Cantr II Discussion Forum

To stay in line with what I posted as the rules in the thread 'biggest problem', I'll start a separate thread to reply ... Btw, the post I'm replying to totally ignored all those rules , but alas. They're there for a reason, though ...

Black Canyon wrote:So.... my short answer is that we do not have enough players.

I agree - but that's why the thread in the first place ...

Black Canyon wrote:Our attempts to make cantr more realistic may have resulted in a reduction in "fun factor".

I really think there is kind of a major misunderstanding here in terms of the goals of this game . To be absolutely sure: this game is designed to be fun, not to be realistic! Priority #1 is fun. When you go too unrealistic, it is sometimes damaging to the extent to which you can imagine things. It's not a sci-fi game, but one in a more or less realistic setting. So we want to take realism into account. But all the changes in recent years were not for realism purposes, but for fun purposes. And yes, some or most of them have perhaps failed in that regard, which is what I'm trying to solve, but that's still the main purpose.

But I should also clarify another thing: a game in which you can produce as much as you want, in which you do not need to cooperate, in which there is no challenge setting up a new town, in which attacking is easy ... that is not a fun game to me. No challenge means no fun. So the rules are there to attempt to get a fair balance to keep the game interesting. To make sure that to be rich or powerful, you need cunning and patience, etc., while it should still be possible for newer players to get a stake in the game.

Anyway, I don't want to start yet another long debate on the use/disuse of those new features - there are many already - but just wanted to really clarify the purpose of those changes. All were created for game reasons; none for realism reasons.

Black Canyon wrote:If life becomes too tedious and mundane and mired down in the details that make our real lives a struggle.... what is the point? If the fun is too hard to find, who is going to wait around for it...especially as a brand new player?

I totally see your point, though - just wanted to make sure there is no misunderstanding about motivation.

Black Canyon wrote:Perhaps the question should be asked if the combination or changes..... repair rates, increased food requirements, town and road amnesia, skills, and tiredness have resulted in an imbalance of difficulty versus fun factor.

Yeah, you might well be right on that one. The question is, how to rebalance, without destroying the game.

To be sure, even in our lego game, which predated Cantr, we had the same problem. Sometimes things were too easy (e.g. we had a lot of our own chars quickly group together to commit a coup and succeeded - that's how the non-grouping role was born), but then when we added some rules, sometimes the game became really annoying (the whole administration of gas use etc. just because you moved a lego car became very frustrating!). So this is always tricky balancing.

skills are not too bad i don't think they have caused any harm, food requirements took some getting used to but are not too bad. repiars well i think those need tinkering, and amnesia? well that may have lost a few that started before it happened, those who are still in and those who start up shouldn't be effected too much now it's what we pay for dynamic naming of towns, as for the idea of building amnesia i would warn against it cuz that would be brutal, signs are good to be able to change what everyone sees and dynamic naming still but more amnesia i think would be bad. tiredness isn't too bad from what i see as the only thing that really effects it drastically is fighting which was necessary to stop massacres and make people co-operate more to run the sand red

One man's fun is another mans boring...

Some people want their characters to write sonnets and form a rich cultural heritage, some want to lead an build empires, some to engage in murder and piracy.

This game is great and being wide open and giving opportunites for all these and some more but I do wonder if it is just impossible to 'be all things to all men' and thus the game fails some people at different times.....

We can't all have active players around us at the times we want, without removing the randomness and anonymity of cantr.

We can't have instant weaponry for newspawns without devaluing them and any work that goes into weapons.

We can't have amazing graphics and free roaming and still hope to maintain the game as a simple, easy to load text based game...

I hope you understand where I am coming from...

My fun factor is interacting with other characters. I have enough fun with 4 of my characters to make up for all the fun I'm not having with my other 7. Perhaps I'm not normal in being able to maintain those 7, but I do have occasional enjoyable moments (usually in accomplishing a long term goal).

I think the drop in "fun factor" is mostly due to the fact that it is harder and harder to meet a well played character. Any game can become routine and dull after a while, even one as open ended and flexible as Cantr. After while, many players will have sampled all the character types they can think of, build every tool they ever cared to, seen every type of location....it can be routine. Compound that with the time constraints of real life as one ages (I really need to write a thesis sometime), it is understandable for people to drop off and fade away.


But in order for the Cantrian population to survive, we need proper turnover. For every quality roleplayer/simulator we have drop out, we need to replace them with at least one quality roleplayer/simulator. This is not happening. I feel that the marketing has focused on bringing any old schlub with an internet connection to the game, which is nice and all, but we could probably use a bit more focus in our efforts to seel the game.

If we don't boost our number of good roleplayers, we will drown in 13 year old hack and slashers....


As more and more vehicles appear, I think the world will effectively begin to shrink again. I have been noticing this in certain areas of the old English islands where dirtbikes are becoming a more common site. The two day bike ride is being replaced with the two tick motorcycle ride, which makes it easier to move goods and information. All is not lost on that front.

I truly believe that with the implementation of air travel, we will be able to see regular and rapid traffic between Cantr and Pok islands and even to K. It will just take a bit of work to make it happen.

If we don't boost our number of good roleplayers, we will drown in 13 year old hack and slashers....

Aren't 20 or 30 year old hack and slashers just as bad as 13 year old ones?

Excuse, that I interfere, but, in my opinion, this theme is not so actual.

Posts about how all the new players are crap RPers are a big part of a problem...

Who want to start playing a game, come to the forum and have a bunch of squabbling geeks who cry when things happen to the characters tell them they are not good enough...

Fortunately I had been playing for a couple of months before I discovered the forum and the wikki, otherwise I would have been discouraged and left, feeling I wasn't good enough for this exclusive group.

Mykey wrote:Hack and slashers make the RP

You're so right!
"lol this game rules"
"*he frowns* He must be speaking in tounge. What is this 'lol' you speak of? And.. what game? Let's throw him in a prison and make him work 'cause he's crazy. "

Not all new players are crap roleplayers. I don't want it to sound that way. There is still the occassional new guy that comes in and brings something awesome to the table. I will throw Diego out as an example. Relatively new, but he seemed to immediately "get it" from everything I have seen.

And not like I am trying to encourage conformity. Conformity is what we don't need and not what we are expecting. It takes skill to get a character that is quirky and unique without being over the top.

And the fact that people assume when "we" are talking about roleplayers vs. hack and slashers, that we are trying to boot violence from the game. What we do want to avoid is an army of men in their twenties, wearing nothing worth mentioning, carrying three iron shields, two claymores, a crossbow, and 15 kilos of onions, posting "im bord" then hacking through 15 character followed by "u been p0wn3d lol". We would also like to avoid "hay bbz get yer b00bz owt! hoo wantz 2 get layd?" and the other variants on the theme

Contrary to popular opinion, the technical staff has not tried to delete the presence of violence in the game. We do want to keep it in its place, and unfotunately it has gone overboard in that effort. It is difficult to figure out how to get a colorful combat system worked into a slow-paced game. I compare it to trying to store a popsicle and soup in the same thermos.

The problem comes when two players of this caliber leave for every one that joins. That is attrition. Trouble is, where do we find those new players?

Wow, wichita, well put!! Both posts. Most or less what I'm thinking as well - we clearly envision a very similar game in our ideal picture .

Phalynx wrote:Some people want their characters to write sonnets and form a rich cultural heritage, some want to lead an build empires, some to engage in murder and piracy.

I very well see your point, Phalynx, and I agree - it is impossible to please all - but just one thing I'm wondering: how can cultural heritage be interesting if there is no violence/strife/conflict/etc. involved? The cultural heritage of the battles of who made the nicest tea that morning?

Dozens of war games have been made which people love, and the closer to realism they get in the area of combat tactics/fighting styles the better they get (in general, the realistic levels of blood and guts are utterly unnecesarry).

Cantr can take something from this. In reality, locked doors are not the weapon of choice. In real war there is strength in numbers. In real war an organized army can defeat an unorganized mob ten times their size. In real war tactics are worth a thousand men.

The only other rule of combat is already in Cantr: equipment. Superior equipment is the fourth key to victory. Organization is meaningless in Cantr, and unless we all decide to make huge, labyrinth like rooms then ambushes are going to be difficult. Even then, they can leave the second they enter. Other tactics (charges, spearwall, etc.) are impossible. And strength in numbers doesn't really mean anything, because locks and cloak-and-dagger tactics easily defeat attrition.

EDIT: I also had an interesting conversation with my girlfriend... yes, we are this bad... about why government in Cantr won't work. Aside from the fact that large-scale democracy is extremely hard to do with the Cantr setup - just from the nature of the game - most governments lack greed. Altruistic, rights-for-everyone types. They work on individual towns, but the reason you don't see economies sprawling is caused somewhat by a lack of artificial scarcity. Example: Karnon did all that work to get TBR off of K-isle and liberate Karnon Forest from those hematite-restricting tyrants, and all Karnon is getting out of it is dying generals and a lackluster town fueled by Page Zahan's RP. It doesn't make sense in Cantr or in RL that Karnon would liberate Karnon Forest for the sole purpose of liberating it, even after seeing that they're being dusted over. Everyone can get hematite, so nobody really cares what Karnon thinks, and thus they don't have the power they had before the war. By winning the war, they lost influence over the isle. Call it a bad decision by Vernes, but this sort of thing happens everywhere. Karnon was the biggest example I could think of. Nobody seems to want to be powerful... they just want to be. This was pretty long-winded... I hope it made sense.

I didn't know where to reply to that but I was sure it wasn't in Jos' main post. I Just want to say that I totally agree with that. Look at Krif/Drojf/SF that place is laughable. They been talking about doing something for fifteen years about Mary, instead they just decide they'll travel out of area to get the materials. Got councillors bowing down to MacGregors all in the name of trade/travelling away rather than have to deal with them.

However, I think you're wrong. It's not that nobody want's to be powerful. (I wrote a post last night and by the time I tried to post it my log-in to the forum timed out and so I lost everything. I'll re-write it later.)

Jos Elkink wrote: I'm wondering: how can cultural heritage be interesting if there is no violence/strife/conflict/etc. involved? The cultural heritage of the battles of who made the nicest tea that morning?

You've been to Dorykisom then??

More seriously people like Leonardo Da Vinci seemed to wander round doing their stuff irrespective of conflict around them and who was paying them. Culture seems to grow and become important because of conflict, but I'd go as far to say that at times culture leads to conflcit, and while it is influenced and changed by the expereince of conflict this often leads to reinforcement or polarisation of cultural things.

Heck who am I kidding - you have forgotten more than I know on this subject. But Cantrian locations rarely have much in the way of culture and where it exists it is resting in a library or in someone's inventory. Culture sometimes seems restricted as to whose army/clan/police force you belong to...

Nalaris wrote:Cantr can take something from this. In reality, locked doors are not the weapon of choice. In real war there is strength in numbers. In real war an organized army can defeat an unorganized mob ten times their size. In real war tactics are worth a thousand men.

You obviously did not have a character involved in the TBR vs. Everyone else on K-Island war. That was nothing but tactics. They just aren't real world tactics.

What is nearly impossible in game that I would like to see is for an army to be overwhelmed by an ill equipped mob ten times its size. I want to see the "Zulus" slaughter the "British" and that is not going to happen with what we have now.

Nalaris wrote:The only other rule of combat is already in Cantr: equipment. Superior equipment is the fourth key to victory.

This was the reason combat skill and the shield chages were put into place, so that an iron shield did not yield immediate blockage of everything weaker than a sabre, and claymores do not always do 50% damage. Equipment needed to be neutrailized a but better. Mykey calls it nerf. I call it adding chocolate syrup to the vanilla ice cream. Problem is that it was a bit overcompensated.

Nalaris wrote:Organization is meaningless in Cantr, and unless we all decide to make huge, labyrinth like rooms then ambushes are going to be difficult.

You apparently never had a character killed by the Barons either. The best military strategists I have ever seen in game there. I had two characters killed in the open, no dragging behind locked doors. It was all done with cooperation and activity.

Nalaris wrote:Even then, they can leave the second they enter. Other tactics (charges, spearwall, etc.) are impossible. And strength in numbers doesn't really mean anything, because locks and cloak-and-dagger tactics easily defeat attrition.

I think you are mostly right here. The reason that strength in numbers won't work is because the laws of probability are going to prclude getting 10 players with bone spears online at the same time to take down a single iron shield wielding soldier.

It is going to be unpopular, but the best way to fix this situation is to make combat project based. Combat tactics will move to a more medieval format, lining up in ranks and throwing the largest number of guys possible at each other as long as they can hop on the project in time, but we will get more combat happening.