On Having piles of Crap and Nothing to Do with It.

[Cogliostro]

Dear collectors and crap-hoarders, my fellow cantrians. Maybe you're getting bored with your collections of crap in Cantr, like many people. Hold on, I wanna say to you, hold on. Have patience. There are ways to make all that crap worth having again, and fun.

Previously and to some extent now as well, game staff have been dominated by an economist Idée fixe - "the only way to make something valuable is to make it scarce". That's why they work tirelessly to have item decay, building decay, vehicle decay, and now even clothes decay in Cantr. The only reason for this is ultimately to make the game fun. There's too much crap, they feel. So when crap becomes scarce over time, you have to make new crap yourself, and that, this idea goes, is the source of fun.

Well, we beg to differ. The source of fun in Cantr is certainly not endlessly making new crap, over and over again. Think about it. The fun comes from connecting with other characters (for example, with your broadsword). So in contrast to the above idea, we have a different one to put on the table: "the correct way to make something valuable in Cantr is to give players a social reason to want it".

If broadswords were of some use (game mechanic supported), or at least having one represented some kind of dangerous status symbol, then no matter how abundant, players would continue to want broadswords, making them valuable. Imagine a town of 3 people that has 33 broadswords. Sure, 30 of those will be ignored and locked away, but 3 will be used by players, enjoyed and cherished. That is, if broadswords were of some use. Currently, they are not.

It is not fun to make new broadswords, because wow, the old 33 we had, have all decayed away now. The fun is in what the broadsword means to other characters. And at the moment, it unfortunately means next to nothing. It gives no special abilities, powers, or reasons to be proud of oneself.

The same thing goes for piles of resources, tools, and curiosities. Currently they all don't have much of a meaning, and their fate is slow decay. The fate of the "lucky" player who owns them is even sadder - repairing all that crap so it doesn't fade away completely. The "broadswords" need to have a shot at meaningful use, let's think about it and give them their shot, instead of opening up the drain of decay more and more, and mindlessly sucking the items created by past generations out of Cantr.

[Oasis]

Not sure what special abilities or powers you want to bestow upon the holder of a broadsword, but I'm all for more items/tools/weapons having more uses. I am more interested, however, in having more crap to make with that crap. It's all 'been there made that' now, so when I want to make something special, there's very few new, interesting items. Give us more!!!

[curious]

I'm not sure what s/he means... 'ever'..! But, there s/he goes again with that 'we' shit.
This is surely just a misplaced suggestion?

[Hedgedhogst]

Yes, this post has indeed earned my first 'return to Cantr' post. I'd most definately like to state that the 'we' statement does NOT include myself.
I'm not about to start stamping my feet and crying until everyone turns into a riot-fuelled psychopath, but I'd love to throw my opinion into such an interesting statement.

First off, I feel that the decay system is not so much for keeping things scarce, the mere fact that a bone knife decays quickly enough and is thrown about by everyone gives me the impression that there's more to it than that.
Every tool and weapon I make, or trade, is treasured to me. I will repair and maintain them whenever I can, and I'll enjoy it.

Last time I was here, oddly enough, my favourite time passer was making the same thing over and over again, for the sake of trading, and helping newspawns. At one point, I had myself a nice collection of bronze tools which I randomly made for no reason. Later, a group passed through looking for a collection of cheap tools that they could use to get an abandoned town rebuilt. It was great fun. Without creating, building, repairing and maintaining, future generations would have to start from scratch with what we 'cannot be bothered to maintain'. I'd love to hand down a broadsword to someone in years to come, knowing that it's been through so many battles.

I remember passing through an abandoned town myself once, and as I arrived, there was a seemingly endless supply of bone tools scattered about, all on the verge of crumbling away. I imagined how busy the town may have been before, or what may have happened to them. Trying to picture who held these tools was quite fun... But I randomly decided to repair a few of them for a while.
A few people passed 'back through', as they put it... They were impressed with the fact that I'd chosen to give the pile of crumbs a bit of TLC. They chose to stay and help out a bit, and this triggered some amazing RP. They turned out to be awesome characters.

Almost every RP situation I found myself in, has come from working together to make a vehicle, or distributing tools and weapons to those in need... I'll never forget the 'TRC - Town Repair Campaign', where we all joined forces one day to repair one item each, to help maintin the productivity of our town, and its future.

My point is, unless you're hoping to turn that broadsword into a resurrection blade for my fallen comrades and loved ones, I'm quite happy for it to be simply an optional weapon that sits there and rots if I do nothing with it. My battleaxe has made fur for garments, clothing the needy. It's made bones for newspawn tools, helping them get started. It's saved me from wolves, kept me fed and protected me from looters.
Why could I possibly say that's not enough?
Well, that character died, the sword no doubt, is in the hands of someone else right now. I hope they know what it meant to me.

[RedQueen.exe]

I don't understand what you're arguing for at all. The situation that you think would fix the problem already exists:

If broadswords were of some use (game mechanic supported), or at least having one represented some kind of dangerous status symbol, then no matter how abundant, players would continue to want broadswords, making them valuable. Imagine a town of 3 people that has 33 broadswords. Sure, 30 of those will be ignored and locked away, but 3 will be used by players, enjoyed and cherished. That is, if broadswords were of some use. Currently, they are not.

They already do have use. And people do want to possess them, but once you have the one, all future broadswords are of no value, because having more than one is no better than having one.

You don't even really seem to understand the problem. The problem is that many chars already have all they could want, and often at a very young age, giving them nothing left to work for - and no sense of progression. I agree that nobody wants to keep rebuilding broadswords over and over, there's no progression in that either, but - if I understand correctly, the real point of decay is to make items and resources valuable enough that newspawns aren't just given all of the things that they would normally strive to EARN.

Having a lack of newspawns in active towns that actually feel like earning things is the best way to get items, instead of just waiting until they fall into wealth from becoming trusted, having the town leader die, etc, is quite possibly what makes it so difficult to stand up new organizations and groups that make the game interesting. Everyone just tries to go it alone. That may be why old and strict organizations like the Stone Knights and Blackrocks do so well. They aren't just going to up and dump wealth into the hands of a newspawn when a leader dies, and their strict rules make it hard for newspawns to go it alone in their lands.

[Doug R.]

I get the gist of Cogliostro's post. The point is that things need value above and beyond their resource and labor cost. I agree with this 100% The problem is, as Cogliostro pointed out so adeptly with his complete lack of a suggestion as to how to accomplish this, is that there's no obvious way to accomplish this!

What has value in the game, and why?

Crossbows/Claymores/Battleaxes - Extra value because they're the best weapons in the game.
Rakers/Galleons - Extra value because they're the best at what they do (speed/cargo)
Fighting/Strength Skill - Extra value because it makes killing/dragging easier.

Other unique items (sextant, telescope) - Extra value because they do unique things. (the tech spread for binoculars/telescope was implemented perfectly, imo; it is hard enough to make a telescope that making binoculars is still desirable and valuable, unlike weapons and ships, where if you have steel tech, you can and may as well build the best).

[RedQueen.exe]

(the tech spread for binoculars/telescope was implemented perfectly, imo; it is hard enough to make a telescope that making binoculars is still desirable and valuable, unlike weapons and ships, where if you have steel tech, you can and may as well build the best).

Agreed there. I've never understood why some cities build things like steel sabres, other than to maybe be able to give youngsters something while still leaving them room for progression. There's no real point in building the lower damage steel tech weapons, since having them does not reduce the time needed to have the best in any way. If it were possible to recycle them for resources to re-use to make better weapons, then maybe there would be a little more incentive to build the mid-range steel weapons.

[Doug R.]

Sabers have the best cost/damage ratio, and they can be built very quickly (or at least, that used to be the case before hilts and blades were made separate items). If you needed to arm a large force quickly, you built sabers. But as I said, this may no longer apply.

If we had two more levels of tech for tools, shields, and weapons, things would improve dramatically. Unfortunately, since the best is already being built, you have tons of "legacy crap" lying around that would make a change in the system ineffective. We'd need a reset to effectively add more tech levels without fudging the current system.

[SumBum]

I can understand the point, but if some "social significance" was given to broadswords, you're still going to have 33 of them laying around. If you want something to create RP then why not start a culture that reveres broadswords and there's your social status or whatever special meaning you want an item to possess. There's nothing stopping you from doing that now and no one needs a game mechanic programmed to accomplish it.

I'm not convinced that it's simply a matter of adding more uses for things that will help in the long run. What does one do when you run out of crap to make? A good answer is not: beg for more things to make. You add new things and eventually everyone will be making the exact complaints again. Don't get me wrong, I love having options and new stuff to build, but it is not a solution in itself.

Decay and consumption are good for Cantr...if done properly. Fuel was a hard adjustment but it forces people to go to places to obtain it. Repeatedly. It means more interaction, more commerce, -some- specialization and niche markets. Things that are nearly impossible to establish in other aspects. Even those towns that strictly prohibit resource gathering and force you to trade can just be bypassed by going to the next town with the same resources. And since resources are unlimited, you just load up a ton and haul it home to sit around until maybe you need it.

[Oasis]

I'm not convinced that it's simply a matter of adding more uses for things that will help in the long run. What does one do when you run out of crap to make? A good answer is not: beg for more things to make. You add new things and eventually everyone will be making the exact complaints again. Don't get me wrong, I love having options and new stuff to build, but it is not a solution in itself.

No, I agree, it is not a solution....it is a bandage to appease us while one is being figured out. Though bigger new things to make would appease us for a lot longer at least (trains). Actually, it does more than appease us, it helps those of us who have played for a long time and have made everything there is to make to ease our boredom with the game and keep us here. So yes, it is important to keep adding more.

As for a solution.......I think the biggest improvement would be to make the world smaller, either by map change or the building of trains and other faster modes of transport. Both, actually. The Cantr world is now so depopulated, so many abandoned towns, it has grown far larger than it used to be, in respect to how close trading partners, neighbors are, how many active traders there are, moving these resources around amongst all the characters has slowed proportionately to the slashing of population likely. Put the characters and towns closer together, it will make a world of difference.

Another absurd idea is to somehow make walking a lot faster than it currently is. Take a walk, kill the game for that character for possibly days or years looking for other people in some places.

[Cogliostro]

As an experiment, I decided to omit my own actual suggestions and let people discuss. Enough, for now, of being the clever jew at the antisemite convention.

The idea is very simple, but by no means obvious. I'm happy that veterans like Doug and Oasis instantly caught on that there's something there. In order to create social value, having items or resources must have social effects. That is something that the game mechanic in Cantr has hitherto completely avoided.

It was usually generically argued that devs cannot impose social effects via game rules, those effects must somehow create themselves out of nothing, as the game grows. The result is the well-known blandness, meaninglessness.

Why not think in this direction: if this restriction had been mentally put aside, how could you create a special power for someone who has 10, 20, or 30 broadswords? How could you create a special reward for someone who has 10,000g of diamonds, or wears the most expensive golden crown ever to be made? In every case there's no limit to inventiveness, but the principle basically stays the same throughout - giving items and resource collections powers that influence their social use/meaning in the gameplay.

[Doug R.]

Sounds like you want to introduce magic or something. I'm not going there. I want to infuse currently meaningless things with actual worth, not some arbitrary mechanic that automatically names you king or gives you healing power if you collect 10kilos of diamonds.

[SumBum]

Why not think in this direction: if this restriction had been mentally put aside, how could you create a special power for someone who has 10, 20, or 30 broadswords? How could you create a special reward for someone who has 10,000g of diamonds, or wears the most expensive golden crown ever to be made? In every case there's no limit to inventiveness, but the principle basically stays the same throughout - giving items and resource collections powers that influence their social use/meaning in the gameplay.

This sounds to me like encouraging the problem rather than finding a way to fix it. By giving chars something special for having mountains of resources, you're only giving them incentive to hoard. "Sorry, newspawn. I can't give you a wooden shield because if I collect 800 of them, I get a petrified wood shield +4. Never heard of it? Well, it's amazing and you should bow to my awesomeness. By the way, you might want to go sit inside since you don't have a shield - those animals are vicious."

[Oasis]

Hey, wait, I don't think I caught on to what you're going on about at all. I went off on my own tangent completely. No idea what we should do with the 30 broadswords or rooms full of resources other than let the charries figure it out in game. And creating more large endeavours to use the res on (like trains). I certainly don't agree with any kind of bonus given for having so much (totally unnatural to Cantr).

[Hedgedhogst]

As for a solution.......I think the biggest improvement would be to make the world smaller, either by map change or the building of trains and other faster modes of transport. Both, actually. The Cantr world is now so depopulated, so many abandoned towns, it has grown far larger than it used to be, in respect to how close trading partners, neighbors are, how many active traders there are, moving these resources around amongst all the characters has slowed proportionately to the slashing of population likely. Put the characters and towns closer together, it will make a world of difference.

Hey, wait, I don't think I caught on to what you're going on about at all. I went off on my own tangent completely. No idea what we should do with the 30 broadswords or rooms full of resources other than let the charries figure it out in game. And creating more large endeavours to use the res on (like trains). I certainly don't agree with any kind of bonus given for having so much (totally unnatural to Cantr).

Oasis, firstly, I missed you loads while I was gone. Just for that reason alone...

What you said made perfect sense to me, and was almost perfectly on topic in my eyes.
If there was more reason to travel to other towns/islands, such as knowing there might actually be a cantrian there, resources would start spreading out.
There's always one cantrian saying "Don't collect wood, we have plenty. Focus on hunting before we all starve" over here, and just over there a little is another Cantrian saying "We can't grow this town much because we have no wood to produce anything, just loads of this rice."
Travel is almost painfully slow, until characters have engine vehicles with fuel or 'the racing ship of ships' with masts and sails. By then, many of them are too old or too tired to want to become a traveling trader. Nearby runs for their hometown is usually fairplay, but it doesn't happen often enough.

Either faster transport of some kind, such as the train idea, or, smaller map... Well smaller map would be painful to handle, but perhaps overal faster travel times.

Dude, go find a town that doesn't have a radio or a natural source of food. Offer them your 30 broadswords for a pile of wood or mushrooms. Take that wood to the other end of the map, where everyone is crying out for a new ship, and hey presto. You're empty and adored by many. Let me know how long that takes.