Maximum number of resource gatherers

[Nick]

No, Cantr is friggin great as it is. I don't want it to change just to appeal to more people.

And hell, I'm in the Marketing Dept.

[formerly known as hf]

I'm not asking it to change just to attract more people - but more consideration given to how changes might affect the enjoyment of potential and existing players (although I know that is something that's thought about)

[PRUT]

Small CONCLUSION for all who got lost with all the debate:


LAND SCARCITY is like a CAKE, when too many people want to eat it.

All talks are about how to solve the problem of too small cake.
People has different ideas which I will try to show:


SYSTEM BASED ON GATHERERS

In current system and any other which is based on slots, the solution is not to allow everybody to eat the Cake. Only chosen ones can seat near the table and eat. The size of the Cake depends of what kind of tools they are using and hob big apetite they have. One thing is sure:
If you are allowed to eat, you can eat as much as you can, if not - you cannot eat at all


SYSTEM BASED ON RESOURCES

KeVes suggested that everybody can eat the cake, no one is better or worse! But the grater the number of people who want to eat, the smaller will be the part of Cake for each. So, in this case you can eat as much, as others let you to eat. If You are better with eating or have better tools, you eat faster than others and more than others.

My suggestion is similar to KeVes. The only difference is that in his system the Cake can be bigger or smaller dependigly of eaters apethite. I disagree with that and I think that the Cake has a constant size.

[Jos Elkink]

It is my impression that Cantr was created as a society simulator. I'm a lot newer to Cantr than many of the people here, with less knowledge of the beginnings, and of course Jos knows better than anybody, but I read that Jos and his friends started the original Cantr, in Lego, more for the purpose of watching characters live their lives, and the society they formed do its stuff, than for the purpose of causing the characters they controlled to succeed, and thus succeed themselves, as their players.

That, I think, is the central difference between an MMORPG and a society simulator.
In a society simulator, you, the player, look in on the world. You watch the characters live their lives, unaware that they live in a world that is contructed by the programmers and the players. You play your character or characters not as extensions of yourself, but as independent beings who need to be told what they're supposed to do. You might root for your characters' success, but your characters' success is not necessarily yours, and vice versa; a death in style is as good as eternal fame and riches, as far as the player is concerned. That's why you can't use your OOC knowledge for the success of your characters; that would be an empty success.
In an MMORPG, the player is part of the world. You play your character (almost always restricted to one) as an extension of yourself. Your character exists as a vehicle for you to immerse yourself in another world. Your character's desires are your own. If your character does well, you win. If your character fails, it's your loss.

I came for the power, I stayed for the society

Wow! I'm impressed ... I could never have worded it like this, never even thought about it in this way, but I totally agree ...

I think the challenges created for the characters should create the fun, try to find ways to improve their lives rather than just building and building and ..., but also a great part of the fun comes from observing and watching how their lives develop. I've had nice characters die in battle and just enjoyed the whole episode. Or I lost elections I really wanted to win, but still enjoyed it ...

Well, anyway, I think someone should add Sho's quote to the Wiki about the basics of the game ...

[KVZ]

In real world I can estimate potential of the place. Some islands now are being under exploration and people are looking for places to found new cities. Some of my characters are exploring places where no one has been before. How can I choose right place do live I don't know its limits?

I agree. Limits should be visible before exceeding.

EUREKA If you realy want to determine how much in total can be gathered, why not give compromise solution, f.e. there could be a limit of total amount of resources can be gathered in any area and it would work like thet every resource will have daily gathering value mulipled by factor and result of every gathering will give the same factor, to make this more clear:
there is a factor 20 in any location, and then:
it is possible to gather 8000 of carrots/day, or 15000 of stone/day, or 4000 of carrots and 7500 of stone, with all possible combinations.

Yes, reading the above discussion, my mind was already going into this direction. Harder to implement, but definitely worth considering. I have to think about it. Your arguments for why this should be implemented are very good, though, and at least well in line with the basic idea of Cantr

Thanks I hope that this suggestion will be implemented soon in any form.

If you look at how states developed, it's basically land owners becoming more and more powerful, eventually developing in kings, and eventually being overthrown by a communist or democratic regime. In other words, it all began with the land owners. In Cantr there is no such thing, and I think there should be.

Well, there was govs with taxes or which have control on many locations even before slots were implemented.

We could, for example, increase all resource gathering rates or something like that, or make characters walk faster, or ... well, there might be different solutions other than removing or reducing land scarcity.

Increasing all resource gathering rates will have almost the same global effect like incrasing number of slots, but it would allow those who are not affected by them to gather more. But if my suggestion would be implemented and all slot/factor capacity will be increased then all gatherers will be benefited. Making chars walk faster will make trade more profitable and chars will like to travel more often. Best soulution is to add walking skill, so those with good walking skill will give more potential to others. There should be also harvesters for grains like for rice, carrots and potatoes. And why some harvesters can't be universal for more then one resource with possibility to select which resource they have to gather? So, one harvester would gather rice and wheat too if both of them are in one location.

- Now it is easy to organize the way of using slots
- City can decide which material is more important.
- You have "x" slots, and you know that it would be nice to have "x" experts in the city.

Other sugestions are going to complicate situation.

Now it is easier to gov to "organize" because they have to stop only those which using slots, but they don't have to stop all possible out of limit gatherers. In my suggestion city can still decide which material is more important. If my suggestion will be implemented in this easier variant (which will not affect skills and tools that much giving them possibility to exceed the limit) then you would still know that there is nice to have "x" experts in the city. My suggestion will complicate life of governing ones but it will make life less complicated to normal chars.

"Limits suck" is not a rational argument.

I have not said this. I said "this implementation of land scarcity suxx", but I gived another reasonable suggestion how this should be implemented.

So now we have two things to fix up:
1. Identifying characters who drag other chars.
2. Disallow project removal when any character is engaged into it.

And a sugestion of mine - maybe it is reasonable to limit maximum number of repetitions?

I totally agree with all three ... perhaps you should add them to Flyspray? Or better, implement them?

I agree with them too, but I would add one more:
Possibility to drag someone away from his project without dragging him to the building. It should be allowed to stop someone from work even when there are no buildings to lock them and without killing them. Locking and killing should be used only for recidivists. And sometime people with keys to buildings are alsleep and there are no opened buidings and when dragging a lot of people buildings will get full, so it is needed to drag them away from the building again, so it is a lot of work... And those annoying errors when draging

To my knowledge they are not bound to a certain resource but the amount of resource gatherers is the combined amount of all the people working on resource collection, be that farming, mining, fishing or so on. I think it should be divided a bit, and hey, how about counting only the number of active projects, instead of the workers? That would increase cooperation because you could still join someone else's project even if you can't work on your own. You'd just have to ask them to share.

But where is reality in this? This would be not land scarcity, but project scarcity. My idea is more realistic and nice

Yes, because the staff secretly plots to make the game worse so no one will play.

Really? Say me more about this

a man in his twenties says: "Hi, I'm a Peter Pan, a newspawn!!! "
You see a man in his twenties die from hunger.
You say: "Our repair shop is always looking for fine lads like yourself, Peter Pan. We pay 100g potatos a day. OOC: Aw, forget it, I'm too late logging in again..."

Well, in my suggestion newspawn will have possibility to "steal" some food even if there is overpopulation, so his chances for survive will be bigger.

My suggestion is similar to KeVes. The only difference is that in his system the Cake can be bigger or smaller dependigly of eaters apethite. I disagree with that and I think that the Cake has a constant size.

In your suggestion there are many types of cakes for each resource, and in mine there is only one cake, but everyone can select which part of cake he can consume