a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building
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I was reading a suggestion posted earlier about limiting 1 family per rift with plane travel between the isolated rift lands and it got me thinking about how that might play out in-game. I think it is a very interesting idea that might solve a lot of problems I have with the current rift system.
First, I have to say that I don't know how the current rift works from a coding perspective, so I have no idea how difficult it would be to make these kind of changes. I apologize if what I suggest is way too technically complex or impractical to actually implement. It isn't a minor change and it might not be possible, but I figure there is no harm in proposing it.
With that said, my idea is that each rift become the unique "homeland" for a single tribe of players, all descending from the same Eve. If the village fails and the land remains unoccupied for a period of time, it is reset to a new randomized untouched map and a new Eve can now spawn to try again. The number and size of these rift worlds would need to be kept relatively small to avoid spreading the players across too many families. And to ensure that the finite nature of the family's homeland eventually encourage exploration and migration to survive. I think a size around 500x500 is good. The recent rift map was 770x770, I believe. I was able to travel across it on foot and by horse in a reasonable amount of time. A somewhat smaller map should still be adequate for a single large village or several smaller villages without feeling claustraphobically small. As for the number of Eves, like the idea of four tribes - one for each skin tone. In fact, I think it would be cool if the same homeland would always spawn Eves with a particular skin tone so the neighboring tribes would be visually distinct and recognizable.
I am envisioning a 3x3 grid of riftworlds. Nine square lands, separated by deep chasms.
O X O
X @ X
O X O
The rifts marked by X would reset and spawn a new Eve when that rift's population reaches zero and remains empty for a period of time. The reset is important to prevent Eves spawning into an unlivable, depleted rift. The rifts marked by O do not spawn Eves. These lands are available to be explored and populated by the neighboring villages, when their homelands become depleted. These rifts should also reset if they are unoccupied for a period of time. It could be longer than the reset period of the homelands. The central rift, marked by @, will be the "overflow" rift. Normally, players will spawn as an Eve or descendent of an Eve, in one of the four rift tribes. But what if there are no viable mothers available? In that case, players will be redirected to the overflow rift and spawn as an Eve or child of another Eve. In this special rift, multiple Eve spawns are allowed. Otherwise, it functions the same as the other rift lands and if no one occupies the central rift for a while, it will reset. Under normal circumstances, players will not be born to mothers in the overflow rift. The four families get priority. Only if no mothers are unavailable (or the player is banned from all available mothers) will a player spawn in the overflow rift. In that case, they will spawn to an available mother in the overflow or spawn as an Eve. Multiple births (twins, triplets, quads) will also be directed to overflow. This will help prevent multiple Eves in the homeland rifts and various other issues.
I anticipate these changes will have a couple of interesting effects on gameplay. The four tribes will be mostly isolated and could be at radically different tech levels if one of them has just died out and started over while another is still going after many generations. The rifts would act similar to an extra large, maintence-free "property fence." Reducing interactions between families, but not eliminating the possibilty. Since resources inside a populated rift will steadily deplete, each tribe must eventually tackle leaving behind the relative safety of their homeland to explore the outer riftlands. This will require building up to the highest tech - airplanes for travel and radios for long distance communication across the rift. The corner riftlands are unoccupied (initially), so they offer the potential for new lands and fresh resources. But traversing the rift is a difficult, multi-generation project. And moving into new lands will increase your chances of encountering new people from other tribes who are attempting to do the same. Sometimes you will be born in a huge advanced homelands city, surrounded by depleted lands. Othertimes, you will find yourself in a border outpost, a few isolated family members, surrounded by hopefully friendly foreginers. In anothe life, you might witness the maiden flight of your village's first airplane. Each life gives the potential for new adventures, exploration, and progress.
The overflow rift will be unpredictable. They might not have adequate population to reach a high enough tech level to make a plane. But because this central tile gets all the extra Eve spawns AND banned players, it would be the natural spot to form bandit camps or launch raiding parties. It also could be a good spot for an advanced multi-cultural trade city, if they could survive the endless griefing.
Speaking of griefing ... I'm not completely sure how cursing works right now. Last I checked, I think you can only curse people who are in your family and if they get enough curses, they go to Donkey Town for a while relative to their lifetime curse score. I think (?) that both murder and cursing also affects your ability to be reborn to the same lineage again, but I'm not positive if that is true or how long the ban lasts. What I would like to see happen is that getting cursed by someone from one of the four tribes prevents you from being reborn to that lineage for a long time - like 24 hours? And if you are cursed more than five times by people from the same lineage, you are permenantly banned from that lineage. So if you upset your family enough to get cursed, you won't be allowed back for a while. And if you piss off a whole group (or multiple individuals) you are gone for good. In this way, tribes will be able to self-govern and "exile" people they do not want around any longer. They could even put someone on trial and formally curse them as a group, if they felt someone deserved to be banished.
Ideally, I would like it to even go one step further. There are four homelands - north, south, east west. If you get banned from five different lineages from the same homeland, then you get permenantly banned from all lineages that originate from the homeland, now and forever. So people who are persistantly and consistantly getting caught doing antisocial behavior by their own tribe will eventually be unwelcome anywhere other than the overflow rift. They can still join the same server and play the same game, but their spawn options will be significantly reduced because they are no longer allowed to be born to any random mother. They will always get born as an overflow Eve or as the descendent of an Eve from the overflow rift. To get banned from all tribes will not be quick or easy. To reach that point, your lifetime curse score will be at least one hundred - cursed at least five times each by five different families on four different homelands. Getting banned from a single family will limit your spawn options in the short term, but isn't permenant, because that family will die out eventually and be replaced by anothe Eve lineage. Being repeatedly banned over and over, however, has the potential to permenantly restrict your spawn options. Which also means that homeland will not have to deal with that same problem players again and again and again. Over time, the effect of the curse system interacting with the spawn system should mean that you can trust your family more and rely on them to work cooperatively, except for rare occassions. The threat of internal griefing will not be completely eliminated - there will always be some bad apples that slip through and will need to be dealt with appropriately. But it should be reduced significantly, especially in older lineages or more vigilant lineages that take steps to weed out troublemakers.
Since the overflow rift will act as the "dumping grounds" for banned players and troublemakers, I expect that it will end up being a scary place to live. But it also could be an interesting place to visit. You can also get there quite easily and voluntairly by using the /die command four times in a row. I would not be surprised if some people decide to try building there, both for the challenge and because they can gain access to other homelands more easily from the central riftland.
Which leads me to another important concept - travel between riftlands. Each land is separated by a deep rift. You cannot walk across it or jump across, but it should be possible to fly a plane across the rift to reach new lands. If you fly to a land that has no airstrip ready for you, your plane will crash somewhere in the next riftland. You cannot fly out of the 3x3 grid. If you try flying out of the grid, you crash in the same land (or maybe you get lost and end up in a random adjacent land?). I really like the idea of making planes USEFUL and important to late game progression. You can't just ignore planes and radios. They are actually necessary tech.
But what about crossing the rift WITHOUT a plane? I think that it would be nice to have another option available. Specifically ... I'm thinking about suspension bridges. My thought is this ... using carved stone blocks, wooden planks, stanchion kit and similar things, you can construct a "bridge support" on YOUR side of the rift. Then someone else needs to build a matching bridge support at the right spot on THEIR side of the rift. Finally, either side can finish the bridge by adding ropes and more wooden boards. The finished bridge now allows people to cross over the rift freely at that point. Bridge construction is a cooperative effort. You need at least two people with access to iron tools and a willingness to work together to connect two lands. The bridge should also be destructable. Using an axe, knife or sword will break the rope and revert it back to two bridge supports. Coordinated action between two people (like removing a fence or adobe wall) can let you remove the bridge support (on your side). At that point, someone could still come along and rebuild the bridge support or start construction somewhere else. But it would take time and coordination to complete a bridge or completely destroy a bridge. So what does this mean? It means that you could fly across to a corner land and complete a bridge to get back in your lifetime ... while also allowing your village to gain permenant access to the other side. Or you could coordinate with someone in the central overflow land to build a bridge without letting anyone know about it and then lead a bandit raid on the unsuspecting villagers inside your own homeland. Or you could build a network of bridges and roads that connect ALL nine lands together and make a huge trade city at the very center of the overflow riftland. There are many options. Bridges would be very cool because they are semi-permenant and relatively low tech. The hard part is coordinating the support construction, but building or repairing bridges doesn't take high technology or access to tons of iron. In contrast, planes are rare and fragile. They would be super important for reaching the untouched corner rifts, but not very practical for regular commuter traffic. Too easy to lose. Too hard to mass-produce.
I may have forgotten a few things, but I think I will stop here.
What do you think of this idea?
Last edited by DestinyCall (2019-08-12 00:14:09)
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It still could have the problem of too many players leading to the unsustainability of a settlement. However, it seems like the best rift idea to date. But, Jason is on vacation and I don't think very likely to read it, even if he were to care.
It's also rather different than Jason's concept regarding rifts:
The goal in all of this is to enable a collective challenge: How long can you all survive together before civilization collapses globally?
https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=7543
Then again, his concept is useless, as it can't even get tested, because of the griefing issue which lead to the player count dropping rather dramatically. So, I wouldn't worry about his original concept there, as there's no basis to believe it reasonable whatsoever.
Thumbs up on the post. It doesn't sound like it would lead to griefing issues (other than in the center area, where it's kind of deliberate anyways). Not seeing how it will make a difference though unfortunately.
Last edited by Spoonwood (2019-08-12 00:25:22)
Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.
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given dwindling player count, this quickly becomes 1 rifft per 4 payers.
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It's also rather different than Jason's concept regarding rifts
The "failure" goal is one of the big problems that I have with the current system. I want the goal to be striving TOWARD sustainability, rather than fighting against inevitable decay. I think it is a much more positive goal and it gives me a stronger incentive to keep playing despite adversity. Hope is a powerful motivater. The lack of hope is very destructive as the never-ending failure arch has shown.
Thumbs up on the post. It doesn't sound like it would lead to griefing issues (other than in the center area, where it's kind of deliberate anyways). Not seeing how it will make a difference though unfortunately.
Yes, if account banning isn't a valid option, then in-game banishing is the next best available alternative. The existence of suspension bridges and planes would mean that organized griefers could still band together to act as "raiders" and try to mess with the main tribes. But they would have to work a lot harder to achieve their goals and peaceful players would have more options for defending their lineage against internal griefing and toxic people. Trapping griefers in the overflow rift could be a powerful counter to individual griefers trying to ruin the tribal homelands. There are ways to get out of the overflow rift, but they require hard work, time, and cooperative play. A single griefer acting alone can be swiftly dealt with by cursing and killing him so he is removed to the overflow, far away from the main tribes. And access to the homelands can be limited ... but not completely cut-off. I think it is a decent balance - allowing griefers and PvP-oriented players to play how they want to play but not giving them free-reign to ruin the whole gameworld for everyone else.
This arrangement would also allow for people to have real Eve camps, small isolated villages, big cities, and walled towns under constant siege ... all at the same time, depending on where they are born. With four homelands, four wilderness corners, and the overflow rift at the center, there are a ton of opportunities for radically different lives in different areas of the map. The current rift is quite large ... but it can be easily traversed in a single lifetime, even by foot. If you have a horse, you can reach any village in the rift in one lifetime. After a while, you run out of new places to explore and discover. With nine unique rifts, there will always be some new frontiers and new projects to keep people busy.
given dwindling player count, this quickly becomes 1 rifft per 4 payers.
I don't think we are quite there yet. But since we would only need sufficient population to keep up to four villages alive, I think it would be fine. Low population servers can be fun too.
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The "failure" goal is one of the big problems that I have with the current system. I want the goal to be striving TOWARD sustainability, rather than fighting against inevitable decay. I think it is a much more positive goal and it gives me a stronger incentive to keep playing despite adversity. Hope is a powerful motivater. The lack of hope is very destructive as the never-ending failure arch has shown.
I agree with you Destiny.
Yes, if account banning isn't a valid option, then in-game banishing is the next best available alternative. The existence of suspension bridges and planes would mean that organized griefers could still band together to act as "raiders" and try to mess with the main tribes. But they would have to work a lot harder to achieve their goals and peaceful players would have more options for defending their lineage against internal griefing and toxic people. Trapping griefers in the overflow rift could be a powerful counter to individual griefers trying to ruin the tribal homelands. There are ways to get out of the overflow rift, but they require hard work, time, and cooperative play. A single griefer acting alone can be swiftly dealt with by cursing and killing him so he is removed to the overflow, far away from the main tribes. And access to the homelands can be limited ... but not completely cut-off. I think it is a decent balance - allowing griefers and PvP-oriented players to play how they want to play but not giving them free-reign to ruin the whole gameworld for everyone else.
Yea, that might just work.
Your idea isn't 'the rift'. It's many rifts.
This arrangement would also allow for people to have real Eve camps, small isolated villages, big cities, and walled towns under constant siege ... all at the same time, depending on where they are born. With four homelands, four wilderness corners, and the overflow rift at the center, there are a ton of opportunities for radically different lives in different areas of the map. The current rift is quite large ... but it can be easily traversed in a single lifetime, even by foot. If you have a horse, you can reach any village in the rift in one lifetime. After a while, you run out of new places to explore and discover. With nine unique rifts, there will always be some new frontiers and new projects to keep people busy.
I think with nine unique rifts, even if you're rotating between them, that things wouldn't get stale.
Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.
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