Suggestion: Family Types with Home Biome

Flachzang · 2020-01-25 22:16:54

I just can't be helped with: I like to imagine to wander through a thick, foreign, hostile and hot jungle and then encounter an ancient tribe of brown people there, along with their settlement.

Wouldn't it be cool if you encountered family types and their towns mostly where they are actually supposed to be? I mean, according to current game design, of course. So browns would often settle in the jungle. And gingers in the snow. And blacks in the desert. And whites in...umm...[insert adequate biome here]. I don't know but I just like the idea of encountering and settling in the actual "home" biomes of family types.

Currently, all the specific biomes are pretty much hostile and can't be lived in properly. That would need to change obviously in order to implement such an idea. Well maybe, by giving the corresponding kind of family reasons to live there. Like in form of special benefits, such as being immune to mosquitos for browns or black people can endure the heat better in desert and so on. Maybe they have a speed/food/speciality bonus. Maybe they just settle there because other family types have disadvantages to prevent a war in the home town. The list can go on and on.

Also, other family types would not have the inability to pick up stuff in general but only the inability to process special goods and tasks, like farming rubber. That way, families could still interact with each other and the restrictions to limit certain production lines to certain families would still be there.

Yes? No? Maybe?

TheRubyCart · 2020-01-26 21:26:10

This is Quite Interesting...

DestinyCall · 2020-01-26 21:52:52

In my opinion, something like this is how biome specializations should have been from the beginning. Unique early village starting locations for different families that look and feel different from each other.

Flachzang · 2020-01-26 23:29:59

Yeeees, right? That’s what I meeeean. I could elaborate so much more on this but I thought I give you guys the gist of the idea first, before I end up with a 132 page long master thesis on why this approach to implement specializations is so much cooler than the current one.

You know, I actually like the idea to have specializations in the game. For various reasons. However, while the basic idea sounds great, it got poorly executed in my honest opinion. It just feels cheap and lazy to simply restrict the access to certain biomes for certain family types. Yes, I know it is not strictly restricted but come on, nobody wants to go into a jungle if you are not brown, right? And even if you are brown, you just get in there quickly, grab what you can and then get out of there asap before you will either get a heat stroke or the mosquitos eat you alive. But browns should actually feel at home in there shouldn‘t they? Isnt that what they are unique about?

Once I was born as a brown Eve and my first thought was „ok, im brown, so lets settle in a jungle because it is my home biome“ but then the realisation set in immediately. It is simply too hostile there, but come on, just make me as a brown immune to mosquitos and give me a bit more heat endurance and voila: Berries as the standard getgo food just got substituted by bananas (in a bit weaker form for balance). But nooo, special about me is only that I can pass the invisible wall in front of that biome for abstract and non-comprehensive reasons, and which also only sums me down to being one single thing: a rubber providing donkey.

Of course other families would need to be able to survive longer than 2mins in the jungle as well and be able to pick up and interact with items in general. But of course without the family specific advantages and still with the inabilty to harvest special goods like rubber or oil. So there would still be a lot of communication and interfamily interaction going on.

With changes like that and the removal of the invisible barrier in front of half(!) the biomes that exist in the game, specialization could be and developed further into such an interesting and unique part of the game other than just being an annoying necessity to overcome at some stage in the game. You know, at least when your deep weel went dry and you need rubber all of the sudden. Moreover, people would actually have almost twice the size of area to play with because you would not have to avoid those specific areas at all cost anymore but would rather be interesting and unique first lines of new stories to tell.

Melea · 2020-01-27 04:24:48

I wish Jason would take this game a little more in the direction of the Community Crucible - https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=6794

Biomes larger (hopefully not as large as CC's though...that's massive), but each biome having the necessary items to build up villages and small towns. In the CC for example, grasslands have vernal pool water sources, native muskrats for a non-plains fur source, and onions can replace carrot for compost. Prairie biome has field maples for a non-grassland source of straight branches and leaves, poor soil deposits available, and dried beans can substitute for gooseberries for compost. Just some variety for different flavors of town, without almost always needing to settle in green-near-ponds areas.

Maybe remove dropsy and add in different pros and cons for each family/race that encourages them to settle in certain biomes over others, but so there isn't a magical barrier completely preventing them from settling in other areas if desired.

Allowing biome-specific families to get a much better harvest from biome-specific plants would help a lot as well. Like a ginger may only get a partial bucket of latex from one rubber tree while a brown fam could get multiple buckets or a reusable tree. It still encourages using the correct family for high-tech resources, but doesn't completely hamstring villages that don't have the right race present.

DestinyCall · 2020-01-27 05:52:37

I think it would be great if there were "hot" specialists and "cold" specialists. If you are born to a hot tribe, you are comfortable in hot climates, but can't handle the cold. In contrast, cold tribes are comfortable in the coldest parts of the map, but weak to hot temperatures. The hot tribes will have their own early tech tree that utilizes resources available in the desert, jungle, and savannah. The cold tribes will also have their own early tech tree that only needs stuff that is found in the tundra, badlands, and swamp. Meanwhile, some tribes could be neutral - neither hot nor cold specialists. They would naturally settle in the green and follow the originsl tech tree.

There could be new afflictions - heat stroke and frost bite - as well as temperature specific clothing that help to prevent them.

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2020-01-25 22:16:54

Suggestion: Family Types with Home Biome

#2 2020-01-26 21:26:10

Re: Suggestion: Family Types with Home Biome

#3 2020-01-26 21:52:52

Re: Suggestion: Family Types with Home Biome

#4 2020-01-26 23:29:59

Re: Suggestion: Family Types with Home Biome

#5 2020-01-27 04:24:48

Re: Suggestion: Family Types with Home Biome

#6 2020-01-27 05:52:37

Re: Suggestion: Family Types with Home Biome

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