Chris wrote:Trade isn't going to flourish because of some little tweak, or twenty little tweaks. It won't flourish, period. The people are gone. The few who remain are spread out over way too much space.
Although I can see where you're coming from and I kind of share a similar feeling, I am not yet convinced it is unsalvagable ... The biggest issues in my mind are a) people are too spread out (although personally I don't enjoy playing in big towns as there is too much chatter); b) too many things are already built (so weird to be in a village with three people but thirty vehicles and buildings); c) resources are too easily acquired.
But those things can, in my view, all be fixed, through implementing a form of deterioration of unused products (houses, vehicles) that does not increase "repair" requirements (which is boring to play); to using animal aggressiveness to make regions in the game that are currently uninhabited kind of uninhabitable (with very careful planning and protection of small language group areas); to make resources deplete slowly over time to increase inter-regional trade; etc. These are not small tweaks.
One thing to remember is that Cantr in some ways is very out-of-date and really more like a 1990s game. But it was created in 2001 and part of the appeal to many players is exactly that nostalgic feel of a text-only game. I don't see how that would not work in the 2020s, if we can address the above concerns.