Decreased travel time or distance (New Thread)

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Do you like that idea?

Yes
63
73%
No
23
27%
 
Total votes: 86
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the_antisocial_hermit
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Re: Decreased travel time or distance (New Thread)

Postby the_antisocial_hermit » Thu Nov 08, 2012 6:35 pm

Jos Elkink wrote:My worry would be that it really reduces incentives to build vehicles - the difference was large on purpose in the original design of the game.

If walking speed is the only problem, you can simply change that, of course, and leave all else. But that does reduce the value of vehicles.

I haven't played Cantr myself in quite a while, but my impression is that there are really quite a few vehicles around already, including many abandoned ones. So isn't access to a vehicle already a lot easier?

The difference and incentive to build vehicles wouldn't change that much, especially if everything gets at least a slight boost. Vehicles have a million (okay, exaggeration- several) advantages compared to walking (as pointed out by others): Way more capacity, faster (unless it's a full wooden cart), ability to work on projects, ability to pass things to people on roads, safety from dragging, etc.

Walking speed is the problem, but I think the discussion is leaning towards giving everything a boost so that there's still a good difference between walking and using some other form of transportation.

Access to vehicles may be easier in some places, but usually the more populated, older areas. As stated, not all areas have access to rubber or other components. I have a character in an area where making a motorized vehicle with the capacity needed for resource runs is not really a possibility (no bauxite). That's annoying enough since they could produce fuel easily. I can't imagine not being able to make any decent un-motorized vehicle because there's no rubber.

Also: Everything BC said. Walking is usually not fun when you don't have company. I have other ideas on how it'd help people want to play characters that choose walking over vehicles, but... I'll stop. I'm long-winded.
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Re: Decreased travel time or distance (New Thread)

Postby Jos Elkink » Fri Nov 09, 2012 8:58 am

Ok, I'm starting to see the arguments :) ...

I do think, though, that the description of the world I read here, with highly developed and weaker developed areas, is really quite interesting, and something that should be cherished. That way there is interesting reason for inter-regional trade even over long distances.

In my view, a better solution to reducing the world size could be to increase incentives to live in towns. The biggest issue, I think, is that too many people spread out too widely to make a living. I forgot the name, but there used to be one island where the animals were much more overwhelming than in other areas, and people pretty much had to live in towns to be safe. That actually created a very interesting dynamic.
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Re: Decreased travel time or distance (New Thread)

Postby Black Canyon » Fri Nov 09, 2012 3:49 pm

Increasing the incentives to live in towns will not increase the social interaction and trade between towns, however, and I think that this would improve the quality of cantr lives. The easier to travel and communicate between towns, the more opportunities for roleplay. It increases the possibility for more competition and rivalries between individuals and towns ... which makes for more interesting gameplay. (Remembering the whole Krif, Seatown, Drojf area way back when)

In addition, apart from the advantages of living in towns that already exist, I'm not sure how increasing these advantages would be a good thing over decreasing time spent alone on the road. Again.. days of seeing your character only light up with the message "You are hungry" does not exactly pull you into the magic that is cantr :P Trying to play an active character in a sleepy town can get pretty discouraging and heading on down that road for greener pastures can be a quite compelling option. All it takes is two characters, no matter how long they may have been inactive to spawn a new character. Granted, we're looking at changing that... and I think it's a good thing. But I also think that making the cantr world slightly "smaller" would be a good thing too.
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Re: Decreased travel time or distance (New Thread)

Postby kaloryfer » Sat Feb 23, 2013 12:08 am

I'm against fast travelling.
So far it has worked well, so we shall not change it.
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Re: Decreased travel time or distance (New Thread)

Postby Marian » Sat Feb 23, 2013 3:11 am

I haven't had a chance to read this entire thread yet but I'm all for it. Time spent alone on the road doesn't benefit RPing or simming, it just makes things boring for the player.

Right now, a lot of the time it feels like every town is its own island. Trade and interaction between them is good for the game and should be a more common thing, even for people on foot. Though it's true that vehicles seem more easily available than ever in older regions, that has more to do with there being fewer people.

I'd be curious to see stats on how many cars have actually been produced in the last twenty years or so. Do we have healthy societies that are trading and producing things or are we just endlessly recycling the belongings of the dead?

...but all that said, I'd argue that increase in walking speed might not be necessary anymore, though all that of course depends on what kind of possibilities domesticated animals open up.
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Re: Decreased travel time or distance (New Thread)

Postby Yang » Sat Feb 23, 2013 3:01 pm

In well developed places, my character make more and more car. In near future i think every citizen of that city will have a vehicle. But in other places my characters uses vehicles that were build long time ago. So i think it means civilisation when you can have your own new car. Too bad they dont rot like tools.
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Re: Decreased travel time or distance (New Thread)

Postby Oasis » Wed Feb 27, 2013 12:17 am

The biggest difference I see between now and then is that when one goes for a walk, instead of arriving at a town with people you have to walk through three or four abandoned ones before you find one with people. And if those towns have no food to gather, one could starve before they find those people. I fully support speeding up walking to double speed....increase the speed of the slower vehicles by more than the faster ones, not sure as the fastest ones would need any boost at all, though, they would still be lightening fast in comparison.
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Re: Decreased travel time or distance (New Thread)

Postby Voltenion » Wed Feb 27, 2013 6:38 pm

The flaw is not in the distance or travel speed, but on the ridiculously gigantic game and islands with too many locations of which too many are also useless (We can always delete Fu island, :wink: :wink: ).
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Re: Decreased travel time or distance (New Thread)

Postby Yang » Wed Feb 27, 2013 6:41 pm

Delete Fu island? I have two chars there and they like silence there. Also some people make radio network there, so i tell you, this island can be still useful not so overcrowded like polish islands.
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Re: Decreased travel time or distance (New Thread)

Postby Marian » Thu Feb 28, 2013 2:33 am

Sink the whole thing into the ocean, YES. :twisted:

There are plenty of other empty wilderness areas...Fu is just too much, it's the largest example of Cantr's biggest problem.
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Re: Decreased travel time or distance (New Thread)

Postby freiana » Thu Feb 28, 2013 9:39 am

I very much disagree. Emptiness/wilderness isn't per-se bad if people use it right. Making walking faster would make that a lot easier.
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Re: Decreased travel time or distance (New Thread)

Postby Marian » Thu Feb 28, 2013 4:24 pm

Wilderness areas aren't bad, though like I said, even without Fu we have plenty of those, way more than the player population could ever settle even if it tripled over night.

Populations spreading thinner and thinner until there's no one to RP with and nothing getting done is bad, however. The amount of 'towns' that consist of two or three people sleeping to death is ridiculous as it is, especially when you consider that new players can spawn in these places.
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Re: Decreased travel time or distance (New Thread)

Postby freiana » Thu Feb 28, 2013 9:52 pm

And surely sinking an island with still a huge amount of chars on it will make the few players we have more motivated to stay...? I don't think that sinking Fu is really a good solution. Let's see what happens if we increase walking speed first...
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Re: Decreased travel time or distance (New Thread)

Postby Marian » Thu Feb 28, 2013 11:46 pm

I never said anything about killing characters.

And that's one situation where I don't think walking speed will help much. You still have too few characters spread out over too vast of a distance. Dropping ten fully fueled vans into each town wouldn't even help, really.
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Re: Decreased travel time or distance (New Thread)

Postby freiana » Fri Mar 01, 2013 8:18 am

My mind is racing about how to sink an island without killing characters... And to be honest, some very funny ideas come to mind xD
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