Why Cantr failed

General out-of-character discussion among players of Cantr II.

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curious

Re: Why Cantr failed

Postby curious » Wed Mar 21, 2018 9:53 am

I just use the 'find' option in my browser... and search for my character's name... 'says to you'... 'gives you' and 'hurts you', I skim for interactions that I was involved in but generally, If I am alseep (RL) my characters are asleep too and they don't recall conversations.
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Chris
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Re: Why Cantr failed

Postby Chris » Wed Mar 21, 2018 1:57 pm

The incentive for me to have multiple characters was that so little was happening with my first character. The pace is so slow. When Cantr was new for me, I wanted to experience what it had to offer, but it takes days to make even the simplest things, assuming that you even had the materials. Traveling to another town takes days. Chat is the one thing that doesn't take days, so that's what people do. But most of the chat is irrelevant for my character.

I played Neverwinter for a while. I could actually do things with my character. When I would stop a session, it wasn't because I ran out of interesting tasks and experiences in the game. It was because I had to eat and sleep and live the rest of my life. The main incentive to start another character is to play another character class (i.e., wizard, fighter, thief, etc.).

I understand that Cantr will never be about slaying thousands of monsters and leveling up and casting spells. But being able to do interesting things while you are logged in and not having to worry when you are logged out are good design principles.
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the_antisocial_hermit
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Re: Why Cantr failed

Postby the_antisocial_hermit » Wed Mar 21, 2018 2:09 pm

PaintedbyRoses wrote:Someone mentioned that it used to be possible to color-code the words of the different characters. I think that would make it so much easier to skim through lots of conversation by focusing in on characters you usually talk to while quickly passing over long conversations between two friends, for instance.

Can we get that back? With lots of different color choices for big towns. Pretty please?

And you know what? If a color could be assigned to any whispers to your own character, that would be awesome.

It wasn't a feature and was disabled for security reasons, I believe.

You would use HTML in the field where you named the character on the character's page (clicking a character's name or XX in their twenties would take you to the character page; there were no info boxes), much like you can do on sign projects right now (but not in the dynamic names of buildings). So you were able to use any color you wanted. Of course we couldn't change the background of Cantr at that point, either, so usually it had to be colors that showed up on Cantr green well (I usually used light blue, yellow and pink).

If you use the browser add-on "Cantr Enhanced" you can choose different colors for different characters. It just doesn't work so well for me, because it tends to reset when the browser is closed.

I definitely use the search function to find who speaks to my characters when I need to make sure I don't miss something.
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Jos Elkink
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Re: Why Cantr failed

Postby Jos Elkink » Wed Mar 21, 2018 5:38 pm

I guess instead of using many colors, it could be a good idea just to highlight all events that involve your character. That would be pretty easy to do, I think.

Back on topic, though. The slow pace was always by design, to be honest. It was assumed that players are not spending all their time playing Cantr, but doing other things, like study or work. So by design the idea was that you could play for, say, 10 or 20 minutes a day, and still have interesting characters developing. It was never designed to be interactive while you're online, but to have interactions between logins.

I know there are huge advantages to have it being more about when you are online, interacting with others who are, but that's just a different game and there are already plenty that do that. This game is more about long term strategy and development, not immediate interaction.
curious

Re: Why Cantr failed

Postby curious » Wed Mar 21, 2018 7:13 pm

Chris wrote:not having to worry when you are logged out [would be a] good design principle.

I disagree. I think we would see even fewer people online. I actually like this feature... I believed that it would actually be an encouragement to immersion in-game.
That said... I am beginning to think that the whole concept of immersive role play has just had it's day... a fair few players are not immersed in Cantr now (and no... I do not want to argue the toss over the correct and rectifying game mechanism here either) and many 'plays' that extend beyond an in-game (in-cirt/toen) clique feels like it is either arbitrary or coincidental.
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computaertist
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Re: Why Cantr failed

Postby computaertist » Thu Mar 22, 2018 3:50 am

PaintedbyRoses wrote:If a color could be assigned to any whispers to your own character, that would be awesome.

Cdls wrote:CSS code examples:

To change events like the radio messages: ->This will change the color of the radio messages <-

Code: Select all

.eventsgroup_9 { /* Radio Message */
    color: #00B7A5;
   
  }

You want to color .eventsgroup_23 , which are character whispers to you. (edit was to add an s to .eventsgroup_23)
Oh, that goes in "Player Settings" (in the list of links above the character list) -> "Interface" -> "Custom CSS skin:" (and mark the box there).
See also: Redesign Cantr! --PUBLIC CSS/Styling THREAD--
Last edited by computaertist on Thu Mar 22, 2018 5:14 am, edited 1 time in total.
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PaintedbyRoses
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Re: Why Cantr failed

Postby PaintedbyRoses » Thu Mar 22, 2018 4:31 am

Thanks, computerartist

What I put in the box looks like this [CORRECTED]:

.eventsgroup_23 { /* Character Whispers */
color: #EE49EE;

}

Is that right? I can't test it because all of my characters are traveling alone right now and probably won't talk to anyone for a while.
Last edited by PaintedbyRoses on Thu Mar 22, 2018 8:32 am, edited 3 times in total.
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computaertist
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Re: Why Cantr failed

Postby computaertist » Thu Mar 22, 2018 5:07 am

Looks right to me.

And, to be sure, you'll need the little checkbox to the left of "Custom CSS skin:" to be checked.

Oh, and if no one's around to see you do it (or if your character might have a reason to be mumbling to themselves) you can always whisper to yourself to test it.

EDIT: Sorry, I checked my own custom css and found it's spelled plural, with an s: .eventsgroup_23
Probably won't work without that s.

Also, this may be useful for choosing colors: https://www.somacon.com/p142.php
Mark Twain wrote:Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.
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PaintedbyRoses
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Re: Why Cantr failed

Postby PaintedbyRoses » Thu Mar 22, 2018 6:46 am

It worked and it's awesome! And you are also awesome! Thanks again.

I used this color which is a purplish-pink: EE49EE and it shows up really well.

But this can't be used to customize the talk of individual characters, right?

EDIT: Sorry for the off-topicness. I thought we were dealing, somewhat, with one problem (mentioned above by Jos) that tends to annoy players, namely, having to read through huge amounts of text in some of the busy areas.
Last edited by PaintedbyRoses on Thu Mar 22, 2018 8:23 am, edited 2 times in total.
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EchoMan
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Re: Why Cantr failed

Postby EchoMan » Thu Mar 22, 2018 7:01 am

People, can I please ask you to try to respect the topic title of where you are writing? There is a Suggestion forum for suggesting new things, and there are topics that discuss tweaking and changing the apperance of Cantr. Thanks. :)
Rigel Kent
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Re: Why Cantr failed

Postby Rigel Kent » Sun Mar 25, 2018 4:24 am

The radios must be fixed. That would help.
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Slowness_Incarnate
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Re: Why Cantr failed

Postby Slowness_Incarnate » Sun Mar 25, 2018 3:16 pm

They were made this way intentionally because of overlapping characters and trying to separate those who are in close proximity. Not that I agree with the change either. Its one of the few things that ruined part of the game for me personally.
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viktor
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Re: Why Cantr failed

Postby viktor » Mon Mar 26, 2018 3:32 am

with regards to the radio nerf and it's negative effect on cantr
nerfing the repeaters was understandable but to also change the radio ranges was way too much... if only the repeaters were broken and the ranges stayed the same I think we would have kept more players as a result..
curious

Re: Why Cantr failed

Postby curious » Mon Mar 26, 2018 11:59 am

Personally speaking, all my current characters spawned after the radio collapse so they don't miss it at all.
In previous gaming periods, I found the radio to be the biggest source of annoying 'noise' in the game.

That said, I think what people might not like is the ability to work around just what it could achieve. It would be nice to have something like beacons (hey... we may have these or they may have been suggested somewhere... I didn't bother to look)... big fires that used to be lit along places like the UK coastline to warn of impending danger and the like... and far quicker than any enemy could travel. In addition... lighting beacons wouldn't be an invisible activity, unlike the radio, which just seemed prone to boredom relieving idle wankers.
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cutecuddlydirewolf
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Re: Why Cantr failed

Postby cutecuddlydirewolf » Wed Mar 28, 2018 6:53 pm

I mean, there are solutions.

Have a character run messages throughout the island. Use fireworks as signals to other towns.

Personally, I think the problem is that people got so used to the radio that they became dependant on it. No one wants to find alternatives.
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