OHOL requires a dedicated hour to play. This is rarely the case when I’m on mobile because I am usually in an environment that I could get interrupted, have a flaky connection, or have an unknown amount of time to play. If I know I have 1+ hour to play with a dedicated connection I’ll go on my PC.
There is also eye strain and fatigue of holding the device up while playing. It is good to take frequent breaks with mobile games but that isn’t possible with OHOL.
What if we could pause the game for an extended period of time? In that state the player would not get hungry, have a baby, or be attacked by animals or other players. You could also make them not age but that might lead to strange family lines.
This may change the feel of the game, but I think it is nearly a requirement for mobile gaming.
Definite potential for griefing with this, but I agree, playing this game on mobile is a different context so we need to think of something along these lines.
When discussing pause, we need to analyze what it would mean for other players if e.g. a child or mother suddenly went offline. The interaction and co-dependence between players is the big thing in OHOL. Would it not destroy the game if people could go AFK for extended periods?
Are we talking 1, 5 or 15 minutes here? What should the limits be?
If you would like a limit then they could continue aging. The built in limit would be the length of their life. That would mean reaching old age is not a challenge though.
Just spitballing here. What about a way to close the app in such a way that you actually die, but the next time you respawn, if it has been a reasonable amount of real life time (to avoid abuse) and you are spawning as an Eve, you will respawn there. Like a marker of sorts.
I guess it would be irrelevant if there are enough players online to be born to…