Cantr II Discussion Forum

I was reading about criteria for getting games reviewed, and one of the articles said that if they don't see something engaging in the first five minutes, they move onto the next game. That was about video games, ones that need installation, so browser games are something different, and persistent browser games even more different. I was wondering if people who join Cantr generally make the decision about continuing to play or to leave in 5 minutes. That would explain why so many people never log in after the first time.

So do you remember what it was like when you first started playing Cantr?

I started with two characters. My first character picked up probably everything on the ground, started burying a dead body, got bored when it didn't progress in real time and left down a road. There was no wiki back then, so there was no explanation of ticks happening every three hours.

My second character spawned in Pak, which was full of roleplayers at the time. My character had a background story but no one complained about that. At first I just observed and watched people have a mud fight, which I found entertaining. I also felt obliged to state that I had to go offline. Fortunately no one complained that it's unnecessary to say that. In some other games it's common courtesy. Then after a few days, this character also decided to go exploring. A couple of people followed him, one wanted to give him a shield but couldn't because they were on foot. Then another one followed them and said some drama was happening, so they had to turn back. My character traveled alone and later met some other people. He had a long list of items he would want to get, including a hide scraper for making a hide cloak. The hide scraper used iron to make. It was around the time when iron could still be found in leftover gathering projects in the locations where it used to exist as a natural resource. There's no longer hide cloaks in the game because they got removed long ago.

Some conclusions: A newbie has no concept of how valuable things are, until explained ingame. Also, things have a nominal value but actually cost less to the people possessing them and giving them away for a reduced fee or for free, because Cantr has masses of items left behind by the dead. I doubt Cantr economy could even function if every character lived for decades and demanded a certain level of luxury. There seem to be two kinds of towns, ones that give things readily to newspawns, and ones that make them earn everything for the standard price. I don't remember seeing many places where it's something in between, where prices would be reduced because most of the items were produced by previously deceased people.

Edit: Also one time someone wrote to support that this game sucks because you haven't even implemented a button to leave a vehicle. So somehow his character had gotten inside a vehicle and couldn't for the life of him figure out how to get out.

I don't remember my second character at all, strangely. It was called Wiro and I have no memories of it at all. I know he lived for three Cantr years before dying, I assume killed for theft. I stole a lot back then, especially resources I didn't recognize. I never planned ahead until one day someone offered to buy some of my stolen apples. It was the weirdest thing ever, to receive iron for some dumb apples.

My first and third characters I both remember well, though. One was English and the other Dutch, they both died when I quit, in my mass suicide 600 days after I started playing so that means they survived throughout the entire time I played back then. I knew about the game and was able to play along rather well because of that. I didn't understand most things and while I never really asked many questions OOC, I do remember occasionally saying something friendly in OOC (which I would hate now). All in all it went well but only because I did the research.

Because of this post I went back to the very first logs I have, and I remembered the feeling immediately. Why I liked Cantr so much back then.

I really struggled with the interface especially and found the game as a whole very overwhelming when I was a very new player - my first character spawned in a huge city (or at least the most populated, most awake English-speaking location I've seen) with lots of rules and I was terrified of pressing any buttons in case he broke a rule or did something rude. I ended up getting a fair few OOC pointers and explanations his first day and some explanations from the friend who suggested Cantr to me, but by the time I spawned my fourth and last character on my fourth day playing I'd pretty much figured out the basics and the only thing that I really had to psyche myself up for and figure out was travelling, then again when I first had a character try travelling in a vehicle.

Let's face one fact: Cantr is a niche game. It's a questless, text-based, permanent death, crafting-centric, RP-focused sandbox game. Any one of those five qualities are typically dealbreakers for commercial games. But it's EXACTLY what I as a player have wanted in a game for a long time. Many people may be turned off from Cantr in the first five minutes because they're looking for the standard "Get quest, do quest, kill stuff, get points" themepark experience that is basically nearly every other RPG. But I'm glad Cantr is different. Didn't take me five minutes to realize that... I knew it before logging in, and I'm just glad the game delivered on the promises.

Cool, interesting topic, Seko

I had the luck of having a rl girlfriend getting me into Cantr, as it made me wanting to learn more, and it's much easier with someone sitting with you and explaining

I think I was quite a fast learner, therefor, though I did make the mistake of having a char run off with stuff from a town a few hours after spawning.

I probably should mention all my trouble was in spite of having read the wiki quite thoroughly while I waited for my account to be validated :3 I had 'find and follow the town's rules' as a top priority as a result of one of the guides on there, but someone still had to explain how to use a bucket and that work wouldn't have an immediate effect.

I saw it from...some kind of mud site or something. and it looked interesting. My first few characters I don't really remember, but I remember how hard it was for me to gain a basic conception of where I was.

it took me some time to realise that, to fully understand what an area was I had to check:

People tab
resources tabs
objects tab
building tab
(and for bonus points, the projects tab).

I was used to playing muds where you would go to a new area and it would say:

You've entered beeboo hills, there are 4 people here, there are a pile of corn, a pile of stone and 8 other goods. Corn, stone, diamonds, and barley abound this region. There are 23 buildings, 8 land vehicles, 9 boats, and 54 projects are laid out.

Anyway, THAT was what you saw in a mud, and it made you immediately go "Oh, hello people", "oh some stuf!", "oh a project?

in cantr you walk in start working and just don't realize nine people are in the room, looming behind the piles of gold and lock break attempts. it's kind of striking how absolutely featureless the game is at first glance.

I REALLY think a movement readout like that would just make the world of difference.

(Oh, i have to go, I'll expand on this later. my early experience anyway).

I also think that if some one had explained some basics to me, it would have been great and...our players can wait hours before they respond, which can put off a new player.

I think if there was a bot, or a notice board that you always see that says "hello, you're new! cantr is a questless, text-based, permanent death, crafting-centric, RP-focused sandbox game! your character performs tasks that can take real life days to complete and the role playing and dependency is very long term!"

and then it would go on to explain how to collect food, how to build a knife, how to build a tool. maybe culminate in how to build a small raft to raft to (the real game) or something like that. would just be excellent.

essentially if my start up had been even slightly more directed, I would have hit the ground running, and maybe some of the real life people who i advised to play the game would have played longer.

I think a good starting guide to starting Cantr, with screenshots of pages, would be useful

I'd even be willing to build such a guide if I find the time

I started playing with some rl friends and online friends ,it was funny and cozy also interesting for me. I was used to play in MUD before so I enjoyed the atmosphere. It went well for a while then changed,all friends quit and rl got in my way. One day I felt the urge and I have turned back. In first days I felt so novice and learning the changes took time,I even did very silly things and my first char got killed.
I am agree with Bmot about the guide,because now Cantr is a very detailed game and Wiki can be complicated for the new players.

Well, on my first day, I got confused because I didn't realize I had to name all the towns, so I ended up asking for directions to the town I was already in. Other than that, the interface was pretty easy to master and I read through most of the wiki.



Of course, I'm still new as this is my 7th day playing the game.

Welcome, Firetrout. I started about a little over a year ago.

I think it looks the same for everyone unless they change the custom CSS edits.


....
....
....





Seriously though, my first time was sort of an odd experience. Unfortunately I don't have logs from those days, but it wasn't all that hard to pick up and run with it. There was a bit of fun in not being able to use the wiki for character information, and needing them to find everything out in game.

Cdls wrote:I think it looks the same for everyone unless they change the custom CSS edits.

Or if you're a Qupzilla user. ;)

I played for a verrrry short time years ago. I don't remember very much from back then other than I think my first character spawned in a mountain location where there were very few others. I got bored while that character was traveling on foot because it was taking sooo long to get anywhere decent

This time round, I found the interface pretty simple because it was still familiar from my first try all that time ago. I think the thing I struggled most with was when trying to work out how to get my third character to help someone else shift a dead body. That is really so not intuitive