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a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building

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#26 2019-06-05 15:29:00

ProNice
Member
Registered: 2019-04-11
Posts: 25

Re: Rethinking the player's role in the game

I normally never use /die. I did twice because my mother told me, she needed a girl and once because she was in the wilderness and said she would dump me anyway.

From my point of view, you could simply deny the right to /die. Removing the /die would probably increase the number of running / fleeing babies, though. You could try to counter this, with a cooldown (like the one we already have with the curse token). Before being born, you need to wait at least one minute before you can play (in the meantime, the mother can experience pregnancy). It does not affect most players, who try to live a long and prosper life (they experience 60 seconds of waiting and after that 60 minutes of playing). But it affects picky people who try to hack the system by dying as a baby. They would get a chain of cooldowns.

Another topic: If people really want to play as eves, why not let them choose.

Last edited by ProNice (2019-06-05 15:33:27)

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#27 2019-06-05 15:32:55

Tarr
Banned
Registered: 2018-03-31
Posts: 1,596

Re: Rethinking the player's role in the game

ProNice wrote:

I normally never use /die. I did twice because my mother told me, she needed a girl and once because she was in the wilderness and said she would dump me anyway.

From my point of view, you could simply deny the right to /die. Removing the /die would probably increase the number of running / fleeing babies, though. You could try to counter this, with a cooldown (like the one we already have with the curse token). After every death, you need to wait at least one minute before you can jump back in. It adds to the punishment when you die as a baby. It does not affect most players, who try to live a long and prosper life. But it affects picky people who try to hack the system by dying as a baby.

Also, If people really want to play as eves, why not let them choose.

I really think adding a timer is a terrible idea for deaths in general. Why? How frustrating would it be to get abandoned multiple times in a row and get stuck waiting at a "git gud" screen. Moms already have the ability to reset their birth cooldown instantly when a baby dies so you might just end up on the same lady riding around on a horse which leads to another minute of twiddling your thumbs while you wait to be able to play. Runner babies are a bigger annoyance than /die babies because runners will keep you on cooldown longer than someone who just pops in and out real quick. Unfortunately, with all the changes this generally means you get the same /die baby repeatedly but it's better than making 500 Eves spawn.


fug it’s Tarr.

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#28 2019-06-05 15:36:38

futurebird
Member
Registered: 2019-02-20
Posts: 1,553

Re: Rethinking the player's role in the game

ProNice wrote:

Also, If people really want to play as eves, why not let them choose.

There are more people who want to be Eve than we need. If everyone who wants to be Eve gets to do it whenever they want then families won't last very long we used to have this issue and it's a bit better now since the change.

People have suggested that there be some waiting many times, but there must be some issue that makes that unattractive.

I think a 1 min wait if you use /die or die naturally when under 3 years old is really reasonable. Yes some of the time it will suck because you might have a terrible mother or die to a wolf ... but for the most part getting to age 3 is possible and one min isn't that long.


---
omnem cibum costis
tantum baca, non facies opus

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#29 2019-06-05 15:49:25

ProNice
Member
Registered: 2019-04-11
Posts: 25

Re: Rethinking the player's role in the game

Ok, lets formulate a suggestion:

You join the game: A timer goes down for like ... 45 seconds (9 ingame months).
The mother will get visually pregnant, which will indicate that she has 45 seconds to prepare for a baby (getting to a fire, gathering food and clothing).
A child will only see this timer once per life, which makes it more frustrating to die often as a baby, but it also increases the value of good parenting
and it's discouraging things like "the running baby", "chain /die babies", and subsequently cluttered baby boneyards.

Last edited by ProNice (2019-06-05 15:52:14)

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#30 2019-06-05 16:13:43

DestinyCall
Member
Registered: 2018-12-08
Posts: 4,563

Re: Rethinking the player's role in the game

Keyin wrote:

300 tiles is kind of big. That's more than the area ban. I like the idea of 'creepy stalkers' becoming a thing and having to be dealt with by the other men / the women in town. More true to life. I would say the general vicinity should be more like 30-50 tiles rather than 300.

I chose 300 at random, just as a placeholder.   My feeling is that if male contribution is randomized, every guy in the village should get a shot at it.

You might find stalkers fun, but I'm willing to bet that most people would not.   Especially since our options for "dealing" with annoying people right now are essentially limited to "murder or don't murder".

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#31 2019-06-05 17:35:20

Keyin
Member
Registered: 2019-05-09
Posts: 257

Re: Rethinking the player's role in the game

DestinyCall wrote:

I chose 300 at random, just as a placeholder.   My feeling is that if male contribution is randomized, every guy in the village should get a shot at it.

You might find stalkers fun, but I'm willing to bet that most people would not.   Especially since our options for "dealing" with annoying people right now are essentially limited to "murder or don't murder".

Sure, it may be annoying. But if we can get people to act more like they do in real life, isn't it worth it? Males are R selected and females are K selected. Women can only get pregnant once every 9 months, but men can reproduce with many women. I think I saw an article a while back that it would take something like only 28 men to reproduce with the whole world?

But yeah, if it is a far distance, then you would get 'sneaker' males. Esentially, males travelling to other villages and using zoom to stay out of sight but close enough to pass their genes on. I will admit it would be funny to see the reactions of people when a ginger boy gets born to a village that is 100% black men & women, with the sneaker just lurking around the corner.

Currently there is no real male competition. Most males are basically just drones there to serve the women. I remember when property fences came out I thought to myself, 'I want to claim a nice plot, build up a bunch of useful stuff and then use it to woo the village girls'. But then I realized, that doesn't really make much sense. No real benefit to me. I am a genetic dead end. Oh well, it was a nice thought.

Another interesting behavior that happens in real life that doesn't in ohol, is often groups of men will come in and kill all the men and keep the women as forced brides. This doesn't make sense to do in ohol because you can't pass your genes to the women's children. In ohol, you should prioritize killing all the fertile women and girls so that you can replace them with your women.

Another interesting behavior I think could become common is young men killing younger boys in order to secure their position as alpha male, and brothers teaming up(since they share nearly 100% of each others genes) against say their cousin's sons.

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#32 2019-06-05 17:42:42

Léonard
Member
Registered: 2019-01-05
Posts: 205

Re: Rethinking the player's role in the game

ProNice wrote:

Ok, lets formulate a suggestion

fsUnJCb.png

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#33 2019-06-05 17:46:27

Tarr
Banned
Registered: 2018-03-31
Posts: 1,596

Re: Rethinking the player's role in the game

ProNice wrote:

Ok, lets formulate a suggestion:

Well that's a ban. Rip in peace.


fug it’s Tarr.

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#34 2019-06-05 19:44:32

jasonrohrer
Administrator
Registered: 2017-02-13
Posts: 4,805

Re: Rethinking the player's role in the game

Thinking about this more, there are two conflicting interests here:

--The experience of brand new players.

--The experience of veteran players.

If you watch any streamer who is playing the game for the first time, they get a huge thrill out of being born into a different situation each time.  This is a good mom.  This is a bad mom who left me.  This is a primitive mom.  Whoa, this mom is in a huge city.  They play the hand they are dealt, usually live a short life each time (they die due to mistakes), and get reborn into a different situation each time.  This is the "attract mode" for the game, and it should be preserved at all costs.  It's the "best" experience of the game, and what players are buying.  I don't want to undercut it, even if that "best" experience doesn't last forever.

A veteran player, who has played hundreds of hours and perhaps thousands of lives, is no longer so thrilled to be born in a different situation each time.  Maybe they've played many hours today already, and already visited most of the major families on the server.  Or maybe they only have one hour to play today, and they will certainly play until old age, so they want to make that one hour as good as it can be.  They really want to pick the best situation possible either way. and they'll use whatever means available to control where they are born.

I still want those veteran players to "say goodbye for real" and all that.  But they want to pick their next life from what's available.  It would be nice if that ability was built into the mechanics themselves, allowing veteran players to leverage these advanced mechanics to achieve birth choice.

The problem with building such a system is that it will undercut the magic of the game for new players.  They won't understand spreading genes, and they'll die a lot, so they'll find themselves "stuck" in the same family over and over.  This is not what they want, and will make the game worse for them.

I worry that the early game, for new players, is too fragile, and I don't want to do anything to upset it.


Thus, I feel like I need to take a bifurcated approach.  For new players, the game should behave identically to how it currently behaves.  For veteran players, a birth choice option should open up.

I think the most obvious way to handle this is opening up a birth choice screen after a player triggers /DIE.  That's an advanced move.  It can open up advanced functionality.

Hidden features aren't great, but it's probably the best option here.

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#35 2019-06-05 19:50:14

DestinyCall
Member
Registered: 2018-12-08
Posts: 4,563

Re: Rethinking the player's role in the game

Keyin wrote:
DestinyCall wrote:

I chose 300 at random, just as a placeholder.   My feeling is that if male contribution is randomized, every guy in the village should get a shot at it.

You might find stalkers fun, but I'm willing to bet that most people would not.   Especially since our options for "dealing" with annoying people right now are essentially limited to "murder or don't murder".

Sure, it may be annoying. But if we can get people to act more like they do in real life, isn't it worth it?

Ehhh ... not sure how it works where you live, but I'm pretty sure that the proposed system is pretty far removed from reality on a number of levels.  We do not reproduce with wind-pollination and sky babies.  If absolute proximity determines fatherhood, you will have a bunch of dudes stacking into the same tile as the last girl, hoping to get lucky.   That's not just stupid from a gameplay standpoint, but also pretty gross from a realism standpoint.    I feel sorry for the girl who has to deal with that kind of behavior in a game.

And the rest of your "interesting" behaviors are just as unappealing to me.    Murder, murder, and more murder.   Just what the game needs - a few more reasons to slaughter everyone else.

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#36 2019-06-05 19:55:55

Twisted
Member
Registered: 2018-10-12
Posts: 663

Re: Rethinking the player's role in the game

jasonrohrer wrote:

A veteran player, who has played hundreds of hours and perhaps thousands of lives, is no longer so thrilled to be born in a different situation each time.  Maybe they've played many hours today already, and already visited most of the major families on the server.  Or maybe they only have one hour to play today, and they will certainly play until old age, so they want to make that one hour as good as it can be.  They really want to pick the best situation possible either way. and they'll use whatever means available to control where they are born.

I just want to say that this is the main draw of OHOL for me still. In 99% of cases I don't want to choose where I am born, I want to be dealt a random life and make the best of it.

jasonrohrer wrote:

I think the most obvious way to handle this is opening up a birth choice screen after a player triggers /DIE.  That's an advanced move.  It can open up advanced functionality.

Hidden features aren't great, but it's probably the best option here.

If you end up doing this, would an additional option that had to be toggled in the settings folder similar to the older server select be a good idea?

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#37 2019-06-05 20:02:07

futurebird
Member
Registered: 2019-02-20
Posts: 1,553

Re: Rethinking the player's role in the game

Twisted wrote:

I just want to say that this is the main draw of OHOL for me still. In 99% of cases I don't want to choose where I am born, I want to be dealt a random life and make the best of it.


Same. I like the surprise and variety still.


---
omnem cibum costis
tantum baca, non facies opus

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#38 2019-06-05 20:23:40

DestinyCall
Member
Registered: 2018-12-08
Posts: 4,563

Re: Rethinking the player's role in the game

jasonrohrer wrote:

I still want those veteran players to "say goodbye for real" and all that.  But they want to pick their next life from what's available.  It would be nice if that ability was built into the mechanics themselves, allowing veteran players to leverage these advanced mechanics to achieve birth choice.

The problem with building such a system is that it will undercut the magic of the game for new players.  They won't understand spreading genes, and they'll die a lot, so they'll find themselves "stuck" in the same family over and over.  This is not what they want, and will make the game worse for them.

I worry that the early game, for new players, is too fragile, and I don't want to do anything to upset it.


Thus, I feel like I need to take a bifurcated approach.  For new players, the game should behave identically to how it currently behaves.  For veteran players, a birth choice option should open up.

Maybe there is another way to achieve this result.     New players die a lot.   They will often die before reaching adulthood.   Before having kids and passing on their genes.   Veteran players die by accident a lot less and are more likely to reach 60, if they are enjoying their life and like their village.   Using these characteristics, I think you could design a system that would allow new players to experience a wide variety of lives while also allowing veteran players to get reborn into towns that they like.

  Here's a rough outline of how it might work:

1.  If you have no genes in the game, you are born to a random mother.
A)  If you die without passing on your genes, you will be born to another random mother
B)  If you live long enough to have kids, they will carry one copy of your genes.   
C.) If your kids have kids, they get two copies of your genes and one copy of your kid's genes.
2.  When you are born with living desendents, any fertile mother with one or more copies of your genes will get "first dibs", highest genetic count gets picked.  If no living desendents are available due to age or gender, you get a random mother.     


If you use /die, your genetic link will be cleared from that mother (all copies of your genes will be removed) and you will be born to the next available desendent.

New players would rarely see the same place twice, but more experienced players can choose to be reborn into a strong line,if they wish.

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#39 2019-06-05 21:00:50

jasonrohrer
Administrator
Registered: 2017-02-13
Posts: 4,805

Re: Rethinking the player's role in the game

Well, I guess for now, I'm keeping a laser focus on the 5000 /DIE babies every day.  That's a lot.

Yes, this thread was originally about solving the underlying problem, but there's too much risk of messing up other good aspects of the game.

Twisted, unless you /DIE, the screen won't be shown to you, and you'll get born randomly as normal.  I don't think there will be a secret setting to unlock it.  Anyone who is using /DIE, I want them to stop doing that, so they will be shown the choice screen.


And this is NOT about letting veteran players return to the same village.  They are currently not using /DIE for that purpose, because of the area ban.  (Though they can return 90 minutes later, just like everyone else, and they may be using /DIE to get there after that.)

It is about letting veteran players pick their next life from what's available, given the existing rules of the game.  The rules won't change, but "choice" will replace "random" for veteran players, if they want that.

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#40 2019-06-05 21:16:12

Dodge
Member
Registered: 2018-08-27
Posts: 2,467

Re: Rethinking the player's role in the game

Why do people /die so much?

Is there statistics or feedback on the reasons players use /die?

Solving the reasons people use /die seems better long term than giving a screen to allow choice for a tailored life.

For example some people /die when they are girl because they dont want to take care of babies, solution could be some contraceptive herb, plant or some crafting recipe to allow that.

If they /die because they are a boy but want to take care of kids, adding mariage could be a solution.

If it's to be Eve there could be a way to increase chance of being an Eve (from the limited number of Eves per day, some priority over other players) like some altar to make and have a better chance to be Eve in one of the next lives.

If it's to be in a big city then there could be traveling with wild horse without saddle and not having an infinite map, to find other villages more easily.

Etc.

Last edited by Dodge (2019-06-05 21:16:55)

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#41 2019-06-05 21:39:46

Keyin
Member
Registered: 2019-05-09
Posts: 257

Re: Rethinking the player's role in the game

DestinyCall wrote:

Ehhh ... not sure how it works where you live, but I'm pretty sure that the proposed system is pretty far removed from reality on a number of levels.  We do not reproduce with wind-pollination and sky babies.

Wind pollination/sky babies is more realistic than everyone being an asexually reproducing single mom, to be fair. 

DestinyCall wrote:

If absolute proximity determines fatherhood, you will have a bunch of dudes stacking into the same tile as the last girl, hoping to get lucky.

Again, just like real life. An exaggeration of course, but you get what I mean. 

DestinyCall wrote:

That's not just stupid from a gameplay standpoint, but also pretty gross from a realism standpoint.

In what way is this spore/sky baby mechanic showing a lack of intelligence?  I think it is a fair simplification of real life, considering geographic location(proximity) is one of the greatest deciders in mate selection. Don't get me wrong, I am not advocating for this to be the chosen mechanic. I would much rather have a lover mechanic, but I think that you shouldn't dismiss it just because it's "gross". Humans commit blatantly unacceptable behavior all the time. I think people should have the option to be gross. And when they are, you reward them with a stab.

DestinyCall wrote:

And the rest of your "interesting" behaviors are just as unappealing to me.    Murder, murder, and more murder.   Just what the game needs - a few more reasons to slaughter everyone else.

Are there any real reasons to slaughter everyone in the game right now other than different lineage? Right now it is in your best interest to slaughter everyone not of your lineage because they are effectively a separate asexually reproducing species competing with your species for resources and babies.

Adding a way to blend lineages would solve this. I can't think of a legitimate reason in game to kill someone right now (other than non-lineage being too dangerous to trust and taking fertility from your lineage).

So yes- I would rather be killed for a legitimate reason than just get killed by a troll for no reason.

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#42 2019-06-05 21:46:15

lychee
Member
Registered: 2019-05-08
Posts: 328

Re: Rethinking the player's role in the game

I’m kind of worried about players being incentivized to /die if it unlocks that menu.

It would be really strange to see /die increasing in this system; players who aren’t currently /dieing (but still want to express their preferences) would be encouraged to /die with this kind of mechanic.

Last edited by lychee (2019-06-05 21:46:30)

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#43 2019-06-05 21:53:24

Spoonwood
Member
Registered: 2019-02-06
Posts: 4,369

Re: Rethinking the player's role in the game

futurebird wrote:
ProNice wrote:

Also, If people really want to play as eves, why not let them choose.

There are more people who want to be Eve than we need. If everyone who wants to be Eve gets to do it whenever they want then families won't last very long we used to have this issue and it's a bit better now since the change.

Nope.  More people are needed to fulfill the fudamental concepts of civilization building and parenting.  More people being an Eve and trying to start a family and build up to a town means more players likely to fulfill the fundamental concepts of parenting and civilization building.


Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.

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#44 2019-06-05 22:05:21

jasonrohrer
Administrator
Registered: 2017-02-13
Posts: 4,805

Re: Rethinking the player's role in the game

Dodge, I'm pretty sure people are using /DIE to re-roll, for any number of reasons (including the ones you listed).

They have nothing invested that early in life, so why not re-roll?

If there's some random element in picking where they are born, then re-rolling will ALWAYS be a potential way for them to get born into some other situation.  Yes, give them an herb to not have babies, but why wouldn't they just re-roll anyway?  Why bother with the herb, when they can re-roll and be a boy?  Yes, give them some in-game way to make themselves more likely Eve, but why would they bother with that, if they can re-roll to be Eve anyway (they can't currently, by the way).

I've been thinking a lot about Spelunky and why players almost never re-roll.   The main randomized element that affects the remainder of the game is the contents of the first shop.  But that doesn't occur until Level 2, and Level 1 is pretty devoid of variable factors that might motivate a re-roll.  So by the time you have the information you'd need to re-roll, you're already deeply invested, having done your best so far through Level 1 and part of Level 2.  If you get a crappy shop, you just go with it.


In OHOL, when you're a baby, by definition, you have no investment.  Also, you are very fragile, which is what makes motherhood meaningful, so there's no way to prevent a player from dying as a baby.  And finally, they already have all the information they need to decide on a re-roll.  They look around and see the situation they were born into.  To summarize:

1.  No investment.
2.  Full information about your roll
3.  Cheap and easy death (aka, re-roll).

Spelunky has (3), but by the time you achieve (2), you already have a big investment, so (1) isn't true anymore.


A simple way to fix (1) in OHOL is to have the WAITING TO BE BORN screen involve actual waiting.  Like maybe it takes 10 seconds to be born each time.  I'm hesitant to do that (it makes the game feel like worse tech on purpose), but also, it doesn't fully address (1), because passive waiting isn't the same as the active investment present in Spelunky.

The real way to fix (1) would be to have some actual challenge that a player needs to overcome to be born in the first place.  A birth canal mini-game, or something like that.  But it would be so disconnected from the rest of the game that it would feel out of place, and determined players might re-roll anyway.  An hour is a long time.

That's another big difference here.  Most Spelunky runs are short.  Even if you're an insane expert, you can beat the whole game in less than an hour.  Most people's runs are more like 5-10 minutes.

So I feel like, even if I solve (1) and (2), the upcoming hour is a big enough deal that people might re-roll anyway.  Probably anything short of 5-10 minutes of investment before re-roll-worthy information is available won't be enough.

You can try to twist yourself into knots and change the game in dramatic ways to solve this one little problem, and make the game worse in general along the way.

But the reality is that in a game with freely available, randomized birth situations and frequent death (two of the main features that make the game tick for new players), people are going to re-roll to control where they are born.  At some point, I have to cry "uncle" and just let them pick where they are born.

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#45 2019-06-05 22:10:29

jasonrohrer
Administrator
Registered: 2017-02-13
Posts: 4,805

Re: Rethinking the player's role in the game

lychee wrote:

I’m kind of worried about players being incentivized to /die if it unlocks that menu.

It would be really strange to see /die increasing in this system; players who aren’t currently /dieing (but still want to express their preferences) would be encouraged to /die with this kind of mechanic.

Yeah, but they would /DIE once an hour instead of 225 times a day (20 times an hour, even if they play a full 10 hour day).  That will be 20x fewer /DIE babies, taking us from 5000/day down to 250/day.

And it could be even better than that.  The client could remember that you used /DIE this session, and then always show you the choice screen for the rest of your session.  So you'd only /DIE once a day, instead of 225 times a day, for a 200x improvement.

The choice screen could also have a "RANDOM" button on it, which would let you go back to the normal birth assignment.

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#46 2019-06-05 22:11:48

Spoonwood
Member
Registered: 2019-02-06
Posts: 4,369

Re: Rethinking the player's role in the game

jasonrohrer wrote:

At some point, I have to cry "uncle" and just let them pick where they are born.

Jason, those are people who have paid you money, NOT your bigger brother forcing you down onto the floor, because he's a jerk.


Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.

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#47 2019-06-05 23:06:20

lychee
Member
Registered: 2019-05-08
Posts: 328

Re: Rethinking the player's role in the game

jasonrohrer wrote:
lychee wrote:

I’m kind of worried about players being incentivized to /die if it unlocks that menu.

It would be really strange to see /die increasing in this system; players who aren’t currently /dieing (but still want to express their preferences) would be encouraged to /die with this kind of mechanic.

Yeah, but they would /DIE once an hour instead of 225 times a day (20 times an hour, even if they play a full 10 hour day).  That will be 20x fewer /DIE babies, taking us from 5000/day down to 250/day.

And it could be even better than that.  The client could remember that you used /DIE this session, and then always show you the choice screen for the rest of your session.  So you'd only /DIE once a day, instead of 225 times a day, for a 200x improvement.

The choice screen could also have a "RANDOM" button on it, which would let you go back to the normal birth assignment.

I don’t know. To be perfectly honest, I still think this is overly optimistic.

When you consider the pre-Eve changes, we were having upwards of 1000 eves per day — and I think that’s a fair approximation of the number of people who were /dying to Eve. I think it’s important to keep in mind that people /die with specific goals in mind, and if they don’t reach that goal even with the “preferences” specified, they will still continue to die (this is probably especially true of the players who SIDS 200+ times daily).

Consequently, even if you implement a “preferences” screen yet maintain the hard limit on the number of Eve’s, I would still expect players who didn’t receive their exact preference to continue to /die until they got the exact preference they want.

In this sense, if you really wanted to combat the /dies yet still limit Eves, it may make more sense to implement a “queue” of some kind. Players who want to Eve would enter a “waiting to be born...” queue that they stay on until an Eve slot opens up. At least this way, they’re not continually dieing until they get their Eve preference.

Last edited by lychee (2019-06-05 23:07:05)

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#48 2019-06-05 23:30:14

TofuInjection
Member
Registered: 2019-04-28
Posts: 40

Re: Rethinking the player's role in the game

I loaded up the game a few minutes ago, for the first time in a couple weeks.  I wanted to play somewhere between Eve and Gen 3.  I used /DIE about 20 times, did not see my desired result, and closed it back down.  I guess I'm the problem?  I won't apologise for wanting to interact with the game the way I want to though;  I'm not going to spend an hour of my time doing something I don't find enjoyable, for no benefit at all.  I think a menu that comes up the first time you use /DIE is as good a solution as any other, and probably a step in the right direction.

It kind of hurts though;  I agree it takes some of the magic out rolling up a new life.  I will use /DIE for a bunch of reasons, from not liking the layout of a town, to wanting to be a different generation, to spawning in to a racist mom.  It doesn't mean I want the randomness of the next life taken from me.  I dunno, I can see how that might be asking too much.

I sincerely don't understand what the big hatred for /DIE is though.  I know it frustrates a lot of players, and not least you Jason, but I personally don't see why players having a choice of how they would like to spend their time interacting with your game is a negative thing.  I would stop playing altogether if it were removed (lack of starting camps has kind of resulted in that already) and I have to imagine other people feel the same way.

I have mentioned several other times that I think player frustration could be heavily curbed on this issue if /DIE babies did not leave bones, and their info did not clutter up the lineage screen.  These changes seem like no brainers to me, so the mother wouldn't need to waste time on babies that didn't want to be there.  The first time you pick a child up shouldn't cost a hunger pip either.  Those changes alone, I think would be game changers and provide a better experience, while still maintaining the randomness feeling for everyone involved.

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#49 2019-06-05 23:35:13

futurebird
Member
Registered: 2019-02-20
Posts: 1,553

Re: Rethinking the player's role in the game

lychee wrote:

Consequently, even if you implement a “preferences” screen yet maintain the hard limit on the number of Eve’s, I would still expect players who didn’t receive their exact preference to continue to /die until they got the exact preference they want.

So, they'd pick a family name from the list, knowing that they can't be Eve, and then /die? Why not just wait a bit and pull that list up again later to see if there is an Eve slot free?

I think one bad consequence of this will be that Eve slots will always be snapped up so the chance of getting it "naturally" will fall to basically zero again. I could see my typical play style being to play a random family UNLESS that rare Eve option is there, then I'd snatch it up.

And I'm someone who is happy if I get to be Eve in 1/20 games.

Another consequence might be that being Eve won't happen for new players anymore that much, since, again it'd be snatched up.

The selection screen should give the family names and the generation of the camp probably... So at least if you like early or late game (or if like me you are excited to keep a very old line going even longer) you might do that.


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#50 2019-06-05 23:40:55

futurebird
Member
Registered: 2019-02-20
Posts: 1,553

Re: Rethinking the player's role in the game

TofuInjection wrote:

I sincerely don't understand what the big hatred for /DIE is though.

The hunger pips, and bone spam are part of it, but so is being interrupted. When I have a kid I stop what I'm doing and get ready to do everything I can to help them survive. I start thinking of a name I take my hands off the mouse to type it. Pick them up... "YOU ARE...." oh you're dead.  Great.

In that time someone has taken the cart I was using and I can't even remember what I was working on anyway. OH! another kid... Dead too.

It's awful.

I also really resent that people use /die to be Eve or play in Eve camps because *I want to do that too* I LOVE gen 1-3. But, using /die to get there just feels wrong to me when I know how much it annoys me. That's another reason for the hate.

I wouldn't do all of that to you but you'll do it to me.


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omnem cibum costis
tantum baca, non facies opus

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