Why Cantr failed

[curious]

I think it would be very important for people to realize that this is supposed to be a slow game.

And part of the this mentorship, Curious, could involve teaching people about the slowness of the game .... or at least to be respectful of players who don't have as much time to give to the game, instead of making them feel ignored because they can't keep up.

I absolutely get this. Yes...
I am guilty myself of just following the pace of the game as it appears to me and at whatever time, but I do go through all the plays and make sure (try to make sure) people don't get missed in the 'noise'... it is a problem though, a problem that is compounded by some players desiring 'instant' plays... stacking posts, if you can't answer them quickly enough. I have ranted about this before but it is getting more and more common in the game... and no, I am not talking about people who talk for a long time and use multiple posts to do so... I am talking about 'answerable' plays that should be made and absolutely await a reply.
Sometimes, I put my character to sleep in a play, rather than just let people assume they are and the other issue that seems to baffle people who may be totally new to the game is the fact that they won't hear stuff until I wake them again.

Mentorship would be a good solution.
It might see players waste a couple of experimental chars but at the end of the day... they might keep a dozen more.

[Slowness_Incarnate]

Once again, I give up.

Please don't give up , PaintedbyRoses, because I find you made a really good point. One of the things that completely stresses me about Cantr at the moment is the speed of the role-playing in certain places. It feels as if people have nothing else to do but role-play. Makes for a lot of reading, that I often don't have the time for, but above all, it makes events move on so fast that a question you may have asked or a request you made is completely forgotten by the time you log in again.

I think it would be very important for people to realize that this is supposed to be a slow game.

And part of the this mentorship, Curious, could involve teaching people about the slowness of the game .... or at least to be respectful of players who don't have as much time to give to the game, instead of making them feel ignored because they can't keep up.

But those are are online at the same time and post one after another are not going to wait for others to wake up and still their interactions. Not fair to them. If there are several people playing and being silly its not good to ask them "Hey can you slow that down so that everyone can join in?" That might never happen. We are all in different timezones and have completely different active times.

A mentor might be good but I don't know if that would work considering the line between IC and OOC might blur to those who do not understand this distinction yet. So, in time it might.

[Tiamo]

Isn't there a learning zone for new players, with volunteers to mentor them in there, already?

[Neva]

Isn't there a learning zone for new players, with volunteers to mentor them in there, already?

Are there volunteers mentoring the new players?

[Jos Elkink]

Isn't there a learning zone for new players, with volunteers to mentor them in there, already?

Are there volunteers mentoring the new players?

Yes, there is. But new players stay there relatively briefly and the amount of mentoring that takes place is limited, because not much is happening in there ... And this is certainly not the fault of the mentors. It does provide a tutorial to the interface, though, as well, which I think is quite well done, actually.

One of the things that completely stresses me about Cantr at the moment is the speed of the role-playing in certain places. It feels as if people have nothing else to do but role-play. Makes for a lot of reading, that I often don't have the time for, but above all, it makes events move on so fast that a question you may have asked or a request you made is completely forgotten by the time you log in again.

I think it would be very important for people to realize that this is supposed to be a slow game.

I totally agree on that front. I am now only playing very boring characters, in tiny towns, because otherwise I cannot manage, and this is primarily due to long dialogues and monologues that I do not have the time to read. Or too long events lists.

Some simple suggestions that have been made here before already help, perhaps, like being able to filter events (that's a suggestion already, right?), but it remains an issue.

I was thinking of writing some kind of longer forum post on this topic, actually, but haven't yet found the time. Something along the lines that when I designed the events structure and buildings, my idea was always that private talk should be common, with public talk happening occasionally - because I thought of talk mostly as a way to do transactions (e.g. trade, negotiate, etc.). I also thought most people would be inside buildings, and customers or others would drop in, do their business, and leave. So I imagined a shop owner being inside a building, and people would come in and out to trade, and then you would occasionally get a town newsletter or something to read about what is going on. But instead everything is on the public square, houses now have open windows, and everyone follows everything. This for me means that now I have to avoid bigger towns, which was always what I was more interested in - I don't like the busy town squares, but in the small towns there is little to trade etc. My characters want to specialise in specific jobs, but the villages are too tiny for that to make sense, for example.

So here the game has - for obvious reasons - developed very differently from what I intended originally.

[computaertist]

...
Some simple suggestions that have been made here before already help, perhaps, like being able to filter events (that's a suggestion already, right?), but it remains an issue.
...

Depending on what exactly you have in mind, this may already be doable with custom css without new work from staff.

Code: Select all

.eventsgroup_9 { /* Radio Message */
    display: none;
   
  }

These days I doubt anyone wants to ignore the few radio messages we get, but just for example's sake imagine you had a character in a place with way too much radio chatter than never applied to you. The above code would filter it out.

I guess someone should check that it's already been suggested that we make more css target-able classes, to highlight certain character's speech for instance. Forgive my laziness; my desire to help could only drive me as far as threads I already knew how to find quickly.

[PaintedbyRoses]

Just being able to filter out the whispering in the large town streets would be great. In RL people don't have to be aware of every conversation in a town. That would be horrible.

[PaintedbyRoses]

Double post, sorry.

Awesome! Thanking AH below for the info.

[the_antisocial_hermit]

You can create a filter for that with current interface technology. I have a couple on a char and switch to whichever filter as needed. It’s under character settings —> event page filters.

I think it’s great for a lot of things, but we could use more types, such as ways to highlight specific things or people. You can do color with css and I think there’s some add on, but it’d be nice to make it more straightforward for those less versed in those things.

[sherman]

Big towns have lot of going on, specially since there's usually many people awake at same town and if there's something going on people want to join. And then little towns might have 1-2 line per a day which is also not that optimal

[curious]

I just think, busy or not... fast play or not... there really is no excuse for missing relevant posts.
For instance, if you are having a conversation with someone who is a 10 minute a day player and then you get into something that moves quickly with another bunch of people..? Wait.

This might easily frustrate new players.

Yeah... it'd be great if Cantr were like the real world but some of the 'world' that it is just needs to be seen as quirky. God knows, if aliens landed on this planet (apart from laugh at our political systems) Might think... Whoah... what's this straight line time shit..?

[Chris]

There is an easy way to solve the problem of too much chatter in big towns, but I know it will be rejected as incompatible with Jos' vision. When you aren't playing a character, you would not see any conversation that takes place. If anyone wants to send you a message, they can give you a note. That's how MMOs roll. Anything else scales poorly.

[cutecuddlydirewolf]

There is an easy way to solve the problem of too much chatter in big towns, but I know it will be rejected as incompatible with Jos' vision. When you aren't playing a character, you would not see any conversation that takes place. If anyone wants to send you a message, they can give you a note. That's how MMOs roll. Anything else scales poorly.

Sorry, but I really don't like that idea. Part of the beauty of Cantr is that you don't have to be constantly "online" to play it. You can check in a few times an hour or so.

And honestly, the way I see it- if you don't want a lot of stuff going on, don't have your character in a big town.

I actually really like having characters in very busy and active towns. And I'm sure I'm not the only one.

[curious]

There is an easy way to solve the problem of too much chatter in big towns, but I know it will be rejected as incompatible with Jos' vision. When you aren't playing a character, you would not see any conversation that takes place. If anyone wants to send you a message, they can give you a note. That's how MMOs roll. Anything else scales poorly.

I don;t like this.
If I have a character in conversation with someone who doesn't always get online at the same time as me we would then. in effect, not be having a conversation at all, or at best, a conversation on notes.
As i have said previously... if I emote my char as sleeping, then it is very likely they won't hear stuff... everything else is fair. Just because I am not online shouldn't rob anyone in what is basically a 'persistent' presence in world. Are you suggesting that you can't be killed during this time also..? Basically everything that is shit about Second Life brought to Cantr.

New players just need coaching though this element of the game. I personally don't have a problem with the noise from busy towns. If I wake to masses of text... I just use the search function to look for key plays.

[PaintedbyRoses]

I realize this will never happen, but the conversation made me think that I would like it if there was a mode where characters could indicate that they were sleeping and they would be a different color on the list of characters page. Then, when they wake up, everything that happened while they were asleep would be in a different color on the events page.

The character would automatically come out of sleep as soon as they posted an event or action or, the player could take them out without the character doing anything (but not just because the player looks at the events = stealth sleeping). Maybe they would automatically go into sleep mode after an hour of non activity.

Wouldn't that be fun in a big town? It may be that I like this idea just because I get tired of the same old text color all the time - especially if it is a wall of text. I already have whispers in a different color and I get so excited just to see them.