Cantr II Discussion Forum

Have no need to wait four days to notify an irregularity to the Players Department

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I'm pretty sure all these sex slave and other topics are against rules.. I mean think what would happen if someone 10 year old would see it and then Her/his parents? Lot's of trouble for Cantr..

Very interesting thread to read (before it turned to sex on the radio, which seems to be an entirely different topic, although important in itself).

I have not played Cantr for years and even back when I was still actively engaged in Cantr admin, for a long time I didn't really play much. I've only seriously played in the first few years.

I have always played to play politics, military operations, big trading companies, or something like journalism. But only early on in Quillanoi did I have a chance to really play like that, and to the dislike of most other inhabitants of the town. Oh, and exploring, I love the exploring bit, which is I think visible in how I designed the game. But the problem is that that kind of play requires a lot of time and effort, which makes it impossible to play such roles besides a normal real life. And the just farming, hanging around kind of character is just too boring.

But I must say, I have recently started a few new characters and am actually quite enjoying it, including the more simplistic life. I really enjoy the domesticated animals and the many additional interactions that has created. And the fact that because of windows, fewer of the people inside buildings are completely disengaged with the town.

I'm not sure I like the many, many ghost towns. It makes building up a town just too little challenging. Especially the many ghost vehicles too. That could be solved by faster deterioration, but for the actually active towns, it is no fun to have to repair all the time just to keep the town going.

Personally I think we should revisit the spawning system a bit, so that we stimulate spawning in bigger towns, and the wilderness can be left to those who actively seek it. But in smaller language zones there is a real difficulty with the CR in this regard, which we need to think about.

I love the size of Fu, just the fact that the game world can be so large, with coastal towns but also very deep inland locations. But it's true that it requires either many more players, or at least higher concentration of the players that are actually there. I think it doesn't matter if most of Fu is never visited, it only matters if the characters that are there spread out too much.

Anyway, I'm rambling. Just nice to see some people still very much enjoying the game. And I think we all agree that for many issues, the best solution is getting many more players, so you can all help with that!

Jos Elkink wrote:I'm not sure I like the many, many ghost towns. It makes building up a town just too little challenging. Especially the many ghost vehicles too. That could be solved by faster deterioration, but for the actually active towns, it is no fun to have to repair all the time just to keep the town going.

Deterioration doesn't need to be faster to solve ghost towns, it just needs to exist for buildings, machines, and vehicles. Right now buildings, machines, and vehicles don't deteriorate at all (unless you count buckets as machines, which would be fair), and most buildings ever built will stand forever because there isn't yet a way to tear them down even if you wanted to put character labor into it. A few have been given the possibility of demolition, but this doesn't even include bone huts.

I'm not complaining personally, mind; I'm fine with eternal buildings since I can at least rename and re-describe them and get on with whatever my character considers more important/fun town stuff, I'm just making sure you understand the real state of your game.

EDIT: I forgot, ghost ships at sea do eventually get wrecked now, but that doesn't probably address your concerns about ghost vehicles since it seems unlikely you've encountered a ghost ship at sea since starting to play again before writing that post.

The simplest way to implement building and vehicle deterioration without hindering the lives of active characters would be to make it so that entering a building or a vehicle once a year would be enough to keep it from deteriorating. That way only completely abandoned buildings and vehicles would eventually crumble away while people wouldn't have to do actual repair works to maintain current infrastructure.

Ghost towns get "lurkers" all the time though, who enter to see if there's worthwhile loot, and then leave.

Perhaps it would be better to start with making it possible for completely empty rooms (either rooms within buildings or the whole building if it has no nested buildings) to crumble? Because aren't they the real problem buildings? The ones that just simply aren't used at all?


To get back on topic though. Yes, I am still enjoying. There are low points at times, of course, but generally...I still find enjoyment in the continuation of some of my character's stories, or in exploring new places with other characters, or in building up a town further as part of a great community. I'm still finding lots to do

Cantr II tries to be both a game and a simulation. The game part is often sacrificed for the simulation. The problem is that simulation isn't necessarily fun. We could simulate wiping our butts after we shit. I'm sure that would be fun for a little while. Then people start getting ill because they aren't producing toilet paper and wiping their butts often enough, and it's not so fun. Characters are having sex so maybe we should have that hard-coded: skills, genital sizes and shapes, erectile dysfunction, sex toys, lube, etc.

I would prefer a game that has a few simulation elements, as opposed to a simulation that has a few game elements. If it's not a game first, then it's pointless to ask how fun it is. If it's a simulation, you should ask how accurate it is because that's the relevant criterion.

Chris wrote:Cantr II tries to be both a game and a simulation. The game part is often sacrificed for the simulation. The problem is that simulation isn't necessarily fun. We could simulate wiping our butts after we shit. I'm sure that would be fun for a little while. Then people start getting ill because they aren't producing toilet paper and wiping their butts often enough, and it's not so fun. Characters are having sex so maybe we should have that hard-coded: skills, genital sizes and shapes, erectile dysfunction, sex toys, lube, etc.

I would prefer a game that has a few simulation elements, as opposed to a simulation that has a few game elements. If it's not a game first, then it's pointless to ask how fun it is. If it's a simulation, you should ask how accurate it is because that's the relevant criterion.

I find this particular distinction of game and simulation to be a false dichotomy. It's entirely possible to simulate a system that doesn't and can't exist anywhere on Earth or even in Earth's physical universe, and design said system so that simulating it is necessarily fun, and by consequence of being an unnecessary activity that people find enjoyable, with room for competition and effecting other participants' progress, it becomes a game second. In other words, if it's set up in such a way, simulation accuracy can translate to fun.

Sadly, that's not what Cantr seems to have always done (sometimes though, and it's often the design goal even when that mark is missed), and you're right that, the way Cantr is currently set up, the simulation and game sometimes get in each other's way. Not enough to kill each other, though, and there's definitely some magic in the effort to do both.

Simulations need to make a compromise between accuracy and manageability. For example, we don't have to vulcanize rubber or use tongs to handle hot objects or oven mitts to take stuff out of an oven. I think I once heard of a game that had fiberglass trees because they wanted to have the resource without requiring a complicated manufacturing process. I think it was reviewed in a radio program if I remember correctly.

I heard that there is or was a game (Sociolotron) that was mainly built as a sex simulator, but it's also marketed as a society simulator and people could have their characters learn skills unrelated to sex. Their site hasn't loaded the couple of times when I tried to visit it, so the domain registration may have expired. The site would randomize genital size and have the vagina size grow if the character gives birth. The game put children away in a university after they're born to avoid legal issues involved, and players could take over one of their character's children as an adult if the parent died. I sort of wish I had heard of the simulation while it was still active.

SekoETC wrote:Simulations need to make a compromise between accuracy and manageability. For example, we don't have to vulcanize rubber or use tongs to handle hot objects or oven mitts to take stuff out of an oven.

Accuracy of what, though? It's obvious we aren't trying to accurately simulate Earth, so why do people keep making Earthling assumptions? Cantr humans simply don't burn (unless they're role played that way, implying an abnormal weakness in that particular character's skin/system). That doesn't make the simulation less accurate of the system it's simulating, it just makes it less Earth-like. Cantrian rubber ad maple sap come thick from the tree while Earth saps come thin. That doesn't make the simulation less accurate, it makes the system being simulated less Earth-like.

I'm not sure I ever considered Cantr more a simulation than a game - I always think of it as a game first. But, part of the core game design is simulation-like, indeed.

For me a game is more interesting when it is a little more realistic, in the sense that I'm not a big fan of playing in fantasy worlds (although I don't mind sci fi worlds). I wanted to play different careers, like politicians, journalists, traders, soldiers, etc. and for that, to me, a more realistic world is more interesting. Cantr always turned out a bit weird, though, in how it combines pre-historic with very modern aspects, and I can't say I like that, but it was just kind of unavoidable in how it was designed. In the Lego game we just built cars, we never worried how we got there after landing with barely a loin cloth in an empty wilderness ... Personally I would actually prefer if all of Cantr was set in reasonably modern times, without the wilderness survival bit.

In the Lego game we also really enjoyed working out how things kind of work in society, like "what does a bank really do?" I think that was part of what motivated us. And so I didn't hard code any of these elements and left all human inventions to the players. In that sense it is a bit like a simulation, I guess.

Actually, one aspect I sometimes regret not to have implemented is just money. I sometimes wonder whether Cantr would be more fun, closer to the game I want to play, if there was a hard coded banking system (or, like, gold coins system) to stimulate trade, auctions, markets, etc. that are not so much oriented towards barter trade.

I do agree with computaertist that the two are not necessarily conflicting, even if at times elements of it might be.

Just for the record, I'd have absolute zero interest in playing at all if all Cantr were set in modern Earth like times without a large dose of either sci-fi or fantasy (the pair are tied in my mind). I can do that in real life plenty and go to games to escape it. So I have to admit that when I bring up how being un-Earth-like is as a positive thing for Cantr, I'm projecting my own desires into the game and forgetting those of others. I'd apologize for that, but if I were to do that honestly it would probably result in me losing all interest and leaving so you all can have your suspended-disbelief mostly-Earth-like setting without me putting it down all the time, and I suspect leaving is not what most of you want me to do.

computaertist wrote:Just for the record, I'd have absolute zero interest in playing at all if all Cantr were set in modern Earth like times without a large dose of either sci-fi or fantasy (the pair are tied in my mind). I can do that in real life plenty and go to games to escape it. So I have to admit that when I bring up how being un-Earth-like is as a positive thing for Cantr, I'm projecting my own desires into the game and forgetting those of others. I'd apologize for that, but if I were to do that honestly it would probably result in me losing all interest and leaving so you all can have your suspended-disbelief mostly-Earth-like setting without me putting it down all the time, and I suspect leaving is not what most of you want me to do.

Seconded on that and I think Cantr is very modern in some cases, it smells of a very nice steampunk scent. Though I like seeing and trying supernatural things without passing natural limits.