Coming Soon: Family Specialization

jasonrohrer · 2019-11-13 20:48:48

Why:

To make life in each parallel family feel unique
To encourage players to explore outside of their village bubbles and find other families
To encourage inter-family interaction, cooperation, and trade
To encourage players to bridge language barriers between families
To make climbing the upper reaches of the tech tree less linear, monotone, and certain
To give you more complex, interpersonal challenges
To partially model a beautiful facet of the real world, where different people from different areas specialize in different things

What:

Three specialty biomes: Snow, Jungle, Desert
Three specialist skin tones: Darkest (desert), brown (jungle), and ginger (snow)
One non-specialist skin tone (pale)
Tarry spots will exist only in snow biome

How:

Everyone can enter every biome
Only specialists can manipulate objects in a specialty biome
Non-specialists in that biome cannot pick up or set down objects there (but can pass through)
To message this, non-specialists take on an illness sound/emote matching the biome (heat stroke for jungle and desert, pneumonia for snow)
Mousing over objects in a special biome, as a non-specialist, will simply say INHOSPITABLE JUNGLE or INHOSPITABLE ARCTIC

Reasoning:

Resources from these specialty biomes aren't needed in early civilizations, allowing bootstrapping in isolation and later ramping up to exploration/trade
Players need to be able to easily recognize trading partners for various resources, so appearance consistency is necessary, and there's no sense in deviating from real world expectation about skin tone (gingers do better in colder climates, etc.)
A non-specialist skin tone is necessary for balance, currently (3 biomes and 4 skin tones), but that may change in the future when more biomes are added
A non-specialist skin tone is interesting in its own right
Suicide as Eve in a "less useful skin tone" is unlikely, because Eve is currently so rare and special (8 Eves per day, currently) and because of impacts on genetic score.

Details

Limit rubber tree, mango tree, and sugar cane planting to jungle biome.
No more "second place" biome object placement (where penguins spawn just outside the snow boundary

Maybe:

Non-specialist people can speak all languages (as multi-way traders)
OR non-specialist people are lifetime language learners
Eve skin tone selection may remain random, which means that sometimes, there's no specialist alive who can help with a given biome (temporary resource drought)
OR Eve skin tone selection will be forced to be balanced (always some specialist around for each biome)
Some way that rubber is consumed on a regular basis by a high-tech civ, to make a constant supply of jungle and desert products necessary
Iron veins may move to desert

Expectations:

Some players will try to form cooperative, multi-skin-tone towns that contain all three specialist types
Some people are going to be mad about this update for political reasons

mina · 2019-11-13 20:51:55

I'm no pro, but I like this idea!

pein · 2019-11-13 20:59:12

sounds bad

limits getting horses which is the main reason why some would even consider travelling
also why trade when you can just steal? one more artificial limitation which only slows down gameplay in a bad way

jasonrohrer · 2019-11-13 21:02:38

Yeah, why trade when you can just steal?

DestinyCall · 2019-11-13 21:12:26

jasonrohrer wrote:

Yeah, why trade when you can just steal?

Why steal when you can just share?

Guppy · 2019-11-13 21:13:53

jasonrohrer wrote:

[*]Only specialists can manipulate objects in a specialty biome[/*]
[*]Non-specialists in that biome cannot pick up or set down objects there (but can pass through)[/*]

Will this include basic stuff, like rocks, the stuff under pine trees, bananas,or just the specialty, so: oil, rubber stuff, dye rocks in desert, etc?

The first option sounds horrible, the second one sounds nice

DiscardedSlinky · 2019-11-13 21:14:00

Snow biomes don't offer anything besides gold though, and even that is practically worthless.

Rubber is necessary, how are we supposed to last long enough to survive without a working pump? HOPE we can find another Eve with the right speciality? Eves spawning around us could just die and we'd have to walk thousands of blocks to find people to actually help. Water has been nerfed so hard that you have to rush as fast as possible for an engine for your town to even last long enough. Then adding a new restriction for it, finding a family that can actually make rubber? wait. TWO FAMILIES. Cause you need sulfur and rubber, desert and jungle.

This just sounds really REALLY annoying for early game. Seriously how are we supposed to make rubber for a pump?

Am I understanding this wrong?

Last edited by DiscardedSlinky (2019-11-13 21:17:45)

pein · 2019-11-13 21:17:21

just make sure you make chains so we can trade slaves easier

Twisted · 2019-11-13 21:23:49

?????????

Sounds horrible. Basically when you spawn as an Eve you'll have a choice of settling in place and probably giving your family a ~4 hour timer before they die out since they can't make a Newcomen, or you'll just run N/S/E and hope to find another town that has a different race. None of those choices sound like interesting gameplay.

I also find it very silly that you've been very resilient to changing stuff like Pine Walls because of 'realism', but now you're making it so that only black people have the power to pick bananas.

I'm willing to try it and play it and I hope I'm wrong (I've been wrong many times), but I don't see how any of this is going to encourage trade, and that appears to be one of your main goals with this.

jasonrohrer wrote:

Suicide as Eve in a "less useful skin tone" is unlikely, because Eve is currently so rare and special (8 Eves per day, currently) and because of impacts on genetic score.

If you care about genetic score and you get an Eve spawn the best thing to do is to kill yourself ASAP. Being an Eve means you'll get a ton of babies with no way to support them. I was an Eve earlier and it tanked me to 200th place even though I tried to take care of all my 11 kids. If I had just killed myself immediately I would have lost fewer points.

Coconut Fruit · 2019-11-13 21:26:40

I don't know, this may not work, there is too little cooperation, too little chatting. Trading a horse for some iron? There are already too many noobs who won't even know what is going on, doing such things alone may be boring, you won't even be able to talk with someone unrelated you see for the first time. Forcing to live together with other families? I hate this concept. I dislike living with other families, unless it's a rare thing.
I don't even like skill/tools update. Limitations is a bad thing. Games like minecraft or factorio are so good because of total freedom they give.

DiscardedSlinky · 2019-11-13 21:32:43

Trade is going to be pretty impossible to accomplish without some sort of actual system for it.

Someone could travel to another town, say they want to trade, and die on the way home before he could tell his family. Maybe this is what computers could be for, or an addition to radios possibly? Even then people die out so FAST it's going to be forgotten that a trade is happening without a constant reminder to everyone in each family.

I think it should be done like Rust. A constant object people can interact with. You place an engine in it, set a price like. 50 iron ore, and then people can trade for it without having people actually involved.

Dodge · 2019-11-13 21:36:45

Gimicky way to force a shallow form of trade, will probably get gamed by having multiple families in a town and what not

Just sounds overall bad and uninteresting

edit: on second thought could be somewhat interesting but will need balancing since you need rubber pretty fast and finding the right "race" might be too difficult (infinite map)

Last edited by Dodge (2019-11-13 21:48:58)

Grim_Arbiter · 2019-11-13 21:45:12

DiscardedSlinky wrote:

Snow biomes don't offer anything besides gold though, and even that is practically worthless.
Rubber is necessary, how are we supposed to last long enough to survive without a working pump? HOPE we can find another Eve with the right speciality? Eves spawning around us could just die and we'd have to walk thousands of blocks to find people to actually help. Water has been nerfed so hard that you have to rush as fast as possible for an engine for your town to even last long enough. Then adding a new restriction for it, finding a family that can actually make rubber? wait. TWO FAMILIES. Cause you need sulfur and rubber, desert and jungle.

This just sounds really REALLY annoying for early game. Seriously how are we supposed to make rubber for a pump?
Am I understanding this wrong?

The tarry spot is only in the arctic with this change.

DiscardedSlinky · 2019-11-13 21:46:15

Alright, here's some actual ideas on how to make this "work"

Make it so each skin tone is more efficient in their specific biomes. Gingers don't get as cold in snow, Black people don't get as hot in jungles, and Brown don't get as hot in deserts.

Everyone can do everything, but make it easier in some way for the people with specialized skin tones. For example: non-black people have to add some rare ingredient to make rubber or palm oil that black people wouldn't because they're specialized.

jasonrohrer · 2019-11-13 21:47:06

Factorio does not give you total freedom. Everything is heavily constrained, and then monsters come and destroy what you've made.

I'm not trying to make the most popular game in the world (Minecraft), I'm trying to make the greatest game in the world. Minecraft was revolutionary in a whole bunch of ways 10 years ago, which is why it was enormously popular, but it also pandered to people who don't even want to play games (creative mode). I'm making a game, not a toy.

Artic isn't useless. It's the only place where oil will exist (see the change listed above, where it won't be in desert anymore).

Guppy, I hadn't thought about rocks. I know there are lots of those in the desert and arctic, and people tend to go there looking for them, because those are sparse biomes. Not sure what to do there, though the specialists could trade in rocks too, I guess. Non-specialists will have to get rocks from the other biomes. But bannans and other things are specialty items.

And Slinky, when have you ever made a Newcommen pump as "Eve"?

Let me look at a log here....

In the current server run, the first five deep wells ran out at this number of hours:

2:12
3:24
3:50
4:15
5:04

2:12 is a little short, so I will give these pumps more water before they run out.

Legs · 2019-11-13 21:48:57

I like the idea and I'm curious how it will play out, but there are clearly some issues with the current implementation. Particularly getting rubber for the newcomen well. Towns are also too spread out to make trade reasonable. You can spend half your lifetime searching on horseback and only find abandoned eve camps. If you're lucky you might find a town a thousand tiles away. At the very least one other town would have to be within reasonable walking distance.

Part of the problem is that tools used for trading require trading to begin with. Horses for travel and transport. Rubber to make erasers for reusable notes. With how many items and recipes are in the game there are going to be things forgotten too. Only desert people can dye clothing, and only jungle people can wear yellow or green for example. Items used for minor recipes that now become effectively impossible without that specialty.

Dodge · 2019-11-13 21:50:58

Right...

Only black people can get horses, so how will other people find other "race" villages on an infinite map?

Grim_Arbiter · 2019-11-13 21:51:47

DiscardedSlinky wrote:

Alright, here's some actual ideas on how to make this "work"
Make it so each skin tone is more efficient in their specific biomes. Gingers don't get as cold in snow, Black people don't get as hot in jungles, and Brown don't get as hot in deserts.
Everyone can do everything, but make it easier in some way for the people with specialized skin tones. For example: non-black people have to add some rare ingredient to make rubber or palm oil that black people wouldn't because they're specialized.

+1

But you switched it. It would be the darkest skin tone not as hot in jungles, ginger not as cold in the snow, and personally I think the jungle peeps should get mosquitoe immunity.

Tighten the eve placement and put us a bit closer

Also make the first two wells last a lot longer to bootstrap.

Edit* I see that you are going to put more water in those wells

Last edited by Grim_Arbiter (2019-11-13 21:54:28)

Saolin · 2019-11-13 21:54:57

Hmm this is an ambitious idea.

Hard to say how it would work, would depend on how accessible other families are. Could you find the two families capable of producing rubber in time to build Newcomen well before the water runs out? Sounds potentially quite difficult. It is an interesting idea. I worry that some skins will have a certain ceiling in tech that they rarely advance past unless getting extremely lucky, so balancing may need to be done in various areas to accomodate this? Or just let some skin tones be bad I guess, but that's not as interesting. I think iron should be left out of this unless some alternative to iron tools is introduced. Otherwise you need to find a specific skin tone at the eve camp stage just to be able to dig a shallow well.

And even for just rubber, you will need to find two specific races before Newcomen well... But let's say you do... And then you can't even talk to them. You need to spend multiple generations together just to understand each other, meaning an initial plan to trade and head back is likely to turn into just abandoning the old town to live in one big city with all races probably since obviously by the time multiple generations have passed the original town the trader was from will be long dead. I guess there's ways of working around this, like writing notes, and its also not likely to be a complete mystery what the trader is looking for...

As for stealing I think it would likely become pretty typical for families to lock up their specialty resources.

Ambitious idea that would probably demand a lot of subsequent balancing and adjustments, but once got right it could be an interesting dynamic. It would probably have a lot of problems for a while first though.

jasonrohrer · 2019-11-13 21:59:27

Slinky, why soft, optional specialization?

Long-term, trans-generational prospects are too abstract in this game for most players to reason about (evidenced by water-inefficient yet convenient foods dominating the diet of most players).

With the tool slots, similar ideas were floated about getting "good" at the axe or whatever. But I'm sure you'd see players who are bad at the axe chopping away anyway, right? Hard specialization makes it impossible to ignore. I can't use this axe. I MUST find someone who can help me.

I did consider temp advantages for specific people in specific biomes, but that wouldn't be enough. You don't need to live in there to run in and get what you need.

Having non-specialists need a rare ingredient just makes them hunt for that ingredient. I want them "hunting" for each other. Visiting other villages in search of what (and who) they need.

Also, Twisted, the Eve baby flood has been mostly fixed, right? Look at some recent Eves in the family tree:

2 BB:
http://lineage.onehouronelife.com/serve … id=5488728

11 BB, only 2 died in infancy:
http://lineage.onehouronelife.com/serve … id=5488753

8 BB, 1 died in infancy:
http://lineage.onehouronelife.com/serve … id=5489443

Saolin · 2019-11-13 22:03:17

Grim_Arbiter wrote:

DiscardedSlinky wrote:
Snow biomes don't offer anything besides gold though, and even that is practically worthless.
The tarry spot is only in the arctic with this change.

I thought oil had been restricted to only the arctic biome while we still had the rift? Did it change back?

To me ginger seems like the best skin: oil and seals.

Legs · 2019-11-13 22:04:32

What staple exports could the jungle biome produce equal in value to iron or oil? Rubber is essential for a newcomen pump or diesel engine but it's definitely not as valuable currently.

What kind of other uses would it have to make the jungle biome competitive?

Saolin wrote:

I think iron should be left out of this unless some alternative to iron tools is introduced. Otherwise you need to find a specific skin tone at the eve camp stage just to be able to dig a shallow well.

Seems like iron ore would still spawn in badlands, so you could gather enough to support a town until trade is established. You'd need to find a desert town to get rubber anyway.

Twisted · 2019-11-13 22:07:11

jasonrohrer wrote:

Also, Twisted, the Eve baby flood has been mostly fixed, right? Look at some recent Eves in the family tree:
11 BB, only 2 died in infancy:
http://lineage.onehouronelife.com/serve … id=5488753

That was me, it tanked my score by 200 places. If I had just killed myself immediately I would have lost less points. I would have lost even more had I not spawned in an extremely good location with tons of food and water within twenty tiles. Eleven babies is kind of insane when you have nothing.

Toxolotl · 2019-11-13 22:11:33

All i can see this doing is artificially killing off civilizations. Only jungle civs can make rubber now and they also cant tap oil?! Snow civs are basically useless. Desert civs have a huge advantage being able to make horse carts and mine oil.

Beyond the racist undertones this poses an incredible amount of mechanical issues to the game as well.

Like pein mentioned people dont trade, ive never seen anyone trade in this game. I have seen people raid and steal a lot though. I have no doubt that's what this will turn into.

Currently towns are too far spread to trade or steal even if they wanted to. So it will likely turn into a bunch nomadic fams following the fault lines using and running out of water as they go. Towns like that wont motivate anyone to put effort into building them up.

I found a big issue with the rift was people would give up on building or progressing a town because they knew it would be wiped away in a few days. This would pose the same issue. Why put in any effort into a town when your family is just going to move on when they run out of water.

Sustainable towns will become incredibly rare and the experience of the game will be even more narrowed than it was before. Tool slots were already a huge wrench in the machine, if this gets implemented i imagine it would be an even bigger one.

Instead of slowing down progression with updates like this please consider advancing the tech tree so we have more to build towards. Hitting those advancement benchmarks is extremely satisfying. Please add more elements to strive for instead of making current benchmarks more annoying and tedious to complete.

jasonrohrer · 2019-11-13 22:14:30

I just brought Eves closer together, with spacing of 200 (was 320)

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2019-11-13 20:48:48

Coming Soon: Family Specialization

#2 2019-11-13 20:51:55

Re: Coming Soon: Family Specialization

#3 2019-11-13 20:59:12

Re: Coming Soon: Family Specialization

#4 2019-11-13 21:02:38

Re: Coming Soon: Family Specialization

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