Things that annoy or puzzle you about Cantr

[Cdls]

Right now I'm really annoying because that char is starving. *Grumblegrumblegrumble.*

Don't let it starve, please!!! Please, please, pretty please with sugar on top!!

Um, what?

I wanted to say really annoyED... But, yes, I'm a bit annoying too. But I don't want it to die

4 day rule and all that....

[saztronic]

All towns being of about equal size (and quite small) is generally boring because there would be very little variation in what the towns would look like.

The size of towns is not their only distinguishing characteristic. They can have several different configurations of topography, geography, access to water, resources, connections to other locations, etc. It seems weird to claim that if towns had equal population size they would have very little variation. If you took a set of towns in the game today that all have four characters -- would they all be the same? I doubt it... I imagine there would be quite a diversity.

It is bad for gameplay because all those small towns will not have the manpower to become more advanced (technologically AND organisationwise) and maintain this higher level over a longer period.

Characters are mobile. As you yourself pointed out in another post, they move from place to place. They can concentrate in towns, and aggregate the manpower required to advance technologically. In fact, if towns were forced to recruit, we'd have far fewer large towns where people spawn often, but find the environment stagnant, frustrating, difficult to get ahead, etc. Why should the leaders of such towns try to entice others to their locations? A newspawn is bound to come along soon anyway, so why bother. Talk about bad for gameplay...

...no one wants a new player (we still get those occasionally right?) to land their first characters in tiny towns populated only by two or three sleepers, surrounded by locations with more of the same...

Wouldn't it be easy to solve this by ensuring that for new players, different spawning rules would apply for, say, their first four characters? So they would be more likely to spawn in populated places. After that, it's up for grabs.

...and actually new or not, that would suck for pretty much anybody. There are waaay too many huge empty areas in the game as it is, even if the entire world were limited only to Fu, evenly spreading people out like that would just be a bad idea and it would take RL years before you could collect enough interested people (who were not also played by you) to build an actual functioning town.

there are way too many locations in the game (more than there are characters at the moment, i suspect).

These essentially make the same point. There are too many locations in the game. So making spawning random would spread people out too far. Ergo, we can't change the spawning system.

But there are two variables in play here.

Why does Fu exist? It's not just massive, it's unnecessarily massive, and massively unnecessary. Removing Fu from the game would solve the problem that Marian and Tiamo are getting at above, and then you could change the spawning rules. You'd have Cantr, Treefeather, Burgeo, Shai, Noniwrok, and Haven/Sanctum, plus all the other language islands. I'm sure people are having fun on Fu, yay for them, but can anybody argue that Fu is actually necessary to the game with the size of the player base we have currently?

Changing the way spawning works is not mathematically undesirable, unless you posit that the ridiculous number of locations currently in the game -- as Tiamo points out, more (and probably far more, by my count) than characters actually exist -- is sacred and Must Not Be Changed.

[Marian]

Why does Fu exist? It's not just massive, it's unnecessarily massive, and massively unnecessary. Removing Fu from the game would solve the problem that Marian and Tiamo are getting at above, and then you could change the spawning rules. You'd have Cantr, Treefeather, Burgeo, Shai, Noniwrok, and Haven/Sanctum, plus all the other language islands. I'm sure people are having fun on Fu, yay for them, but can anybody argue that Fu is actually necessary to the game with the size of the player base we have currently?

I've said it many times, I'd love nothing more than to see that entire continent dropped to the bottom of the ocean, the game world is just waaaay too huge for the tiny handful of players we have, but that's about as likely as the game getting a full reset. (ie: never ever gonna happen)

[Vega]

Right now I'm really annoying because that char is starving. *Grumblegrumblegrumble.*

Don't let it starve, please!!! Please, please, pretty please with sugar on top!!

Um, what?

I wanted to say really annoyED... But, yes, I'm a bit annoying too. But I don't want it to die

4 day rule and all that....

Not that I'm saying which char is that char and, to be honest, there are a looot of chars starving right now... But awwww, lots of awws....

[SekoETC]

Fu is fun to explore if you have a vehicle and a good shield. Not all people want to sit around in towns having a doll's tea party. Some people like exploring, and I think it's a good thing that there are still areas that haven't been mapped.

[Marian]

Fu is fun to explore if you have a vehicle and a good shield. Not all people want to sit around in towns having a doll's tea party. Some people like exploring, and I think it's a good thing that there are still areas that haven't been mapped.

So all human interaction is considered a doll's tea party now? My how that term has evolved...

And there would still be plenty of empty locations regardless, even without Fu the world is still too big for the playerbase.

[paskud]

<3 Fu

[Marian]

The vast trackless wilderness is no place for emo anime girls in ridiculous hats.

Anyway, I have two characters exploring Cantr Island right now, that's enough empty wasteland for me. It's amazing all the major historical events that took place there and now everyone is gone, I feel like an archaeologist or something.

[paskud]

Oh, so I have to take all my characters from that bad place!

[Slowness_Incarnate]

2000 rice = 800 vegetable feed. Ugh. Losing more than half of the rice, AND the animals eat it up like crazy.

[saztronic]

Fu is fun to explore if you have a vehicle and a good shield. Not all people want to sit around in towns having a doll's tea party. Some people like exploring, and I think it's a good thing that there are still areas that haven't been mapped.

Far enough, and exploring is fun. I've had a character on Fu, wandered, lived alone for decades. I enjoyed it.

But I was around when Fu was added to the game... 3000 days ago or whatever. And in all that time, as far as I know, no one has managed to map it. And some have tried. It's just that big.

And that's fine.

But why not make Fu a spawn-free zone? Let it be an explorer's paradise, the vast, untracked, untrackable wilderness of the Cantr world. Just exclude it from possible spawning locations, so that those who want to explore it have to, you know, actually explore - sail to get there, plan ahead with the resources they'll need for vehicles, put together an expedition party if you want, whatever... like going to Antarctica.

But don't tell me that because of the thousands of locations on Fu we can't possibly change the spawning system, and that the current spawning system is the best possible one for the game. That makes no sense and from my perspective at least, is patently untrue.

[Snickie]

Well there are a few towns on Fu that are settled. We can't deny them their newspawns, can we?

Why is nobody complaining about Pangaea? Isn't it similar to Fu in that it's vast and underpopulated?

[Doug R.]

Fu's like 3x bigger.

[Snickie]

It's still huge and underpopulated, though, right? One-third the size of Fu is still pretty big considering how massive Fu is.

[Chroma Key]

Pangea is a great island with (mostly) great people. If I had any knowledge on mapping, between another map maker, the existing maps and my char, most of it would have been mapped by now. Actually, a good portion of it is mapped already.