Cantr II Discussion Forum

Still, since I've started following the public statistics pages, we've lost another 12 or so accounts. That's 12 players in... 2 or 3 weeks?

I was very discouraged to play, but now my character is riding on a kiang over the completely unknown land (at least to me), mapping it and creating multi-language dictionaries. Finally I'm having fun.
And another char of mine is riding a zebra through the jungle and burning bones. It's also extremely fun.

It looks like I like single-player mode.

Wolfsong wrote:Still, since I've started following the public statistics pages, we've lost another 12 or so accounts. That's 12 players in... 2 or 3 weeks?

Must be mostly new players who logged in once.. Since I have seen quite many of them die lately, maybe around 8 or so. Though there might be also some old players from other languages etc. Hard to say but it's alarming

Cantr doesn't get enough new players to justify saying it's all them. I'll hunt through the public statistics again when I'm on my desktop, since it's possible to see old vs. new players, etc., on there and determine who's quitting in droves.

Well, I can only say what I have seen personally and I saw some new players spawn, never woke again and then die some time later. Now of course 8 can be from same player but I would assume there were at least 2-3 of them.

On Statics:

on day 5003 we had 519 players

On Day 5043 we have 479 players. That's drop of 40 players in 40 days.

On day 5004 we had 3463 chars

On day 5043 we have 3350 chars

(Edit: and it seems number of total chars today is dropping drastically so my number will be wrong later today, this was situation at 10:15)

Number of old chars in english language:

on Day 5000 we had 172 old players

on Day 5043 we have 177 old players

Number of old chars in polish language:

On day 5001 we had 169 old players

on day 5043 we have 169 old players

When I started playing Cantr in Brazil, my internet (and was the standard of the Brazilian Internet) had rate of only 2.5 Kbytes to 3 Kbytes per second on average) and had to be used at dawn to not pay much the phone bill. This made my available time to play any game were minimal. Also I had to play a game that was not expensive in bandwidth usage, ie without too much graphic and too much animation. To complicate matters, were rare online games that had its interface translated into Portuguese. So I, and many other Brazilians find Cantr II !!! !!! Low paced, text based and widely translated. And with the added bonus that we can play with our own community, rather than being tourists in foreign territory.

That was ten years ago! Today, after a lot of advances in telecommunications (and we are still well behind) most people have cell phones with internet (much faster but also much more expensive) and few use internet on desktops or laptops. Preferred games are the most graphical animated and in casual game mode. People can stay connected for more time, but can not be immersed for long. They want instant fun and easy amusement. And the first thing that a game company does when launch a new game of this type on the market is to translate it into Portuguese, as we are avid consumers of online products. The market is saturated with filth which satisfies the average consumer.

I am loving this game, although I am a new player, only about 3 months so far, and I have been dragging my friends into it, kicking and screaming... well maybe not kicking... I used duct tape, which incidentally, also takes care of the screaming... but seriously, I have brought two other players into the fold, and have two more that will soon be joining after listening to my characters' adventures.

and from what I have seen this game is what you make it... if you are going to play a boring character then you will most likely be bored... do things! be adventurous!!! don't wait for someone else to make it interesting for you....

Ahrta wrote:I am loving this game, although I am a new player, only about 3 months so far, and I have been dragging my friends into it, kicking and screaming... well maybe not kicking... I used duct tape, which incidentally, also takes care of the screaming... but seriously, I have brought two other players into the fold, and have two more that will soon be joining after listening to my characters' adventures.

and from what I have seen this game is what you make it... if you are going to play a boring character then you will most likely be bored... do things! be adventurous!!! don't wait for someone else to make it interesting for you....

Thank you for sharing the game! We are so glad to have you on board. Glad you're enjoying it. The more we share the game, the more fun the game gets. Literally! Look at the history contained in the notes you find around the place - this is from the peak period of the game. Big wars, huge armies, large empires... intrigue, politics, troubles, peace, and more.

For what it's worth, I can say comfortably that I'll play this game until it ends, if history proves anything. I've played for a long while, off and on (like many others here).

My char has stock which is worth 9000 days of labour ... thats 450 Cantr years, plus I have to add weapons. And I don't a see point in playing with this char.
I would love a restart.

Restart is just a double edged sword where you need to carefully think benefits and cons. The thing is also that some might also not want to start over where as some want and we might have a sharp player loss.

Your char surely got nice amount of stuff which.. really would allow you to do pretty much anything

Well, the world is flooded with resources and that is one of the reasons why this game isn't so much fun really. Create a pirate? What for? There are piles of resources everywhere. Make a war? What for? For resources? So maybe a trader? He will manage to sell some stuff, that's for sure, but it won't be that interesting, since no one is really in need of anything. This game has just become too easy. There are no challenges created by the game itself. Now all is up to us - the players. I read some old notes, gosh, people had so much fun! They were so excited about finally being able to have some better weapon, or a dung fork to gather potatoes. They had some goals and challenges created -by the game-, not fellow players.

Most people are against a restart because they would lose their characters, and I agree with that. But there are other options. Do something to make Cantrians lives challenging again! Some disaster taking away most of the resources from the world, or some bloody strong animals ravishing towns and being able to attack people who are inside of a building. Or whatever. Anything that will create goals again.

If there was a reset, I wouldn't play anymore. I only really care about my older characters, and I have 4 of those left. Life is so different for my younger characters. Some days I do enjoy them momentarily, but I wouldn't really care if they died.

I agree, Alutka. Cantr can only stay interesting if it keeps presenting challenges to your character(s).
However, taking away what characters have (by some game mechanism) isn't enough. This just presents characters with challenges they already have faced before, and have overcome. Doing the same again becomes boring quickly.

I think the solution is to have challenges at different levels of complexity, up to a level that is almost impossible to achieve and sustain.
In the economy part of Cantr many levels already do exist (straightforward project, combine resources, large amounts of resources, use tools, use machines, more production steps, collect resources elsewhere, having to search for unknown resources, FOIG, needs fuel to use, specific limitations, etc.), but they prove to be doable by any character, given time and persistence. Cantr needs a series of levels beyond this: learning/teaching, time limits, need for coöperation, personal/skill limitations, need for coordination/planning/timing, having to invent things before you can make them, others i didn't think of yet.... As long as there seemingly are always new things to achieve and discover players will never grow satisfied (only frustrated because they might fail at achieving some).
The same goes for other departments in the game: roleplaying, character building, society building, history making.

Unfortunately it might be impossible to change the current game this way. A complete rewrite might be needed.

jantar44 wrote:My char has stock which is worth 9000 days of labour ... thats 450 Cantr years, plus I have to add weapons. And I don't a see point in playing with this char.
I would love a restart.

I would instantly delete my account if that was the case. The stories behind my characters, are the only reason why I'm still playing this game.

Like Tiamo said (well.. to be honest for me it's RP reasons why I play, no game mechanics really keep me interested anymore when I already got most I want anyway)

Like said rewrite might be needed but when many could quit which would mean if game cannot get new players it's kinda like killing the game off