One Hour One Life Forums

Alf

Member

Registered: 2018-03-31

Posts: 63

What is the real idea of this game?

I wrote a topic recently about the idea of the game and issue of coming back to the same place, living there continuously instead of having a singular experience.

Then the apocalypse happened...

First of all, let me quote what is posted on the game's main page :

This game is about playing one small part in a much larger story. You only live an hour, but time and space in this game is infinite. You can only do so much in one lifetime, but the tech tree in this game will take hundreds of generations to fully explore. This game is also about family trees. Having a mother who takes care of you as a baby, and hopefully taking care of a baby yourself later in life. And your mother is another player. And your baby is another player. Building something to use in your lifetime, but inevitably realizing that, in the end, what you build is not for YOU, but for your children and all the countless others that will come after you. Proudly using your grandfather's ax, and then passing it on to your own grandchild as the end of your life nears. And looking at each life as a unique story. I was this kid born in this situation, but I eventually grew up. I built a bakery near the wheat fields. Over time, I watched my grandparents and parents grow old and die. I had some kids of my own along the way, but they are grown now... and look at my character now! She's an old woman. What a life passed by in this little hour of mine. After I die, this life will be over and gone forever. I can be born again, but I can never live this unique story again. Everything's changing. I'll be born as a different person in a different place and different time, with another unique story to experience in the next hour...

I would like to address these three highlights here.

1. Time and space in this game is infinite.

I would certainly agree with the infinity of space as the world is just big enough, at least from the math formula, but the game is not really making use of all this. I will mention that later on. Speaking of time though... it's not infinite, because you live from an apocalypse to an apocalypse. You might say that it is infinite because I can play after that apocalypse, but isn't that already a different world then? If we knew the real end of the world (no idea what one might mean by that) would happen tomorrow, we certainly wouldn't speak of the infinity of time, even if somebody came up with the idea that another world might start when the old ends. It simply does not concern us.

2. Countless others will come after you.
Well, no. If Jason plans to have an apocalypse weekly, certainly not countless others. Person born three weeks after I died would never have the occasion to see the adobe wall I built.

3. I'll be born as a different person in a different place and different time.
This is more the the topic I started recently, about having that singular experience. I would like to connect 1. point to that. The game world is really big and yet not used. As far as I understand, though might be wrong, the games make you spawn next to people's settlements as an Eve and not like 100,000 tiles further. Why then? Why create such a big world and do not use it at all?

Why would you wipe the whole map anyway? I don't really understand why would that be necessary if we do not speak of real issues as server capacity and so on.

My feeling got ruined. This game had no magic or fantasy elements, I adore that. Just purely civilization building. Yes, there were natural disasters happening in the real world. Volcano eruptions, earthquakes, floods, famine, diseases. I believed that was already implemented in the game. Seeing settlements die because of the unwise farming, depletion of food and natural resources was very immersive. I liked that a lot, made me feel that our work can be actually lost, because of us.

Of us... but not because of the game creator.

I believe that the ones that wiped the worlds are not us. It's Jason. He wanted it wiped and we were merely his tools. His bullets.

In real life there is a branch of science, called archeology that deals with the stuff I just said. Again, why if the carrotpocalypse happened and the village starved out due to lack of seeds and food in general, we are not spawned 1,000,000 tiles away from it, just 100 or 0 instead. Is the better solution for this really wiping all the stuff later on? Where's the past in that, using your grandpa's ax or anything. That is just being lazy for me. Lazy and very curious how would people react to your totally unexpected ideas. I do not even mention that apocalypses now happened every few hours.

What is the reason of building anything if it is not going to last at all. Not because somebody might destroy it but it will be destroyed as a general idea.

There are games or particular servers of games that are meant from the very beginning to be repetitive and temporary, about to reset after some time. And there people play way differently than on the servers that would last. They focus on different activities because there is no point in doing the lasting ones.

There is some point in the stagnation Jason mentioned speaking of technology. This does not mean we did not have stuff to do there. I have seen plenty of towns and cities that were expanding all the time. Just recently a one surrounded with a very long wall, having a lot of space inside just waiting to be filled with buildings, farmlands and so on.

As for this update, the things I build are not for me. They are not for the countless players of my kin or not, that will come after me. It is for Jason to erase and forget about it. That is sad. I always thought the experience is to overcome the struggle of survival and make something that would last.

These are some of my thoughts about this, simply opinion. I realize that Jason's concept of the game might have evolved. Just like that or by looking into what we do in the game. On the other hand I think it's really unfair to do such thing out of the blue, without asking the community about it in any way. We are supposed to build a civilization, a society, but the sole founder of that idea does not really care about that. Or he cares in the means we wouldn't like him to.

I don't really know what to think. I am simply disappointed.

EDIT: To be honest if Jason put in the descripiton : "reset every week!" I think I would not buy the game. The legacy part of it took my interest. And my money.

BIGEDIT: I forgot to add something I wanted. I think we would all make use of bigger (much bigger) biomes. Some towns were big enough to almost 'touch' every biome type. I would love to see into the idea that one village would focus on farming and the other one on getting wood and other resources because of its location. All the time I've been feeling too packed with the current biome situation.

Last edited by Alf (2018-04-06 19:02:44)

Verinon1

Member

Registered: 2018-03-13

Posts: 88

Re: What is the real idea of this game?

I share your frustrations. I think Jason’s goal was for this game to be very difficult to advance in. But players being players kind of negated that, thus we had towns. That negated his vision for the game, so he gave us the trigger for a wipe, knowing it would get used, and therefore making the game hard again for everyone. His new idea about “mini apocalypses” (where Eves spawn many many tiles away from other people, forcing them to start from scratch) is a decent one, I think. It makes the game harder, while still allowing us to preserve everything we’ve done thus far server-wide. There are a couple problems with this idea though (that people have brought up elsewhere): players can still use coordinate mapping tech that allows them to find locations on the map and thus negate the purpose of Eves spawning far away. And also: the game currently resets areas that haven’t been visited by any players in some time, therefore, it would be next to impossible to establish trade routes, roads, etc, because you would never be able to find them.
And I disagree with Jason’s idea that the game had become stagnant. I still had plenty of stuff to do in towns. Plenty of people did. And those that felt bored with the game could always run out into the wilderness to start anew if they wanted.
What turned me on to this game was the permanence of your actions, if not your life. Sure, it should be hard to continue your lineage and advance society, but having to start over again and again because of unnatural game mechanics is just self-defeating.

Last edited by Verinon1 (2018-04-06 18:53:28)

starplayer

Member

Registered: 2018-03-14

Posts: 19

Re: What is the real idea of this game?

Jason has always made games that worked sort of social experiments. In this case, he wants to torture a game community, to see how long before they all ran away I suppose.

I support everything you two have said. Jason has traits of a psychopath I'd say. This is even worse than SimCity
There could have been much better ways o dealing with the "problem" of too big cities or false stagnation (apparently in Minecraft you stagnate once you kill the Ender Dragon. That's why people have stopped playing it years ago).

We've been fooled.

Last edited by starplayer (2018-04-06 18:58:42)

Alf

Member

Registered: 2018-03-31

Posts: 63

Re: What is the real idea of this game?

I share your frustrations. I think Jason’s goal was for this game to be very difficult to advance in. But players being players kind of negated that, thus we had towns. That negated his vision for the game, so he gave us the trigger for a wipe, knowing it would get used, and therefore making the game hard again for everyone. His new idea about “mini apocalypses” (where Eves spawn many many tiles away from other people, forcing them to start from scratch) is a decent one, I think. It makes the game harder, while still allowing us to preserve everything we’ve done thus far server-wide. There are a couple problems with this idea though (that people have brought up elsewhere): players can still use coordinate mapping tech that allows them to find locations on the map and thus negate the purpose of Eves spawning far away. And also: the game currently resets areas that haven’t been visited by any players in some time, therefore, it would be next to impossible to establish trade routes, roads, etc, because you would never be able to find them.
And I disagree with Jason’s idea that the game had become stagnant. I still had plenty of stuff to do in towns. Plenty of people did. And those that felt bored with the game could always run out into the wilderness to start anew if they wanted.
What turned me on to this game was the permanence of your actions, if not your life. Sure, it should be hard to continue your lineage and advance society, but having to start over again and again because of unnatural game mechanics is just self-defeating.

I hope the thing of seeing into your coordinates (and choosing a server) is considered by Jason as an exploit and he would fix that soon.

Gare22

Member

Registered: 2018-04-06

Posts: 4

Re: What is the real idea of this game?

Jason has always made games that worked sort of social experiments. In this case, he wants to torture a game community, to see how long before they all ran away I suppose.

I support everything you two have said. Jason has traits of a psychopath I'd say. This is even worse than SimCity
There could have been much better ways o dealing with the "problem" of too big cities or false stagnation (apparently in Minecraft you stagnate once you kill the Ender Dragon. That's why people have stopped playing it years ago).

We've been fooled.

Lol. He's a game dev, not a psychopath. It's hard work pleasing everyone and making it so the game does not become stagnant...

Lexyvil

Member

Registered: 2018-03-23

Posts: 107

Re: What is the real idea of this game?

The game is in a calibration state, Jason is only experimenting to see what works and what doesn't, based on the statistics and comments players have given so far, all while adding new content. The game has only been released to the public, so for sure there're adjustments to be made.

It will ultimately be a balanced game in the end, at the pace he's working at, for sure.

Last edited by Lexyvil (2018-04-06 20:46:44)