Skills

[rklenseth]

For example, how can it be realistic that you don't know if there is a combat skill for all weapons or individual skills for different types of weapons, or even all weapons?`
IRL it would be clear for anyone that although you are a great shot with a pistol you might not be as impressive with a sword...in Cantr you can't apply that logic, since matters like the programmers time to sit with the system or the servers ability to take care of such things may limit how advanced the combat skill is.

Ah, you went and changed what you said before I could reply.

If you real life you don't know if you are good with a pistol or a sword until you have actually used one. Once you used it you can say 'I'm pretty good at this' or 'I suck at this'. Or maybe you were simply lucky or unlucky and then believe you are good or you aren't. I'm not sure how the system works either but I hope that there are skills for different types of weapons but also a skill for combat alone as you suggested but the main point of keeping the system hidden is so that the 'number crunchers' don't abuse the system to benefit their characters as has happened in the past especially in the field of combat. There is still a rather slim possibility for one of these people to figure out the system (or at least think they have) but they can never truly know if they have because the system and how it works will still be hidden from them plus the random diviations will pretty much negate this since they can't calculate it as well as perhaps hide the system even more.

Also, I think many of the people who are complaining that the game is ruined are the 'number crunchers' (not you Pirog). They can no longer calculate things easily as they once were able to. And in my opinion the skill system will help the statgant economies in Cantr since now you can value of resources or objects on skills.

[Pirog]

If you real life you don't know if you are good with a pistol or a sword until you have actually used one. Once you used it you can say 'I'm pretty good at this' or 'I suck at this'. Or maybe you were simply lucky or unlucky and then believe you are good or you aren't.

Yes, I know...but that is not my point. I don't want to be able to see all values in Cantr. That would be disastrous.
But I do want to KNOW if there is a difference between training with a sabre and a crossbow for example. Not know how good I am, but to know if there is a difference. There is no realism or logic in keeping that hidden.

IRL it is also pretty obvious for you when you improve at a skill. There is no chance of missing that you are getting better at something. I don't know how obvious the improvement in Cantr will be, but from what I have seen I'm afraid that you would be able to miss it.

Also, I think many of the people who are complaining that the game is ruined are the 'number crunchers' (not you Pirog). They can no longer calculate things easily as they once were able to.

Yes, but I fear that is just for now. Number crunchers are always upset when they aren't in total control...but the system is new and I'm pretty sure that they will learn the improvement curve before others, simply because they find it funny to spend the time on observing such matters...and I don't think Cantr should be skill based on a player level.

[joshua johnson]

Okay, I couldn't stand it any more so I have to add my two cents.

Stop Complaining People!

First, if people want to spend hours doing documented observations and some funky math to figure out all the nuances of skills and tiredness and such, they probably will, and they might get slightly closer to an understanding than I will get by simple occassional observations. I know from what I have read that if my characters practice some stuff, they will probably get better at it, and I am cool with that. Ultimately, the fun of the game is not really in how fast your character can collect spinach or whatever. The fun is in the interaction, the events, and so on.

All these skills won't effect how well your character survives under an imperialistic dictatorship, like Lad was. It also won't affect your character's ability to try to get a banking transaction done in Quillanoi from sleepy bankers, or to run for president there. These things are affected by your characters interactions with others.

Truly, some of the posts others have made make it sound like our characters are at a sudden disadvantage. From my four or five months playing, characters that become "powerful", at least in their local area, seem to be just plain more active - and interactive with others. It has very little to do with their ability to win the local stone digging contest.

I will grant that the skills, tiredness and random damage could affect who wins a battle. I think it is all more realistic, however.

Here is some examples:
Skills: An excellent archer would be more likely to hit a person where they wanted, doing the amount of damage they wanted to, by hitting them in the chest area more often and missing less often for example. Also, in real life, a well trained martial artist could quite likely defeat a clutz with a sword. Why not here? Then that character would not need the weight of weapons. *wonders if weight affects aggression and defense* Regarding production, I see no reason why someone forging a steel weapon or constructing a building should be as good at it on the first try as they would be after making 100 of them. Tangent: I think it would be cool if the "quality" of the weapon, or the amount of damage it caused was affected by the skill of the manufacturer. Same for tools. Then there would be true specialization.... Rare swords would be famous, and certain manufacturers would get rich!

Tiredness:
A tired person has slower and less accurate reflexes and abilities. This is pretty self explanatory, I think, on why it should affect combat and why it should affect production.

Randomness:
How do you know when you shoot someone with an arrow, if you just hit them in the arm, which sucks for them, but is more painful than damaging, or if you shot them in the chest, through a main artery, which could kill them in one shot? Regarding production, sometimes the tomato patch has more tomatos, from better weather or whatever.

So, I am intrigued by everything, and my characters will rule Cantr without knowing all the math.

[Pirog]

joshua johnson>

I agree with a lot of what you are saying, but since I want some of my characters to specialize in certain areas I do think that small advantage that the number crunchers gets might be important.

Personally I don't want to know the fact so I can become more skilled at playing...but my character Silverfoot will want to strive to become the best warrior in the entire region, my tailor Michel Tennek will want to be able to do the most beautiful clothes (or working faster than others) etc.

So I'm not expressing a fear of losing the game, since it's not about winning...I just want to be able to groom my specialist characters for their sake.

And again...I don't see myself as complaining. I believe these changes will make Cantr a much better game...I'm simply trying to understand and give ideas of how you might improve the new features.

[joshua johnson]

Pirog,
Just wanted you to know that the previous post was not directed at you specifically, although as I look back now I do see that you were doing a LOT of the complaining Just kidding. I appreciate your comments.

Mostly the post was a response to stuff in multiple similar threads including this one. There seems to be a few of them going at once.

[Agar]

So I was watching some Rocky movie the other night. The one where he fights the russian. They're both training for the fight, getting in shape and what not.

There's the russian, hitting the sensor over and over, getting a scientific read on the force of his blow, everything getting analysed with each hit. "What he hits, he kills." - some scientist or soemthing.

Then theres Rocky, trains hitting by pummeling a frozen carcass. What's for dinner kids?

Anyway, one method of training worked better than the other. Did either of them know which was better? Was one trying to lose by useing the "bad" training method? No, they did what they could, did what they thought was best.

We don't need to know what to make skill better. Go do something, odds are, you'll get better at it.

And merchants worrying about making everything fair and even when dealing with unknowns, don't worry. Do business as usual. If it takes someong 4 days to get enough of something that costs 3 days of material, that's their tough luck. If you're doing your thing slower, keep doing it, you'll get better. Get the idea?

[kinvoya]

Wax on...Wax off

heh

[Pirog]

Agar>

The Rocky movies resemble Cantr in other ways too, like the amount of hits with your bare hands it takes to knock someone out

I see your point, but my beef is more about the general structure. That you in fact get better at fighting if punching carcasses or sensors isn't such a big difference...but would Rocky have won the fight if he put his practice time shooting a rifle at beer bottles?

[Agar]

I see your point, but my beef is more

Fruedian say what?

[Pürkel]

Cantr is a simulated world, is not real life. All your intuition and experience from RL is worth nothing if the programmers haven't programmed the simulated world to resemble the RL.
So, there are only 2 posibilities:

1. The simulated world's rules are different than the RL rules, what we would call counter-intuitive, in which case we have to learn the new rules. As I argued before, this is not a reasonable option, unless you have the same kind of interaction with the simulated world as with RL (live and breathe it).

2. The simulated world's rules are a subset of the RL rules, the intuitive ones, in which case you don't have to learn them, but you do need to know which subset this is. Otherwise you have false expectations that lead to frustration.

I think Cantr is a combination of both. We don't need numbers and formulas like tiredness increases with 2% per day of gathering carrots, but we need the broad rules, like you get tired when you walk (intuitive) and attacking people is more tiring than attacking animals (counter-intuitive - case 1). You may argue that "Of course you get tired when you walk", but this is not true. Unless the programmers wrote code for it, there is no "of course".

[Jos Elkink]

You're missing the fact that Cantr is not RL, it's a game. The big difference is that RL you live 24h per day, and you interact with it with 5 senses, whereas with Cantr you play 200 minutes per day (at the most) and interact with 1 sense (seeing).

This is an interesting point. Besides this I agree mostly with Richard, Missy, Joshua and others, but this is an interesting addition. So what I'm wondering is - would there be something possible to add to the Cantr interface that increases the number of senses? ... Like, other than just numerical representations of ones skills or something, which I will definitely not implement, are there more realistic ways of giving a character more clues about how he's doing?

And if some number crunches want to figure out the current system entirely, I wish them good luck ... I'm involved in serious statistical research in political science, so I know what would be involved to investigate this, and you'd better be rather good at it ... In other words, I'm not afraid many people will get much of an advantage trying to figure this all out numerically ...

Oh, and in addition to what Missy said about some people finding things out and telling others, IC: also note that it can be more long-term and less precise. E.g. two cities might train their armies in different ways and one might win more battles, so that more cities take over this method of training ... People can build up historical experience.

[rklenseth]

I think he is talking about the player only using 1 sense but if he isn't then I would like to point out that he is wrong. Our characters currently use 2 senses, seeing and hearing.

I'm not sure how one would implement this to benefit the new skill system but it would be a cool addition to Cantr to have your characters use more than sense. Perhaps if someone is dirty or large group of people are dirty than maybe an area will smell a certain way. Maybe you can smell people cooking meat or smell a fire. Maybe perfumes and stuff can be added to the game so that characters can wear it to make themselves smell nicer. Touching a but harder but maybe you can touch things and get a description of you are touching. Like you can look at a hemp tunic, so you see the size of it, what color, and its textures but you don't know how it feels, smells, or taste until you have committed those actions. So you touch the tunic and your senses determine that the tunic is rough feeling. You smell the tunic and it smells like it was just washed.

Something like that but I can't think of anyway to implement that into the game as far as the new skill system goes.

[Pürkel]

What's missing is the reflection of the internal state of a character in his actions. This could greatly increase the realism of the game. For example, when someone is tired or wounded, you could see them <b>struggling</b> with the work.
This applies to skills too: "you see X <b>skillfully</b> hitting a cow with a knife" or "you see Y <b>clumsily</b> working on a longbow".

Looking at things would also be nice. Just as you can look at people and get a description of what you see, you could look at things and get a description. Maybe you should also touch it, smell it, taste it, listen for what kind of sounds it makes.

In the events page, there could also be events for the other senses. Currently you see people doing things and you hear them speaking and knocking on doors. Maybe you can feel someone toching you, or smell smoke in the air. Text for an event could be colored in a certain color depending on the sense being affected.

Finally, the use of progress bars for the new health system was not such a good idea. Much better would've been textual descriptions, like "you're tired" or "he looks exausted", "he is severly/slightly wounded", etc.

[formerly known as hf]

Finally, the use of progress bars for the new health system was not such a good idea. Much better would've been textual descriptions, like "you're tired" or "he looks exausted", "he is severly/slightly wounded", etc.

I like that idea... I like that a lot...

I can't remember who said this in another post somehwhere (sorry however it was...) but, IRL, there are no bars floating over people's heads, no 'skill level' in a bubble... but, if someone is badly injured or really tired.. you can pick up on that quite easily, 'cos you can see it...

I think this is one for the suggestions...

[wietse]

What's missing is the reflection of the internal state of a character in his actions. This could greatly increase the realism of the game. For example, when someone is tired or wounded, you could see them struggling with the work.
This applies to skills too: "you see X skillfully hitting a cow with a knife" or "you see Y clumsily working on a longbow".

Finally, the use of progress bars for the new health system was not such a good idea. Much better would've been textual descriptions, like "you're tired" or "he looks exausted", "he is severly/slightly wounded", etc.

I mostly agree with purkel and pirog.
And i do think skills will improve the game. but the way they seem to be completely hidden is no good in my eyes. I think purkel has some very good ideas here to improve the visiblity of skills without actually showing what exactly those skills are. (if that's not what people want).


I still do think the game needs to a better explanation about what kind of skills to expect. As purkel en pirog said the game is not always as logical as it may seem to the programmer or as intuitive. To me these skill feel a bit as i have no control at all over them, but maybe i will learn in time.

I think the use of progress bars is a grafficaly improvemend of the percentages. It is still an percentage. I think general descriptions would be much better. That way you not only give a number to things, but also a real value. for example if i do 60 damage, well ok i do 60 damage, but is this a lot, what does this mean. If it says i do a lot of damage, that would be vaguer in a way, but much clearer in another way.

Also if its says i am at 70% hunger, well ok... i dont know how it feels to be 70% hungry. It would mean much more if i was not hungry, a bit hungry, or very hungry.


Jos also said some things about societys developing skills in different ways.

I am sure this is very interesting to watch from the outside as Jos does. And use this information for his political studies. And of course he programmed the game, so ill give him that. But to me it means almost nothing. With the current pace of the game it takes such a long time for societies to meet i'll not notice. and when something interesting does happen i will probably get hit on the head or trade some stones with them, and that's it.

I am, and some of my characters are much more interested in the small mechanics of the game, such as how much stones can i collect. Some people may thing this is not what the game is about, but to me, it is an important part, next to roleplaying of course. (and to watch societys develop is also cool, but not on a worldwide scale, i wont notice that).
some may see it that way, but i dont see myself as a number cruncher. yes i have character who caculates everything, but that's because he is a buisnessman and wants to make a profit.

And what is wrong with number crunchers? i thing nothing. I think you no need to discourage number crunching by making the game mechanics so complex so they will never find out. There is no need to discourage number crunching in any way, if the rules that are programmed put limits on the use or misuse of it (like the limits on violence)

oh, and this is all constructive critism, not to be taken as whining.