Dragging time

[EchoMan]

Bumping this discussion.

I see no real reson for two people being able to drag whoever into a building or onboard a boat against their will and the will of 10 or 250 other people in that location. It should take time to drag someone so the can defend themselves against murder (or whatever is happening).

What is the reason for being able to drag someone unwilling while outnumbered? Make it more fun playing a murderer or two? Important guards in town don't have the time to spend on dragging a criminal?

[Nick]

Are you kidding me? Think of the practicality of what you're suggesting.
People generally don't commit crimes and then sit around for an hour or two and wait for you to be locked up.
Currently it's already hard enough to take over a town. Too hard. If you eliminate dragging (which, call it detering if you will, but this will still in effect eliminate the use of dragging) it will be in all practicality, impossible.
I'm very tired of people having bad characters do things to them, and then them come here and insist that things be changed. No. Bad things happen. Want to prevent this? Get your town guard some crowbars. Restrict the ownership of locks. Do things in SOCIETY. This is a society simulator. Problems you faced should be solved in the society, not by coming in here and whining.

Now don't get me wrong, in an ideal Cantr I'd think dragging should produce a mild ammount of tiredness. But in a Cantr where you can only really attack once before you're too tired to be any help at anything? No, leave it alone.

Maybe if first we eliminate the one hit a day rule, cut down tiredness caused by hitting others to like, 5%, lower the effect of tiredness on your character's production, and make it easier to build furniture to rest on... THEN we can make dragging harder.

Right now, dragging IS the combat system. Whiners already ruined the hack and slash part of it.

[EchoMan]

Want to prevent this? Get your town guard some crowbars.

Crowbar? In undeveloped islands we don't have iron yet, but pirates get a key and lock for free when building their boat. Not the solution nor the point.

Restrict the ownership of locks.

On boats coming to the village? Again this might work fine in the "old" areas but in the new lands, no. Staff here usually talks about getting more players to the new areas, if they're to stay for more than a very short time, issues like this needs to be dealt with.

This is a society simulator. Problems you faced should be solved in the society, not by coming in here and whining.

I am not whining. Although as soon as this subject comes up you seem overly defensive.

Programmatic changes can't be solved in society and that's why I brought up this discussion here.

My point is the utter sence of unrealism I get from two people (given awake at the same time) can "snatch" a person from under the nose of an arbitrary number of other people, and kill that person off pretty fast.

Maybe if first we eliminate the one hit a day rule, cut down tiredness caused by hitting others to like, 5%, lower the effect of tiredness on your character's production, and make it easier to build furniture to rest on... THEN we can make dragging harder.

Good suggestion. Especially the last part.

[Nick]

Crowbar? In undeveloped islands we don't have iron yet, but pirates get a key and lock for free when building their boat. Not the solution nor the point.

So an unorganised village next to the sea in a crime infested area might get pirated? I don't see any reason why this should not happen. If the criminals have better technology than you, don't blame the game mechanics that you're having troubles.

Restrict the ownership of locks.

On boats coming to the village? Again this might work fine in the "old" areas but in the new lands, no. Staff here usually talks about getting more players to the new areas, if they're to stay for more than a very short time, issues like this needs to be dealt with.

So again, a frontier town encounters problems with crime and this needs to be "dealt with" oocly? Nope, I'm afraid that's one of the problems some societies face. Why not build say, a dinghy or several. Dock to them and attack them, until they go off.

This is a society simulator. Problems you faced should be solved in the society, not by coming in here and whining.

I am not whining. Although as soon as this subject comes up you seem overly defensive.

Whether or not you were whining, many of the changes we've had to the game recently were due to whining. And I had to get "defensive" because some people were agreeing without debating the consequences, which I believe would be incredibly severe.

My point is the utter sence of unrealism I get from two people (given awake at the same time) can "snatch" a person from under the nose of an arbitrary number of other people, and kill that person off pretty fast.

Two people kill someone pretty fast? Pfft, not likely. Try it sometime. Not to mention if the kidnapee has any brains, they'll dock back to town and if the town is indeed so populated and better equipped, they can kill them.

Maybe if first we eliminate the one hit a day rule, cut down tiredness caused by hitting others to like, 5%, lower the effect of tiredness on your character's production, and make it easier to build furniture to rest on... THEN we can make dragging harder.

Good suggestion. Especially the last part.

Good, we agree on something.

[SekoETC]

You should be able to murder someone without having to drag and lock them up somewhere... When you cut someone's artery, they will very soon bleed to death even from a small wound. (Anyone seen Hannibal? He stabbed that guy in the groin and the victim barely felt any pain, but bled to death within seconds in the middle of a crowd and no one noticed.) Everything should be possible. Escaping from a locked room without a crowbar should be possible. Bleeding should be possible. Stopping someone from dragging should be possible. Stiffling a bleeding should be possible. CPR should be possible. Getting lucky sometimes should be possible. Cantr has barely any randomness. Even though the skills are random, they change very slowly and you do the same damage to animals every time, only altered by the weapon and opponent shielding. We need more room for mad chance.

[Lumin]

Among other things, if dragging takes a turn it will be completely impossible to do anything with thieves and petty criminals except chase them down the road and hack to them to pieces. That kind of society is already prolific enough...do we really want the game to do even more to encourage it?

It seems like your argument here is mainly about how pirates take advantage of the system, but a smart player is going to take advantage of ANY system (there's also way for people who worry about being dragged to prevent it, though if that's not taking advantage of one of Cantr's idiosyncrasies I don't know what is), and I think if you stopped and considered it from the point of view of the characters trying to keep order in a town you'd see that changing would cause all sorts of difficulties.

And not every person being dragged somewhere is having it done against their will. Characters are dragged into locked buildings to protect them during an emergency, and I see traders do it to their crew members all the time so they're not waiting around a week for everyone to wake up and get on board.

I think it probably should result in some tiredness, but nowhere near the insane levels combat causes. (Though honestly, subduing a struggling person would be more tiring than swinging a weapon, but Cantr is anything but realistic in this department...)

If fighting is first made feasible then I could see making dragging a little more difficult, but as Nick said, right now dragging has taken the place of effective combat. Nerf them both and there'd be no possibility of physical conflict and we'd all stand around in peace and harmony growing potatoes together.

[Nick]

Nerf them both and there'd be no possibility of physical conflict and we'd all stand around in peace and harmony growing potatoes together.

Easiest way to get rid of me from Cantr.

[saztronic]

Crowbar? In undeveloped islands we don't have iron yet, but pirates get a key and lock for free when building their boat. Not the solution nor the point.

So an unorganised village next to the sea in a crime infested area might get pirated? I don't see any reason why this should not happen. If the criminals have better technology than you, don't blame the game mechanics that you're having troubles.

The problem is, the criminals don't necessarily have better technology. All you need is 10 kilos of wood and a stone hammer and bingo, you have a lockable, mobile pirate ship against which a primitive town has very little defense.

Why do all vehicles automatically get locks, I guess is the point (are the lock and key made of wood?). The pirates don't have better technology, they're just exploiting game quirks that give them an unearned advantage over others. And so what, really?

We need more room for mad chance.

That's the essence of the complaint in this thread, IMO. Cantr has a certain structure, certain kinds of rules, that restrict and/or channel behavior in certain directions. The same is true of any game, whether it's a board game or an online RP setup. Tweaking those foundational parameters is best done cautiously, and over time, as many won't like the tweaks and the results can be unpredictable. Witness skill implementation and food changes.

I don't know if "mad chance" is the answer, because it's not easy to program mad chance. Do we have a table where every time I strike someone there are 100 possible results, from nicking them on the fingertip to eviscerating their femoral artery?

Difficult to imagine any kind of society fluorishing in that sort of environment, where a thief can escape by virtue of mad chance (only gets nicked when people attack) and the town leader can be assassinated by one fortuitous strike from a newspawn (arterial bleeding).

[Nick]

The problem is, the criminals don't necessarily have better technology. All you need is 10 kilos of wood and a stone hammer and bingo, you have a lockable, mobile pirate ship against which a primitive town has very little defense.

Why do all vehicles automatically get locks, I guess is the point (are the lock and key made of wood?). The pirates don't have better technology, they're just exploiting game quirks that give them an unearned advantage over others. And so what, really?

Why do they, you say? Simple. People complained in a topic similar to this that it was too easy to steal a boat. So then, the powers that be bended, and here we have a land of free locks on boats.

These things go both ways. Make it harder for people to pirate your town and it will be harder for you to catch them. Just give up this nonsense complaining, actually work towards making it realistic and fair (in the FAIR sense, not 'oh, my character died, it's so unfair').

As I believe, it shouldn't be the game mechanics that keep you from walking up to the town leader and killing him. It should be the reprocussions.

[Lumin]

Difficult to imagine any kind of society fluorishing in that sort of environment, where a thief can escape by virtue of mad chance (only gets nicked when people attack) and the town leader can be assassinated by one fortuitous strike from a newspawn (arterial bleeding).

You mean like our society?

@EchoMan - Dinghies, man. Like Nick said. Any town can build dinghies

[saztronic]

Difficult to imagine any kind of society fluorishing in that sort of environment, where a thief can escape by virtue of mad chance (only gets nicked when people attack) and the town leader can be assassinated by one fortuitous strike from a newspawn (arterial bleeding).

You mean like our society?

You think our society is flourishing?

Seriously, though, if Cantr was like real life, I wouldn't even bother.

As I believe, it shouldn't be the game mechanics that keep you from walking up to the town leader and killing him. It should be the reprocussions.

And what should they be, those repercussions? Certain capture, trial, and execution? That's no deterrent really. The death penalty doesn't deter murder in real society, after all, and the stakes are so much lower in a game.

No, the fact is that it's exactly because you can't assassinate someone with one blow in Cantr that the consequences of attacking them are so guaranteed. They're not going to die, and they will exact revenge, unless you are organized and coordinated with a group of people. It's the existing repercussions that prevent assassination now, insofar as they do.

[AoM]

I agree with what Nick has said. Although I have seen combat without dragging be very effectively done, dragging is still a large part of the combat system, especially in the case of large towns. I would prefer a combat system where the strength of arms mattered more than the number of locked places a person has to throw people in.

[Nick]

I would prefer a combat system where the strength of arms mattered more than the number of locked places a person has to throw people in.

Agreed entirely. Unfortunately many people seem to complain when their characters die, and blame it on bad mechanics.

This current system of combat, clearly based on how many locks you have at your disposal, heavily favors town leaders over people trying to overthrow them.

I'd say, two people with swords should be able to kill many unarmed people. Unfortunately unless they have a veichle or a locked building this is not the case.

[Nalaris]

[quote="EchoMan.[/quote]

Crowbar? In undeveloped islands we don't have iron yet, but pirates get a key and lock for free when building their boat. Not the solution nor the point.[/quote]

Since the indians were never taken advantage of by more developed societies.

[EchoMan]

@EchoMan - Dinghies, man. Like Nick said. Any town can build dinghies

Yeah, but in a undeveloped location on an island without wood it may take some time.