Motherhood Score - a better measure of success

DestinyCall · 2020-02-02 08:24:02

I'm not satisfied with the current implementation of the genetic score. It has nothing to do with genetics and it isn't an accurate reflection of your parenting skills or the value you place on family or lineage. It is also too abstracted and too luck-based to feel real. If I play for an hour, at the end of that hour, I don't know if my score will go up or down from what I've done in my life - I have no sense of accomplishment from a life well lived or regret for squandered opportunities, related to genetic fitness, because there is no way to assess my progress while I play. Without checking my score to see if my kids lived longer than expected, I will not even know if I'm doing a "good job" or a "bad job". Even worse, I feel no ownership of my score. No sense that it is something that I did for myself, because it is based on so many factors that are too far beyond my control. It is frustrating and annoying and I don't like it.

....

So how can we do better? What is the genetic score really tracking and how could it be improved? In my mind, the genetic score is about parenting. Are you a good parent or a crappy parent? Do you care about your kids or do you let them starve? Do you teach your children and support them or leave them to fend for themselves in a cold cruel world that wants them to starve young? Based on Jason's original post ( https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=7116 ), the idea was to try to encourage people to value their "genes" and take care of their family due to a shared genetic destiny. But I feel like the focus was a little off the mark. Instead of focusing on the abstraction of genes, it would be better to consider the abstraction of motherhood itself.

The real strength of this game is centered around the bond between mother and child. It is as the core of what makes OHOL unique. And that is what we should be rewarding and encouraging in our playerbase. Mothers who care about their kids, provide for them, and check up on them later in life. Grandmothers who are excited to see grandkids. A village that cares about its children. It shouldn't be about accumulating strong genes. It should be about raising strong children. They are our future.

....

Okay ... but how do we do this? First, I think there needs to be a few changes to the birthing algorithm. If we are expecting mothers to take an individual interest in their children, then we can't be expecting some mothers to be responsible for birthing dozens of children. There needs to be a hard limit on how many kids you can have during your fertile period, both to "level the playing field" between competing mothers and also prevent one lucky/unlucky mother from being buried under too many infants. My recommendation is to place a hard cap on births, so each mother can have up to six babies total (not counting SIDS babies). Each woman is fertile for 25 minutes out of her hour long life - between the ages of 14 and 39 years old. Six babies mean that a mother could potentially have a baby every four minutes - enough time to get one kid raised before the next baby arrives. Or she might get a cluster of babies in quick succession and be "done" making babies before she hits forty. If one or more of her babies uses the /die command to kill themselves, that birth is removed from her tally and she is eligible for a replacement baby, if one comes along before she is too old. Not every mother would actually get six babies during her fertile period, since births are dependent on a number of other factors, but more importantly, no single mother would birth all the available babies.

Next, let's consider the motherhood score. To keep things relatively simple, I think an age-based point system would work best. The life cycle is broken up into five stages in OHOL - BABY (0-3 years old), CHILD (4-13 years old), YOUNG ADULT (14-24 years old), ADULT (25-39 years old), ELDERLY (40 to 60 years old). For simplicity, I will combine young adult and adult together and consider the span from 14 years old to 39 years old as "ADULT".

If your baby dies before reaching the first milestone, you get no points for that kid. As a mother, you are fully responsible for keeping your baby alive for the first three years. So if the baby dies, you haven't displayed good mothering skills. No points for you.

If your baby survives long enough to reach childhood, congratulations! You are not a completely terrible mother. You get one point for this kid, if it should happen to die at this point. Children are able to feed themselves, but lack adequate reserves, so it is a good idea to check up on your young children when you can and make sure they are provided with adequate clothing and a reliable food supply. You have contributed a small investment of time and energy in this kid by keeping him alive during babyhood, so you get a small reward.

If your child survives and reaches adulthood at the ripe old age of fourteen, great work! You have managed to provide the village with a new worker. You get TWO points if your grown child kicks the bucket at this lifestage. They are likely passed the point where they need their mother watching over them, but you helped get them to this point and your hard work has paid off. Also, they are now old enough to potentially give you grandkids! You get a decent amount of points for your efforts.

If your child manages to stay alive long enough to reach elder status (>40 years old), then you really have achieved parental success. Every parent hopes to be outlived by their children. That should be the goal of any good mother. More importantly, you get THREE points when this old kid inevitably dies. Keep up the good work!

So let's talk math ... you can have a total of six kids. Each of those kids can give you between zero and three points. If all six kids lives past forty, you get three points for each kid, for a grand total of 18 points. I'm sure the other moms are jealous. Chances are pretty good that you won't get all 18 points. Somebody is going to die young. Someone is going to step on a rattle snake. Somebody is going to get killed by a griefer. Someone is going to BE a griefer and get killed. Someone else is going to starve right next to a crock of stew.

But the point is that you can actually check to see how you are doing in a given life by keeping tabs on your children. If you occasionally check up on them, you should have some idea of who is alive and who is dead. You'll know if they are doing well or if you've got no idea if anyone is still alive. If you find a pile of bones and realize it is your child, it will have a clear relationship to your motherhood score that is immediate and obvious. And if your daughter introduces you to your grandchildren .. that should mean something too.

...

Let's talk bonus points. Grandchildren are important. Even if you are the best mother in the world to your own children, it won't matter much if your line ends immediately after you. It is important that your mothering instinct is passed along to the next generation. You want some grandkids!

For each grandchild that reaches 14 years old (adult), you get TWO bonus points. If the grandchild dies as a baby or child, you get no bonus points.

These bonus points can get pretty crazy - if you have six daughters and every one of them has six kids and all their kids live to adulthood ... you could get a whopping 72 bonus points! That's a huge amount of extra points. Way more than you could achieve from just being a great mom to your own kids. But of course, the odds of all thirty six grandchildren surviving to adulthood is quite low. And the odds of all your children being daughters and every one of them birthing six kids is also low.

Also, these are "bonus" points, because chances are very good that you will be dead before your grandchildren reach adulthood. You are responsible for birthing their mother and raising her to adulthood, but your kids are directly responsible for their own children. You are only indirectly involved in their existence, so their success probably has little to do with your skills as a kick-ass grandmother.

....

Alright ... so we've covered basic point totals and bonus points, but there's one last issue that needs to be addressed - BOYS. In OHOL, men are genetic dead-ends. They are not needed for reproduction and they can't make grandchildren to feed your craving for more bonus points. What good are they? Should you love your boy children as much as your girl children if they are only worth three points at most while a girl can give you up to eighteen bonus points in addition to her own value? Yes, yes you should. Every child is precious and deserves to be loved. I hope you feel bad for even asking that question, you monster.

But seriously ... why should you love your boy children? The answer is obvious. Multipliers! For each boy child who reaches 14 years old (adult), you gain a multiplier to your motherhood score. This multiplier is applied to the point total from your own children BEFORE adding the bonus points from grandchildren. It can significantly increase your base score, especially if you have multiple boys.

If you have no boys, the multiplier is x1 (no score change)
If you have one boy, the multiplier is x1.5
If you have two boys, the multiplier is x2
If you have three boys, the multiplier is x2.5 ... and so on .. up to a x4 multiplier for six boys.

Having a lot of boys won't give you as many grandchildren, but men are hard workers and contribute greatly to the success of the village by doing difficult tasks. It's important to recognize that silent contribution to future generations. Without the continued effort of male workers, it would be a whole lot harder to focus on raising a bunch of well-adjusted children that understand the importance of keeping a fresh pie in their backpack at all times.

....

Here's an example: http://lineage.onehouronelife.com/serve … id=5878987

Taya Pie has three children. One dies of SIDS at age zero. No points and doesn't count toward her total births. Another is a girl who dies at age 4 to a grizzly bear and the last is a boy who dies at age 49 to starvation. She gets one point for the girl and three points for the boy for a total of four points. Since she has one adult boy, she also gets a x1.5 multiplier, increasing her score to 6 points. She has no grandchildren, so she doesn't gain any bonus points.

Now look at Eve Am: http://lineage.onehouronelife.com/serve … id=5876499

She has five kids. Two of them are SIDS, so they wouldn't count toward her total births. Her other three kids are all daughters who died of old age at 60 years. She would get three points for each for a total of 9 points. Unfortunately, only one of her daughters had any children, so she only has a single grandchild, who also lived to sixty years old, providing two bonus points. Eve Am's score would be 11 points.

Last we have Emmabelle Pie: http://lineage.onehouronelife.com/serve … id=5877117

She has six kids and they ALL reached adulthood. In fact, most of them died as elders (age 40 or above). Only one daughter died young at twenty. So she gets 17 points for raising six successful adults. One of her kids was an adult male, so she also gets a x1.5 multiplier, which boosts her score to 25 and a half. Also she had six grandchildren reach adulthood, so that's an additional 12 points for helping to produce the next generation. Her total motherhood score is an impressive 37.5 points.

.....

Alright, so that's the basic run down for how motherhood score would be calculated each life. To calculate each player's FINAL score for the leaderboard and general bragging rights, the motherhood score from their past ten fruitful lives are added together and an average motherhood score is calculated. This is an important step, because it helps to even out the inherent randomness of a few lives where you don't get many kids or suffer some other random misfortune. Only lives were you manage to reach adulthood as a female AND birthed at least one non-SIDS baby will be counted toward your motherhood total. So if you aren't a mother, that life won't bring down your average motherhood score. Only lives where you actually had the opportunity to BE a mother to another player will matter. Also, scoring will not be active on low population servers to avoid penalizing someone who gets a random baby on a low pop server. [EDIT - changed definition of "fruitful lives" to mean you actually have at least one baby during that life and added notes about low pop servers]

If you die as a child or if you are born male, that life will be ignored. If you never have any babies or if all your babies /die, that life is not counted against your motherhood score. This means that you don't need to worry about your motherhood score when you are a guy. You are free to go about your life, unencumbered. It won't hurt your score. But when you are a woman, once you start having babies, you should do your best to take care of all your kids (and grand kids), if you want to get a good score.

Ideally, this system would be rewarding for people who care about their kids and want their efforts to be properly recognized.

Last edited by DestinyCall (2020-02-02 19:27:18)

Jamie · 2020-02-02 08:34:28

But does survival time really show how good of a parent you are. What if the kid was raised by another, what if they got left to die and barely survived by running to the nearest person. Mum couldn't care less but some of her kids still got saved and lived a long time.

The_Anabaptist · 2020-02-02 08:40:36

DestinyCall wrote:

....
Okay ... but how do we do this? First, I think there needs to be a few changes to the birthing algorithm. If we are expecting mothers to take an individual interest in their children, then we can't be expecting some mothers to be responsible for birthing dozens of children. There needs to be a hard limit on how many kids you can have during your fertile period, both to "level the playing field" between competing mothers and also prevent one lucky/unlucky mother from being buried under too many infants. My recommendation is to place a hard cap on births, so each mother can have up to six babies total (not counting SIDS babies).

In our modern era it is easy to forget just how many kids a woman can have in her lifetime. In my grandparents generation it wasn't uncommon for them to be families of 12-15 kids. My mother occasionally tells the story of one such mother who lamented, "...and not a one of them died." So I'm going to vote a "nope" on your proposed hard limit of six. At least until the tech tree reaches birth control pills.

The_Anabaptist

DestinyCall · 2020-02-02 08:43:05

There are many different variables that can contribute to your parenting success in a particular life, but your final score is based on your average over ten lifetimes. If you make no effort to raise your own kids, some of them are going to die. Even if they are sometimes saved by kind strangers, that's not going to happen every time. Just as bad luck won't screw over a good mom every life, happy accidents won't rescue a bad mom's neglected children every time.

On average, I believe a deadbeat mom's score will end up being noticeably lower while an attentive mother will end up with a higher average.

The_Anabaptist wrote:

DestinyCall wrote:
....
Okay ... but how do we do this? First, I think there needs to be a few changes to the birthing algorithm. If we are expecting mothers to take an individual interest in their children, then we can't be expecting some mothers to be responsible for birthing dozens of children. There needs to be a hard limit on how many kids you can have during your fertile period, both to "level the playing field" between competing mothers and also prevent one lucky/unlucky mother from being buried under too many infants. My recommendation is to place a hard cap on births, so each mother can have up to six babies total (not counting SIDS babies).
In our modern era it is easy to forget just how many kids a woman can have in her lifetime. In my grandparents generation it wasn't uncommon for them to be families of 12-15 kids. My mother occasionally tells the story of one such mother who lamented, "...and not a one of them died." So I'm going to vote a "nope" on your proposed hard limit of six. At least until the tech tree reaches birth control pills.
The_Anabaptist

I think the record is somewhere around seventy or eighty children born to a single mother - multiple births were involved and obviously the woman had an impressively strong constitution. It is not impossible for a woman to give birth many times or to have many babies each time she gives birth. And in times of high infant mortality, it is essential to produce many children since you can reasonably expect many will not survive to adulthood. I come from a family of five, so I'm well aware that small families are a modern invention.

But I'm not interested in "realism" for the sake of realism. Just because it is possible in real life, doesn't mean it should be a common occurrence or even a possibility in OHOL. We do not have many things that exist in the real world. Like sexual reproduction. I'm interested in good gameplay and reducing randomness to a reasonable level. If we want to be able to form real connections between mother and child, smaller families are important. I don't have enough time to get to know seventy nine sky babies. I would not even try to name them all.

Last edited by DestinyCall (2020-02-02 08:57:39)

Legs · 2020-02-02 08:47:33

I had a new player as a baby today. For their entire childhood I instructed them. Do -not- starve. Always remember to eat. Keep food with you. I filled a backpack with pie and gave it to them. They grew hair and waddled off. Five minutes later they starved.

For the most part, short of following a kid around like a helicopter mom there's nothing you can do for them. A good player will be born ferile and go on to be the king of bell town. A bad player will be born in bell town and starve in the woods. It's all down to luck who your kids are.

Spoonwood · 2020-02-02 16:36:07

DestinyCall wrote:

If we are expecting mothers to take an individual interest in their children, then we can't be expecting some mothers to be responsible for birthing dozens of children. There needs to be a hard limit on how many kids you can have during your fertile period, both to "level the playing field" between competing mothers and also prevent one lucky/unlucky mother from being buried under too many infants.

Well, there would have to exist more Eves during an update period then. 4 Eves won't be enough. Early lineages, at the very least, might again become fragile to dying out, because of lack of children.

That said, 6 babies per mother might do something to address the longstanding issue of what people do during a population boom, while out on horsecart, or as an Eve. In other words, it might lead to less situations where players have cause to not pick up all of their children.

DestinyCall wrote:

Now look at Eve Am

Genetic score is currently inactive on the servers which remain low population. I'm not sure that genetic score would be inactive on servers 2 through 15 if they had more than 14 players, or if it's inactive based on the server number. It seems like that you're proposing that motherhood score apply to the low population context. If so, what's your reasoning here? Oh... duh... I forgot. Yeah, there do exist low pop players who I've gotten birthed to who have said 'sorry, no kids', and sometimes that might be because of the potential of their child growing up to kill them... at least when I started playing low pop I didn't always keep children due to fear of getting killed out of the blue (did happen once a while back, well I guess twice). Fortunately though, I usually play with people who keep their children, and we enjoy playing with each other in small groups.

The_Anabaptist wrote:

In my grandparents generation it wasn't uncommon for them to be families of 12-15 kids. My mother occasionally tells the story of one such mother who lamented, "...and not a one of them died."

I would guess the latter is more of a joke, kind of like the 'take my wife, please!' joke, than a lament. 12-15 children as a True Eve (one who starts from scratch and only helps build a town, she doesn't find a developed one)? Well, tell me whether or not you think it's smart for an Eve to try to raise that many children.

Legs wrote:

I had a new player as a baby today. For their entire childhood I instructed them. Do -not- starve. Always remember to eat. Keep food with you. I filled a backpack with pie and gave it to them. They grew hair and waddled off. Five minutes later they starved.

For all we know that player may have left their keyboard. The old question of 'does starvation really mean that the player couldn't find food?' which we just can't answer definitively.

Dodge · 2020-02-02 17:01:53

But what about men? (sorry if you said it in your post i skipped trought it, it's a long read)

I definitly agree that having too many other players count for your score in your current life gets overwhelming and then you tend to not care.

So in your opinion what is a good number that isn't too much and you can handle taking care of in a life?

Also pls Jason add some way to recognize those who count for score.

DestinyCall · 2020-02-02 17:28:56

Dodge wrote:

But what about men? (sorry if you said it in your post i skipped trought it, it's a long read)
I definitly agree that having too many other players count for your score in your current life gets overwhelming and then you tend to not care.
So in your opinion what is a good number that isn't too much and you can handle taking care of in a life?
Also pls Jason add some way to recognize those who count for score.

I refer you to the section "why should I care about boys?"

...

As for the number, I went for a quantity of six babies - not too many, not too few. A good mom should be up for the challenge. I was originally thinking ten babies total, but I feel like once you hit double-digits, careful parenting becomes a footnote next to basic survival.

...

I actually had a very memorable life once where I gave birth to ten children (not counting SIDS babies) in a town overrun by bears back during the Rift experiment. I was the only survivor of a griefer attack that culminated in the release of multiple bears INSIDE our property fenced town. I tried to find a better place to raise my kids, but I ended up running out of time and options, so I made do in Bear Town. As my babies were born, I explained our unique living situation and wished them good luck, but the vast majority were bear fodder. I couldn't do much to help them, because I kept spitting out more and more babies.

Even so, I kept all those little potatoes alive until they grew hair and managed to have several of my children reach adulthood. Unfortunately, that life ended on a sour note, because one of those kids was the same griefer who killed my family. They brought more dangerous wildlife into town and finished off the last girl before one of my good sons was able to end them. Sometimes the deck is stacked against you from the start.

Last edited by DestinyCall (2020-02-02 17:44:15)

DestinyCall · 2020-02-02 17:42:13

Spoonwood wrote:

DestinyCall wrote:
Now look at Eve Am
Genetic score is currently inactive on the servers which remain low population. I'm not sure that genetic score would be inactive on servers 2 through 15 if they had more than 14 players, or if it's inactive based on the server number. It seems like that you're proposing that motherhood score apply to the low population context. If so, what's your reasoning here?

I think motherhood scoring should be turned off on low pop servers. The possibility of bearing children in a low pop setting is significantly reduced, so I don't think it would be fair to compare scores for a player who always plays on low pop with one who always plays on BS2. Or to allow lop pop lives to bring down your average. It would not reflect your true parenting skills, since you rarely get the chance to be a parent or have grandchildren in a low pop setting.

The individual lives that I selected were merely examples to illustrate how the motherhood scoring would work in the game. I felt it was a better way to explain it than coming up with a fake family tree or speaking entirely in abstractions.

Dodge · 2020-02-02 18:04:00

I meant when you are a man you cant be a mother... so who counts for your score then?

Ok so six people in your opinion is a good number of what you can keep track of in a life.

Maybe the score should be divided between all people that counted in your life

For example if you have 10 babies (or 10 people that counted for score) each baby counts less (has less weight) than someone who has only 3 babies, someone who has only 3 babies and loses one it "hurts" more.

DestinyCall · 2020-02-02 18:48:53

Dodge wrote:

I meant when you are a man you cant be a mother... so who counts for your score then?

If you are man, you are not a mother. Sorry, those are the rules. Motherhood score is for moms only. So feel free to not worry about your motherhood score if you are born male. That life will not be counted in your average motherhood score. As a man, you can still care about your village and help the hard-working moms in your village. But you aren't obligated to do anything baby-related. Feel free to go on a big adventure, drill for oil, build a pretty garden, hunt bears ... whatever you couldn't do in your last female life because you were too busy raising children.

The leaderboard scoring is calculated by averaging the score you received in the last ten lives where you were born female AND reached adulthood. In other words, any life where you had a real opportunity to be a mother. Alternatively, it might make sense to require that you give birth to at least one child for that life to be counted. I like this idea - you have to be a mother in order to earn a motherhood score. If you are a woman, but never give birth your entire life for whatever reason (bad RNG, incoming update, too many curses, wrong time of day), that life doesn't get counted. Likewise, if you die too young or get born the wrong gender, you are not eligible for scoring either. As Spoonwood pointed out, lives lived on a low population server should also be ignored, since you are unlikely to have any children during those lives so it doesn't make sense to include them in a competitive score system.

The motherhood score is about being a good mother. That should be the focus.

Dodge wrote:

Ok so six people in your opinion is a good number of what you can keep track of in a life.
Maybe the score should be divided between all people that counted in your life
For example if you have 10 babies (or 10 people that counted for score) each baby counts less (has less weight) than someone who has only 3 babies, someone who has only 3 babies and loses one it "hurts" more.

So if I have a lot of kids, I should care about each one of them less? I don't like that idea and I don't think my mom or grandmother would like that idea either. They came from large families and cared about all their kids. Personally, I like the simplicity of a scoring system that is consistent. More kids living a long time is better than fewer kids. If you can handle the extra challenge of raising a big family, you should be rewarded for your herculean efforts.

But I feel like there should also be a limit. Parenting should be about quality over quantity.

Extremely large families are difficult to manage in this game and I think the right solution is to reduce the size of your immediate family to something that is reasonable for a one-hour life, rather than reducing the value of your individual children until the ones that die don't matter that much. As an unwed mother, tasked with raising babies alone, you shouldn't be asked to birth an entire football team!

Dodge · 2020-02-02 19:41:41

Then players are going to kill themselves to be born as female to increase their score, 10x more runner babies and /die no thanks

Also what does that mean? that if you are a man you should not care about your family? seems weird

Or maybe the "motherhood score" is supposed to be smething separate than the genetic score?

In that case it's just makes thing too complicated, having one and only score that everyone tries to get better at is good having 10 different scores and 10 different leaderboards not really

I hear you on the having more kids counting less that seems kinda strange but at the same time isn't that what happens in larger families where you have 10 kids compared to smaller families with only 1 or 2 child, idk it's a complicated question.

But the fact is that someone that has to take care of 10+ people is going to have a disadvantage compared to someone that only has 2-3 people to take care of and imo each player should have the same chances to increase (or decrease) their score and what they did in their life is what matters and not rng (or at least not that much)

Right now the difficulty is like a lottery, you have a life with 10+ score members, hard difficulty, your end score will basically be random (random events, murders, out of control stuff) and not depend on what you did

3 members? easy difficulty = easy score, you can basically make them live easily past 50+

Anyway the point is right now it depends way too much on RNG

(you could even have a mod that tells you how many count for your score and if there is too many you just /die or worse players will resort to antigame "immersion breaking" stuff like asking their child to /die in case they have too many to take care of so it doesn't affect their score)

Gogo · 2020-02-02 19:51:41

Destiny, do you realize people will still die as boys to get higher score as moms? Beside this, idea for having multipliers for boys is good. Also about getting points only from our line, I don't raise nephews and nieces so why they affect me, right.

Legs wrote:

I had a new player as a baby today. For their entire childhood I instructed them. Do -not- starve. Always remember to eat. Keep food with you. I filled a backpack with pie and gave it to them. They grew hair and waddled off. Five minutes later they starved.

You have to teach them that their death lowers our abilities to use tools.

DestinyCall · 2020-02-02 20:17:00

I am considering motherhood score as a replacement for genetic score, because genetic score is badly implemented and doesn't work.

Dodge wrote:

I hear you on the having more kids counting less that seems kinda strange but at the same time isn't that what happens in larger families where you have 10 kids compared to smaller families with only 1 or 2 child, idk it's a complicated question.

As a woman in real life, I can tell you that it shouldn't. But I haven't had ten kids yet, so I don't know for sure.

I do know that my mom had five living kids and she still mourns the four pregnancies that didn't come to full term. She is a great mom and I think she'd have had no problem raising twice as many kids and loving every single one of them at the same level.

That being said, I DO think that baby overload in the game leads to players getting burnt out and unable to form a real connection with so many babies. When I have one or two babies over 25 minutes, I can devote extra time to the new players and get to know my sons/daughters on an individual basis. If I have eight or ten kids in the same amount of time, I pretty much just have enough time to name them and point them toward the berry patch. There is very little time for any bonding to happen. Having played this game a long time, I've become pretty hardened to the high infant mortality rate and the high player turn-over rate. I rarely spend that much time with my kids beyond their three year anniversary.

If we want family to actually matter, I think that something needs to change. Motherhood score might be the answer or it might not. But I don't think genetic score is really doing it, since running around shoving pie in everyone's mouth isn't the same thing as taking care of your own children and finding out if they need any extra help.

Gogo wrote:

Destiny, do you realize people will still die as boys to get higher score as moms? Beside this, idea for having multipliers for boys is good. Also about getting points only from our line, I don't raise nephews and nieces so why they affect me, right.

Just to clarify, score-seeking players might /die to be the "right" gender for scoring purposes, but they are not penalized for playing as a male. A male life is simply not scored. You will not get a lower score for being born male or living a full life as a male. This game doesn't have fathers, so I don't think it makes sense to include a fatherhood score. If that ever changes, I would welcome a gender-neutral parenting score.

Now, if your only joy in life comes from being a mother, I say you should be allowed to be a mother. I won't fault you for wanting that and if you use /die, it will not affect my ability to get a high motherhood score. People suicide for all kinds of reasons, some good, some bad, some silly. I consider that a separate issue from the motherhood score and it should be addressed independently. Trying to punish people for not wanting to live is a tricky business. They literally have nothing left to lose and forcing them to live a life they do not want is a recipe for murder.

Personally, I appreciate the freedom that comes from living life as an independent male. You can get so much more done during an uninterrupted hour of adulthood. And having some lives that are un-scored means that you can focus more intensely on the unique challenges of motherhood when the time comes. It is also worth considering that your mother is another player who might care about HER motherhood score just as much as you do. As a male, you can choose to help her get a better motherhood score by living to adulthood and watching over your younger siblings while your mom raises more babies. The multiplier from raising a boy to adulthood provides a significant boost to the mother's base score so even if you don't take an active role, you can benefit your mother simply by staying alive.

Be a good son. Take care of your family. Protect your little brothers and sisters. You will hope for the same from your own children in the next life.

OHOL is a cooperative experience at its core. It is important to not lose sight of that while striving to top the leaderboards. The best mother cares about more than just her own personal success. She cares about making the world a better place for her children and her children's children.

Last edited by DestinyCall (2020-02-02 20:43:06)

Dodge · 2020-02-02 20:43:28

I agree that the code should as much as possible distribute babies evenly and avoid overloading a mother.

A score that doesn't count for potentially 50% of players at any given moment is just a bad idea imo, will get abused, tricked and all sorts of twists and issues that will result from it.

It's true that leveling the weight depending on the number of score members will not make you able to care more for each baby in case you have 10 of them but at least you dont get punished in case there is no other solution (the code is unable to do any better because for example the female to male ratio is off and the few females get all the incoming players) and it happens.

So the leveling is not a remplacement for a better baby distribution algorithm but it makes it fair for every player and every life, your score should not heavily dependent on rng like right now.

DestinyCall · 2020-02-02 20:48:11

I have an alternative solution that involves replacing the current sky baby system with parthenogenic egg-layers. But I don't think Jason is ready to implement lizard people just yet.

Dodge · 2020-02-02 20:53:17

DestinyCall wrote:

I have an alternative solution that involves replacing the current sky baby system with parthenogenic egg-layers. But I don't think Jason is ready to implement lizard people just yet.

We had egg babies not too long ago maybe he's more open to the idea.

DestinyCall · 2020-02-02 20:53:57

Egg babies? How did I miss this?

DestinyCall · 2020-02-02 21:18:47

And if anyone is interested in my crazy idea for One Hour One Lizard .... my idea is that we would all female and lay self-fertile eggs, as is the way with certain species of snake and lizard, such as the mourning gecko. The eggs are laid at random throughout your fertile period, but they must be incubated in a warm place (like close to a fire or in a desert) in order to hatch. An egg that is abandoned in a cold place will never hatch. And if an egg sits around for too long, it will get old and no longer be able to hatch. Keeping the egg in a warm, dry location - like inside a nursery building warmed by a slow fire - will extend the amount of time it remains viable. When a new player joins the game, instead of looking for viable mothers, the game seeks viable eggs that are fresh and warm.

Old eggs cannot hatch, but they can still serve a purpose. Both fresh and old eggs can be used to make omelettes - a useful food source for an early camp or a town that is suffering from over-population. If left around for too long, old eggs will eventually spoil. Once spoiled the egg has no practical value and will decay after a period of time or the egg can be broken to hasten decay.

A colony of lizard people will likely have one or more places for eggs to be kept safe and warm. The egg clutch is the future of the colony, so it is important that it be protected and tended by a good villager. Eggs are fragile and can be broken, so they are vulnerable to malicious intent. You don't want someone to break in to the hatchery and turn all your precious eggs into omelettes! That being said, everyone lays eggs and they are laid quite frequently, so a surplus of eggs will be common. You don't actually need to keep all of them and some of them SHOULD be consumed for the sake of population control and to reduce floor clutter.

The nice thing about an egg-based system is that if you lay an egg while far from your village or while you are riding a horse, you can just leave it behind. It will not hatch unless it is moved to a warm location, so you don't need to worry about an abandoned egg hatching ... unless you drop it in the hot desert. Of course, if you are the last female in your colony and getting old, then every egg is precious and you might want to bring it with you. I think it should be possible to transport eggs in carts, but they should be protected by first placing them in a basket - one lizardman egg would fill the whole basket. It is a big egg, after all. A single egg might also fill up your backpack, allowing you to carry a lucky egg home with you, at the cost of extra storage.

You also might occasionally find random eggs in the wilds and carry them back to your village to see what kind of lizardperson they hatch into! It's a mystery. Since reproduction is by parthenogenesis, each egg produces a genetic clone of the mother. So your offspring will look identical to you. If you were the only one of your lineage in a village, it would be easy to find your babies. But of course, things get a little messy if you are in a large colony of related lizard people. But since you are all clones, does it really matter who laid the egg?

Dodge · 2020-02-02 21:29:04

DestinyCall wrote:

Egg babies? How did I miss this?

DestinyCall · 2020-02-02 21:59:52

Dodge wrote:

DestinyCall wrote:
Egg babies? How did I miss this?
https://i.ibb.co/vhB1qzS/Sans-titre.jpg

OH GOD .... I take it back. We don't need egg babies.

Joseph Stalin · 2020-02-03 21:02:01

jason.
implement now!

pein · 2020-02-04 22:13:35

males suicide quite early before 15 they bail out on life, but if they choose to stay, they much more likely to reach old age than females
that's what the stats showed me when I looked into it deeper

females generally don't die early if they decent, but a lot of them quits after can't have kids

males are killed and cursed more often when some assholes running around
but overall more females are killed, maybe due to the fact that some player overvalue females and themselves as females so they do more asshole things as female and get killed for it

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2020-02-02 08:24:02

Motherhood Score - a better measure of success

#2 2020-02-02 08:34:28

Re: Motherhood Score - a better measure of success

#3 2020-02-02 08:40:36

Re: Motherhood Score - a better measure of success

#4 2020-02-02 08:43:05

Re: Motherhood Score - a better measure of success

#5 2020-02-02 08:47:33

Re: Motherhood Score - a better measure of success

#6 2020-02-02 16:36:07

Re: Motherhood Score - a better measure of success

#7 2020-02-02 17:01:53

Re: Motherhood Score - a better measure of success

#8 2020-02-02 17:28:56

Re: Motherhood Score - a better measure of success

#9 2020-02-02 17:42:13

Re: Motherhood Score - a better measure of success

#10 2020-02-02 18:04:00

Re: Motherhood Score - a better measure of success

#11 2020-02-02 18:48:53

Re: Motherhood Score - a better measure of success

#12 2020-02-02 19:41:41

Re: Motherhood Score - a better measure of success

#13 2020-02-02 19:51:41

Re: Motherhood Score - a better measure of success

#14 2020-02-02 20:17:00

Re: Motherhood Score - a better measure of success

#15 2020-02-02 20:43:28

Re: Motherhood Score - a better measure of success

#16 2020-02-02 20:48:11

Re: Motherhood Score - a better measure of success

#17 2020-02-02 20:53:17

Re: Motherhood Score - a better measure of success

#18 2020-02-02 20:53:57

Re: Motherhood Score - a better measure of success

#19 2020-02-02 21:18:47

Re: Motherhood Score - a better measure of success

#20 2020-02-02 21:29:04

Re: Motherhood Score - a better measure of success

#21 2020-02-02 21:59:52

Re: Motherhood Score - a better measure of success

#22 2020-02-03 21:02:01

Re: Motherhood Score - a better measure of success

#23 2020-02-04 22:13:35

Re: Motherhood Score - a better measure of success

Board footer