The Race War/Genocide/Xenophobia Update

futurebird · 2019-05-11 14:03:48

Right now the genetic variation is gone. So, if you are ginger Eve the whole town is gingers and every man looks identical because there is only one ginger model. The same for black Eves. Two types of women and ONE black guy. Black people should not be as rare as gingers anyway and that always bothered me, but with this change to "racially pure" families is much more noticeable.

I was initially drawn to the game because of the diversity of the character models. I remember thinking "wow someone got it right for once" -- now? I don't know if I'd have started playing.

I do think we need ways for families to feel distinct but the combination of concepts in this update is ugly: racial purity for families, language barriers and swords for killing outsiders. What is the message there?

Ways to address this:
-add a way to pick up languages in-game (marriage, exposure, adoption, something)
-add more character models so there are more than one kind of black family. Black families are the only race with just one "type" that means you can kind of assume all black people are in the same family and if you are black anyone who isn't your race is an "outsider" the same is true for gingers but it's not as bad because there are at least other white people.
-Asians don't even exist which is frustrating and annoying.
-put some genetic variation back it, just keep it scaled back and for the brown-skinned people make it go in one direction only. So each family would have *two* skin color groups it could draw from-- would make towns less like advertisements for racial purity and help tell people apart.

I don't even know if the sword is broken or not. If it is fix it. I'm not that worried about the sword though I don't think it will have a big impact on gameplay but this race thing is gross.

Averest · 2019-05-11 14:23:58

Did you see Exequiel's heads posted on Steam? They're amazing!

https://imgur.com/gallery/M2dCmMe

That aside, I'm with you on this.

FeignedSanity · 2019-05-11 14:34:29

@averest

Wow, that post is amazing. I'd really like to see those in game.

@futurebird

Yeah. If he wants this sort of thing to stick, the next thing he should really do is add more models. I said in another post how this stuff doesn't really bother me, but I can definitely see how something like this would get really out of hand (to the point of turning off a great number of people who are more sensitive to this stuff).

I also would just leave languages as they are. I don't really think there needs to be a game mechanic where you can just see what they're actually saying. I like the idea of having to actually LEARN it. "Bog" means "rock", "Jene" means "well", etc. And there's always writing and radios that you can use, those were untouched. Which I really like because it gives the stupid radio much more purpose. It's like a...for lack of a better word, "magical", language converter. Makes the radio kind of kick ass, and not just a novelty.

Last edited by FeignedSanity (2019-05-11 14:37:32)

futurebird · 2019-05-11 14:34:39

Yes Averest! I love it! It's not the exact same art style as the game, but it has the right feel and the level of diversity we need.

seth · 2019-05-11 15:38:47

Tower of Babel update

breezeknight · 2019-05-11 16:03:32

this game becomes increasing unsympathetic

you won't meet me in game anymore
but who cares, right ?

- - -

futurebird · 2019-05-11 16:12:22

The language thing isn't that bad TBH. I rather like that change. But this combo of changes not so much.

CatX · 2019-05-11 16:12:33

breezeknight wrote:

this game becomes increasing unsympathetic
you won't meet me in game anymore
but who cares, right ?
- - -

/sad

pein · 2019-05-11 16:24:54

actually i had a sprite edit using exequiels pictures and turned out nice

Last edited by pein (2019-05-11 16:25:16)

spurofthemoment · 2019-05-11 19:54:31

Yeah, more genetic variation within families would be nice. I agree that the race thing is weird, and it's gonna be worse once people start slaughtering each other's families...I also was drawn to the game for the character model diversity so I hope it gets fixed soon.

jasonrohrer · 2019-05-11 20:26:28

Not sure what you're getting at here with "lack of diversity"... the same character model diversity is present.

Yes, a few of the races are short on people, but I'll obviously be adding more.

The end-goal is 100 unique characters, 16 per race (8 men, 8 women) in 6 different races.

If you're talking about diversity in the same town, well, that was always a little weird, right? There was a 1/10 chance that your baby would be from a "neighboring" race on the skin tone spectrum. Over time, as the tree grew in size, eventually featuring all races in the same family, even without any outside influence.

Some racial blending may come back to the game in the future, now that towns will mix. But I have to take these things one step at a time.

It would be nice to have one giant update that addresses dozens of issue in one fell swoop, but that's not possible if I'm doing weekly updates. So it's a "piece by piece" approach.

(Can you imagine bi-racial kids that can speak both languages and serve as translators? There are all kinds of possibilities here.)

futurebird · 2019-05-11 20:42:11

I didn't find it that strange. Big cities are diverse. My husband is white (a ginger no less) I'm black, my brother's wife is Chinese American, her sister is married to a guy from India, we go out to dinner often enough and we aren't the only table in the restaurant that looks like a united nation's convention. But NYC is like that big cities should be diverse cosmopolitan. Small towns less so.

If you limit each woman to two skin-color groups for her kids with one being dominant (the one that is the same as her own) it should be more balanced. And yeah adding more models.

A fast way to get at least a little more variation is to just make a few more skin color shades and not edit the rest of the art. So add something between the darkest skin tone and the brown middle tone and use the same models. You could do something similar by adding new versions of the brown-haired white-folk with hair that's much darker. Even small differences would help.

Having towns with 4 copies of the same ginger or black dude isn't that great.

Spoonwood · 2019-05-11 20:45:30

jasonrohrer wrote:

If you're talking about diversity in the same town, well, that was always a little weird, right?

Nope, not at all actually. No one had a clue who the father was, nor were the mother was for much of her life. So, black babies coming out of white women, for example, could make sense. Even more so for Eves.

jasonrohrer · 2019-05-11 20:48:49

Well, it's easy enough to change back (it's a server setting, childSameRaceLikelihood, used to be 0.90, now 1.0)

But I'll leave it for now, so the nearby towns get a chance to settle in.

And they're going to get REALLY close with the changes that I'm making live right now....

pein · 2019-05-12 05:37:13

jason, just mix up the hairs and eyes and mouths, whats the reason not to?

Tarr · 2019-05-12 15:03:50

Not real sure the game needed a racism update of all things but you know I guess Jason thought we were really missing that positive experience from the game...

Buggy · 2019-05-12 16:19:43

The race war update is definitely ruining the game for me. I can't find my children if I leave them for a second because everyone in town looks the same, goodluck finding your own child on the baby fire. I have been learning how to use the freestanding Newcomen tower and now people can just turn my rods to swords when I am trying to make pipes. I don't want to not trust people based on their race that is a terrible feeling. The language barrier thing is funny for a bit, but then you realize in low pop servers you can't talk to your neighbours anymore. All the low pop servers were wiped too rip all the work put in there. I really liked playing a game where people were working together to build long lasting cities and lineages it is sad that the game is moving away from that to some warring clan game.

Dodge · 2019-05-12 16:25:08

Tbf it has nothing to do with race but with other families, sword doesn't work based on skin color but lineage.

Buggy · 2019-05-12 16:39:05

Yeah but the general vibe of the update is don't trust people who look or talk different from you. I mean having red hair is not a race seperate from white irl either. It is more about the game encouraging you to kill other families before they kill you because now swords exist. It just feels bad to me. I don't like the game pushing that type of idea, but this update obviously isn't designed for people like me who like taking care of their children and advancing their cities.

Last edited by Buggy (2019-05-12 16:39:49)

Dodge · 2019-05-12 17:00:28

It doesn't really encourage you to kill other families, you dont get bonus points for killing the most people.

It's made easier, but only from the perspective of previous murder being made harder on purpose, to avoid mass stabing.

Sure some prefer that this game would stay all about building, nursing and family, but it's supposed to be a simulation so not adding murder etc. would encourage one type of gameplay over another.

PVP is starting to get better and more interesting, it's nice that people that are not into building, nursing etc can also enjoy the game.

But since PVP is getting a better place in the game, maybe it's time to have better medicine at some point, because currently it's pretty basic, would be nice to have official medics that can carry pads (maybe sterilized pads in alcohol since we have sugar now) to balance the potential wars, crusades and other murder sprees.

futurebird · 2019-05-12 17:30:14

My idea for portable pads: pound a gold ingot in to gold leaf with the newcommon hammer. Wrap a pad in it. Now it is portable. Gold is sterile so it's logical. When you use the pad you would get "crumpled gold leaf" back and could pound it flat again to reuse it for another pad.

Dodge. I don't think people object to combat or any kind of violence it's the combination of ideas that suggest violence against outsiders and the fact that if you see a person who isn't your exact same race you need to be suspicious of them. That's kinda crumby. I do like that families look more similar to each other, but I think we need something to balance the "stranger danger" vibe.

I thought I'd hate swords but I most just feel like they waste iron now. We don't have a lot of reasons to interact with other families unless you want to try to be a mass murderer. And I can't blame people for wanting to try that. It's the new game mechanic, so even rather peaceful players are like "hey maybe I should find another town and go ham on them, I won't get cursed even."

And that wouldn't be so bad if we had positive civilization building reasons to reach out to others as well like marriage or the ability to gain a new language or carts and storage big enough to make trade possible.

Dodge · 2019-05-12 18:30:12

futurebird wrote:

My idea for portable pads: pound a gold ingot in to gold leaf with the newcommon hammer. Wrap a pad in it. Now it is portable. Gold is sterile so it's logical. When you use the pad you would get "crumpled gold leaf" back and could pound it flat again to reuse it for another pad.
Dodge. I don't think people object to combat or any kind of violence it's the combination of ideas that suggest violence against outsiders and the fact that if you see a person who isn't your exact same race you need to be suspicious of them. That's kinda crumby. I do like that families look more similar to each other, but I think we need something to balance the "stranger danger" vibe.
I thought I'd hate swords but I most just feel like they waste iron now. We don't have a lot of reasons to interact with other families unless you want to try to be a mass murderer. And I can't blame people for wanting to try that. It's the new game mechanic, so even rather peaceful players are like "hey maybe I should find another town and go ham on them, I won't get cursed even."
And that wouldn't be so bad if we had positive civilization building reasons to reach out to others as well like marriage or the ability to gain a new language or carts and storage big enough to make trade possible.

One idea to balance the "stranger danger" vibe, is to add mariage to the game so if the kids are born from parents of different races you could have kids from the same family but with a different skin color, eventually you would get mixed racial towns and only the family name would be something that you look out when fighting.

As for trading imo professions and a skill system are the way to go, the baker trades with farmer that trades with tailor etc. I talked about it in another post.

paulof · 2019-05-12 21:35:34

Buggy wrote:

Yeah but the general vibe of the update is don't trust people who look or talk different from you. I mean having red hair is not a race seperate from white irl either. It is more about the game encouraging you to kill other families before they kill you because now swords exist. It just feels bad to me. I don't like the game pushing that type of idea, but this update obviously isn't designed for people like me who like taking care of their children and advancing their cities.

Well, You guys think this game is about living peaceful a life, planting and doing stuff the way you want, but its not. Jason is being faithful to what he proposed, a game that simulates life from begining of mankind til nowadays or even the future in where you have to survive not only the nature, but also other players, just like life is. And its a game, it has to have challenges and i think the challenges we have in this game are a genius thing, like to find out how to talk to someone in other languages, to teach kids, protect the village, not starving, etc. Besides, the game brings us all this peace by peace for us not to get bored, which is amazing. Don't forget guys, its a surviving game

Dantox · 2019-05-12 21:57:13

Well, You guys think this game is about living peaceful a life, planting and doing stuff the way you want, but its not. Jason is being faithful to what he proposed, a game that simulates life from begining of mankind til nowadays or even the future in where you have to survive not only the nature, but also other players, just like life is. And its a game, it has to have challenges and i think the challenges we have in this game are a genius thing, like to find out how to talk to someone in other languages, to teach kids, protect the village, not starving, etc. Besides, the game brings us all this peace by peace for us not to get bored, which is amazing. Don't forget guys, its a surviving game

Just because it sounds good in paper it doesnt means that is going to be great in practice, in this update jason added heavy paranoia against strangers and its going to probably lead to towns to be closed up at all times and make foreigners or travelers to get killed at first sight to prevent "raids or griefing" you just cant simulate life in a game which lacks the needed resources for an actual civilization. This update killed trading between towns until jason adds something to engage trust again

Buggy · 2019-05-12 21:58:52

paulof wrote:

Buggy wrote:
Yeah but the general vibe of the update is don't trust people who look or talk different from you. I mean having red hair is not a race seperate from white irl either. It is more about the game encouraging you to kill other families before they kill you because now swords exist. It just feels bad to me. I don't like the game pushing that type of idea, but this update obviously isn't designed for people like me who like taking care of their children and advancing their cities.

Well, You guys think this game is about living peaceful a life, planting and doing stuff the way you want, but its not. Jason is being faithful to what he proposed, a game that simulates life from begining of mankind til nowadays or even the future in where you have to survive not only the nature, but also other players, just like life is. And its a game, it has to have challenges and i think the challenges we have in this game are a genius thing, like to find out how to talk to someone in other languages, to teach kids, protect the village, not starving, etc. Besides, the game brings us all this peace by peace for us not to get bored, which is amazing. Don't forget guys, its a surviving game

I don't think this is a peaceful game, there was more than enough murders happening before the update. There were threads on here everyday from people complaining that they kept getting randomly murdered. I like finding challenge in the game through building new technology for the town. Which is why I liked the well update so much it made those actions matter. I always start my life with figuring out what the town needs and trying to improve it. This update doesn't add anything to improve towns and it adds another magic item that doesn't simulate real life at all a magic sword that can only hurt strangers.

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The Race War/Genocide/Xenophobia Update

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