Game changes - discussion about implemented changes.

[Wolfsong]

[Joshuamonkey]

Cantr has funds for advertising, just need someone to get things going. Right now I'm focused on so many other things, but there will definitely be more marketing in the future.

[miirkaelisaar]

The rot thing makes me really sad.. you don't have to resort to such a drastic measure, people are still gathering and trading and I don't see the reason for this. I have characters who wake every single day and processtons of materials, but they have 10 grams of emerald their fiance gave them years ago before he died, and they keep the emeralds as a memento, and you're telling me now that tiny bit of emeralds are going to rot, and my poor sailor can't keep his little handful of pearls he carries around to show and inspire young ones to travel? And my character who needs chromium and strawberries, and has to travel for years across Fu to get it, only has time to gather a handful of each and return home, and those things rot before he can get home if his trip is too long? The characters that have huge farms and all their helpers died but thank goodness they at least have a stock of hay in storage, that's gone now?

And how does this fix things? I am genuinely confused, having too much resource never seemed to hurt anything, if you make newspawns work right away because you can't afford to give them things, the player gets bored, they came to rp, not click one button and then wait three days for a project to finish to click another button and then after five days they have some pants, and maybe in 6 RL months their character will finally have a tiny boat to leave and have some actual adventures. Towns with the most wealth are most active right now, my characters with wealth literally give every thing away already and actively try to make new things with surplus material so it will all be used, they even have to force it on some people who won't accept gifts, even my poor characters give things away to try and keep newspawns active when they get agitated, but the people playing new characters seem to stop playing after one or two days without even trying, they just don't stay active, and it seems like it has nothing to do with how we use resources because plenty of my characters are already struggling to maintain resource stocks and food for their people, and ask people to work and gather things like this rot thing will enforce, and they all hate it and no one except sleepers get on the projects, and then those sleepers never wake again, being stuck on long gathering projects. Or worse they start a project themselves and ignore the ones you have for things you actually need, they fill up a resource slot and gather kilos and kilos of stone when you need food, and this won't change that for sure. I have all 15 character slots filled from primitive people fending for themselves in the wilderness to town leaders, and not one of mine will benefit from this implementation and most of them will suffer needlessly.

[Rocket Frog]

I think that some things should rot away, while others shouldn't.

Example: a pizza back from 10 years ago?... Ewwww... And it's still edible!! Yet, some emeralds should be eternal.

Making things rot away indiscriminately sounds silly. Rocks, metal ingots, clothes, and all those things, don't rot away. At least and specially if they are protected from the weather and the elements.

[Joshuamonkey]

Rot isn't intended to solve every problem, so an argument that it doesn't will always win.
Rot is on hold because we do need to think it through more and do it right, but I'd suggest thinking about how Cantr was when it first started. How is it possible that people enjoyed Cantr when there was relatively little?

not one of mine will benefit from this implementation and most of them will suffer needlessly.

Cantr’s mission is to foster creativity, learning, and communication in a world simulating the challenges of real life.

Making things rot away indiscriminately sounds silly. Rocks, metal ingots, clothes, and all those things, don't rot away. At least and specially if they are protected from the weather and the elements.

Indiscrimately, yes. Rot is dependent on the type of resources. But to me having no rot makes less sense than having all things rot over a long period of time. Life isn't like that. Even metal rusts. And in real life we have rent, bugs, etc.

While some would argue differently I don't think lack of rot is Cantr's main problem, but I do think it's an important way to stimulate an economy. Currently the economy is mostly about finding storages of resources.

[Chris]

Inflow and outflow of resources in/out of the game world are important, but they have to be fixed before a mass exodus. We just don't have the player base, and the characters are too spread out. Doing things takes far too long. The slowness of the game means that its death has been happening in slow motion, but it is truly dying.

[Slowness_Incarnate]

Oh not this rot talk again. Seriously. My opinion of it will never change.

[PaintedbyRoses]

As long as you're making changes, I'd like to make an argument for changing the rate of repair needed on tools, shields and weapons. It is much too high. IRL none of these things would require many hours of repair even after years of use if they are made of iron or steel.

My characters spend most of their time trying to keep these items from crumbling away because they are often precious and irreplaceable. This doesn't promote trade or interaction or attract new players. It's a boring and unreasonable chore. They can't even pursue an occupation because they don't have any free time.

I don't understand the rational behind making it take more hours to repair an item than it would take to build a new one. It just doesn't make sense. Sometimes the materials aren't available to build a new one.

Other ridiculous things:
~ Why does it take so long to cook something like scrambled eggs? In RL it takes one minute, in Cantr it takes hours. One hour would be more than enough.
~ The failure rate on lock breaking is much too high. This is also unrealistic to the point of boredom. Locks are actually really easy to break.

Why does Cantr sometimes strive to make things as much as possible like RL but other times it is so unrealistic (as with the repairs I ranted about above). I know there was originally some rational behind these things but I think they have proven to actually be unending chores which make the game very static and dull. I have plenty of endless boring chores to do in my own house. I don't need them in Cantr, too.

[Tiamo]

... Other ridiculous things:
~ Why does it take so long to cook something like scrambled eggs? In RL it takes one minute, in Cantr it takes hours. One hour would be more than enough. ...

Originally Cantr was set up in a way that no project would take less than a day to complete. On cooking this leads to some ridiculous results, like you mention. On the other hand: the same cooked food can be kept indefinitely, where it would rot (become inedible) within days irl. Seems like a nice tradeoff, since otherwise characters would have to spend an hour cooking their daily food every single day. That would really be a chore...

[Rocket Frog]

Making things rot away indiscriminately sounds silly. Rocks, metal ingots, clothes, and all those things, don't rot away. At least and specially if they are protected from the weather and the elements.

Indiscrimately, yes. Rot is dependent on the type of resources. But to me having no rot makes less sense than having all things rot over a long period of time. Life isn't like that. Even metal rusts. And in real life we have rent, bugs, etc.

But what happens to things like gold, emeralds, rubies, diamonds?... Those things don't rust away, and I swear that if you leave a bunch of bits or nuggets of any of those things over a table, for centuries, all you will find when you return would be a layer of dust covering them. No rot, no damage. No bugs eating them or anything like that.
In the other hand... Ships seem eternal at Cantr. Cars, bikes, motorbikes... None of them rust or rot away, or ever break. And more importantly: they require no materials to repair or maintain them. If you want to make things rot away, you could start by the vehicles. And buildings too!! Because, chaining things, I could say that there are no more virgin places at Cantr anymore. And I have been at quite remote spots already.

[witia1]

~ The failure rate on lock breaking is much too high. This is also unrealistic to the point of boredom. Locks are actually really easy to break

Some locks reqire quite an effort to break them irl.
And as we don't have few kinds they are kinda to resiliant.
But separating them info few kinds would not change much as then mostly best one would be used.

Another thing is that locks as part of "combat system". As they play quite important part when you can secure character from sudden attack.

[PaintedbyRoses]

I understand how important locks are and that it's a matter of chance but I still think the failure rate is too high. I brought this up before and it was explained that it isn't a 50-50 chance of breaking a lock as most players think. The failure rate is set so that a lock breaking effort is much more likely to fail than to succeed. This has resulted more than once that a character of mine who desperately needs to obtain say, a tandem bike, from a deserted town with 10 deserted bikes fails to break the lock 12 times in a row. That's just crazy and annoying. For half a year that character can't do anything else, must stop to cook food and is exposed to animal attacks and damage which just makes the lock breaking take longer.

If it's important to keep building locks secure to protect people (which I don't agree with but that's another issue that I'm not interested in arguing) then perhaps locks on land vehicles should be changed so that it's closer to a 50-50 chance of breaking them.

I don't know of any building or vehicle lock IRL that can't be opened pretty easily with a crowbar. The buildings in Cantr are primitive not high tech. Realistically, all that would be needed is to kick in the door.

Plus, there used to be lock picks which gave some advantage to poor characters who couldn't get crowbars. Now, all the advantage goes to relatively rich characters who go around breaking into all the abandoned bikes and buildings and taking all the goods.

I am always for the underdog in this game and I think it detracts considerably that most of the time they have to depend on handouts from richer players in order to be able to do anything except struggle to survive with a bone knife and bone shield. I like the struggle but I also think they should be able to get lucky once in a while.

[Rocket Frog]

And what if you add quality to things based on the crafter's skill and a factor of randomness? That would define how hard is for someone to go against it. In this case, the locks.

Lets say... Someone with a good quality crowbar has good chances against a poor quality lock; the opposite happens whith someone with a bad quality crowbar and against a good quality lock.

This could go with weapons and shields too. Also the user's skill.

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About the absurd time it takes to craft some things and to repair others, I totally agree. It really pulls people back. I have spent weeks only repairing the gear of one character.

I think that I would be ok with food rotting away if we can also get food being prepared and produced faster. Larger amounts, faster cooking.
And the rotting and rusting of vehicles. There are TONS of vehicles out there and tearing them apart is a full time job.

[ToxikCoffee]

And what if you add quality to things based on the crafter's skill and a factor of randomness? That would define how hard is for someone to go against it. In this case, the locks.

Lets say... Someone with a good quality crowbar has good chances against a poor quality lock; the opposite happens whith someone with a bad quality crowbar and against a good quality lock.

This could go with weapons and shields too. Also the user's skill.

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About the absurd time it takes to craft some things and to repair others, I totally agree. It really pulls people back. I have spent weeks only repairing the gear of one character.

I think that I would be ok with food rotting away if we can also get food being prepared and produced faster. Larger amounts, faster cooking.
And the rotting and rusting of vehicles. There are TONS of vehicles out there and tearing them apart is a full time job.

I love all of these ideas! +1

[Joshuamonkey]

I agree that some things should be faster, lock breaking being one of them. And combat changes like requiring time to attack and drag would make combat not so dependent on locks. And rot would make economics not so dependent on locks, as well as make increasing the speed for everything more reasonable or a good trade-off.

And what if you add quality to things based on the crafter's skill and a factor of randomness?

I also like this idea and there was discussion about it before (wish I knew where). The question is, how exactly would it be implemented? For now I put it as an idea in the Resources Department.