Is it really that bad?

[kroner]

in concept all the changes to the game have been positive. tiredness adds an interesting new dynamic, damage and hunger being tied together never made much sense, and item degradation is important because otherwise the amount of goods in cantr will continue to grow without bound which after a while really kills any sort of economy. the changes certainly haven't made the game any easier, but made it worse of a game? that remains to be seen. i doubt it.

i will concede that the specific mechanics of the new features require some heavy adjustment. i don't expect everything to work perfectly on the first try, but i haven't seen any experimentation on the part of the programing department to get it right, which is really discouraging. it shouldn't be too difficult to edit some constants here and there, and it would solve huge problems. the work to gain ratio is really very low.

so in short, it's not really so unbearable the way it is, but yeah, there are problems that should get ironed out in the relatively near future (i hope, but at this rate it could be a while)

Oh, my favorite thing recently (yes, more griping about the broken animal system): 1000 g of a healing food to heal 30% of my character's injuries. You can harvest 25 g of this food per day.

the healing food rates haven't changed. the rates also vary vastly from healing food to healing food. there's one i know that allows you to recover up to 9% a day (though i can't say which on the forum ).

also, i think it's been mentioned that not recovering damage automatically wasn't really an intentional change, just something they haven't gotten around to fixing.

[west]

Well, I wish they would.

My loner in Aki had been fine with his iron shield for 15 years, but now he can't stay outside long enough to harvest onions without getting attacked by wolves three to four times a day, for almost 20 damage each time. He's reduced to holing up in his home, starving while trying to cook meat, hoping eventually his damage will go down far enough so he can harvest onions without dying.

[Lumin]

Okay, I'm curious now. Does anyone read the little messages that Jos or whoever puts up when you log in? Items *do* disappear completely, and right now a way to repair things is in the process of being programmed...hopefully before everyone's tools and weapons rot away to nothing. Because now everyone just has to hope the programming doesn't turn out to be trickier than Jos thought, and that whoever's working on it doesn't get distracted by RL issues, and that when the repair ability *does* go into effect, it doesn't take up so much time and extra materials that people don't have time to fix their stuff before it's too late.

Regardless, I've decided to go ahead and play a couple of characters anyway, since it not like I have much to lose.

I still have a little experimenting to do, but the main thing I'm wondering about tiredness is how balanced it is in proportion to the amount of work you do, and particularly to the amount of food gathered. The return should be *much* greater than the penalty; obviously if takes longer or an equal amount of time to recover from gathering the food than it does to eat the food, something's very wrong there. (It may not be *that* bad, but even if the ratios are close it discourages people from doing anything else but gather food, unless they've got a stockpile already built up.)

And if it's true that a one day project takes up more tiredness than a larger one, that seems a little unfair to newspawns, who already had to go hungry a little while before getting food; now they've might have to go even longer, or put themselves at a disadvatages by ramping up their tiredness. (assuming they even know how tiredness works; I could imagine brand new players getting confused or frustrated over this.)

Also, when you couple the inability to gather food due to tiredness with the healing problem, I'm betting regular foods will become virtually obsolete soon when compared to the more versatile healing foods. (It's interesting from an observer's standpoint, as that'll mean shifts in what kinds of places are good for towns, but I'm not sure if that's what the programmers meant to happen...) Clothing industry and anything else superfluous like that will probably be the next to go.

Than again, taken purely from an observer's standpoint, this whole thing is pretty interesting. Say everyone's weapons and tools rot away and the whole of Cantr is thrust into a pre-medieval technology level (or post-apocalyptic, take your pick). People are dropping dead right and left, starving, huddled together in buildings to protect them from the wild animals, too tired and sick to gather food for healing or make anything better than wood and bone tools to help them, trade and innovation dries up as everyone must struggle to help their community survive instead of wasting time making long trips across the continent (trips that will require a ridiculous amount of food with no way to produce anymore on the road.) It's be pretty fascinating to see what kind of society develops, as long as you don't care too much about most of your characters.

I imagine thievery will see a huge increase, too, but that's realism for you. Why wear yourself out working for food or tools when you can just let someone else do all the work and then just take their stuff when they're too tired to stop you?

I still love the idea of item deterioration, but like I said, only if it makes sense. Before it was okay to take years and years of travel and tedious work to make a single weapon or tool, because you knew once you had it you'd be set for life. But with the changes now there has to be some kind of balance struck; if items don't last very long, than they shouldn't take so long to make, simple as that. And that's not even bringing travel times into the equation...

Still, if one good thing comes out of this, it'll be that all the unbalancing stockpiles of weapons the older characters have been sitting on since the iron change will rust away, and their players will find out how tough life really is now that they can't rely on them or on the players who have them to keep them in power...

[mortaine]

Also, when you couple the inability to gather food due to tiredness with the healing problem, I'm betting regular foods will become virtually obsolete soon when compared to the more versatile healing foods.

Healing foods cannot be used for hunger. Oh, yes, indeedy. One of the "positive" changes is that FOOD CANNOT HELP YOUR HUNGER! Whee!

People are dropping dead right and left, starving, huddled together in buildings to protect them from the wild animals, too tired and sick to gather food for healing or make anything better than wood and bone tools to help them, trade and innovation dries up as everyone must struggle to help their community survive instead of wasting time making long trips across the continent
...
I imagine thievery will see a huge increase, too, but that's realism for you.

You've just described my experiences of Cantr. Oh, and thievery is also up because it's now impossible for a small group of guards to enforce the law; you can only hit someone once per day.

[Agar]

My advise for newspawns new and old about gathering food: Work expodentially. A typical raw food will feed you for better than 6 days for each day you spend gathering it. Gather food for one day, then gather more food for the next 5 days or so, becuase you'll be gathering it slower since you'll be tired somewhat, then that project will finish, but you'll have about 30 days of food to figure out your next move. If you want more food, you've got 30 lesiurly days to gather it.

If you're getting attacked my animals, hunting or dragging thieves, well, you might try to be better prepared if you can.

[Bowser]

I find it interesting that the people who have "no problem" with the current difficulty are all long-time players, presumably with characters who have things and tools already to make their lives easier. In fact, the boasting in these threads ("I have secured a nearly-unlimited supply of limestone!") gets really sickening to those of us who spend 90% of our newbie characters' time trying to get enough food and healing food to stay alive for just another couple of days.

Please forgive me for starting my account before you and not quitting. My post was meant to convey the fact that times were simpler back then, ohhhh the good old days.

I have a character in his fourties that has worked alone all his life building a house and a smelter and collecting the resources to make iron and steel. Now, finally, at the age of fourty, he can make tools, weapons, and is working on a car.

I have a character that is 24 years old with a weapon and shield and food because he joined up with a group of people. (tribe/clan/company).

I have no problem with the changes because I accept them and adapt. I repeat that I think everything takes much longer now. I didn't say making iron was harder, I said it just takes longer. Doing things all/making things are getting more and more detailed and involved.

It would be great if you could go to the trading post and barter or pay for a motorcycle wheel, a wrench, a gram of sushi, and an axe... but that day will never come. It would be great, but it will never happen.

[SekoETC]

Last night I cried because Cantr has turned so depressing. I realized only about a half of my characters had been active on the last few days. Only one has a force that keeps her going. Though the others may have plans they don't feel joy in making them advance. Everything is just too hard and big, seeing that even though you get a small thing done there's still a million steps to take before you ever reach anything, it really makes you feel insignificant. Sometimes it's just too hard to take. No one wants a game where farming is the biggest challenge in life. The tiredness factor the way it is now is simply ridiculous. A sleeping option or similar must be added.

[ephiroll]

I find it interesting that the people who have "no problem" with the current difficulty are all long-time players, presumably with characters who have things and tools already to make their lives easier.

Not true. If that was the case many of those who quit in the last month wouldn't have, and as the people who "inherited" my stuff know, the last thing I would ever have concerned myself with was where the next tool or weapon would come from.

I've been watching things here on the forum in the last month since I quit and I've seen that the people not complaining are the ones who haven't had to seriously deal with the BS the changes are causing, as time goes by more people deal with the BS, therefore more and more people are speaking out about it. There are several who said that me and others who said they would quit were bluffiing, now those are the ones saying the very things that I and others did not so long ago, go figure .

I really wish the crap would be fixed, because I do want to play again, but I refuse to play a game that is more BS then fun. That's why people play games, to have fun, not deal with a bunch of stupid shit they have to deal with everyday in real life, we have to deal with enough of that at work

[Black Canyon]

Its nice to hear that you want to play again.

[ephiroll]

Never really wanted to quit, but it had to be done to prove a point (I don't bluff ), and a month without Cantr has allowed me to get caught up on other things.

[Chrissy]

I bluffed. To Jos, and Thomas, and anyone who asked thereafter. I would use a blushing emote, but I'm not to embarrassed, stuff [shit] happens.. I'm not quiting... I was supposed to at the first of the year. So I thought. I have come to the conclusion that Cantr is a sexy European cult. lol. We have lived parallel cantr careers Jerry, remember the first time we both were quiting? Every time you have vocalised it, I was seriously too, at the same times. I think because I'm a girl, my prides not effected as much if I don't follow through. lol.

C.

[Lumin]

Huh, well I hadn't realized about the healing foods. That does make things a little unnecessarily complicated, I think. And in that case, why are they still *foods*? At the very least they could be turned into medicines or something a little more realistic. I don't get how eating apples and onions is going to heal and injury but not fill you up in the slightest.

I finally managed to pinpoint what's been bothering me so much when rereading this thread and seeing the comment on how people are thinking about the technical side of things now. The thing is, Cantr is supposed to be a society simulator, not a resource manager. The changes may have been made in the name of realism, but to me at least they've made Cantr feel too much like a "game". (though not a particularly fun one.) Instead of letting their characters and roleplay run the show, players now seem forced to focus on resource management, figuring out how the system works and how to work around it just in order to survive.

One or two of the changes, if introduced slowly and given time to let their consequences be seen would have been fine, but tiredness and hunger and item rot and healing all at once work together now to make the game incredibly difficult and unforgiving for almost everyone.

As it is, I appreciate the advice Agar gave, and I'm going to follow it, even though that's not normally the way I would play a newspawn. But the kind of experimentation with different resources and element of randomness I enjoy is just too costly now, so I'm going to have to think carefully about every decision they make from now on. Even hunting for fun is out of the question now, as I can't afford to tire such new characters out until they get the basic food and protection they need. (and then I imagine I'll have to rebuild that basic protection again pretty soon...)

[Neelix]

One of my chars was hit by a boar, and I don't really see how eating over 4 kilograms of seaweed is going to help recovery...

I mean, if we're going for the realistic stuff then throw out healing foods altogether.

[Agar]

One of my chars was hit by a boar, and I don't really see how eating over 4 kilograms of seaweed is going to help recovery...

I mean, if we're going for the realistic stuff then throw out healing foods altogether.

Try Sugar, it's far far worse.

The second edition of the dirt map I've been working on for the last couple of R/L months will be ready soon, and has a complete breakdown of which healing food is better and how much. A couple interesting changes were noted, for example, salt and asparagus are no longer healing foods, in any sense at all.

[swymir]

I still don't have a problem with it and I'm an old pklayer, but my characters aren't old. If you work together things get done. As for the person saying that maiking iron and steel is difficult. It's only difficult if you are trying to do it alone. Most people have a number of people working together to build cars. In fact I don't think anyone has ever gathered all the neccessary materials, smelter the iron and steel, and put them together just to build a bike for themselves. You just need to stress the "society" part of the game more if you want to get things done.