Alternative game design instead of current restrictions

DrRoy · 2020-03-30 11:50:41

Hello everyone. For a moment, suppose the race restriction, tool slot restriction, killing restriction and the latest update are undone.
I would love to discuss several game design alternatives with you that are meant to solve the same Problems in a different way. I don't want to say any of the following are better than the current solution or necessary to improve the game. I just would love to discuss some Pros and Cons with the community.

What do you think about the following attempted solutions (arbitrary combinations may be allowed) to the Problems "where is trade?", "where is conflict?", "where is meaning?", "Don't kill off new Players for fun!":

1. Make biomes really really huge and some natural items really really rare, but show the nearest occurance of [stuff] when Player types \[stuff]. Maybe buff wild Food. Would Eves settle down in their spawn region cause the 'greener pastures' are to far away creating different starting conditions? Would it encourage trade and conflict since different villages have easy Access to different ressources?

2. Make crafted objects decay over time (different timers for different objects), but let some natural ressources regrow over time (like animals, trees, wild Foods). Would it give more meaning, since what you do has a more direct Impact?

3. Implement Knowledge: When a Player spawns as a baby it has only very basic knowledge about crafting (can pick stuff up, eat stuff). When a character witnesses some other character doing something he also learns this skill. Sometimes, a random character can have a random epiphany, meaning he learns something out of the blue that is related to his current Knowledge. Would this be annoying or another way to implement different conditions for different families and therefore the need for trade of goods or knowledge? Or even raids for goods that one family can not provide? Would it give meaning in the sense, that the Players feel dedicated to teach the knowledge of their character to younger?

4. Auto Curse with killing or abandoning: Instead of Donkey town or current curse system, if a character dies through the hands of another character, a character curses another character, a mother lets her baby die or a Baby runs away add both respective players to each others blacklist. A Player that is on the blacklist of another Player cannot spawn a descendent of the other Player. Would this prevent toxic players from beeing near others? Scenario, we protect our family against outsiders since there is a Chance that a toxic player it among them. Or would it make lineages die out faster?

I would love to read some thoughts about these ideas.

Morti · 2020-03-30 13:40:38

Hi, DrRoy.

pein · 2020-03-30 13:46:30

biomes idea is okay but right now the sizes are adjusted for iron (not perfect but still)
decay is not fun, for food I would understand, but then we would need hourly income
that's a weird knowledge implementation, we would need higher tier tech first
curses never worked, I would like more Eves and more competition on a political and strategical level

Morti · 2020-03-30 13:49:52

pein wrote:

biomes idea is okay but right now the sizes are adjusted for iron (not perfect but still)

Lot of things are getting meshed into scales and grids, aren't they?
I'm not sure I find that interesting or not.
Wonder what got Jason on this, ley line, craze...

Morti · 2020-03-30 13:52:02

Jason, why the ley lines?

wondible · 2020-03-30 14:21:45

Morti wrote:

Wonder what got Jason on this, ley line, craze...

Jason hates wandering around searching. Lines make it so you can always find the grid.

Elsayal · 2020-03-30 14:24:11

DrRoy wrote:

1. Make biomes really really huge and some natural items really really rare, but show the nearest occurance of [stuff] when Player types \[stuff]. Maybe buff wild Food. Would Eves settle down in their spawn region cause the 'greener pastures' are to far away creating different starting conditions? Would it encourage trade and conflict since different villages have easy Access to different ressources?

That looks impossible. Eve can't settle down : milkweed is only on green, clay only in marsh, maple trees... You got the idea. If anything can grow in any biome, then it's not "biome" anymore right ? Any example of really really rare natural items ?

DrRoy wrote:

2. Make crafted objects decay over time (different timers for different objects), but let some natural ressources regrow over time (like animals, trees, wild Foods). Would it give more meaning, since what you do has a more direct Impact?

Animals could reproduce, indeed. Regarding object, most of them already decay. But I can't see the relation between this and more meaning. Not at all.

DrRoy wrote:

3. Implement Knowledge: When a Player spawns as a baby it has only very basic knowledge about crafting (can pick stuff up, eat stuff). When a character witnesses some other character doing something he also learns this skill. Sometimes, a random character can have a random epiphany, meaning he learns something out of the blue that is related to his current Knowledge. Would this be annoying or another way to implement different conditions for different families and therefore the need for trade of goods or knowledge? Or even raids for goods that one family can not provide? Would it give meaning in the sense, that the Players feel dedicated to teach the knowledge of their character to younger?

Can you be more specific ? How do you learn skill in the first time ? I mean the first eve can't do anything ? How will it work ?
In this game, player already learn from watching, I'm not sure this will help.

DrRoy wrote:

4. Auto Curse with killing or abandoning: Instead of Donkey town or current curse system, if a character dies through the hands of another character, a character curses another character, a mother lets her baby die or a Baby runs away add both respective players to each others blacklist. A Player that is on the blacklist of another Player cannot spawn a descendent of the other Player. Would this prevent toxic players from beeing near others? Scenario, we protect our family against outsiders since there is a Chance that a toxic player it among them. Or would it make lineages die out faster?

So when you kill a griefer you get auto-cursed ? When you have to abandon a child because you don't have any food left and too much babies, auto-curse ? I don't like this. At all.

pein · 2020-03-30 14:56:11

It's generic, you don't see it cause of the distance, but it looks awful from above. Cities in a line to each other, Full 90 degree and full 45 degrees. I miss the natural randomness of early camps, choices mattered, this place has lot of soil or water, you can engage in a different tech.

Temp update removed the hot spots so it reduced the variety. We needed 3 biomes specifically together.

Then the map rework made it viable at least, but that was for the sake of the rift, there was like 20 spots on that tiny box.

The variety shouldn't be about "Viable spot" and "non-viable spot". In the end you survive that's basic. So you did not make a bad choice. But your choices don't matter. There aren't widely different areas which are viable in a different way.

At least we had jungles with swamps or green with badlands. the combo between them made different cities.
Now you got the same thing for everyone then your speciality far away.

DrRoy · 2020-03-30 15:08:32

Thank you all for your interesting viewpoints.

pein wrote:

decay is not fun, for food I would understand, but then we would need hourly income

Keep in mind that decay timers could be an hour or two. Does this change something for you?

pein wrote:

that's a weird knowledge implementation, we would need higher tier tech first

Can you specify what makes this implementation weird?

Morti wrote:

Lot of things are getting meshed into scales and grids, aren't they?
I'm not sure I find that interesting or not.
Wonder what got Jason on this, ley line, craze..

Would a system without grids but with pointers to nearest object of a specific king be more interesting for you?

Elsayal wrote:

DrRoy wrote:
1. Make biomes really really huge and some natural items really really rare, but show the nearest occurance of [stuff] when Player types \[stuff]. Maybe buff wild Food. Would Eves settle down in their spawn region cause the 'greener pastures' are to far away creating different starting conditions? Would it encourage trade and conflict since different villages have easy Access to different ressources?
That looks impossible. Eve can't settle down : milkweed is only on green, clay only in marsh, maple trees... You got the idea. If anything can grow in any biome, then it's not "biome" anymore right ? Any example of really really rare natural items ?

Yes, this is very true. In my mind you would either completely overhaul (or add to?) the tech tree to make different bootstraps in different biomes possible or make ressources not biome exclusive. It could still be a biome if the spawn rate in the home biome is much larger than in other biomes so it runs out much quicker. Does this change something for you? Rare items would be something like Gold, Copper etc. Would need balancing.

Elsayal wrote:

DrRoy wrote:
2. Make crafted objects decay over time (different timers for different objects), but let some natural ressources regrow over time (like animals, trees, wild Foods). Would it give more meaning, since what you do has a more direct Impact?
Animals could reproduce, indeed. Regarding object, most of them already decay. But I can't see the relation between this and more meaning. Not at all.

Maybe it does not give more meaning. The idea is that "there are tons of pies someone made ages ago" feels different than "it is important that someone is always there making pies so we don't starve".

Elsayal wrote:

DrRoy wrote:
3. Implement Knowledge: When a Player spawns as a baby it has only very basic knowledge about crafting (can pick stuff up, eat stuff). When a character witnesses some other character doing something he also learns this skill. Sometimes, a random character can have a random epiphany, meaning he learns something out of the blue that is related to his current Knowledge. Would this be annoying or another way to implement different conditions for different families and therefore the need for trade of goods or knowledge? Or even raids for goods that one family can not provide? Would it give meaning in the sense, that the Players feel dedicated to teach the knowledge of their character to younger?
Can you be more specific ? How do you learn skill in the first time ? I mean the first eve can't do anything ? How will it work ?
In this game, player already learn from watching, I'm not sure this will help.

The idea is that characters have knowledge. First eve and every baby would just have the basic skills - maybe stop with stone tools and simple tasks for that (stacking stuff, Picking stuff up, pulling a cart etc). When your character is on the same screen as someone who does perform a task that you dont know, you learn the skill and can do it yourself right after (learn how to chop trees/make steel/bake pies). This makes it important to 'teach' the skill to characters (not players). Every once in a while a random character gets a random skill based on his current skill set as epiphany (I suppose you would need to implement a skill tree or something). Thus the things you could and could not do would differ from family to family and progression would be slowed down. The idea is that the characters learn from watching (additionally to the Players I guess). A system to easily check which skills you have would be required.

Elsayal wrote:

DrRoy wrote:
4. Auto Curse with killing or abandoning: Instead of Donkey town or current curse system, if a character dies through the hands of another character, a character curses another character, a mother lets her baby die or a Baby runs away add both respective players to each others blacklist. A Player that is on the blacklist of another Player cannot spawn a descendent of the other Player. Would this prevent toxic players from beeing near others? Scenario, we protect our family against outsiders since there is a Chance that a toxic player it among them. Or would it make lineages die out faster?
So when you kill a griefer you get auto-cursed ? When you have to abandon a child because you don't have any food left and too much babies, auto-curse ? I don't like this. At all.

Let me clarify that donkeytown and old curse system would be no longer valid. So the disadvantage is that you cannot be Born into the lineage of someone who did something you did not like or kill you. Someone you don't want to play with to begin with? Does this change something for you? Can you specify what you don't like?

pein · 2020-03-30 16:06:50

it does change everything for everyone
Jason nerfed temperature by 20% or so, people cried about decaying baskets, the first was critical, the second was really just a bit of organization issue, reeds even have grown back per hour so you just had to remake them. You put your reserve resources in baskets, so that's kidna annoying to put them back all the time.
Even that we can technically fix a breaking cart by upgrading it, it's quite annoying when it breaks down without notice. I like that things stay the same over the time, I would even like higher tier upgrades for them. Doing things over and over for the sake of doing it is not fun.
You supposed to advance in the world. We would need more upgrades and resource sinks, so you want to put all your resources into something.
I don't it's fun to repair stuff manually. I guess upkeep would be okay. Like you get 100 water per hour and use 20 to get a bonus on iron production. It takes automatically if it's turned on. that would be a decent system where you got a conversion and a choice to convert. IF we do everything just to have water and survive longer, the other resources won't matter that much. There should be a point where you can say you got enough water, time to focus on another tech. An endless circle where you want to produce more of something.

Well, you don't sound too logical. Watching others to learn it? That sounds like an even worse slot system. Also, there has to be someone who knows it. Do you mean blueprints? I would say that time-based activities would be okay if it's short enough. Each person could stay near a research table, doing 20 sec of research for a point. It would unlock something else. At least that would make playtime and work more valuable. bUt then again we would need quality of life upgrades. Jason just ruins your early game life and you cut even by doing more work. Kinda weird concept. He should go for rewarding players who do the harder tech.
If he refuses to add HP system, stamina or energy bar, sanity, durability for walls, proper duel system, it just makes hard to think of anything that matters without any of those. Make a building for 0.01 heat bonus? spend your life to eat every type of food in the world for a tiny bit of bonus?
I really don't like limitations I can't overcome.

Everything in tech tree should be a requirement and have a requirement on its own, maybe one time unlock cost. That could also replace lower-tech choices. Let's say you can only have 16 berry bushes but you can increase the yield over time by placing in special planter box, then upgrading the hourly income (per 10-20 min harvests but recharging). It should be harder than now, but more rewarding over time and it would take the workers in the account. The bushes would die out and you got to start again but the seeds could be better for next generation of berries. A bit of colour change to indicate the levels, it could reuse the same sprites, so it wouldn't be that hard to make.

Right now we got level 1 of each tech and the map is the same so hard to think of anything of value long term, and the race restrictions totally cockblock the high tech. In the meantime minimum requirement for an outpost is higher than the maximum tech you can reach on your own.

DrRoy · 2020-03-30 16:48:21

Thank you Pein for your input I am not quite sure I understood everything. Sorry that I did not manage to sound logical to you.

I think from a design perspective it is interesting to differ from the typical tech tree such that things can be forgotten or lost if no one cares. But interesting does not equal fun and I see your point there.

Maybe I don't understand what you mean by 'limitations I can't overcome'. Every game has such limitations right? And it is necessary to function. You can not go left in mario world. You can not go out of the predefined area in open world games. You can only jump that high, run that fast etc. I suppose you mean something different. I was taught "Limitation leads to creativity" and creativity can be fun. Of Course there is a well done kind of limitation and a poorly done one. And if I understand you correctly you think the limitations I wrote about are too restrictive since it blocks too much gameplay for you. That is an interesting inside

DestinyCall · 2020-03-30 17:09:08

DrRoy wrote:

1. Make biomes really really huge and some natural items really really rare, but show the nearest occurance of [stuff] when Player types \[stuff]. Maybe buff wild Food. Would Eves settle down in their spawn region cause the 'greener pastures' are to far away creating different starting conditions? Would it encourage trade and conflict since different villages have easy Access to different ressources?

The Community Crucible Modded (CCM) server has implemented HUGE biomes. I like it quite a bit, although there are some implementation issues that would need to be addressed to make it work properly. The first issue is that our current tech tree is VERY interwoven, so you need access to multiple biomes (grass, swamp, prairie) in order to make an Eve camp and get a basic village started. In order to make huge biomes functional, the early tech tree would need to be redesigned. The way that CCM handled this problem was by adding parallel resources in all habitable biomes. Every biome has a small plant that gives thread. Every biome has a small burrowing animal that provides furs and meat. Every biome has a tree that provides straight shafts and another that gives curved branches. Every biome has deposits of fresh soil that can be used for farming and some kind of water source. New content was added for each of these core resources and also brand new crops were added to further distinguish living in one biome from another.

After playing on CCM for a while, I can say that I really enjoyed all the new plants and animals. It added a lot of variety and definitely made the game feel more varied. But there were also some issues. For one thing, I think the biomes were TOO huge. It took a long long long time to run from one side of a biome to the other. And if you spawned into the middle of a tundra biome, you were pretty much screwed, because there was no food for miles. Also, because they replicated the core resources in each biome rather than designing new early tech pathways, there were very few fundamental differences when playing in a swamp compared with playing in the badlands or a grasslands biome, except for the color of the background tiles and the presence of deadly animals. From a practical standpoint, it was best to settle at the border between two biomes or the meeting point of three different biomes, since there were some biome-specific resources and the biomes were so ridiculously large, settling in the center of a biome was not the best idea, since you'd have to travel really far to gather necessary resources from distant places, like getting horses from the desert or mining in the tundra. Keep in mind that CCM is a low-population server, compared with BS2, so you were generally playing solo instead of part of a village. It wasn't exactly the same experience as if the same thing was done in the main branch of the game, but it did give a real taste of what big biomes would feel like. Personally, I'd like to see Jason attempt something like this, but with smaller biomes and perhaps focusing on just adding two or three habitable biomes based on the current specialty biomes. And designing a NEW primitive tech tree that works in a fundamentally different way from the current pathway to civilization would be even better than adding re-skinned versions of the core resources. I've talked in greater detail about this possibilty in the past, but I'd love to see gingers reworked as a "cold tribe" so they have the ability to settle and live in tundra and coffees could be reworked as a "hot tribe" that can settle in the desert as an Eve and utilize different resources compared with the other races to survive in their homeland.

DrRoy wrote:

2. Make crafted objects decay over time (different timers for different objects), but let some natural ressources regrow over time (like animals, trees, wild Foods). Would it give more meaning, since what you do has a more direct Impact?

I have mixed feelings about decay. Playing on a low-population server, decay is really annoying, because you must remake your clothing or make a new cart every time you log in to play, since these items decay after several hours. It gets tedious doing the same things over and over. BUT ... on the main server, we play in multi-generational towns that last for many days. IF we only have to make a cart one time for it to last forever and the village only needs X carts, then as soon as someone makes X carts, the art of cart-making is dead forever, because that village will never need more carts. Likewise, if backpacks never fall apart, we make more and more backpacks until the entire world is backpacks. Ideally, there needs to be some kind of balance.

The game used to have a lot more decay features, before Jason decided that he didn't like decay and started removing most of them. There are still quite a few things that can decay, but also quite a few things that probably SHOULD decay from a logical standpoint or a game-play standpoint do not decay any longer. Raw meat lasts forever. Milk never spoils. Wood never rots. Iron never rusts.

Likewise, there are many things that should be renewable which simply are not for no particular reason. Wild animals never reproduce. Wild plants never regrow. Forests do not spread. The whole world just waits for us to take from it and requires a hard reset to return to a non-depleted state. All natural resources are infinite on a grand scale, but finite on a local scale.

DrRoy wrote:

3. Implement Knowledge: When a Player spawns as a baby it has only very basic knowledge about crafting (can pick stuff up, eat stuff). When a character witnesses some other character doing something he also learns this skill. Sometimes, a random character can have a random epiphany, meaning he learns something out of the blue that is related to his current Knowledge. Would this be annoying or another way to implement different conditions for different families and therefore the need for trade of goods or knowledge? Or even raids for goods that one family can not provide? Would it give meaning in the sense, that the Players feel dedicated to teach the knowledge of their character to younger?

I've considered various ways to introduce adaptive learning into the game, but unfortunately I don't think it meshes very well with the tech tree. On a fundamental level, the game wasn't designed for crafting recipes to be unlocked over time or by watching other players doing a particular action. For example, if you are an Eve, how do you get started without anyone to watch? Perhaps Eves would already start with some basic knowledge that they must pass along to the first generation before they day. But how does the next generation acquire new knowledge? If new recipes are unlocked completely at random, that places the fate of your village in the hands of RNG, which gets very dicey. How long would it take you to accidentally learn how to use tongs so you can forge steel? If it takes too long, your village will die out or give up. If it happens right away, you still need to learn dozens of other things to make all the different tools and things you need to get sheep and make a deep well.

Assuming you can come up with a way to allow new knowledge to be acquired at a reasonable rate, you also need to address the issue of teaching young children in a reasonable fashion. If the only way to learn cart making is by showing a young kid how to make a cart, your village will eventually end up with too many carts. But carts don't last forever, so you need to keep teaching kids how to make carts so you never run out of carts, even if you already have too many carts. Now replace "carts" with every other object in the game. Some stuff is constantly needed (like pies), but other stuff is only rarely important, but when it becomes important it would be super annoying if you have no way to make paper because your distant ancestors didn't bothered to passed down that knowledge for seventeen generations.

DrRoy wrote:

4. Auto Curse with killing or abandoning: Instead of Donkey town or current curse system, if a character dies through the hands of another character, a character curses another character, a mother lets her baby die or a Baby runs away add both respective players to each others blacklist. A Player that is on the blacklist of another Player cannot spawn a descendent of the other Player. Would this prevent toxic players from beeing near others? Scenario, we protect our family against outsiders since there is a Chance that a toxic player it among them. Or would it make lineages die out faster?

I'm not fond of auto-cursing. I do not like to kill or to be killed and I will happily curse someone who deserves it. But I want to be in full control of deciding WHO deserves to be cursed by me. In my own experience, I've had to kill people at times because they were causing too much trouble to allow them to live. And I've also had people ASK me to kill them on multiple occasions, because they didn't want to keep living for whatever reason. Likewise, I've had a few times when I was killed by accident or due to a misunderstanding. In those cases, I would not want to curse my own killer.

pein · 2020-03-30 19:43:56

DrRoy wrote:

Thank you Pein for your input I am not quite sure I understood everything. Sorry that I did not manage to sound logical to you.
I think from a design perspective it is interesting to differ from the typical tech tree such that things can be forgotten or lost if no one cares. But interesting does not equal fun and I see your point there.
Maybe I don't understand what you mean by 'limitations I can't overcome'. Every game has such limitations right? And it is necessary to function. You can not go left in mario world. You can not go out of the predefined area in open world games. You can only jump that high, run that fast etc. I suppose you mean something different. I was taught "Limitation leads to creativity" and creativity can be fun. Of Course there is a well done kind of limitation and a poorly done one. And if I understand you correctly you think the limitations I wrote about are too restrictive since it blocks too much gameplay for you. That is an interesting inside

I mean, from a logical standpoint you can only reach tech on your own, you might never meet others. There is no such thing that trade, it's charity or theft. Charity will always happen, that's fine but stealing resources is kinda unfair to others.
So logically your town dies when the Newcomen runs out, you can't do the rubber cause your melatonin levels and the spell shield around the biome. Which is a big dumb limitation from someone refusing any fun element cause "reeee, unrealistic".

Ideally, you would have parallel activities and multiple-choice to achieve the same result. Like getting water.
One family would have the tech for a unique item, a full tech tree, but that has to be optional for everyone else or have a different way of simply trading them. Age of empires has 35 different skins for 35 nations, each of them has the same era advancement, they got their own buffs and limitations, their own special units, they are not worse than others, they are different. Sometimes they even change the game so some of them get stronger and others weaker. That's what people wanted, a bit of difference in cities, not cutting the content in 4 parts than ake it an interlocked mess where there are situations where you are completely helpless.

By limitation, I mean the whole game is "do this or you die" where some things by chance are "do this to get that", one of them was my idea, the bucket limiting the tech level. You can't get deep well, iron mine, cows, paint without bucket so clearly signals the start of a new era. That's a reward since it does something. Now, look at other stuff: tomatoes. Nothing needs it, nothing benefits from it, a bit of yum maybe, you need a lot of stuff from other families and you will never have the sugar to make a steady income to make ketchup, so rather don't even think about it.
A proper easy market system would be so bad? like, sell 10 sulfur for 10 currency buy some sugar for it. The whole transport system is non-existent. The only fast travel option is locked behind a race. Lots of grind to make a car but it won't even stop wasting the resources when it's unused, and takes so much fuel for 1 minute as 10 people eating for half an hour. How is that better than a horse? you doing things but has no meaning, overproduce the pies? it's just taken away the job from others. How can you make any profit? You can't, you don't have a goal to work for. Ideally, it should be a higher-tech always even if it's a lot of grinds, you make progress toward it. Then he comes and says, too many resources, let's nerf it so you do the same thing but slower.

That one he does, it has to be unique, it has to come from him, 100%, maybe he dumbs it down so it loses the essence, maybe is a total nightmare system. I appreciate unique things but it should be fun to.

Yes we need tech gates, unlocking tech, unlocking areas even. But not this stuff that has no relation to gameplay: leadership which is a total meme and no relation to player skill, yum which is totally selfish personal bonus hunt and not a city-wide try at a higher efficiency, slots that artificially slow you down and races that block the main tech levels.

Also he does limitations backwards. Not like why would it worth doing it, it's more like 'if you don do this you die", slower, based on things you got no control about, and stay in the same shit place and watch how others waste resources.

jasonrohrer · 2020-03-30 21:31:35

Interesting stuff!

A number of these things have been considered and discussed in the past.

The "rare items, but you know exactly where they are" is a good idea, and would solve the problem. There is some implementation headache (like, what if they type /ORE instead of /IRON, or what if they don't know exactly what it's called---i.e., how do they tell you what they're looking for, when there are 75 natural items them might want to find?) There's also a kinda weird realism issue (radar for iron, for oil, for clay?) Anyway, in terms of solving the problem, things could actually run out locally. Closest loose iron is 500 tiles away? Maybe we should install that kero-powered mining rig instead of walking that far.

Not sure about the really huge biomes. I've never been a fan of that suggestion, but I'm not 100% sure why. I guess I feel like it would make walking around boring and tedious (how much farther do I need to go to get to the desert?)

When trying to do personal skill specialization, the idea of learning from others was definitely examined pretty closely. There's a bootstrapping problem, of course, and a problem where people get "stuck" waiting for random-rolled inspiration to replace a forgotten skill. Also, I can imagine it would be frustrating to KNOW how to do something, but not be able to. Like, the player KNOWS how to use a bowdrill to make a fire, but they are born "dumb," and they have to find someone to demo it for them (which might be busy-work.... going through the motions demoing skills to people over and over each life).

With the tool slots, if they want to make fire, and know how, they can do it, and make it one of their chosen skills for that life. There's nothing stopping them from doing any particular thing. There's something stopping them from doing ALL things in the same life, though.

For the race restrictions, you might know how to get oil and not be able to this life.... but you still know how to get it. You follow an expert way stone and go talk to a ginger.

Cogito · 2020-03-31 00:06:28

The thought I've had with respect to 'learning' things is family specialisation, where 'family' means the people you grow up around, or are born to.

It would modify tool slot restrictions, by allowing you to do the jobs that your parents do without using your tool slots.

The number of tool slots would need to be reduced for this to work, but it would allow specialisations within a town to be more realistic.

Something like: If you see a forge being used 10 times before you are 10, you don't consume a tool slot when you use it.

Probably needs to be younger than that, maybe 5 times before you are 3.

pein · 2020-03-31 00:59:46

Nothing fun about tool slots, it just hit veterans, the low end doesn't care, doesn't even understand it.
Also limits certain playstyles like correcting all the stupid mistakes others do.

Also, it's hard to compare woodcutting with engine making.

I already went through the chore of learning all recipes, why I should do it any slower?

Also, it's not realistic at all, you can learn any tool for a basic level IRL and you can refocus your learning to something else. You choose one path cause you get paid for it or you enjoy doing it, you are good at it. If any of those changes, you also change. My neighbour was a banker for years, now he does heavy physical work. I did a lot of jobs for money where I didn't have any interest in it, but I made a profit out of.

So how is realistic that you used a saw twice and now you are a bucket maker for the rest of your life? I would understand that if I could at least make something else with the disks.

Not even talking about the mechanics that clamping randomly would be a requirement even if you don't need any tools then recycling it so no one ever has to spend a slot on those two and it's a complete circle where you can melt things and clamp it randomly again.

DrRoy · 2020-03-31 11:26:01

@DestinyCall CCM sounds like a nice Experiment. I think I try it some day to see how it feels. Although I have the feeling that 'milkweed but with some other sprite and name' is not the best design choice (feels a little 'flat').
Your comments on the leaning idea sound reasonable. I guess if you would be able to dissassemble carts, then it would be easier to teach others. You could although use paper to teach and learn skills. Just make it possible to put a known skill on a piece of paper, and everybody that picks up the paper learns that particular skill. Surely would need a lot of balancing work to feel good (which are basic tasks? how high are the probabilities of inspiration? is it better to learn a whole 'batch' of skills etc.)
Imo the flaws with auto cursing you pointed out are valid. The 'how to protect new players from griefers?' problem seems to be a very hard one….

@pein I think I got what you mean with limitations. Is it about choices on a grand scale? About more pathes to the same objective? Linear gameplay also has some Benefits. But maybe non-linear gameplay suits this 'open world sandbox' style games a little better.

@jasonrohrer It is true that object radar feels unrealistic. But the important question is, if it feels too unrealistic. Every game needs unrealistic elements in order to function. Just look at 'exact information about your hunger, yum bonus, curse counter', orders from leaders, ley lines, Combat system etc. in ohol. I don't know it the idea I talked about breaks immersion.
Furthermore, I clearly see the frustration due to differences between player knowledge and character knowledge (if you want to put it that way). But on the other hand, the games I enjoyed most in my childhood where 'Zero to hero' games like gothic. In this games you always knew that certain actions are possible in general (and how they would be played) but are restricted due to 'character knowledge'. Still it just felt awesome to get better and better. I wonder what is needed to catch that feeling instead of frustration. Maybe the difference is between RNG and accomplished by your own hands…. It could be possible that a well adjusted system like that leads to more diverse starting conditions where you have to figure out how to Play without everything available. A little bit like capablanca random chess in contrast to chess. Or the amount of frustration is just too high.... Idk

Gogo · 2020-03-31 13:18:44

Tool slot is good update. People who do everything by themselves are actually hurting towns in long-therm. Like if you do everything for your kids, instead of showing them how to do it. Veterans should teach others, that means they need people who's already skilled enough (teached by non-veterans).

Last edited by Gogo (2020-03-31 13:20:08)

pein · 2020-03-31 14:26:10

Multiple paths to the same thing, multiple alternative techs which are equally valuable, similar, but their output is different.
people didn't ask for an interwoven mess of specialization they wanted unique gameplay based on cultures. Sure, even a second style would need double the techs as now. The main tech tree should be the same for all, the optional tech should be different. Right now we got 6 foods locked behind biome, therefore the race, 2 for gingers, 4 for browns. Sugar and salt and mangoes are permanently locked, so the income is limited.

The issue is that we can't drop the communistic play. We need to share to survive, that mostly includes food, so the differences shouldn't be the food. Trade and capitalistic style of play would need security for resources you produce and an easy way to make profit, trading. Overproducing, profiting out of it, unlocking other resources you can't get otherwise, simplify or replace the need for transport and travel. And people stealing others stuff is a major issue. In the rift, people made a whole city stealing all the items I made. What is the purpose of producing and trading when you can die or people steal all your stuff? And it's not like a real two-sided battle, we are reborn and be on the other side of the war and kill the people we fought with? At least we should know that people on our side do our goals if we let our "wealth" go on their hands.

Knowledge and paper sound a lot like blueprints. The issue is that attaching knowledge to physical items is bad in this game. Since we can lose the knowledge they won't be able to use higher tier items we already got. Also, it's just another limitation with no reward.
It's not a single-player game, my knowledge to make recipes are mine, I would be okay with research point which needs time and work to unlock, , a city-wide limitation not personal limitations that you can't work or produce cause ree slots, ree invisible biome walls.

Single-player games are different from multi, especially with the premise of 60 minutes gameplay, sometimes even less. Would you want to play a game starting over and over from zero? I remember the YuGiOh game, you couldn't save it, it was fun but no point playing it without progressing. Sure we could have advantages in-between lives or visual upgrades as some moba games do. You get runes or setups which can alter your playstyle a bit, it's like 10% bonus tops, and everybody gets it who is above level 30. So it's not overwhelmingly powerful but makes the game a bit more varied. If you live max 60 minutes it would be weird that you train your characters strength for 40 minutes to be able to lift a stone, but you die at 41.

Tipy · 2020-03-31 14:38:00

I had an idea of something like a culture tree
All families (or hierachies if hierarchies ever get stable) start with basic skills

As time progresses they can unlock ''branches'' in that tree.
This way you can have families that specialize in different things animal husbandry, cloth making, metallurgy, etc. and at different depths ( like all families start with the abbility to proccess iron, later on they can unlock things like copper and zinc proccessing, new ores that make better tools and new technology, mines that are more productive etc.)

The idea is that a family/ hierarchy would choose where to specialize, not being pre determent and that the way you unlock new brances will be fun as well. Also they could know different nodes at a different depth.

The way you unlock new branches could be that by doing related activities enough times. Like if your people fish a lot you will unlock more things related to fishing (like renwable bait, better bait, more places to catch fish from, other fish types to catch, better chances to catch fish, eskimo clothes, other ways to cultivate and exploit the see's resources, ships, more things to do with fish, etc.)

Higher branches would be harder to unlock, just one man fishing could unlock some of the lower levels but you would need a lot of people fishing to unlock some of the hiegher tier branches. Encouraging team work and creating a scenrio where a family can't just blast through all of the nodes. This way players can shape how towns develope and bring something long needed, variety. Different families could have different tech tree directions and they could trade for tech that they can't get with other families.

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Alternative game design instead of current restrictions

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