Number of players reaches all time low

[Otherside]

I might have to spawn some pure hatred...

And he/she would never be a cowardly small community destroying bastard pirate. You arseholes are destroying the player base, by the way...

[Majix]

Cantr is nearly dead. The aged characters dissuade innovation from the young ones. Sure, there are promotional opportunities in some towns, but old ideas have made this game lame. We need more conflict in cantr and I'm not talking about "oh he's mean so I don't talk to him". I'm talking full out towns that hate other towns. Rivalries and disputes between neighbors are all over the world. A society simulator with little conflict is unrealistic. Older characters have less conflict than younger characters. I'm not encouraging more killing, but people in this game need to stop wanting to be so friendly.

Lets end this idea that we need more hippy jamboree time.

I disagree. The reason I play this game is that it's not what you mention above.

[Otherside]

old ideas have made this game lame.

I agree to some extent... that some old factions that have already done all they can, and just sit, fat and getting fatter and doing nothing, need to change... but the ways are just carried on, with little to no innovation.

But also... the old factions were the ones that made the differences. A few towns united under the same banner were great... kidnappings, murders, defectors, wars... All USED to happen... And these factions were largely opt-in, opt-out. Everyone had the option to live in war or peace, or live protected...

But sometimes war found you anyway.

It was a more balanced game.

New land based faction... let's go!

[Uma]

I find the roleplay and society building/interaction to be the virtue of the game. Conflict can't be the core feature as long as the only way battle is done is stab-drag-drive. it makes the fighting so gimmicky as to make careful society planning and preparation almost moot.

Right now the game is a long term, slow character and society development simulator with a fast and brutal way to die with almost no prevention from a new spawn with a crowbar and luck.

[BosBaBe]

I personally agree that some conflict would be good, but ONLY if it can be rp-ed properly. Which if you think about it, is a bloody long-shot. A lot of people are lazy, and thus we have those bastards that waltz in, and hack people up without a word, then go on their merry way. But I can bet that a lot of them hop back on their ships/in their vehicles, and they'll start rping again. Or they are just trolls playing for the sake of getting a chance to kill others.

Then in terms of rp, there is the opportunity for people to OP their attacks. If you take rping a fight seriously, if someone deals 20 damage to you, but then claims they stab you in the chest/cut off your hand whatever, that's going to piss you off, because that could be fatal/stop you from fighting, but it's only 20 damage. I've never seen it happen because conflict is so rare, but I can say that would annoy the living hell out of me. Sure, it would be better than just people marching in and hacking without any rp at all, or very little, but it would still be a pain, and I'd most likely purposefully ignore such a thing.

But I don't think this is what's going to save the game. I agree that less characters would be a good idea. I made the huge mistake of making a ton of characters when I'd get bored, and it's resulted in a lot of sleepers. But my problem is I rarely find interesting rp. I have found some great characters to rp with (thank you to those players, seriously), and they are the only ones keeping me here. I have very little time left to actually play the game, but the time I do have, I spend it looking for more characters like the few I've found.

The game is different for everyone though, because many want different things from the game. It's when you don't find what you're looking for, that's when the game starts to become boring. We can do whatever we all want to the game, but it's not going to make everyone happy. What we want is too different. I think it's best we search for our desires in game, make conflicts ourselves if that's what we want. Put what time we have into less characters. And keep making suggestions. But it's never going to be perfect for everyone.

Ps. Yes, some things definitely need to change though, like old ideals, sleeper leaders ruling over their tons of resources, those kinds of issues. Factions would be great, nations, nationalities, that's the sort of stuff we should be looking for.

[Snowdrop]

if someone deals 20 damage to you, but then claims they stab you in the chest/cut off your hand whatever, that's going to piss you off

I believe that is actually highly frowned upon, isn't it? The attacker can rp where they're aiming for, but it's supposed to be left for the one being attacked to decide how much of an injury that 20 damage has caused.


As for conflict as a whole, some conflict is good and perhaps necessary...but not the murdering type - that's not what this game is supposed to be about. If the same players have too many characters that kill others too often, you're in danger of killing too many from the same players which only ends up putting them off the game, so they quit and the number of active players and therefore characters drop. Especially if you go about the killing in such a way as to kill the rp opportunities...it just makes it boring

[hyrle]

If you want to see what would happen if Cantr's community decided that murder-type conflict was the main driver - look no further than Hearth & Haven or Salem. Try being a new player in one of those games and you'll see quickly why such a community is terrible unless you're one of the "haves" lucky enough to have a lot of out-of-game friends and protection. The new guy trying to make it on his/her own has no chance in those games.

Instead, you have a large percentage of the population hiding behind walls in a city with a few stronger "always on" veterns relegated to gather and guard for the squishy crafters who serve only to spend all their time making the strong "always on" veterns stronger. These are truly games of the powerful 1% being served by the vast majority of players, rather than the more egalitarian opportunities available in Cantr. Try to strike out on your own in those games - and you'll likely get robbed, ganked, and game overed. (Those games are also permadeath open world games which take days and days and days to make miniscule advancements. Unlike Cantr, though, in H&H, you can easily be knocked out and robbed or killed one-on-one in combat by a stronger player. And combat is literally be all over in seconds.)

If you want to change the game, be ready to innovate. Innovation may bring conflict or dissent, but it might bring some interesting results as well. You can never know until you try!

[Swingerzetta]

Combat in Cantr is over in seconds, too... Unless it was sparked by RP, in which case it's a natural escalation of a verbal argument. But for mechanics-motivated combat (like piracy, or just collecting kills) you'll either be attacked and dragged into a locked room (game over, but you get to brood about it for a day or so) or if there are two agressors, with synchronized sleep schedules and coordinated timing, like in certain pirate attacks against certain coastal Fu towns, you'll likely die before the screen can even refresh.
So, in a conflict-laden version of Cantr, I can't imagine many new people would want to stick around.

[Auryn]

As for conflict as a whole, some conflict is good and perhaps necessary...but not the murdering type - that's not what this game is supposed to be about. If the same players have too many characters that kill others too often, you're in danger of killing too many from the same players which only ends up putting them off the game, so they quit and the number of active players and therefore characters drop. Especially if you go about the killing in such a way as to kill the rp opportunities...it just makes it boring

This. Exactly. I have seen way too many people leave just for this reason. No one likes logging on to see that their character was murdered while they were away. Or dragged into an impossible to escape situation, only to watch them die right in front of their eyes while there's nothing they can do.

If Cantr were a video game, it wouldn't go over well at all. Almost no conflict until reaching a "boss" character that can basically kill you in two hits and you only have a stick to defend yourself? That's no fun.

[Jaxon]

I'm not encouraging more killing, but people in this game need to stop wanting to be so friendly.

Lets end this idea that we need more hippy jamboree time.

For the record, I did NOT encourage more killing. I just want us to all get along a little less in game. Everytime I try to start a "bad" character people instantly rat me out and my guy gets thrown in jail.

[Doug R.]

You need to wrap your bad character in the trappings of a regular one to camouflage them. You can't go bad all at once, it needs to be done incrementally, so no one else notices.

[hyrle]

You need to wrap your bad character in the trappings of a regular one to camouflage them. You can't go bad all at once, it needs to be done incrementally, so no one else notices.

This. It works if done well.

[Doug R.]

You need to wrap your bad character in the trappings of a regular one to camouflage them. You can't go bad all at once, it needs to be done incrementally, so no one else notices.

This. It works if done well.

Perhaps this is why other charactes are so sensitive to "bad" characters - the "bad upon spawning" characteristic lacks depth. Shallow bad characters are much more likely to just murder and loot indiscriminantly, or it's perceived that they would. A character that evolves, slowly descends into villany, has depth, would be assumed to have a conscience. They may be conflicted, and they certainly are interesting. I think players are a lot more receptive to that.

So, it's not that people hate bad characters, it's that people are generally making the wrong kind of bad characters.

[saztronic]

You need to wrap your bad character in the trappings of a regular one to camouflage them. You can't go bad all at once, it needs to be done incrementally, so no one else notices.

This. It works if done well.

Perhaps this is why other charactes are so sensitive to "bad" characters - the "bad upon spawning" characteristic lacks depth. Shallow bad characters are much more likely to just murder and loot indiscriminantly, or it's perceived that they would. A character that evolves, slowly descends into villany, has depth, would be assumed to have a conscience. They may be conflicted, and they certainly are interesting. I think players are a lot more receptive to that.

So, it's not that people hate bad characters, it's that people are generally making the wrong kind of bad characters.

+1

It's hard to play villains well. Those that will last longer than a couple of years, I mean, and have some lasting impact.

The axiom is that villains don't see themselves as villains. They have reasons they do what they do. From their own internal viewpoint it's justified, consciously or unconsciously. Not to say that villains can't be driven by compulsions or a loose grip on reality, but there's still some internal framework or lens that makes this look natural or inevitable to them.

[SekoETC]

I've been wondering what if the drop in numbers is that in the past, the number was artificially higher by players who never logged in after getting their accounts accepted, but now the intro server is weeding out those players, so we see a drop on the main server.