End Race Restrictions

Spoonwood · 2019-12-19 18:32:47

I can't say much about whether race restrictions work with respect to what they were intended to do, since I'm not playing on bs2.

Here's the post with the goals that race restrictions got intended to achieve stated up front:

https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=8377

How many of those goals are happening? None? Some? Many?

I do keep on hearing one complaint or another about race restrictions.

This post is about discussing whether or not is such a good idea and whether they fulfill the intended goals. Additionally, whether or not they have made the game better... especially with respect to new players or players in the learning process. Please do NOT hesistate to speak up on the forums, because without people speaking up for AND AGAINST a change, there's not much of a way to know what people think.

Additionally, a poll on this issue would probably be good.

Saolin · 2019-12-19 19:28:04

Overall I haven't liked it. Some aspects of it are good, like making it more difficult to progress through the tech tree, and requiring players to communicate and cooperate to do so. Other than that though the restrictive nature of it is, well, restricting. It sucks when you get born into a town that's going through a water shortage that you want to fix but you're just left helplessly waiting/hoping that the appropriate family happens to appear to save everyone. I haven't got to work on oil since the update has rolled out, don't think I've even been born as ginger. Feels like I'm always plain white, but that's probably because that's when that situation arises most frequently since they're most susceptible to it.

Also I think the update would have a better feel to it if each race was able to complete unique items from start to finish instead of each having to contribute just raw materials towards a finished product. It's not satisfying because most of the time you can't see recipes to completion and are limited to just dropping off your skin's raw materials for the next person, unless you're the last person who had everything else gathered for you already. But that's not as satisfying either because then you don't have to work as hard for it and at that point it's no different from combining ingredients to make a pie or something.

Last edited by Saolin (2019-12-19 19:37:02)

Kinrany · 2019-12-19 19:41:51

Instead of races we could have randomly assigned personality traits that are necessary for some high-tech jobs.

DarkDrak · 2019-12-19 20:08:14

I'm gonna share my personal experience on this so far.
These were the goals for the upgrade:

jasonrohrer wrote:

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

1. Failed miserably. Every life still feels the same: you either do unspecialized stuff of whine in frustration as you can't progress watertetch while the town needs it or run around the map looking for the right fam to get some help.
2. Sorta succeeded. Now someone's literally forced to explore. Exept it would've been a lot more interesting if walking for a bit would actually get you to a different fam and not to an abbandoned settlement. Chanses are, if families didnt meet at the early generations, they wont just wont meet. Or they gotta rush a belltower now and wait for others to get to town to save it.
3. Succeeded for 2/3. There's much more interfamily cooperation now than there were three months ago. Still no trade.
4. Succeeded perfectly.
5. Succeeded for a half. It's much less certain, ok. But it's still linear and monotone.
6. I mean.....succeeded i guess. Not the kind of challenge one would want to have thought.
7. Succeeded half way. Different people specialize in different stuff, ok. Only Gingers can actually do anything with it though.

Also, for some reason, getting to be a ginger became pretty hard. I guess one has to be prepared to sid to get born into a ginger fam.

P.S. Appreciate you making a new thread and linking to old one instead of necroing the latter.

sigmen4020 · 2019-12-19 20:16:27

I completely agree with this. The racial restrictions offer nothing but meaningless and tedious annoyances. Jason says he made this update to encourage trade. Can anyone honest to god say they've actually traded after this change? I doubt it. It only makes multi-cultural towns obligatory for late-game survival.

Wish Jason would see reason and reverse the racial restrictions, but I doubt he will.

Spoonwood · 2019-12-19 20:18:11

Saolin wrote:

I haven't got to work on oil since the update has rolled out, don't think I've even been born as ginger. Feels like I'm always plain white, but that's probably because that's when that situation arises most frequently since they're most susceptible to it.

It sounds to me like you aren't suiciding either. Or at least not to become a Ginger, correct?

Cantface · 2019-12-19 20:37:34

I confess to slash dying a few times both twin and single play wanting to be tan so I could make tattoos(I know that's generally a no-no but when they came out/after the fix I had to!)...Imagine with limited restrictions we could all be inked, it would be so feckin awesome.

DarkDrak · 2019-12-19 20:39:58

So... basically this upgrade promoted suicide.

Saolin · 2019-12-19 21:03:01

Spoonwood wrote:

Saolin wrote:
I haven't got to work on oil since the update has rolled out, don't think I've even been born as ginger. Feels like I'm always plain white, but that's probably because that's when that situation arises most frequently since they're most susceptible to it.
It sounds to me like you aren't suiciding either. Or at least not to become a Ginger, correct?

Correct. I've hardly ever used the /die command. I used to when I'd get abandoned in the wilderness when born to a Mom on horseback. But since genetic fitness was implemented I wait until I starve now to punish them for it since they were making me take the fitness hit anyway, lol.

Spoonwood · 2019-12-19 21:06:48

Nice to read your analysis DarkDrak! And good to hear the others speaking up also!

Last edited by Spoonwood (2019-12-19 21:21:41)

DarkDrak · 2019-12-19 21:12:04

Saolin wrote:

Correct. I've hardly ever used the /die command. I used to when I'd get abandoned in the wilderness when born to a Mom on horseback. But since genetic fitness was implemented I wait until I starve now to punish them for it since they were making me take the fitness hit anyway, lol.

When /die was introduced as a fast relief against situations where you're abbandoned by your mom but, with the later twists, its usage is being avoided precisely in those situations

sigmen4020 · 2019-12-19 21:20:12

DarkDrak wrote:

Saolin wrote:
Correct. I've hardly ever used the /die command. I used to when I'd get abandoned in the wilderness when born to a Mom on horseback. But since genetic fitness was implemented I wait until I starve now to punish them for it since they were making me take the fitness hit anyway, lol.
When /die was introduced as a fast relief against situations where you're abbandoned by your mom but, with the later twists, its usage is being avoided precisely in those situations

It also has other purposes. Such as making you kinda choose your life without damaging your moms score.

But as Saolin said if you abandon a baby, forcing them eat a score punishment, then you kinda deserve to get a score punishment. Making your own /die babies damage your score, it essentially gives the players the power to punish others for something they don't have any control of.

So I prefer it how it is.

fug · 2019-12-19 21:30:46

DarkDrak wrote:

Saolin wrote:
Correct. I've hardly ever used the /die command. I used to when I'd get abandoned in the wilderness when born to a Mom on horseback. But since genetic fitness was implemented I wait until I starve now to punish them for it since they were making me take the fitness hit anyway, lol.
When /die was introduced as a fast relief against situations where you're abbandoned by your mom but, with the later twists, its usage is being avoided precisely in those situations

I honestly blame the high level forums for the /die issue. Jason was willing to let people choose their lives (which would have solved the die issue) but instead was talked into the life token system which still leaves us with plenty of /die babies along with a host of other issues such as:

-Running out of lives when the game is hectic. Basically, anytime the server goes into freefall the game can be unplayable for players either due to the massive famine, too many babies, or any issues of that nature.

-People still spam /die since once you reach ten deaths its free. You heard me right, it costs you about 3~ points last I just died my life expectancy to 0 but all these points are regained and more once you start living to 60 each life again. The only thing blocking you from this is the mental block of having to lose a "bunch" of points to get to this point. Sure, it would take three hours of solo lives to get those points back but you've got to remember you're going to have children who will also boost (or lower) your score.

-Now we have using /die to be the right race which feels dumb. I personally only like to play as ginger now since they're the only ones who get to do activities I find myself enjoying (fishing, building) which means I don't ever want to be the other three race options even if they have my favorite model in a different tone. Death is cheap because I don't die unless I want to and score doesn't matter because in the current meme score format is just about playing constantly to get high rank (aka more skill slots because rofl at people taking that thing seriously.)

Instead of having races have parts of a recipe make it so they only have access to finished recipes.

Gingers get stuff like fishing/shrimping in arctic and regular ponds (trout/bass for fishing, crawdads for shrimping), salted meat variants of foods for more yum foods, and maybe a cosmetic or special crop.

Tans get stuff like more fruit trees to "trade" saplings of to others. Let them grow nerfed banana trees, mango trees, figs, lemons, oranges, coconuts. Just don't balance them like mango trees for christ sake. Mangoes would likely at least be viable if they started with fruit as then they'd be the default firewood tree due to produce food as well. Also for browns you can give more vegetables make this the exotic food race where they spice our lives up with yummy new recipes.

Blacks get horses, special mines so that they become the dye related race where it's easy for them to give you many different colored sets of clothes. Toss in horses and horse breeding, and maybe something else special and boom now we have more interesting races instead of what we have now.

Tans are boring imo because you're so limited in what you can do (you can fry foods by yourself and pick bananas/grow tomatoes), blacks are needed but boring alone (you get horses which are always of great but I don't live lives to place horse collector.) and whites don't get anything but the ability to talk. At least gingers can make unique towns, can build mostly freely, and obtain food in a way that is pretty chill (though breedable worms would be great.)

Cantface · 2019-12-19 21:35:56

DarkDrak wrote:

So... basically this upgrade promoted suicide.

Umm, well...Yes. I'm sure I'm not the only one trying to pick and choose their start though...Frowned upon again I know, but I've played a lot of OHOL and I know what playstyle I enjoy.

I received my first tatt when I was literally just born, my mom just asked these three already inked guys to tattoo me and I /happied because I for sure wanted that sick ink. I felt like the coolest baby ever (got the tribal x line across the chest) and I rushed onto onetech to get the recipe and do it myself after living that life. four failed tries later (two deaths by bites/ two lacking salt water) I got someone to help me when I was old and I gave her two tattoos as payment as I had only five minutes to live by then lol. One of the best feelings in game ever.

Spoonwood wrote:

Nice to read your analysis DarkDrak! And for the others speaking up.

Ty for asking for opinions, I know there's a lot of them but you ask some good questions Spoon.

Kinrany · 2019-12-19 22:13:57

/die is not an issue because you can always find a way to kill yourself. If it's necessary to increase the timeout between respawns, something else should be done. Observing the mother for a minute before being born, for example.

DarkDrak · 2019-12-19 22:50:02

Spoonwood wrote:

Nice to read your analysis DarkDrak!

Hope it can be useful!

sigmen4020 wrote:

It also has other purposes. Such as making you kinda choose your life without damaging your moms score.

Yeah, i know. I was just kinda laughing at the irony of it all.
I'm pretty sure though that letting one choose their own life has never been Jason's intention, else, back at the time, he'd have gone with a selection screen instead of /die. If memory serves correctly, he added the feature 'cause of abbandonment and running babies. People wanting to play as favorite gener or straight up refusing to play in a town, just run off to die even if it meant sacrificing their time to do that. You can't prevent babies from dying on purpose, so might aswell let them do it easier and save everyone some time and frustration.

Fug, i remember when the issue was brought to us, common mortals, after you made several graphs about the relevance of the problem. Still sad about no secret choise screen triggered by SID.

Back to the topic, i agree that /dieing to become favorite race is dumb.
There were so many ways to go about family specialization and reaching the objectives he had in mind. I'd argue the way she choose was very suboptimal. The dynamic used for tatoos, for one, would've been much more interesting and fair. (as long as it kept out of essential items for survival and city development, like rubber).

Legs · 2019-12-19 23:11:28

jasonrohrer wrote:

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

1. Clearly failed. Sometimes specific people of specific races are obligated to collect specific materials. This only happens in high-tech multicultural bell towns and since those places are so crowded already the pressure to do anything personally is very low. Outside of those towns it's irrelevant because you can't do anything with just your region-specific materials anyway. It just fills buckets and bowls with useless junk until the right family arrives.

2. 90% failure. People are forced to explore, but it's boring and highly ineffective. Towns are too far apart and time is too short for this to work. Full stop. I've spent a bunch of lives on this and it just doesn't work. You find 9/10 towns already dead and even if you find a live one you're already infertile or much too old to bring a girl home.

3. Limited success. Yes, this update was successful on point 3. However because it failed on point 2 actual inter-family meetings are rare. There are currently two types of towns in this game. Poor doomed towns with no water and not enough families, and mega cities with a bell tower and 4+ families. It only comes down to getting lucky. Even in the latter, they're doomed to get further and further away until nobody can ever make the trip to the bell any more.

4. Clear failure. Only the translators stand a chance of communicating. Even within the same race talking to another family is pointless. I stand around insulting them to their face all day and nobody realizes. You can't even get someone to pick up a note unless you threaten them with a knife first.

5. Clear failure. These limitations have only made the tech climb more linear and monotone. Again, take point 2's failure. Exploration is EXTREMELY monotone. The rubber bottleneck makes it extremely linear. There's no workaround. You MUST get rubber. This is the wrong kind of difficulty, where it's boring, frustrating and luck-based. It's completely artificial.

6. Mixed success. It's forcing people to live together and forcing them to communicate. These interpersonal challenges also existed before in the exact same way, but now you can't avoid them. You NEED foreigners. Which is also frustrating, because most people just ignore the gibberish and any other attempts to communicate. Unless you threaten to murder them, they won't even read the note you're passing.

7. Clear failure. This could have been a great success IF it was limited to things like cosmetics. Tattoos, dye and maybe some foods. Not essential technology. Visiting a brown town and getting tattoos would be really cool and fun. Dooming literally every town without brown people using artificial difficulty is definitely not cool or fun. It's a very clear failure.

Family specialization, tool slots and the rift were all very clear failures. It's very rare for me to think that any game is perfect, but ohol was. A great idea that was executed perfectly. That perfect game has been mutilated beyond recognition. It's disgusting to ruin art like that.

Cantface · 2019-12-20 02:04:23

I don't think there's any harm in playing your fave race or town really! Even if people think it's dumb some people might do it if they're feeling like they want something different than a usual life of constant contribution to farm, food, water, rubber, oil or clothes until death. Plus I think giving people tattoos is a nice gift~It made me, as a player, feel giddy and charmed by its simpleness and it also requires teamwork! What's so bad about that honestly?

Build a snowman why not? Decorate the trees hell yeah! Make all the dyes together in a mixed town and go multicolour! It's about the little things sometimes man.

Spoonwood · 2019-12-20 03:35:12

Cantface wrote:

It made me, as a player, feel giddy and charmed by its simpleness and it also requires teamwork! What's so bad about that honestly?

I don't think anyone here thinks that teamwork is bad. More that the teamwork feels imposed in an artificial way and that being able to do the teamwork requires the wrong kind of grind. At least that's what I'm taking from reading someone like Legs. Teamwork, for example, is required in an Eve camp if it's going to thrive (and even before the temperature overhaul when Eve camps could be easier, teamwork was required for a good camp). But I don't think anyone objects to such teamwork. Also, there's no teamwork if you can't find other people that you need on your team, which I think Legs and some others have indicated as happening.

But hey, you like it. Good for you for stating your opinion.

Cantface · 2019-12-20 14:46:23

Spoonwood wrote:

I don't think anyone here thinks that teamwork is bad. More that the teamwork feels imposed in an artificial way and that being able to do the teamwork requires the wrong kind of grind. But I don't think anyone objects to such teamwork. Also, there's no teamwork if you can't find other people that you need on your team, which I think Legs and some others have indicated as happening.
But hey, you like it. Good for you for stating your opinion.

Yeah the new updates in theory were a good idea (Forced adventure and relocation/mixed fams and languages) It gave paper a decent use for translation and I always see maps around holding useful information like tarry spots and other race towns but I think the majority would just rather do it all themselves like before of course. without the restrictions. But the new updates (biome specialty/rank) put a lot of emphasis on having to work together for survival so we're in this for the long run I think. If that's the case I'll still pick and choose what I want to do, as no-one likes all the choices being available then taken away. I apologise if it's selfish but a game is a game and I want to play it in a way that would give me the most enjoyment.

Spoonwood · 2019-12-20 15:15:22

fug wrote:

I honestly blame the high level forums for the /die issue.

The high level forums shouldn't even exist. One does not get the best feedback with closed door discussions like that. Criticism comes from the outside. Different points of view also come from the outside. Furthermore, such closed door discussions can easily devolve into group think or ego stroking. They were a bad call in the first place. And they should get abandoned.

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End Race Restrictions

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