Cantr Day 3000: Now & Then

[nitefyre]

With all this Cantr downage I've been hearing about, I decided now was a good time to return with 3 characters...just for a brief while to see where things have developed since...1697, or 620 for that matter. It's almost day 3000 now.

Some things off the bat:
-more sophisticated production processes/equipment (e.g. telescope)
-glutton of resources, vehicles and structures at certain locations ("power laws"?)
-knowledge proliferation: the impressive compilation of various maps and guides!
-many more animals
-overhearing whispers

Some grayer things:
-more kindness and generosity? --due to resource oversaturation, over production, lots of death inheritances, "social loneliness", and/or "active-town/role-play" goals for towns/players?
-roleplay is more standardized and uniformed

So, what else has changed? In gameplay, roleplay, and societal development? Is life easier?

I'm interested in the notion of historiography in Cantr beyond the naming of continents after famous explorers like Treefeather and Hobbes (cf Omeo). Also, are there any historian/librarian characters out there?

[CantrFreak]

I've tried a few historian characters, but nobody really keeps a written history. /:

But yeah.. things have gotten a lot more peaceful as the days went on. D: Cantr Isle has practically died..

[raspberrytea]

There are historian characters.

It's not only about written history, but also getting as much information from others as you can. A biased history, perhaps, but nevertheless a history.

[Doug R.]

I have two amateur historians, but their interest is very narrowed to specific groups or subjects. And interestingly, Hobbes island is almost never referred to as such IG anymore, and Treefeather is also losing out to the name Pok island. I think the former is due to the Black Atlas, but the latter due to OOC influence, since it's called Pok in the game database.

[CrashBlizz]

I had a charrie who made an extensive history of an area once. Charted its course over about 2000 days with names, dates, events and thoughts found from loads of other abandoned notes. Then he distributed copies in 8 or 9 different towns.

I've been back through the area recently and only found one copy left, right at the back of a rubbish envelope.

Seems nobody cares for history.

[Doug R.]

What ever happened to the rest of the Black Atlas? I have never seen anything but the map.

[SekoETC]

Yeah, I'd also like to know that. About anybody can write a map and it's always repeating the same information, but if you write about people and governments and companies, those things only exist for a while so there's something new to be learned.

[Lord_Igor]

A lot of the information in the Black atlas turned out to be dated and no longer relevant when I had a character who tried to use it to find some place interesting. That could be good reason to cut it.

Though, it's possible I'm misremembering and thinking of some other atlas.

[randognsac]

The Black Atlas is the only map I have found on Cantr Island that is worth owning. Mostly use it for geographical orientation. It's from almost 1500 days ago and it still stands up. Also I will never call Treefeather Island anything but.

[Genevieve]

I don't have a wide-spread of characters but from what I've seen:

There are less multi-town groupings that aren't considered part of the same "empire," and there are more empty spaces than ever.

People seem less organized rather than more and it feels like people are more inclined to go off on their own than stick together (but again, my characters aren't wide-spread so I can only speak for a few areas).

I do miss the glory days of the DHS and surrounding area VERY MUCH.

[Elros]

People seem less organized rather than more and it feels like people are more inclined to go off on their own than stick together...

I very much agree! The reason we don't see towns growing and working together with unique businesses and careers is because most characters are all out on a quest to become famous or get in a leadership position where they can have the spotlight on them. Very few are happy to just pick a job in a town (like cook, blacksmith, tailor) and work it for most of their life. In real life we have that, and it helps to form an actual growing and thriving economy where currency and government can be established. However, when you have all the characters trying to be the President instead of settling for the dedicated cook, your social structure falls apart...

[Genevieve]

My dedicated builder ended up thrown into turmoil, eventually a leader of the town (not by choice!) and then almost-murdered, before eventually killing himself, all alone in the middle of nowhere. LOL

Maybe that was a bad example

But yes, I agree -- lately, it seems my characters have fallen into leadership positions when all they want to do is ______ (xyz job).

[Doug R.]

It seems to me that there are four kinds of characters:

leaders
workers
Characters that hate where they are
Old characters whose players just aren't having fun with them anymore for whatever reason.

If I had to say, (in the English areas) the last two categories make up about 66% of the characters in the game (excluding the characters of people that sign up and never play, and this may be an underestimate). What's different between then and now is the proportion. Back then, the percentages were the same, but the characters numbers were scaled up. Every town had a notable leader and at least four workers. Yes, every town, but they also had ten sleepers.

However, it's not enough to blame our problems solely on the decline in the player base. One of the most common complaints among category three characters - (characters that hate where they are), is that it's TOO LOUD outside. It should be pointed out that coinciding with this decrease in players was a shift in Cantr itself from a simulation to a role-playing game. Do not think I am implying that the role-players are the cause of the player loss. I believe that given the increasing social problems caused by the drop in player numbers, it was the role-players that hung on. This is not surprising, since they play Cantr for different reasons than someone who is playing Cantr as a sim, reasons that wouldn't be necessarily stymied by a drop in players.

I think Cantr is in a painful transition state right now, but I think the declines in towns we see is actually a reflection of this transition, not because players are quitting. Indeed, the player base was at it's lowest before the town decline started. I think we are evolving back towards what Cantr was meant to be - a society simulator, but to do so requires the role-players to adjust their perspectives somewhat, a change that will take some time. I say that Cantr is evolving back into a society sim because we're seeing the decline and destruction of towns that are too small to support themselves. The pseudo-reality created by the characters of the role-players during the worst periods of player decline is finally collapsing under the harsh reality of simple economics. If your town has nothing to offer greater society, your town is inconsequential, and will therefore be a boring place to play a character.

As such, I think we are seeing a slow migration of characters into consequential towns, but this migration could be hastened by two things:

1) We need to make it easier for characters to filter out the noise in large towns. We can do this by implementing some of the discussed filtering mechanisms, and we can also do it by having our town leaders make an effort into making indoor work interesting. There is no such thing as small talk in Cantr, because the subjects of 99% of human small talk don't exist. This is indeed a challenge. I recently came across a regional newspaper from the early days of Cantr, and it was clear that the paper was meant to keep the indoor townsfolk informed of the goings on outside. This is a really good idea, and a subject of small (or more serious) talk.

2) We can formally implement a suicide mechanism. Characters in categories three and four contribute nothing to Cantr society. They stand around silently, often holding keys, forcing their towns into stagnation. If a player had the option to kill these characters without unsubbing their account or doing otherwise OOC things like self-mutilation or starvation, we could more quickly remove these characters and create newspawns that could fall into category 1 or 2 and make a contribution.

[gejyspa]

Thoughtful post, Doug. Let me ask you a question or two, since you have been here since time immemorial..

However, it's not enough to blame our problems solely on the decline in the player base. One of the most common complaints among category three characters - (characters that hate where they are), is that it's TOO LOUD outside. It should be pointed out that coinciding with this decrease in players was a shift in Cantr itself from a simulation to a role-playing game. Do not think I am implying that the role-players are the cause of the player loss. I believe that given the increasing social problems caused by the drop in player numbers, it was the role-players that hung on. This is not surprising, since they play Cantr for different reasons than someone who is playing Cantr as a sim, reasons that wouldn't be necessarily stymied by a drop in players.


I think Cantr is in a painful transition state right now, but I think the declines in towns we see is actually a reflection of this transition, not because players are quitting. Indeed, the player base was at it's lowest before the town decline started. I think we are evolving back towards what Cantr was meant to be - a society simulator, but to do so requires the role-players to adjust their perspectives somewhat, a change that will take some time. I say that Cantr is evolving back into a society sim because we're seeing the decline and destruction of towns that are too small to support themselves. The pseudo-reality created by the characters of the role-players during the worst periods of player decline is finally collapsing under the harsh reality of simple economics. If your town has nothing to offer greater society, your town is inconsequential, and will therefore be a boring place to play a character.

Question one: As one of those pesky roleplayers myself, I'm curious as to exactly what "sims" get out of Cantr. In my real life, I would, for example, put a load of laundry in the washer, go off and read a book or watch TV for an hour, move the load from the washer to the dryer, put in a new load in the washer, and repeat (in the subsequent cycles, "read/eatch TV" would be replaced by "putting away clean laundry"). This is exactly the equivalent of doing projects in Cantr. But none of it was "fun" in any way. It was just something that had to be done, like gathering blueberries, or building a stone hall. You can start the project, go off, come back, it would be done, and repeat.. no one even needed to learn your char's name...Where does the fun come in for "sims"? I'm not being sarcastic here, I'm really trying to find out what the fascination is.

Question two: what the heck is "Greater society"? Right now, both my chars are in towns of basically subsistence farming levels and AFAIK, don't have any active trading, say, with any other towns, and are only occasionally visited by outsiders... yet from my own POV, I wouldn't call either of there places "boring".

--gejyspa

[Indigo]

I was late, gejyspa. I was to say something like that.

I don't see where's the problem with RP and/or sim. In RL, as gejyspa said, there are moments for both things. You wake up, go to work, chatter with your mates... I -really- can't see why RP could not coexist with Sim. There's a time for everything. And, as in real life, there can be chars chatting a lot, and silent ones, which concentrate in their works...

And yes, I'm one of those "roleplayers". That's the reason I'm playing this game, and not another boring just "sim" game that are in each corner of the internet.