There have been some requests for a topic like this. I think that if you read my posts on the entire forum, you will be able to understand what we are aiming for, but there is something to be said for a brief summary. It’s quicker, even if less nuanced.
Note: You should consider this as an opinion piece. Dual Decade is making no promises for the implementation and you should not base any buying decision of the game on this. The game is what it is today. You should buy it for what it is - not for what it might evolve into.
That said, here is my vision for You are Hope…
The core gameplay
At the core, You are Hope is about the need to cooperate with other people for mutual survival and development. The main challenges and rewards will always be about cooperation and about long-term survival for the family you are born into. Specifically, the game will not be about conflict. Conflict may happen because of player actions. This is not forbidden, but it is seen as failing the challenge and at the end it will turn out that it makes it harder to reach the goals.
Note that we will still provide alternative play modes, for fun and enjoyment. There are the Solo servers where you can build your own little paradise gardens. There are events which sometimes offer competition between players or teams of players. We may even run our own Battle Royale event some time. But these are seen as mini games on top of the game platform - not the Game itself.
Being born / respawned
In the state the game is currently, there is a clash between some of the ideas of the original game, and the wishes of the players on how they want to play it. The game idea was that each life is separate and should not be connected to earlier lives - nothing you do will ultimately be for your own gain, only for the gain of those coming after. This is a novel idea (and I can’t take credit for it myself). However, it seems that it clashes with a fundamental wish among most players: to be able to see what becomes of your hard work, and that it was not wasted effort. We aim to make a change here, which allows you to be reborn into previous families (and towns) under certain conditions.
Today, we have the Eve respawn logic, which we inherited from OHOL. This does not work entirely well, as it encourages baby suicide marathons as well as mothers abandoning children. It lets players affect the game experience negatively for others, in search for “creating your own town”.
So we will replace this with something better, which follows these guide lines:
In order to get the “award” of being able to continue on the same town/family over multiple generations, you need to
- play together with others
- affect other players positively
- raise the children to adult age (and try to avoid dying as an infant)
- make sure your family has the means to survive after your own death
There will be some kind of rewards for successfully starting a new family line as an Eve, and for being good at keeping children alive. I am still working on the design of this system, so I will leave out more details for now, but as usual I will come back for more player input and feedback before nailing the design completely.
(Edit: here are more detailed thoughts now: https://forum.onehouronelife.app/t/rebirth-rekindling-and-the-importance-of-helping-others/5393)
Other game mechanics
There are also some game mechanics we will wish to redesign and improve over time. These are some that I have in mind:
- temperature / clothes / food consumption / health
- Yum bonus system
- Water on the map (ponds, rivers, …)
Balancing game difficulty
Our goal is to make it easier (but still challenging) to start in an Eve camp. For developed cities we will provide more challenges to take on over time. These challenges will be about achievements - not about conflict.
New players should be able to play on the same servers as experienced ones. We want to make it easier to take the time to teach others, and have a food consumption model which makes newbies less “costly” for the players who have to help them survive.
Artistic expression
We wish to make more content and mechanics which allow players to be creative. Once survival seems to be in hand, players should be able to design towns that they can be proud of. We have started a bit with water canals, bridges and brick roads, but there are many more ideas waiting for execution.
I think I will stop here for now. As you can see, there is still a lot of work for us developers, and You are Hope will become better and better over time. Your feedback can help us pinpoint the most important things and focus our efforts on the most valuable changes and additions. There is always more that could be done (with infinite resources), than what ought to be done. Different things have different importance when it comes to making the game better.
Cheers,
// Christoffer