Are all towns the same?/ Development Hell?

Bob 101 · 2019-06-18 01:56:16

I feel like boardem is the true root of evil in this game, Weather it is raids or internal stuff. All the towns seems to fall under the same categories again and again.

1. Post Diesel. One main building for bakery/Nursery, Various farms and forge area with wood floor. Not really much to do, Occasionally you might build extra tech like car or radio but it dosn't go anywhere.

2. Pre-Diesel. Usually dying out after basic pumps have dried out. Not enough resources to do anything. You could help out by gathering iron and upgrading but future generations get no meaning out of life.

I feel like development is a bit stuck atm. Jason had an Idea of starting with the basics and advancing through various eras. He marketed as a sorta race between Dev and Player. Jason would add NEW STUFF to the game every week. Boardem didn't seem like it would've been so bad. You'd live lives and various eras while Jason adds to them weekly.

But in reality the updates have been mostly bug fixes and tweaks. We aren't really climbing the tech tree.

TL;DR Tech tree has been stagnant for months and players are getting hell board.

Last edited by Bob 101 (2019-06-18 02:13:36)

Spoonwood · 2019-06-18 06:00:55

Are people getting to kerosone pumps?

I think I've upgraded three charcoal pumps to kerosone pumps on low pop servers (one was in the CCM... I played with Tarr and someone else when I did the upgrade). Two times the kerosone pump busted after it ran once. The other time I didn't even manage to run the kerosone pump before it exhausted.

If families aren't getting to a kerosone pump on bs2, I have to think that's a stage that is missing.

I find the lack of the tech tree progressing boring also. And I don't understand why something like wool clothes, clearly more advanced technologically than any other clothes, wouldn't clearly be the most insulating clothing in the game. I mean, what is with the most high-tech clothing ending up as potentially, if not actually, worse than lower tech clothes? And why aren't cars better than they are and clearly better than horsecarts? I mean with a diesel engine, why couldn't we get a truck that could haul 32 flat rocks at a time instead of the abysmally low 4 flat rocks, making road building into the huge grind that it is? And in what world did cars get invented and people still prefer smelly horses? Why were radios basically just toys, and who wants a telegraph radio as a toy anyways?

That all said, the game's numbers declined throughout the tech tree updates also during the winter as well as recently, though the drop-off recently has seemed rather steep: https://steamcharts.com/app/595690#All

RodneyC86 · 2019-06-18 06:08:53

Spoonwood wrote:

Are people getting to kerosone pumps?
I think I've upgraded three charcoal pumps to kerosone pumps on low pop servers (one was in the CCM... I played with Tarr and someone else when I did the upgrade). Two times the kerosone pump busted after it ran once. The other time I didn't even manage to run the kerosone pump before it exhausted.
If families aren't getting to a kerosone pump on bs2, I have to think that's a stage that is missing.
I find the lack of the tech tree progressing boring also. And I don't understand why something like wool clothes, clearly more advanced technologically than any other clothes, wouldn't clearly be the most insulating clothing in the game. I mean, what is with the most high-tech clothing ending up as potentially, if not actually, worse than lower tech clothes? And why aren't cars better than they are and clearly better than horsecarts? I mean with a diesel engine, why couldn't we get a truck that could haul 32 flat rocks at a time instead of the abysmally low 4 flat rocks, making road building into the huge grind that it is? And in what world did cars get invented and people still prefer smelly horses? Why were radios basically just toys, and who wants a telegraph radio as a toy anyways?
That all said, the game's numbers declined throughout the tech tree updates also during the winter as well as recently, though the drop-off recently has seemed rather steep: https://steamcharts.com/app/595690#All

Agreed, I don't get the whole idea of keeping things challenging as we go up the tech tree. Life is meant to be easier with advancing tech. Clothes from wool and bolts of cloth IMO though, shouldn't be more insulating than rabbit fur because obviously fur is indeed more insulating. But on the flip side, they should be much easier to produce for the masses (textile revolution ahem) . I really don't even mind of cloth clothes can decay faster but they should be easy to craft en masses unlike rabbit fur where you have to painstakingly gather bunnies

I kept saying it and will at it again, roll out more tech that makes life easier, I think it's fallacious that life will get bland when life is too easy. Humans can make their own drama as we now see in diesel engine pumps with their stabathons

Dodge · 2019-06-18 06:29:12

You can add as much tech as you want it wont change the issue with late game it will just delay it by the number of steps in tech needed to reach it, but when you are at the end of the tech tree what is there left to do?

What is the long term challenge?

I agree tech should make life easier since that's the point of climbing in tech but there also should be a long term challenge, yes make life "easier" the more you climb in the tech tree.

Late game should be easier in a sense but should require you to be smarter and to make important decisions, that have consequences.

Adding any amount of content only delays end game but doesn't solve the issue of end game, because there is no real end, since everything is allowed to start over again without any real consequences.

Léonard · 2019-06-18 07:29:29

Bob 101 wrote:

He marketed as a sorta race between Dev and Player. Jason would add NEW STUFF to the game every week. Boardem didn't seem like it would've been so bad. You'd live lives and various eras while Jason adds to them weekly.
But in reality the updates have been mostly bug fixes and tweaks. We aren't really climbing the tech tree.

Glad there are still people around honest enough to admit that.

Quote form a recent steam review that I liked:

I don't think that's going to happen anymore. Updates are game changing, but they don't feel like they're actually going anywhere. Over a year after release, we're still in the iron age and the top of the tech tree has barely moved in the last six months. It feels like there is little foresight put into how an update will affect the game.

-

Dodge wrote:

but when you are at the end of the tech tree what is there left to do?
[...]
Adding any amount of content only delays end game but doesn't solve the issue of end game, because there is no real end

Isn't that why Jason added the apocalypse in the first place?

Dodge wrote:

Late game should be easier in a sense but should require you to be smarter and to make important decisions, that have consequences.

I agree.

Though, as a tl;dr, my theory has always been that for such a thing to happen, we need more content.
So that people are less bored, have more incentive to stay and have a higher chance at specializing and so that the population can grow.
Though for a town to succesfully grow, we also need more content so that towns can properly organize themselves without living in an unbearable mess and so that food production can be optimized enough to sustain the growth.

See? More content.
That's what makes the latest updates so frustrating for me.
If Jason simply stuck with his initial premise of staying one step ahead of the players, then maybe, just maybe civilization, trade, property, prisons, etc.. would have naturally occurred.

Oh, let's also not forget a reason to care about your own family, so that people have a proper incentive to keep their city growing.
And, forgive me, but the war swords and restricted curses utterly failed at that.
It's painfully obvious people go "to war" just for the fun of it.
And this yet again supports my theory: people are fucking bored to death.
The new changes to Eves likely means more maxed out towns, compounded with limited lives means people are generally even more bored than before.
So they resort to genocide and raids to keep their mind away from boredom.
I admit I didn't touch the game in nearly 2 months but that's what my theory is on what's been happening recently given what I keep hearing.

I like how bob's other thread I linked also hints at this.

Bob: Why does everyone want to Eve or play Eve camps?
Everyone: Big cities are boring.
Jason: Eureka! That's because life is too easy!!

And 6 months later we're still at the iron age. Nice.

Dodge · 2019-06-18 07:56:56

Léonard wrote:

...

Yes people go to war because they are bored and not for actual reasons, but is adding content going to solve that?

You can add as much content as you want at some point civilisations reaches the end of tech tree and people will get bored so it doesn't solve the issue as to why people go to war it only delays it by the ammount of content that is added.

I agree there should be more content but this will happen at some point, but imo right now it should stay focused on fixing these deeper underlying gameplay issues as to why people go to war out of boredom instead of actual reasons for example.

I do think that it would be wise to mix up content updates and gameplay updates to make the community happy, instead of having unbalanced updates.

Also it's arguably much easier to add content (depending on which content) than to make deep gameplay changes in the game in terms of programming so it would be a break between the more hours intensive gameplay updates.

But maybe that's not how he works, maybe when he has his mind set to fix an issue he wants to finish fixing that issue instead of being distracted by other stuff, i dont know.

It could be a good idea to suggest him to mix up the updates with content ones, maybe he will be open to the suggestion and maybe that's simply not how he works, who knows.

Maybe this could be part of strawpoll he wants to add in game, "What content would you like for next week?"

Having one week of the month where the players can chose what type of update and content will be added for next week, that could be cool.

RodneyC86 · 2019-06-18 08:37:22

I think there's always a subset of people who will kill out of 'boredom' no matter how much content is added.

Adding content will not stop these kind of killings but at least it makes for more things to do for peeps who don't USUALLY kill. I think some otherwise normal players are getting goaded to join wars out of boredom now

Guppy · 2019-06-18 11:00:06

Well, Jason IS adding more stuff every week. Its funny how when the radio was added, there were complains about how he cant just add stuff at the top of the tech tree when early to midgame is linear and boring, and now where he spent time adding new foods and storage stuff, other people complain about the top of the tech tree being not advanced enough

futurebird · 2019-06-18 11:04:29

I generally agree guppy, but I also think that there is a sameness issue with the towns and perhaps it feels more pronounced now since being Eve is more rare. I was one of the people who was like "just do bug fix week" so, people should know that there has been less "new content" since people asked for it.

I bet the future updates will be more fun adding new things to do and try. We'll see.

Tarr · 2019-06-18 11:16:34

Guppy wrote:

Well, Jason IS adding more stuff every week. Its funny how when the radio was added, there were complains about how he cant just add stuff at the top of the tech tree when early to midgame is linear and boring, and now where he spent time adding new foods and storage stuff, other people complain about the top of the tech tree being not advanced enough

Radio was basically two weeks of updates for a fancy toy you can dismantle in less than a sixth of the time it takes to put together. I swore off the things as soon as my first set of the things got griefed as it made me realize how much of a waste of time they were on my part to put together. High tech =/= good tech. A good example of high tech that is generally smiled upon is the high society clothing options. It was an upgrade over some existing clothing options, brought a bit of extra customization, and pushed people towards higher tech. Radios and by proxy morse machines are basically fancy toys (radios are a little more useful now though.) This is a good example of what high tech should NOT be. Things that take a decent amount of time to make and are easy vandalized makes for a terrible item in general.

The storage stuff was a direct DOWNGRADE vs what we had in terms of actual storage which I think is bad in my opinion. People were asking for UPGRADED storage options and from the looks of things in the future it'll probably be more stacks which I'm fine with since storage apparently cannot exist in a higher capacity. In terms of new food two of the food options are okay (shrimp, french fries) with salsa and ketchup basically adding a giant mass of clutters to town due to nondecaying onions/tomatoes/hot peppers (also add in plates that get locked down along with bowls). While the food update wasn't perfect, it brought in some variety and once the decay gets fixed on the crud I'm sure that will be fine.

It's moot to add stuff to early game as it exists for an hour, mid game is alright to add to as generally this allows for more accessible content for everyone, and adding to late game is good when it's something that is useful.

Spiegel · 2019-06-18 11:31:52

Very randomly, how many hours have passed since the game was first released?

Saolin · 2019-06-18 15:56:39

It would be interesting if there was something special that could be done only in late game towns, like some kind of event or social gathering of some kind. Not really sure what, but something that a group of players could participate in. I don't like the murder fests really, but ironically some of the more interesting late game experiences I've had involve some kind of drama. It would be cool to have another way to facilitate this other than someone starting a string of murders.

Often there isn't much left to do and the town can support players that just hang around eating, so it would be interesting if they had additional ways to occupy themselves in late game other than building mostly useless toys that most people probably don't even know how to make.

Spoonwood · 2019-06-18 16:14:22

Tarr wrote:

A good example of high tech that is generally smiled upon is the high society clothing options. It was an upgrade over some existing clothing options, brought a bit of extra customization, and pushed people towards higher tech.

The high society update definitely came as superior to the radio updates. Radios when implemented were just toys, and now, an s. o. s. radio even ends up a worse toy than an AM radio. The new clothes have functions, some advantages, and people did make them, showing an interest in such. That said, they take *a lot* more materials to make than any of the other clothing, and they are not more insulating than rabbit fur clothing, wolf hat clothing, and sealskin coats. Admittedly, I use the new clothes on a low population server, but that's because I don't want to make decaying clothes every few lives, I'm easily fine on food, and fertility is not a concern. But, given that the purpose of clothing lies in increasing temperature, more optimal clothing exists than the clothes brought into existence by the high society update. They look nice. And that's probably a good part of why people like them... it's not so much about their utility, and I find that strange, as I don't believe the insulation numbers come as difficult to tweak in the code.

RodneyC86 · 2019-06-18 16:25:34

Saolin wrote:

It would be interesting if there was something special that could be done only in late game towns, like some kind of event or social gathering of some kind. Not really sure what, but something that a group of players could participate in. I don't like the murder fests really, but ironically some of the more interesting late game experiences I've had involve some kind of drama. It would be cool to have another way to facilitate this other than someone starting a string of murders.
Often there isn't much left to do and the town can support players that just hang around eating, so it would be interesting if they had additional ways to occupy themselves in late game other than building mostly useless toys that most people probably don't even know how to make.

I think some things can be done but ultimately still pretty limited, on top of my head I can think of

Arena - Now that magic aim is there i'm not sure this is even feasible. Two contenders go into the ring , that split in the middle with a stone wall(maybe a 6x8 size?) - Iron is there, and two kilns, with all the basic materials to craft a knife and a pick-axe (to break the wall with) from scratch laying around - first to stab the opponent wins - so i guess this more of a speed crafting competition
for humanity's sake - pad and sutures will be provided at the end of the game.... or not ... at least it was fun while it lasts

Horse racing - an enclosed track for horse-racing purposes - would be cool if one could bring rattle snakes to dot the racetrack to add some spice - but i guess making rattle snakes containable is grief prone

Theaters - for drama queens and RPers , two stone pillars, a stage of 1x5 wooden floors, fronted by property fences - can actually include murders but well staged up so as to not upset nearby people - pads optional - sorry I don't want to know what happens to the actors anyway xD

jasonrohrer · 2019-06-18 18:33:52

There's a reason that I'm not just piling on more content right now.

There's currently enough of it to go around.... 2000+ unique objects. I'm not sure of the exact numbers, but this is like 3x Minecraft or something already.

Don't Starve has 718 items, for comparison.

Yes, the goal is 10,000 (and I may not get there, but I'll get a good way there for sure). But more content doesn't necessarily make a good game. The heart of the game needs work. If the heart is working better, then we have a more firm foundation upon which to add more content.

Unsolved issues that affect the heart of the game:

--The meaning of your current life and your current family: How much do you care whether you live or die? How much do you care whether your children live or die? The last surviving girl in a village is certainly treated like royalty, but beyond that, life and death feels mostly cheap and meaningless. Why should you care about the fate of your family or village when you're not coming back anyway? You currently shrug your shoulders when your baby dies. Eventually, you should literally scream NOOO! out loud when that happens, and do everything in your power to keep them alive. Given the circumstances that you find yourself in, this kind of desperation for family survival will create a large variety of different family stories that we currently don't see in the game.

--Interactions between villages: what's the purpose of interacting? Is there any mutual benefit? Do you need to care about what a nearby village is doing? Do you depend on them in some way? Is there any contention for resources, or trade, or migration, or necessary conquest/war? Currently, interacting with another village is mostly done on a whim. It should eventually be a core part of the game.

--Overall arc of the game: do we just keep sprialing out into new an infinite wild territory forever? Does nature keep reclaiming abandoned sections of the map? Do players have a permanent, lasting effect on the map? Do resources become permanently scarce? How does the game evolve over the course of a week or a month, and is there an end? And if the map is more permanent and centralized, how do new families spawn in the midst of it? Currently, the game is constantly reverting to a kind of steady state, day after day. If you play in three days, you won't have a different experience from today. It should eventually be evolving over several days in some way, giving you a fundamentally different experience each day. Balancing this potential variability against a consistent new player experience is especially difficult.

--How the heck do people learn this game? 2000 objects is already super-daunting, and it's only going to get worse.

I have spent many weeks in the past piling on content. While the existing players enjoyed the new content for a short time, the novelty kept wearing off in short order, and I was noticing that the playerbase was not growing as a result of these constant content additions. It was kindof a steady state regardless of the amount of content added.

With all the new players joining the game every week, the lack of growth meant that our attrition rate was too great. Essentially, the game is just not good enough yet. People get frustrated, or bored, or something else and leave.... many of them LONG before they ever exhaust the 2000+ objects in the game.

Adding more content isn't going to change that. Making the game better will change that.

Sukallinen · 2019-06-18 19:21:57

Tarr wrote:

Radio was basically two weeks of updates for a fancy toy you can dismantle in less than a sixth of the time it takes to put together.

There is that, then the one single instance I found radio useful and fun was when a person from other side of the large town radioed stuff (I for example went and told radio-operator we're now out of pads so don't get mauled+later that the bear(s) are dead).

Receiver was at nursery, and host did tell kid-useful-stuff like which way what biomes were, what stuff we were almost out of (automatic job selection by bbs, they selected-only time I've seen it work well-their jobs). Also news about said griefer-attracted bear spread fast. Also, since sending from bakery corner(I think) and receiving at nursery it was hard to dismantle either unit without dying immediately. I think you can surround receiver in ancient walls too, and lock host inside with box to feed (also some kind of loudspeaker-system for receiver would be nice so it'd be of more use, along with range-setting to sending station).
Yes, I stayed to feed bbys while most women went to gather bows and arrows. Radio told info how to avoid getting mauled and bears location.
Later host was about to leave but I said he's providing good service for kids and he decided to stay sending public announcements.

Tarr wrote:

The storage stuff was a direct DOWNGRADE

There appeared new use, someone figured to put'em
-between carrot-rows (since not so smart people don't leave room where to pick carrots let alone baskets)
-it is also one-click-storage, easy on irl kids etc, you and I can click very fast but for me ping is still 140+ living in another continent (cs-go is consistently below 10)
-north of bakery next to horizontal road full of pies / next one full of half-eaten-pies etc

Still, if I cook I do pick some baskets of different kinds of pies to move to nursery for the ladies.

Last edited by Sukallinen (2019-06-18 19:34:14)

Spoonwood · 2019-06-18 19:34:30

jasonrohrer wrote:

How the heck do people learn this game? 2000 objects is already super-daunting, and it's only going to get worse.

More sections in the tutorial area could help. Presently people use onetech or the wiki.

Spoonwood · 2019-06-18 19:35:32

jasonrohrer wrote:

Why should you care about the fate of your family or village when you're not coming back anyway?

This is exactly why people have said that they should have the ability to easily get reborn in the same town before.

Léonard · 2019-06-18 20:40:13

Dodge wrote:

Yes people go to war because they are bored and not for actual reasons

I'm glad that you got my point and that we can agree on it instead of getting the all you do is complaint treatment.

Dodge wrote:

at some point civilisations reaches the end of tech tree and people will get bored so it doesn't solve the issue as to why people go to war it only delays it by the ammount of content that is added.

I'm still pretty sure that the apocalypse was put in place just for this reason alone and thought that it would never change.

Maxed out cities will always be a thing in this game, before all it meant was that you'd get a lot more /dies out of them but now that option no longer works as much.
To be honest, I really preferred it this way.
Don't like playing in a maxed out city? Just use /die. Fair enough.
But now that people can't do that anymore, they turn to war or whatever.
And come to think of it, even if instead they just went for the apocalypse, the end result would be the same..

All this really is when you think about it is the same thing that happens to griefers.
When you're born in a maxed out city, there's not much to do anymore, so you resort to roleplaying/things that don't actually have a reason to be done.
You're bored but you still seek to have fun with the game. And since raiding is easy, encouraged by the mechanics and has no consequences, you do it.

jasonrohrer wrote:

There's currently enough of it to go around....

I've seen better..
Oh and also I quit your game because there's not been useful content for months now.

jasonrohrer wrote:

Unsolved issues that affect the heart of the game

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to deny these exist or saying that they shouldn't be fixed.

But in general, it would be way better if you thought about those for way longer instead of shooting for the next idea that comes to mind and push out USEFUL content updates in the meantime.
In short, the literal opposite of what you're doing now.

jasonrohrer wrote:

--Overall arc of the game

What about the apocalypse? Wasn't it your answer to this problem?

jasonrohrer wrote:

--How the heck do people learn this game?

As pointed out by spoon already, you're not doing yourself any favors by abandoning the tutorial like that.

The solution is and always will be better hints/help from the UI.
There's no way around this.

jasonrohrer wrote:

I have spent many weeks in the past piling on content. While the existing players enjoyed the new content for a short time, the novelty kept wearing off in short order, and I was noticing that the playerbase was not growing as a result of these constant content additions. It was kindof a steady state regardless of the amount of content added.

What kind of content are you talking about?

Tech gimmicks or more food recipes?
The OP and I are asking for none of the above.
We want useful content.

Otherwise, of course adding heaps of useless content to your game isn't going to keep people interested.
You might as well be spending your time adding decorations to the biomes..

Adding radios or planes doesn't allow us to climb the tech tree.
It's just yet another dumb useless item that you can waste resources on.

jasonrohrer wrote:

many of them LONG before they ever exhaust the 2000+ objects in the game.

I quit before learning to build the radio.
Wanna know why?
Because it's useless.

Potjeh · 2019-06-18 20:46:58

How many of those 2000 objects are made on a daily basis? 200?

Sukallinen · 2019-06-18 20:48:55

Spoonwood wrote:

More sections in the tutorial area could help.

Game's under construction so my suggestion to this would be Jason's/someone else's (Jason's ad to youtuber? Hmm) howto-video. Making additions to tutorial is major work and many things change, wherein making video a bit less so and lasts useful longer (BTW read what I mentioned about radio and slotbox useability in this thread please).

Many ppl are in awe when I sometimes teach things like compost-farm-plant basically anything. That new players can ASK ingame without bad consequences (sorry I repeat but this is major thing IMO-get good reviews and larger playerbase that stay).

That I sometimes say in nursery: when getting hair say N if new, and nobody worries if you're new, I'll teach a bit. I also say ask random ppl for help, that doesn't hurt-like in most games. Even mentioning these few things in video about the game would give new players a lot more interesting lives, and start adding to playerbase ! We players have no way to communicate this to new players who test, berrymunch game or two and see no fun. Also, always when I teach we both do same thing, so don't show (if anyone interested in teaching) but both DO.

Saolin · 2019-06-18 22:46:50

RodneyC86 wrote:

Saolin wrote:
It would be interesting if there was something special that could be done only in late game towns, like some kind of event or social gathering of some kind. Not really sure what, but something that a group of players could participate in. I don't like the murder fests really, but ironically some of the more interesting late game experiences I've had involve some kind of drama. It would be cool to have another way to facilitate this other than someone starting a string of murders.
Often there isn't much left to do and the town can support players that just hang around eating, so it would be interesting if they had additional ways to occupy themselves in late game other than building mostly useless toys that most people probably don't even know how to make.
I think some things can be done but ultimately still pretty limited, on top of my head I can think of
Arena - Now that magic aim is there i'm not sure this is even feasible. Two contenders go into the ring , that split in the middle with a stone wall(maybe a 6x8 size?) - Iron is there, and two kilns, with all the basic materials to craft a knife and a pick-axe (to break the wall with) from scratch laying around - first to stab the opponent wins - so i guess this more of a speed crafting competition
for humanity's sake - pad and sutures will be provided at the end of the game.... or not ... at least it was fun while it lasts
Horse racing - an enclosed track for horse-racing purposes - would be cool if one could bring rattle snakes to dot the racetrack to add some spice - but i guess making rattle snakes containable is grief prone
Theaters - for drama queens and RPers , two stone pillars, a stage of 1x5 wooden floors, fronted by property fences - can actually include murders but well staged up so as to not upset nearby people - pads optional - sorry I don't want to know what happens to the actors anyway xD

People have been talking about arenas on here for a while though and it never happens - much easier to just pick up a knife and stab. I'm not disagreeing with the ideas you mention, just pointing out there's a lack of incentive to work on them.

The dystopian nature of late game cities is a comment on reality in some ways, but we also have other beneficial luxuries as a trade off in reality. In this game the only real benefit is yum-chain. There's other luxury items, but they often are not an improvement or actually worse than the alternatives.

CatX · 2019-06-18 23:17:03

jasonrohrer wrote:

With all the new players joining the game every week, the lack of growth meant that our attrition rate was too great. Essentially, the game is just not good enough yet. People get frustrated, or bored, or something else and leave.... many of them LONG before they ever exhaust the 2000+ objects in the game.
Adding more content isn't going to change that. Making the game better will change that.

I think this Youtuber has some great points about games in general. If OHOL feels boring, it might be in part because it does not manage to "beat the grind".

https://youtu.be/nP1qLrXaDvE

Right now, the best use of tech is upgrading wells. It absolutely does feel like a relief when someone manages to build a diesel pump and provides lots of fuel for it. But once that is done, nothing happens except that we have water now. It does not change how we work in the town. Beyond having a pump, there is no real sense of progress.

In the video one of the arguments is: "A large part of the frustrations we associate with grinding are to do with doing the same thing over and over again, which ultimately stems from a lack of observable progress. Minit is a game that sees your progress more or less reset every sixty seconds, forcing you to repeat yourself. But with the fact that with every iteration you can make measurable progress towards success through your understanding of the game and a growing collection of items, repeating yourself never really feels that bad."

At 5:50 he talks about Stardew Valley which in some ways is an extremely grindy game. There are several ways the game instills a sense of progress - like seeing the farm grow, and improving my character's skills. But one thing that helped the grind feel meaningful and valuable to me was saving money for upgraded tools which would make my job easier once I reached a goal.

Now I don't want OHOL to be Stardew Valley. But I think OHOL has many of the same elements that Stardew Valley does: Farming, baking, gathering ores and minerals, fighting monsters (or bears or strangers), relationships...

But what OHOL does not have is a feeling of how life is different in various stages of a town's life.

There's Eve camps, which have certain central jobs that differ from later towns: Gather soil, gather milkweed, gather wild food for the children and the smiths until carrots are up, all while making tools and building the main infrastructure of the town.

Then there's towns with pen and water (let's call it stage II, with stage I being Eve camps). Later towns have more foods available than stage II, and different clothes, and they look different in many ways. Top hats, radios... they could be stage III or even stage IV.

But there has been no progress to the central jobs. It doesn't matter if the town has a diesel pump or not, the main jobs have not changed from stage II: Make compost, water berry bushes one by one, plant carrots... Chop wood. Feed the fire. Plant milkweed. The central jobs, what keeps the town running, are all still stage II.

Last edited by CatX (2019-06-18 23:20:17)

Spoonwood · 2019-06-18 23:52:15

Léonard wrote:

Oh and also I quit your game because there's not been useful content for months now.

The flooring change which made it so that flooring could heat you in a building in a neutral (or tundra) biome does qualify as useful content in my opinion. I say this with reservations though, as the maximum of such a building is a 6x6 interior and thus there's an issue with having a single building for an advanced forge with an engine. But, for a bakery or nursery, things stand better than they did previously.

Last edited by Spoonwood (2019-06-18 23:52:31)

Joseph Stalin · 2019-06-18 23:53:12

no I thought Jason buffed it to like 13x13 but maybe that was for an old update

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Are all towns the same?/ Development Hell?

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Re: Are all towns the same?/ Development Hell?

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Re: Are all towns the same?/ Development Hell?

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Re: Are all towns the same?/ Development Hell?

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Re: Are all towns the same?/ Development Hell?

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