One Hour One Life Forums

Thaulos

Member

Registered: 2019-02-19

Posts: 456

Family

In real life a family is the most important social group to which a person could belong to. Our families teach us about the importance of knowledge, education, hard work and effort. Family lays the foundation of the social and moral etiquettes which defines a person and how that person relates to the larger society. Children depend on parents to provide for their needs. By nurturing and teaching children families play an important role in making sure they develop and thrive on the long term.

Families support their children not only in moral and health but also financially. Not that long ago it was common for businesses to be run by families and inherited by their descendants. Jobs weren't just "for life", often they could also be for the children's life as well. Inheritance of wealth ensured the parents hard work would benefit their children even after they pass away.

Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines a family as both "a group of persons with common ancestry" and as "a group of individuals living under one roof."

In the game we have no such social group. People often identify their lives in terms of "town" and "lineage". Uncles and first cousins are indistinguishable from cousins 5th times removed or from some random eve that happened to find the town. Relationships of mother and daughter often don't develop much after the child is able to grab stuff at 3 years old. People exchange the customary "ily gl" with the occasional emote and that's it. If a daughter dies one might not even notice. It isn't uncommon to realize your mother already died because you suddenly became old yourself.

Any direct families do not matter at all unless it matters for the town/lineage. The traditional "last female". If town or lineage is at risk then people will rally together to help the last fertile with advice, varied food and clothing. If last female dies people often suicide and stop playing. In these situations family matters. But why not on others?

I do not have a 100% answer on how to make people care about families. But if there is one thing I strongly believe is that it's essential to have the concept of family existing in-game. For families to matter your daughter cannot have the same value for you that your niece has. Or your cousin. Or your aunt. There needs to be in-game distinction and incentive. Not some abstract reincarnation incentive like family graveyards but incentive in-the-same-life incentive.

Having a sort of traditional family unit (mother, father, children) concept in-game could benefit not only the sense of community and teamwork but also ensure people are invested into being productive. If resources are split between families, those who don't pull their weight will die off. This will inevitably create conflict and some inefficiency but in the long term towns and game experiences might be better off with the resulting competition and player stories. Having lineage's dead branches die off instead of them dragging the entire lineage with them will probably help too.

Property fences aren't perfect nor awful. They mostly just don't matter unless you want to hardcore roleplay or just try it out. It's not that they are necessarily inherently bad, it's just that they are not an incentive but a tool towards achieving something. But without the incentive no one will use the tool.

Families could help with some aspects of the game:

• Ability to regulate fertility: Don't want children? Don't get married.

• Ability to ensure your decedents specifically survive: fence off the fruits of your labor and make sure your children benefit from your hard work.

• More incentive to teach new players

• Family based professions?

Ultimately I believe there needs to be some sort of social group within lineages and above the individual. Families seem like the natural go-to option. They might not work 100% like in real life since OHOL children are pretty much independent from age 3 and probably wouldn't be much fun to increase that to 14 or 18. With some compromises we could have a fun and interesting "atom mechanic" which hopefully could finally help trigger all those tradings and wars.

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Baker

Member

Registered: 2018-03-06

Posts: 445

Re: Family

I'd hate to through all the trouble getting married to a cousin, Only for a stream of /die babies.

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"I came in shitting myself and I'll go out shitting myself"

futurebird

Member

Registered: 2019-02-20

Posts: 1,553

Re: Family

*You should only be able to marry people with a different last name.
*Babies should still be born to unmarried women, but marriage to a man gives a fertility boost.
*Any two players with different last names should be able to marry, but two guys or two girls has no fertility benefit, though the women would still have kids (sky babies)

I do not like "family professions" very much none of the implementations seem appealing and it just sounds like forced roleplaying. (I'm not anti- role play at all, but I don't want to be shoe-horned in to it.)

I agree that having more kinds of family unit beyond "the extended family of my village" A village family is a kind of family unit, though, we should have more variety.

I don't think that everyone is indifferent to who is and isn't their kid. I'm not. When I'm playing as a woman I'm playing for maximum lineage depth and I check on my kids, bring them things, help them with their projects in preference to others.

I worry about the town dyeing out if there are fewer than 3 fertile women. And everyone else should too. But only mod users have easy access to that information.  But, if there are not many babies it's a bad sign. If you don't hear crying the end can creep up on you so easily.

Last edited by futurebird (2019-04-29 17:43:11)

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omnem cibum costis
tantum baca, non facies opus

w0wma

Member

From: The Local Graveyard

Registered: 2019-02-08

Posts: 133

Re: Family

with marriage, there will probably be infidelity as well.