Biggest problem in Cantr

[deadboy]

I know I'm not meant to comment but I need to give a new player a hand

You can break off tasks by going to projects and pressing the cross button, and, say you want to collect 400 potatoes you would do it for 8 x 0.4 hours, which is 3.2 hours, so you cannot collect that much, but you can collect a little less or a little more than that. Also, choosing spawn points would create many potential CRB's, and the reason why there are no laws to be read anywhere around the site is so that people can create their own IG, which adds to the RP, oh, and not being able to die would make the game very bad indeed. Also, you shall find that the game does has many interesting ways to be different, and not just make the same boring things, for example, be a poet, be a sailor, find a new island and create your own sets of laws and morals, instead of sheep racing have bets on how fast they will spawn, become a town leader by manipulating people.... the long and short of it is that there are hundreds of ways that you can be original, instead of following what others do.

[the_antisocial_hermit]

Hello everybody. There seems to be discussion about why new players go away, so since I am a new player, I thought I'd best share my experiences. So here is my first Cantr post. Apologies - as you'll find if I stick around - my posts are always too long!

First off, welcome and nice post to begin with in the forums for a different POV. Spawning during a crash (which they don't happen often at all really) would really suck, but I'm glad you stuck around and didn't just give the game the boot for that.

But I have to keep farming potatoes!

Nah, ya don't. You can cancel it if it's at 0% and you can just stop doing it if you want and leave an unfinished project out there. (:o blasphemy, I know!) Though they have been working on ways to cancel some projects and get the resources you put into them back.

- better indication of time. I find the times confusing. The funny-length days and hours I can cope with. But the time it takes to do a task is, to me, unclear. So I can get 1000 potatoes in a day. How long will it take me to get 400? Can't I just say "farm potatoes for 5 hours" and see how much I get using the "1000 in a day" as a guide?

If you get 1600g of potatoes in a day, you divide it by 8 because there are 8 hrs in a day. That means you can get approximately 200g a Cantr hour. This is assuming you're char has an average (efficient) skill in farming. If the char is novice or awkward, it will probably be less, and if the char is skillful or expert, it will probably be more. If you want how many you can get in a real hour, divide the 200 by 3. That at least gives you a benchmark for what your char may get. You still have to adjust per char. You'll find out quickly that there's a lot of math in this game.

2) "Slow game" - I hear this voiced a lot in this thread
I don't actually think it's too slow. I think the problem is there is not enough to react with. For example, ways to keep it at the same speed but stimulate me more are:

A lot of reaction will have to come from stimuli you create as well as other chars (other players). It is hard and slow sometimes in that respect, especially in some places.

3) Fear of death.
I have read that I can be beaten up and be killed. If I do that, I lose every bit of my character that I've spent hours building up. I lose all my contacts in the game that my character knows. I lose the things I've made, found, stolen. In short, my months of effort can be totally lost by someone bigger than me killing me. This worries me.
- investment - how much time do I really want to put in to role-playing a character if he can get killed tomorrow and I have to start again?
- starting again - anyone who has worked on an essay and had the computer crash and not been saving as they went along - how hard is it to start again when you know you've already put in the time and effort once? It's very hard.
So fear of death makes me unwilling to get too involved, and it concerns me that if my character dies, I will lose everything.

I do understand your sentiments, but getting killed by another char is not so very common as you may fear. It's not easy to kill someone in the game. Usually you need two or three chars (depending on their fighting skill) or two or three days or more by yourself to kill off even just one char. It takes a lot of organization to be able to kill chars easily (or a locked building).

4) Reliance on your spawning area.
I can't choose my birthplace. First time I was spawned, I basically talked to myself for two days. Only one person spoke to me, and they then left down a path soon after. Was really boring in a game that should have roleplay. Second time I was spawned, three people all said hello, told me their names, gave me a knife, and helped me farm some food. They interacted with me. This makes all the difference. With text saying that "do anything wrong as a newbie and they'll kill you", it's really annoying if your first words are "does anyone mind if I farm here, and can I take one of the bone clubs that are lying here?" and no-one answers...
The problem would be less if travelling was easier due to
- indication of how long it would take me to travel somewhere
- whether or not I'm going to be killed for trespassing in someone else's precious area (this comes back to (3) )

This just differs greatly from place to place as it relies on other players and how/when they want to play their chars. The slowness of interaction is based on that too. There's not a lot that can be done to change that.

Edit:
Which brings me to one thought I have on what one of the biggest problems is (and maybe it's repeating it) to keep on topic: Players. There aren't enough players that try to stimulate other players through their chars; they just sit and farm or ignore anything at all, but you know they're not asleep all the time or they'd be dead by now. (I'm sure I'm probably guilty of this too.)

[juxtapoz]

I am new to Cantr. Only been here a couple weeks. However, from the perspective of a mudder with years of experience, I really was struck by these two forum posts:

wichita:
> On top of the number of players decreasing, the
> density of quality players is declining even more
> markedly.

javacougar:
> I continue to be amazed at how many newspawns stick
> around if they are simply spoken to in the first
> couple hours of their lives. I think that the odds
> of a character sticking out the first few weeks is
> directly related to how many people interact directly
> with that person in their first day or two.

Summary: The population density of effective "newbie-friendly" players is low.

This particular newbie has seen of some of your competition (other successful free text-based rpgs), and can testify that there tends to be more player emphasis on being newbie-friendly. Cantr may be more than cool, but these days, given the emphasis of other popular games upon helping newbies, it faces difficult competition.

There's no substitute for players showing off their gameplay, so that people who give the game a casual glance will say, "Wow, that's the game for me!".

THE SOLUTION:

Staff needs to establish some mechanism that will put active player-helpers in touch with newbies. In the absense of more encouragement, the existing set of players will not take it upon themselves. Forget about your past playerbase; this one will not do it.

It's no mystery what other games have done. There are many options.

It's easy to sit around waiting and hoping. There will be problems with every option. Some players will complain. Staffers with other irons in the fire will complain. Doesn't matter. Pick an option that most closely fits your style and do it.


to javacougar:
Your post was high impact. The silence had me wondering about how I was coming across. It's a relief to know that silence is not unusual - it's not just me. Things will work out fine as I run into the right players.

[Wilmer Bordonado]

THE SOLUTION:

Staff needs to establish some mechanism that will put active player-helpers in touch with newbies. In the absense of more encouragement, the existing set of players will not take it upon themselves. Forget about your past playerbase; this one will not do it.

It's no mystery what other games have done. There are many options.

It's not a bad idea from the start, but are you suggesting NPC's?

Actually, town leaders or their collaborators play the roles of helpers for newbies. Or they might do. Just because every city or town is willing to get any extra man power which is on the roads. That's the way it works: a silly newbie could be your best collaborator in a couple of years...

NPC's are not too bad, but how do you supposed it could be implemented, since a NPC shouldn't have any other job to do than teach newbies to play? What I mean, a NPC character could be set for every expert player to guide the new ones, but that NPC should have that exclusive job to do -he could not gather any resource and not collaborate on any activity- So it would be a certain free-obligation for those who are "expert" on Cantr II.

Certainly, I'm not against this idea, but it would depend on how many number of players are able and wish to do that, and, of course, on the creation of a new Dept.

Wilmer B.

[Marian]

Hi juxtapoz, nice to see another new player on the forum, seems to be a trend lately.

As for your idea of 'player-helpers', I don't think that would work out in the actual game since it sounds pretty OOC, but I think that would be nice if we could find the volunteers to hang out on the chat and the forums. (even though it's pretty simple to get answers on the forum as it...can't really speak for the chat of course, I never hang out there.)

There is supposed to be a kind of 'newbie island' in the works though, that everyone can have one character on (for new accounts in would be their first) so that might be close to what your thinking of.

At least I hope no one's planning on performing a hostile takeover and enslaving everyone there. No one else, anyway...

EDIT: And Wilmer, I don't think he's talking about NPCs (no way we could have those!) but players whose 'job' it is to help newbies. I don't think that would really work either, because obviously you can't treat a character differently because there player is new, but some kind of 'help line' on the chat would probably be good. (I guess we already have that on the forums in General Support...)

Also, you have a good point about a lot of town leaders being natural 'newbie helpers' anyway. Like I said in another thread, a lot of my chars I'm always on the lookout for new people and would be happy to reward them just for being awake and sticking around, though of course there's only so much you can do when they're being morons and breaking laws and the like...

[juxtapoz]

Thanks for the welcome.

I'm a newbie, and it's way too soon for me to be making any specific recommendation with regard to Cantr gameplay. Surely staffers are aware of the incredible variety of concrete steps that have been taken in other successful games - even in those where all gameplay is "In Character".

My main point is that staff should actually do something to get the right players involved with newbies. If I understand correctly, that experienced players have seen the same thing I have seen, then regardless of past success, simply waiting may be a mistake.

[Joshuamonkey]

Really long posts are hard to read...but I"m good at skimming!

[Lokar]

There isn't one problem, there are three and they include skills, repairs and the road naming change. All three, I am capable to endure, but others are not and if I had to choose one in particular to get rid of it would be repairs, but I'd say it's all three that scared so many people away, having made the game hard for both new and old players on the same level.

i agree with this completely, with the new building repair idea, its going to come down to us only ever repairing, the game is going to get so boring that people will stop coming to play, for instance, i had difficulties a while back with my chars, my account was completely wiped out, me not having anythign to do with it, i shrugged it off and started new ones, and then these uprgrades, or so you are calling them started appearing, i was slightly excited to see what new things we were going to be able to do, then i heard about having to repair and that steel and iron tools and weapons would take longer to repair, so if for instance your char has a few steel weapons, most of their life will be doing repairs, and then just recently i heard about these buildings and vehicules and how well need to repair them as well, if it comes to that and all im ever doing is repairing, im most likely going to quit the game as i dont enjoy doing repairs at all, it takes away from the things that actually matter, like feeding yourself, so that being said i hope something is going to be done about this because i enjoy this game and wounldt want to have to quit

[Sekar]

One problem I'm seeing is that people, not just newspawns, always have their own agenda, and aren't willing to work towards anothers goal. This causes problems especially in certain regions where population is low. I have several characters right now who work for someone who can offer them nothing. My hope is that later on the person their working for will have the ability to offer more thanks to my characters support of there goals. We need more people willing to support anothers goal then people who come up with their own goals. There are even certain people who expect to be paid equal to what they give in exchange for working for someone. In cantr, and the real world, that won't happen. You do more then you recieve, that is the reality of the real world..and also the reality of cantr.

[Jos Elkink]

Lokar, building repair has been implemented, not building deterioration. The latter might be implemented at some point, but I'm not really sure that would be a good idea yet. So I'm in no rush doing so.

What I do want to implement is building destruction, but that would be a conscious act by a character, not an automatic thing.

[Sekar]

Another major problem I'm seeing..that should be prevented, is alot of in-game references to the real world. I can't think of an example right now, but I've seen alot. References to various movies, books, celebrities, that sorta thing. There continuing to increase.

[rklenseth]

I think the biggest problem in Cantr is the combat system but then again I've been saying this for years and have been shot down every time so I don't know why I bother.

[rklenseth]

Another major problem I'm seeing..that should be prevented, is alot of in-game references to the real world. I can't think of an example right now, but I've seen alot. References to various movies, books, celebrities, that sorta thing. There continuing to increase.

You're never going to really be able to stop that. As long as it kept to borrowing names for character or building, etc... I don't think there is much harm in it. Although Cantr does risk being sued by the owners of the trademarks it is very unlikely that they'll do this and the only way they'll ever know is if they actually play the game.

[Surly]

Okay, okay... one point:

The game isn't fun. We frequently sacrifice enjoyment for realism, and new players come into a game where game mechanics wipe out any potential fun the game had.

[Phalynx]

But first some rules for this thread, otherwise it becomes useless:
1) Post only one post in this thread per person, and put only one sentence summarizing the main problem;
2) Do not respond to others or start a discussion - if you want to respond, start a new thread;
3) Be as clear as you can what exactly the problem is - just one word like 'skills' will not explain much (but still in one sentence, though );
4) Do not hesitate to repeat what others said - I want to get an indication whether it's one or many people thinking this;
5) Post only one problem - which one is for you the most important?
... Thanks .