Vaku wrote:...That is the true charm of village dynamics, community dynamics.
I notice that you as well use the word that means 'immediate community,'
borka wrote:neighbourhood.
And you've used this word in such a sense, that it implies hermits are as much a component in the neighborhood of folk surrounding them as the villager is a component of his or her village. You might even recognize that there is a correlation that can be found on Jorb's Developer Thoughts on PvP, when he writes,
And that correlation shows that there is indeed a much broader community at play which incorporates all players.jorb wrote:The land which I have claimed, you cannot claim. The basket that I am carrying, you can not carry. The apple that I have eaten, you can not eat.... This relation is so integrated in the very essence of H&H that it is impossible to even play the game without performing an action which is mutually exclusive.... This means that the nub who has just created his first character and logged in, by the mere act of existing, is denying other players certain courses of action -- the most obvious one being interaction with that particular tile, but, as said nub starts to play, more and more actions will be denied other players by his act of simply playing.
So please, do not be offended that there are areas in this game, which I notice need improvement, so that the aspects that give rise to communities are not forgotten, because in that same address that Jorb made on PvP, he reminds us of a salient charm in HnH, that it "simulate[s] events and processes of the real world in a digitalized form," and it would be a shame to not call out where the abstraction of civilization in this game is just not appealing.
I do not chop up Villages as the Only Solution (and solution to which problem, I do not know you are referring to). There instead are a range of options for very unique problems. To enumerate some problems, we can look at foraging bots; Incentive to socialize players may have limited effect on what forage bots accomplish with what the current system allows. Forage bots allow for uninterrupted gathering of curios, something that a village of players might only achieve in sequence. For combating the problem of foraging bots, you must instead address Learning Points and branching subjects, not community tools or base structures.
What I address specifically in my previous post was the question of farming. Farming is distinctly an activity which relates to community dynamics, as Jordan helped to point out that he needs several bots in order to farm for just himself. Those bots (and they're alts as well, despite your reservations), can each be replaced by an individual human player, and preferably so, were the mechanics in place that gave a wider social appeal.
For instance, in attempting a garden, you might discover that a tomato plant often will produce many more tomatoes than one person might consume. Instead of eating them all yourself, you share the fruit of that one tomato plant with your many neighbors. That describes the real life incentive of real farming.
HnH farming results in one plant being desperately insufficient for the purpose of feeding one person. In truth, that is part of the appeal of HnH and Salem, with our unnamed hunger system here and the Gluttony System over there--We eat here for the sake of raising our stats, but that is also a big problem for enhancing the appeal for community, while at the same time, it is a problem that incentivizes botting.
I don't know what to do to fix it, but part of me talking here is to begin the discussion, and get you readers thinking about the implications of these very core systems. You can expect a proper Critique thread later, but for now, I'll just respond to the criticism that the content of my previous post received.
Smell of Arrogance
