.

I have never in all my life, on farms dug a single potato with a metal shovel. You might damage the potato! gotta use a fork, your hands or a wood trowl-- and they come up in bunches, like grapes but bigger.

....

Tarr · 2019-04-18 23:27:52

BladeWoods wrote:

jasonrohrer wrote:
There are various suggestions for "fixing" potatoes, but they all involve short-circuiting the way potatoes feel to grow. I could amp up the food value of potatoes to compensate, but I don't think I have enough room to do that even if I wanted to (if each potato gave you more food than the best pie, it still wouldn't compensate for the iron usage). But besides that, potatoes wouldn't feel right to eat if they were a super food.
No, many of them don't involve that at all. One solution:
Digging a potato could only use a shovel usage on the last potato. Putting down a potato shouldn't use a shovel usage.

I don't think a single person has suggested to buff the food value on potatoes because that's not the problem with potatoes. As pointed out the problem lies in the fact they bust shovels like no other.

All that is needed is that you rebuff the shovel back up, remove composting from shovels and add it to a second tool to balance around and boom. Now people don't screech about people digging graves as often, builders aren't screwed over by the balance of composting, and potatoes stop being a completely stigmatized food.

Either that or do like Blade said. Make it so the use chance isn't on every single potato in the patch. Potatoes don't have to be a super food, they just need to not be a shovel smasher.

jasonrohrer · 2019-04-18 23:52:53

Well, I'm not saying that everything is realistic.

What I'm saying is that there is a "making" aesthetic in this game that very few games have. Yes, you just attach wings and propeller to a car, but making the wings is a pretty involved process, and the car itself has something like 80 parts already. And for the radio... you literally make each and every electronic part that would be present in a real radio. There's a bit of hand-waving there (you don't make staples to "fix" all the parts onto the board, nor do you make wire insulation), but not very much.

So, when I went to add potatoes to the game (11 months ago), I didn't think, "How can I make these a balanced food source?" Instead, I thought, "How does potato farming work?" It involves these steps. Potatoes in real life came from this wild plant.

You will hopefully see that process at work throughout most of the tech tree. There are times when I got lazy and didn't flesh it out in as much detail. But in general, it's pretty detailed.

Now, in the midst of all of that detail, I've been trying to solve overall problems with the design. Like, how to make sure that food runs out, eventually.

I feel like these issues are orthogonal, and "balance," whatever that means in this context, is along yet another completely different axis.

The most important things, in order:

1. Is the tech tree detailed and aesthetically pleasing? Does each thing feel like a unique thing to make, different from the other things? Do you get a "feel" for potato farming vs tomato farming?

2. Does the overall arc of the game work? Is it free of exploits that short-circuit that arc?

And far less important (in my mind):

3. Are the various things you can make in the game balanced?

What does balance mean? It usually applies to two-player games, or team games, where we want to ensure that there's not one dominant strategy, one Nash equilibrium. Archer rush in an RTS. Oh, skirmishers beat archers, archers beat calvary, cavalry beats soldiers, soldiers beat skirmishers? In the most extreme case in turn-based games, a game without balance can degenerate into a non-game for players of reasonable skill, where the best move for each player is obvious. That's horrible, and it ruins the game. In the case of the RTS loop, it's not so crucial, since the skill of the game isn't really picking archers or cavalry, but resource and time management. Turning the meta strategy of the game into a large-scale RPS-esque yomi-fest doesn't actually make it any better.

And here, we're claiming that OHOL would be better if the foods were "balanced." What would that mean? That all foods offer food value in exact proportion to their input resources? Which would mean, essentially, that which foods you eat wouldn't matter. Berries would equal milk would equal mangoes. This would leave the foods eaten as a player preference. As an aesthetic choice, really. Is the game worse because no one eats potatoes?

From a game dev point of view, we might say that the potato "content" is wasted if no one ever plays it. That might be the actual reason for "balance" in an RTS. Think of Champion balance in LOL. There's no gameplay reason for it, really, other than to ensure Riot gets a good ROI on the man-hours they poured into each champion, and to ensure that players don't get bored playing the same "best" champions forever. Stale meta, and all that.

But you ARE interacting with the "potato content" all the time. We've been discussing it for 11 months. You actively tell people in the village not to grow potatoes. Maybe potatoes suck, and will always suck. That's not a bad thing, really. Something has to suck. Unless all things are equal, in which case it's a boring mush where your choices don't matter, and you're essentially playing with "window dressing" on what amounts to the same underlying foods, from a gameplay perspective.

There are very bad cards in Magic. That's weird, right? I mean, they don't have to make bad cards, but they do. Every set has bad cards. Some of them are bad enough that it must be intentional. No reasonable person would ever run these cards. But these cards probably make magic a better game. They give it more texture. They allow for very entertaining articles like this to be written:

https://www.coolstuffinc.com/a/abesarge … orst-cards

If we run a "top 10 worst items in OHOL," which would be very entertaining, what does that tell us about the game? What does that tell us about me? That I obviously suck as a designer? That the game is "broken"?

But "balance" isn't really an appropriate goal for this kind of game... at least it's not my goal for this kind of game.

jasonrohrer · 2019-04-19 00:02:58

I just dug 38 potatoes with one shovel. I think people are forgetting that I changed the way that it worked 2 months ago. It used to be two shovel uses per potato (dig, then set down). Now it's just one.

But okay, okay, I'll make it so that digging potatoes doesn't use up the shovel at all.

They still take two soil.

Spoonwood · 2019-04-19 00:08:12

futurebird wrote:

And to address spoon... you are right about fertility, but I don't think many people are playing to keep populations alive. I think some people play for tech or building. But, fertility is key that and having enough simple foods to keep more generations alive. Maybe we do need an "oldest line" contest to drive the point home.

It's hard to tell. I think most advanced players, those with the deepest knowledge of the game, aren't playing to keep family lines alive. Were it the case that Eves had the ability to get reborn into the same spot again but NOT have children via an Eve chain and thus not have a lineage, then people playing to keep family lines alive would end up more common. That said though, it might not be that much, because Eves like Eve Jo who enjoy playing as Eve might not play to keep family lines alive. And also, it's kind of rude in game to go around saying to people 'you need to do this in order to keep our family alive when it's a game, people know that and will know that, and in the game doing something which doesn't preserve lineages doesn't actually harm others, it just gives them more challenges comparable to what happens as an Eve or in an Eve camp. People who play the game that way as if it were some sort of realistic simulation would probably quit, as it involves too much death of family members too often.

Edit: I'm sure that some of the most advanced, non-griefing, players aren't playing to keep family lines alive on bigserver2. People talking about towns such that they believe that is what matters and coordinate systems to find those towns. Moving along possibly without a horsecart to such a family can entail death due to things like tree boars and tree snakes or lag (not that tree boars and tree snakes shouldn't exist). Raising children in the wild can result in failure. But, if you'd rather go to a town where you can play possibly a few times, maybe try to get born there on purpose, then you'll probably do that.

Last edited by Spoonwood (2019-04-19 00:27:44)

Tarr · 2019-04-19 00:09:53

jasonrohrer wrote:

I just dug 38 potatoes with one shovel. I think people are forgetting that I changed the way that it worked 2 months ago. It used to be two shovel uses per potato (dig, then set down). Now it's just one.
But okay, okay, I'll make it so that digging potatoes doesn't use up the shovel at all.
They still take two soil.

Thank you for fixing the potato.

voy178 · 2019-04-19 00:31:18

jasonrohrer wrote:

But okay, okay, I'll make it so that digging potatoes doesn't use up the shovel at all.
They still take two soil.

This is great news! Finally, we'll see more potato farms to add variety to the garden. It's the variety that makes the game better after all.

Last edited by voy178 (2019-04-19 00:31:42)

BlueDiamondAvatar · 2019-04-19 00:45:54

A rallying hymn for the OHOL free rangers ....

Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies above
Don't fence me in
Let me ride through the wide open country that I love
Don't fence me in
Let me be by myself in the evenin' breeze
And listen to the murmur of the cottonwood maple trees
Send me off forever but I ask you please
Don't fence me in

I want to ride to the ridge where the west commences
And gaze at the moon search for the vein till I lose my senses
And I can't look at hobbles and I can't stand fences
Don't fence me in

Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies above
Don't fence me in
Let me ride through the wide open country that I love
Don't fence me in

Last edited by BlueDiamondAvatar (2019-04-19 00:46:38)

futurebird · 2019-04-19 00:54:16

jasonrohrer wrote:

I just dug 38 potatoes with one shovel. I think people are forgetting that I changed the way that it worked 2 months ago. It used to be two shovel uses per potato (dig, then set down). Now it's just one.
But okay, okay, I'll make it so that digging potatoes doesn't use up the shovel at all.
They still take two soil.

*sustained cheering*

Twisted · 2019-04-19 01:20:43

Thank you for fixing potatoes. They're still going to be one of the worst foods in the game, but growing them will no longer be actively harmful to a village - and that's completely fine. That's all we ever wanted, I don't think anyone ever claimed that potatoes should be a top tier food.

jasonrohrer wrote:

I think people are forgetting that I changed the way that it worked 2 months ago. It used to be two shovel uses per potato (dig, then set down). Now it's just one.

I think we all remember that, everyone was in shock when you made that change, because you made them even worse than before - from two separate 4% chances (~7.8% combined) to a single 10% chance to use.

futurebird · 2019-04-19 01:37:52

Fencing bears will be nice, fencing off iron veins... a new kind of evil?

Redram · 2019-04-19 01:44:53

futurebird wrote:

Fencing bears will be nice, fencing off iron veins... a new kind of evil?

Bears are the kind of thing that will be easy to forget and let lapse, unless the cave is literally in town. Iron veins only works as long as the griefer is alive (or rather, for an hour) - I wouldn't worry about it. It would take extraordinary luck and timing for that to work as a griefing tactic.

Last edited by Redram (2019-04-19 01:46:35)

Whatever · 2019-04-19 05:09:20

@ jason

please also make it so burying dead people will not use up shovels. (or that you can get reborn into a village if someone buried you)
currently burying people is griefing

DestinyCall · 2019-04-19 05:20:33

Whatever wrote:

@ jason
please also make it so burying dead people will not use up shovels. (or that you can get reborn into a village if someone buried you)
currently burying people is griefing

I would love to be able to bury the dead without going through a stack of iron. I recall one of the first things I thought when I started playing was "Holy god, why so many skeletons! I need to fix this ..." One dead shovel later, I realized why there was a huge field of bones outside of town instead of a graveyard. >.>

Amon · 2019-04-19 07:25:18

jasonrohrer wrote:

Yeah, I imagine that when you brought your grain to the "central mill" to be turned into flour, the miller would get some of your grain in exchange for the use of the mill. The same with the bakery.
If it really was a commonly owned resource, it would go to hell pretty quickly.

Well it does happen in game, but it is also kinda weird since exchanges don't happen directly. The trading is just less direct and kind of everyone is 'payed in' food up front to do work as adults. The farmer farms, brings food-stuff to bakers, eats pie. The smith makes hoes and shovels to continue production of food, gets pie. Milkweed farmer makes rope for carpenters for buckets for milk/well to essentially contribute in the food cycle, gets pie.The shepherd kills and feeds sheep, brings meat to bakery, gets pie. The baker turns all of that into food, gets pie. Rabbit hunter brings skins and clothes somebody and gets pie...

People still get angry at moochers, it's basically like stealing food. But we have our own way of dealing with them too. A knife or bow if they really don't want to work.

Maybee a fenced in bakey would work. Kind of. But it's kind of an obstruction to work and exchanges that are already happening ergonomically.

Also now I can rejoice with the others! I can live up to being a dirty potato munching Slav.

Last edited by Amon (2019-04-19 07:28:24)

Spoonwood · 2019-04-19 16:45:54

Twisted wrote:

Thank you for fixing potatoes. They're still going to be one of the worst foods in the game, but growing them will no longer be actively harmful to a village

They were NOT harmful to a village. See the numbers above about how many potatoes Jason used to break just ONE shovel. Well, setting up oil takes more than 40 iron on average, and the water from charcoal pumps is already unlimited. No family has broken 40 shovels on potatoes, and you didn't come remotely close to that in your video. And potatoes are food, and would provide yum to most people on their first bite.

jasonrohrer wrote:

I think people are forgetting that I changed the way that it worked 2 months ago. It used to be two shovel uses per potato (dig, then set down). Now it's just one.

Twisted wrote:

I think we all remember that, everyone was in shock when you made that change, because you made them even worse than before - from two separate 4% chances (~7.8% combined) to a single 10% chance to use.

That did make things worse. But shovel charges was NEVER an issue with potatoes. People like Tarr who know won't say it, in part because then Jason would nerf iron spawning even more and doing advanced technology would become even more difficult, and it's pretty hard even if you have the iron around already. Additionally, running a diesel water engine or kerosone pump is more pleasant than running a charcoal pump. And not getting iron early enough so you can make buckets for water and rubber (the supplies needed to make a pump have rubber, NOT iron, as their hang up)... that can kill a camp with the water running out with just shallow wells, no usable cisterns, and an inability to get to milk. So nerfing iron more would pose a problem for getting to a camp that isn't so fragile with respect to the water supply. So nerfing iron spawn probability more would probably make it too hard to build a camp. But, potatoes weren't a problem in that using shovel charges was always griefing. That's just silly and shows a fundamental misunderstanding that lack of iron does't kill a camp directly. Lack of water comes as something that more directly can kill a camp than not having iron around. And lack of food comes as even more direct.

Spoonwood · 2019-04-19 16:56:01

Whatever wrote:

@ jason
please also make it so burying dead people will not use up shovels. (or that you can get reborn into a village if someone buried you)
currently burying people is griefing

I completely agree.

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