Cantr II Discussion Forum

"Won't somebody please think of the pirates?"

That's the funny headline I'd ironically envisioned while the decision to write this post was forming itself in the back of mindful mind. Really, how many times have you heard someone in the forum perk up and say a thing like-

"No. I am against that change. That would only hurt the pirates."

or-

"Absolutely not. Slavery would become impossible, so I am against those new changes."

Not too many, huh? But you sure hear and see the opposite a whole lot, and the entire development team is jumping out of their skin to protect our dear older characters, to cut down on wanton violence so that "RP" could take place, to hurriedly nerf items and weapons just because a dramatic event or two had unfolded in the game.

Why?

Are you guys on a mission to make Cantr safe for democracy or what? Pardon me, for RP. Of course I meant, for RP. It must be admitted, you are succeeding admirably. The combat aspect has been all but eradicated from the game. Your changes, cumulatively, have made the entire possibility of it impossible. Impossibly dull, impossibly expensive, impossibly pointless.

Consider what else you've made impossible and what else has been chucked out with the bathwater, whilst you consistently caved in more and more trying to make players happy by removing what makes them unhappy. When we got rid of combat, we also got rid of danger. When we got rid of danger, we got rid of honour. When we got rid of honour, we got rid of one of the pillars of true love between a man and a woman.

We got rid of hardship, experienced by characters together, which is the only fire that forges unbreakable friendships between men. We got rid of stories; I dare you to look at your bookshelf and dust off the classics - in each and every one you can see for yourself that the kernel of the story is disaster, suffering, misfortune, madness and wilderness. And it's always how the characters dealt with it that ultimately made them who they are.

Must start thinking about "the pirates" more. It is a Must. We have to give them something. Some soil to grow in. Something to be proud about, something to do and be. Out with this narrow, stupid box, where either you're "with the dollhouse", or you're "with the terrorists" and don't belong in Cantr.

Well, I love pirates ^.^ Thieves, murderers, all that. I love it >:D

I don't think the staffers are purposely trying to ruin them, though. It's just kind of making it a bit harder, I guess. Which makes sense, because only the best, most dedicated criminals should survive.

I have seen succesful pirates ingame. If you have problems with playing pirates there are possibly some other reasons?

And please stop assuming that there is just one opinion in Cantr staff.

In my personal opinion those who decide about suggestions do a very good job regarding the game balance. You have the right to disagree, but it doesn't seem to be the majority of players who share your opinion or support most of your suggestions.

Umm.... Actually, there are a -lot- of times that people say "no, I don't like this because it would swing things too much in favor of defenders." It's about finding a balance. If a suggestion is going to put too much sway toward one side then it gets denied or tweaked so that things at least have a chance of being fair.

I honestly can't tell whose side you're on most of the time, Cog. You've gotten upset when some of your suggestions were argued against because they would nerf pirates too much.

Cogliostro wrote: When we got rid of combat, we also got rid of danger.

The combat mechanism has been unchanged since the game was written. I have no idea what you're talking about. The only thing that changed was the introduction of skills to the mechanism.

Still swinging at this strawman?

You'll find, if you stop to listen, that most of the objections aren't against violence, they are in favor of the slow-based nature of cantr and in favor of RP'ing. It against, not violence in the broad sense, but against enabling instant, risk-free, RP-free violence that denies the victim the chance to take part and actually FEEL the danger.

You're imposing a false dichotomy on the conversation, that someone is either in favor of violence or a pacifist. There are more than two opinions, as it turns out. I reject both pacifism AND the narrow-minded, selfish sort of violence that only cares about the opportunity for role-play on the perpetrator's side. Instant violence is missing out on almost as much as pacifism - the interaction between the perpetrator and the victim.

So if you've read this far, you're ready to say "hey! I'm not some basement-dwelling pimpled dork compensating for getting picked in real life on by being a hyper-competitive douche on the internet! I reject instant, undefendable violence too!". Good. By the same token - not everyone who disagrees with your proposals is necessarily a pants-wetting, "can't we all just get along? - I brought marshmallows!" pacifist either. Find the nuance, and engage that, instead of running around poisoning wells.

The addition of tiredness nerfed combat. Before that, a person was able to hit a whole town without breaking a sweat and every victim had an equal chance of getting wounded. Two or three people working together could massacre whole towns. I hear there used to be sleeper swipes back before I joined the game. That active people would go on a killing spree and wipe out all the sleepers they knew of. Nowadays it's less common to kill sleepers, people just let them starve or wait for them to have a heart attack.

Thank you, Seko.
Combat was also adversely affected when weapons damage was scaled down, and when tea was disabled, and when dragging, ship docking rules were meddled with, and on the list goes. In every case, the needs of defenders were considered, while the needs of attackers were summarily ignored. It happened as though part of due process, after all, "Cantr isn't about hack'N'slash.", but was a giant mistake and we know that now for certain.

"La, la, everything is fine with combat, we don't know what you mean Cog" - are we getting to the point where maybe you could change your tune, guys?

Special mention goes out to RedQueen. Everyone, please do have a look at that piece of malicious vulgarity! I don't even mean the touching concern RedQueen exhibits about my pimples and dwelling. It's the parsimonious fashion of giving unsolicited advice that immediately betrays the prole. Thanks for the advice, "your majesty"!

Cogliostro wrote:but was a giant mistake and we know that now for certain.

We do? Or did you decide to move from false dichotomy on to post hoc ergo propter hoc?

There are still good, successful villains, Rau Naedell, Alyssa, and Xjira are/were all relatively successful ones that have been around after most or all of those changes. Most of the ones who do well tend to be more nuanced (I'm not sure villain truly even applies to all of them, say, Naedell), rather than ridiculous caricatures of "evil" like Lord of the Rings baddies or comic book villains.

Perhaps there's fewer pirates because the changes have raised the bar and took a lot of the really uninspired, crappy villains out of the running?

That, and as I mentioned before, ALL new organizations have struggled to get off the ground and attract members lately, and it isn't really shocking to think that new criminal organizations would struggle with that too.

Dear Queen, your comrade majesty. Don't you understand that it's completely irrelevant whether Cantr still has a handful of what you call villains (by which you really mean town leaders with heavyhanded policies, nothing more)?

Or that there are still players who struggle to play a seafaring pirate in Cantr? No, I agree, those players deserve mention, and perhaps a special medal for dedication to hopeless causes and their suicidal bravery... Only, as far as this discussion, it absolutely doesn't matter.

Niether does your wikipedia dictionary of informal logical fallacies. I think your majesty may be too dim to understand that if the logic is informal, then so is the fallacy! No matter what latin name it goes under, here it's all purely a matter of rhetorical taste.

As far as I'm concerned, all those "nerfs" only made piracy/evil more challenging in a positive way, which can give players more satisfaction when they succeed at it creatively. Piracy/evil does not need to run insipidly rampant because it's easy. It needs to be performed well and have true motive behind it (even if that motive is unadulterated insanity).

The situation that we would all prefer to have would be more like:
- pirates get a chance to win, influence of clickfesting minimized or eradicated
- townies get a chance to win, influence of clickfesting minimized or eradicated

It can't be that townies automatically get everything, and pirates get "to have a challenge" and encouragements to work on their true motives.

Cogliostro wrote:The situation that we would all prefer to have would be more like:

Oh really? Thank you for telling me what I want. Please, speak for yourself and not the humble masses.

Just what exactly is your big complaint here, Coglio, because I really don't feel like wasting another 10 minutes reading everything here to find out you just had a short-sighted epiphany.

Cogliostro wrote:Niether does your wikipedia dictionary of informal logical fallacies. I think your majesty may be too dim to understand that if the logic is informal, then so is the fallacy! No matter what latin name it goes under, here it's all purely a matter of rhetorical taste.

Oh, lovely, then when you get around to stating your argument using formal logic, I'll gladly point out where you went wrong there as well. A main function of informal logic is to categorize the common errors people make when stating arguments in natural language. If you're abandoning reason, then you're asking us to just accept that your intuitions and observations are somehow better than other peoples'.

If you sincerely believe that b occurring after a given a means that a caused b, then it is clear that the spawning of Fiona Dracos is what nerfed the pirates, obviously.

If you're only interested in empty rhetorical point-scoring, why should any of us care what you think?