Carrying a Waster....

[Nixit]

As long as it doesn't turn into a boring hack 'n slash game...

[julie2]

Sunni Daez, and others, made a good point here. Personally, I don't think we should be able to choose our character's skills. On the other hand, it does make sense to know what they're good at before we develop their personality. Given that they're spawned at 20 , they ought to know what they're good at by then, and that would have contributed towads forming their personality, surely? Also,given that most people choose names which reflect the intended personality, we need to know BEFORE we choose the name, ideally

In my opinion, skills should either be displayed to the player in some way, or should be abandoned entirely. I think my main point is that the game should be fun - and shouldn't be a constant struggle between players and the game system.

I agree, right now it is hard enough,( expecially with the server problem) and the loss of so many players.....If there are going to be skill levels per character, then the player needs to know....But I think the 'choice' of your charries skill should be left up to the player..when I create a charrie, I have an image in mind, if the game is going to dictate parts of my charries abilities, then it makes me change the charrie....so whats the point of giving it any personality?

[julie2]

I think Sociologist is right- farming skills are much harder to assess than hunting/fighting skills. I’m not even convinced that farming skills exist. That’s mosty because of the overwhelming effect that tirednes has on farming, which makes other less significant variations hard to spot. I think perhaps some characters have rather more stamina than others (i.e they don’t get tired so quickly) and that helps with farming more than anything. But I’m not too sure, as none of those characters are mine, sadly.

I’ve noticed that some characters are better at dragging than others. ie. Sometimes it only takes two to drag a body, not three as I’ve usually found to be the case. But as the skilled draggers I’ve seen all seem to older males, I wasn’t sure if that might not be something left-over from the days when “strength” increased with age or a sex difference? (the first I’ve spotted, if so)

I’ve got two characters who hunt regularly. Neither succeeded in killing any large animal ever during their first year of hunting,(and seldom or never killed small ones) then both suddenly developed a pretty decent kill rate, art the end of the first year. This certainly seems like a case of developing skills. Since one had much more opportunity to practice than the other did, I’m tempted t think that time, not practice, is the decisive factor. On the other hand, in one of these cases, the average amount of damage inflicted didn’t rise in the least , so maybe its just chance?

Of course your characters think “Hey, I’m getting better at this”, but as a player you can’t help wondering about the underlying programming. And the really inquisitve characters are bound to figure out the Cantrian laws of biology and physics eventually (supposing they ever remain constant long enough), which is pretty much tantamount to considering the underlying programming, isn’t it.

[The Sociologist]

[...] but if you are hitting one animal and then thinking "shit, I only hit it for 2%, I'll just make this one a note thief so that the people kill it" Then yes I would have to call that poor roleplaying.

Of course, but I never said anything about note thieves. The characters will die relatively speedily but those who have relations with other charries will roleplay their end in an appropriate way.

It is my experience that if you practice you get better. I don't think it is my imagination that this is true although I can only see it happening with a few of my characters who used to hit for 17% and now hit for 18-19% (full energy).

Thanks for the information. Yes, I noticed that one of my characters with exceptional combat skills went from 26 or 27 with a bone spear to 27 or 28... can't remember now. But I only saw it once and I'm not sure anymore if it really happened. On the other hand, characters with exceptionally poor combat skills have shown no improvement at all, even though they have hit their lion religiously almost every day since the changes went in. So if there is an algorithm at work there, it is seriously buggered. That's what I was asking about.

I think I have a couple of good farmers, as they seem to consistently yield on the plus end of the +/- 20% variation. I didn't document it or run calculations...that would too much like my real job instead of the welcome break from reality that Cantr is now.

Yes, I'd noticed this also, but it is seriously problematic to try and corroborate it. I would like to have a little time left over for roleplaying instead of spending all my time copying down properties of status bars. So that's what I was indeed saying - such skills are obscured to the point of being unusable or meaningless.

I just don't think the game is set up for good fighting roleplay so I can't really get into it here.

Unless the old in-game history documents are massive exaggerations, the game used to be much better set up in the past.

Darwin didn't call for the death of species with skills less fit for survival... and evolution in Cantr doesn't really work according to Darwin's concept but Lamarck's, if you understand what I mean.

Darwin's chapter in Origins is titled "Natural Selection; or the Survival of the Fittest." Such natural selection does not work at the level of species, but at the level of populations with differential reproduction. Overall, we are the progeny of the fittest ancestors - the rest had no offspring which survived to modern times. In Lamarckian evolution, parents pass down acquired traits to their offspring.

So what you are therefore admitting by mentioning Lamarck is that there is supposed to be gain in skills. I'm saying that if so, then it's inadequate and that zero improvement is evidenced by inferior characters out in the badlands. They should be getting a more favorable boost than top-end characters who aren't under stress. Like the Afrikaner women out on the farms where feminism is considered the work of the devil. All day long they cook, sew and bake "pannekoek"... but they can shoot like US marines!

It sounds like you are tying to force what you want onto your chars instead of learning and playing who they are. A lot of older chars are caught in the pinch of having established personalities that don't fit with their new skills.

Hehe, you're actually contradicting yourself slightly there. It is precisely because some of my older characters have established personalities that they are forcing what they want onto the situation. Zaro cannot go crawling back to Krif and become a carrot farmer. It's simply not possible. And it is precisely through Zaro's own despair and rage that I've become frankly angry with Jos and all that the game now seems to represent.

And finally to The Surly Cantrian and Sunni Daez, I agree with your posts up to a point. I would be prepared to tolerate game-assigned skills provided the corrective processes were functioning correctly. But they are clearly barely functioning at all, certainly not enough to make any difference. I had a female character who'd worked inside a factory her whole life long. Just recently she was given a comp recurve bow, wandered outside and hit an animal with it for 40%.

After all this time of the "skills" system being in place? To me, that's complete nonsense.

[Nick]

The idea of altering the effectiveness of certain skills for different characters sounds good in principle, but it radically alters the fundamental basis of the game. The roles that characters play would no longer be dictated by the society in which they live - they would be dictated by the statistics that the game gives them.

My most powerful character who fights the most does 8 damage with a crossbow to an unshielded person, tops. That kinda ticks me off...

[The Industriallist]

Like the Afrikaner women out on the farms where feminism is considered the work of the devil. All day long they cook, sew and bake "pannekoek"... but they can shoot like US marines!

...not really relevant...but I find that really, really hard to believe.

And finally to The Surly Cantrian and Sunni Daez, I agree with your posts up to a point. I would be prepared to tolerate game-assigned skills provided the corrective processes were functioning correctly. But they are clearly barely functioning at all, certainly not enough to make any difference. I had a female character who'd worked inside a factory her whole life long. Just recently she was given a comp recurve bow, wandered outside and hit an animal with it for 40%.

After all this time of the "skills" system being in place? To me, that's complete nonsense.

Well, you see, to be nice to people and in light of how long talking can end up taking, I believe Jos in his wisdom decided not to have skills degenerate over time. Since initial skills were dished out altogether randomly (I think...) some people who never had a weapon before will have immense potential with it. That really isn't much of a problem, I would think.

Your complaint about not enough improvement might well be...I haven't had any characters with enough opportunity for violence to even try to improve. Though I might suggest attacking more than one animal a day fro practice...surely there are other things than lions, and that ought to let you at least double your training rate.

[Solfius]

so, what you want is some kind of addition to the description saying for the project you're working on

"you are quite good at this"

obviously we want to avoid numbers because this is a simulation after all, and I doubt anyone has a set of numbers for all their skills in real life (unless they've made one based on their perceptions of skill)

I think the main point in this thread is for the people to whom it does matter to know how good they are, so they can number crunch the effeciency etc, there needs to be some kind of indication, but without giving the whole game away, because as I'm sure we've noticed before, the real world doesn't give us numbers to work with (even though at the deepest level is must work off them in the form of science and its theories blah blah blah) but it does give us enough to quantify them, this is hard to do in Cantr, so what is wanted is a little help.

(note: I haven't really proof read this, so it likely it doesn't make too much sense, but I hope you get the idea)

[Just A Bill]

So you are Zaro, interesting... This thread explains a lot. While I have only been playing the game for 5-6 month IRL, I find there is a lot more to it than combat skills. Zaro, for example has shown leadership skills that can't be reduced to a stat somewhere on the server. He has done a lot of good for many people difficult surroundings. Several newspawns that otherwise would have probably died, now are in pretty good shape. Others have died, but I suspect that they were really suicides, not killed by the environment.

In my mind, some of the most successful characters almost never attack anything (animal or cantrarian) in combat. Gaoam (sp?) of MWS and Jacques Montblanc in Olipifirovash (west) come to mind, but I am sure there are others...

Lastly, as was previously noted, the rules have been tweeked a lot recently. Tiredness now factors into and greatly affects combat. If some of your characters were even slightly tired when doing your calculations, this may have thrown off your numbers. Also I think weapon and shield effectiveness have changed recently, so compairing. I recently had a character absorbe 10% from one hit, then all 23% of another hit with the same shield, same character. I find making generalizations about my characters abilities difficult, although I have not done any systematic research in this area...

[wichita]

So I think I can imagine a couple of modifications coming out of the posts here so far. If we borrow some game mechanics from D&D (or whatever classic pen and paper RPG for that matter), it seems like people might like to see something like either of the following:

<u><b>Attributes:</b></u>
Upon spawning you recieve computer assigned attribute ratings. To avoid numbers completley ruining the ambiance, it could look something like:

Strength = above average --> affects damage inflicted / wt. carried /
amount farmed (+/- % yield)
Agility = average --> affects chance to hit / avoid damage
Stamina = average --> affects rate of tiredness / resting
and healing rate from NATURAL HEALING

It would be good to avoid charisma or intelligence based skills, as those should be left to the abilities of the player, i.e. the person on the other end should decide if he/she wants to buy your bluff or not. These more physical traits, however are more or less out of individual control - with improvement from excercise and practice thrown in as the obvious caveat.

<u><b>Skills</b></u>
Example skill categories that couls either bear numerical ranks, or a similar qualitative value (which I would prefer to maintain simplicity)

Farming
Martial skills / Hunting
Construction
Manufacturing (could be further split into metalworking, stonecraft, etc)
Sewing

Basically each character would have a success rate for each project that would be affected by his skill level, i.e. a shoddy weaponsmith frequently produces brand new longbows of crumbling quality (please don't yell at me, it's just the first example I thought of ). The other alternative is that a character with a higher skill rate could complete the project more quickly.



If you could see these traits at spawn time, you could easily determine what skills you're char is good at from the start - and rather realistically I would say if there would be a way to display the qaulitatitive descriptors rather than letting numbers or another status bar making the game even more mechanical than it is now. Perhaps there would actually be a percentile rank stored within the program to make the programming more efficient, which is translated into the word ranking going to the screen.

As far as letting the skill to determine roleplay would go...it should ultimately be up to the player if you actually want to live up to your skills or follow your dreams. That's still realistic. I am personally a better linguist than a scientist, but I made the decision to pursue my career aside from that perception of my skills. Kind of like Nick's pissant fighter I guess.

[Surly]

Just on a side note here... do animals still heal naturally? Because if they do, that's just stupid.

Anyway, I think it is dangerous to consider a system whereby the game dictates to the player what a charcter would be. It is a sad truth that several good players are leaving, and I feel that a greater priority should be to keep hold of them - by keeping the game simple- rather than change the game further.

I liked the way Cantr was when I originally joined (around 17 months ago). It was much easier to play, simply because you could do what you wanted. I accept the ideas of tiredness and modular production because they further CAntr, but actually changing the basis of character is a different issue. I am still to be convinced that skills are a good thing.

(on another side-not: My 37 year-old guy was trying to drag someone out of a vehicle with Catherine Cornwallis. He gave up because it wasn't happening, and Olympia Amazuzi promptly got in and achieved it. Just an exception to the opinion that guys might be better at dragging...

[The Sociologist]

I haven't had any characters with enough opportunity for violence to even try to improve. Though I might suggest attacking more than one animal a day for practice...surely there are other things than lions, and that ought to let you at least double your training rate.

That's one aspect I'm not wild about. So your character would then run off to find a backwater with lots and lots of animals and hit each one every day to improve "stats"? Reminds me too much of Ultima Online and its "stats-macroing" tactics, ie you're too busy running around "doing stuff" to ever talk to anyone. Also it's a really bad thing to encourage from the perspective of server and bandwidth. No, I'm just saying that people at the bottom end with poor skills who regularly hit their lion every day should by now have shown a skills increase to at least average. Then above that level it should get harder to improve further.

so, what you want is some kind of addition to the description saying for the project you're working on

"you are quite good at this"

Yes, something like that. Or perhaps just as part of the message when a project terminates.

[...] because as I'm sure we've noticed before, the real world doesn't give us numbers to work with (even though at the deepest level it must work off them in the form of science and its theories blah blah blah) but it does give us enough to quantify them.

Yes. Frankly, little Annie aged six will quickly perceive that she's twice as fast at drying dishes as little Joey, and will hasten to tell Mummy so...in no uncertain terms. I don't understand the current obsession in Cantr with keeping everything hidden. But of course it's not truly hidden, so it merely becomes a mission to find out. It's not how the world really works and what exactly is it supposed to prove?

Anyway, I think it is dangerous to consider a system whereby the game dictates to the player what a charcter would be.

I agree.

My 37 year-old guy was trying to drag someone out of a vehicle with Catherine Cornwallis. He gave up because it wasn't happening, and Olympia Amazuzi promptly got in and achieved it. Just an exception to the opinion that guys might be better at dragging.

I believe there may be a random factor involved in dragging. I've seen that in cases where characters drop themselves from someone's dragging project so as to pop outside and call for help, but then that same project concludes successfully the moment they add themselves back to it again. That's the more likely explanation since Olympia's overall combat skill is exceptionally poor.

[Sunni Daez]

I've seen that in cases where characters drop themselves from someone's dragging project so as to pop outside and call for help, but then that same project concludes successfully the moment they add themselves back to it again. That's the more likely explanation since Olympia's overall combat skill is exceptionally poor.

I noticed that also, I started a dragging project, someone joined in, I went out to get help, when I came back and rejoined, the drag was immediately finished....