a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building
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Oh and while I'm here, I love your talks Jason, would be great to make it to one some time.
Still debating whether I should explore the Nevada Desert though...
Maintainer of Two Hours One Life - a curated OHOL server. Discord https://discord.gg/atEgxm7
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jasonrohrer wrote:Though there's also something fundamentally unsatisfying (for most people) about the premise. You only live an hour and say goodbye to your projects at the end of your hour. That is much less likely to "hook" people than a game you can play all night, working on the same project. Many of the players that have become hooked on OHOL have done so by routing around this limitation, either by playing on empty servers, using (now blocked) coordinate exploits, or (now) simply knowing their way around the rift.
Is this different from games where everything resets between rounds?
Those types of games are usually competitive, which gives you incentive. I would say the style of OHOL fits into a cooperative roguelike game. Typically roguelikes with have a backround gain to go along with the gameplay loop. If either side of that doesn't hold up well enough, it can be frustrating or not fun. The loop is say too hard, or too repetitive. Or the skills, weapons or armor don't feel rewarding or change each run enough.
I believe that is what Jason is trying to dig into, making sure the loop doesn't feel stale and the towns last long enough. Hard thing to balance for sure because for some players, starting from scratch and getting to max tech level can be done in just few hours. Just like how some eves would die with just a berry patch and a few tools, and some would die with a sheep pen done and carts almost done or more.
Back to making lives feeling like they matter more, and goodbyes having some weight. I am probably wrong in that giving someone more than an hour, 2-3 per family with a harsh lockout, would help. All I know is that when I first started and still felt the "magic" it caught me as "oh damn they're dead and gone now". As time went on, understanding just how temporary a life is, and the anonymity factor, they all just became piles of bones. Whether or not that person was ever there at the time, didn't really matter. Someone else, another faceless person, would have filled their shoes, made that well or made that pen. Even the design of buildings started to lack character and all just felt the same. I think thats why the shrines and gardens always felt so cool to see, because they were like a signature left behind, fighting past the endless tides that seek to erase our lines in the sand.
Oddly the quote "One death is a tragedy; one million deaths is a statistic." Seems to apply. Once you grasp just how much death is around us, how often everything disappears, its harder to hold value in life and creation.
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See the thing is, having lives so short and the way death is setup for me, makes lives so meaningless. It makes the goodbyes feel like nothing because there wasn't really time to make a connection. With the overlaps in age, you usually spend maybe 30ish minutes around someone. Maybe have said just a few sentences to them. You probably never worked on anything together or shared many or any moments with them. Then suddenly you are supposed to care if they die?
The lives I played on server12 where I played with a few people multiple times I definitely felt more meaningful than the lives on bigserver2 or the main server where I only saw someone once (so far as I knew). Heck, I felt the lives in Sand City and Duck Town on server1 shortly after the bigserver update felt more meaningful than towns where I only lived there once.
Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.
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I trust too - It's why I bought the game, and why I'll buy the next one.
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This game turned into uninteresting horseshit. I hope it gets better in the future. Good luck all.
- I believe the term "Berrymuncher" is derogatory and therefore I shall use the term "Berrier" instead.
- Jack Ass
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