Fading into obscurity is the worst

[SekoETC]

I've been thinking lately how in the past, I used to play a lot of well-known characters and most of my characters were central in their own communities, some named the life of the town, yet nowadays most of my characters are trivial and feel like supporting characters in someone else's story.

I generally don't play sleepers. I've only played one serious sleeper and that was Sven Tufva. The rest of my characters I've checked pretty much every day. I always check them within a day if they have events, but if they're alone in a location and don't light up, I might forget to check them for a few days. Also most of my characters I've played until they were old enough to die of old age. I've lost some to violence, one to animal attacks, one of accidental starvation and some committed suicide, but the average age of dying is 79.8 and the median is 66.7.

If Cantr was a storybook, it seems in general there are very few characters that could be considered main characters nowadays. It seems back in the old days, there were more characters I could develop a bond with, and more epic town leaders, some of whom had been at it for decades. Then one by one they all died off and got replaced by less colorful characters. I've looked at some new town leaders and thought to myself, they're going to have a heart attack within 10 years. It's surprising when they don't, but I might go as far as to say that none of the current town leaders I know would be so epic that they would deserve a landmark if they died today.

It's not always a question of age, either. My character Hannah Romain was in Seatown Hills when Danea Mathabane spawned. The town had just lost it's previous leader and there was nobody available to take over, but we felt that it was necessary to have a leader next door (we lived in Plaekur forest east) to avoid unrest, so Hannah convinced Danea to become the mayor when she was just a few days old. And she did a good job of it for several years.

I could name several other town leaders who left an impression on me. Commander Valentine of Sjoftich, Malfu Dorsk of Brunoi, Zmambee Sambo of Zuzi, Caine Nanazaki of Mulof North, Katrinn Jelan of Xiria Forest, the Zwelling-Hart couple of Siom, Rani Mella of Brunoi, Merci of QFN, Eurytion of Naron (even though he killed one of my characters), Vladimir Tassadar of Olip West, Emperor Kentosani of Zuzi... There are others that I remember as persons even though I don't remember their names.

Overall, I've had a tendency to bring my story lines to a controlled end when I felt like I couldn't accomplish anything significant with that character anymore. But nowadays I have so many young characters that have no reason to commit suicide, that I have to continue their trivial existence while I concentrate on my older remaining characters. My early characters used to have complex personalities, but many of my young ones are caricatures based on a visual quirk. I have two ugly ones, two unconventional women, two with spawning defects, two that represent minority ethnicities, one generally quirky one and one that started out as a newspawn thief.

[viktor]

it's a cycle I think, sometimes you'll fall back to mostly supporting roles and eventually you'll have more prominent chars again. I have a combo, some are.. on the midline working towards advancement, I was pretty pleased to see one of my old chars on ur list there
I have no doubt you'll have a few rise in prominence again and take on lead story roles. I find sometimes i'll have a character that takes a while to develop into something with real character.. or sometimes a character that has a number of people around them to get in character with but then when they disappear and they see 90% sleepers everywhere they go and the others who don't are relatively quiet.. they have little left to rp.

[HFrance]

What I regret are institutions fall into oblivion. systems of government, economic, religions, things took a long time to be developed by several hands. But I regret even more when this forgetfulness is caused by simple vanity of some wanting to reinvent the wheel just to put theyr names on it.

[viktor]

What I regret are institutions fall into oblivion. systems of government, economic, religions, things took a long time to be developed by several hands. But I regret even more when this forgetfulness is caused by simple vanity of some wanting to reinvent the wheel just to put theyr names on it.

I've seen a number of instances of exactly this.. a few nations I've developed over the years dying with my founding character, some with everything written out easy to understand, well structured and by all rights should prosper to this day that, just collapsed the moment my char leading it died.
only example I can think of that lasted any decent amount of time past my character might have been the nation of shortinazy lasting at least some time longer than Prage.
there are some where they existed, my char died the nation died, another char was in the region and events made forming something worth pushing but didn't succeed and then a couple earth years later someone else makes it again in a certain region but is generally half fizzled again..
and.. if anyone is familiar with a character I had Eudora Dyson.. well then you'll know the country and possibly it's non existence.
it is almost impossible for anyone to leave a legacy in this game, there are maybe a couple organisations I can think of that have existed since before I started playing (2004) and still exist today like firecam and tbr, zuzi empire, that's about it. teregotha too but is young compared to those other 3
even the great commonwealth has been gone for years now, it is just so near impossible for anyone to carry on something in the game that it almost always died with the character that started it... I don't give up trying but still, I can't expect anything I create to outlive any char I have starting it.

[Alladinsane]

Could failure to appoint or delegate qualified subordinates have a factor in this? I am only suggesting since I was not around to witness it.

I am witnessing what happened when a major char disappeared recently and the replacement(s) may not be inspiring equal amounts of confidence.

Leadership by a dictator sometimes leaves a power vacuum and we can see countless examples in RL too.
The mongol empire's dissolution.
Break up of the soviet union post-Stalin et. al.

I am sure that others can post their own examples

[HFrance]

Could failure to appoint or delegate qualified subordinates have a factor in this? I am only suggesting since I was not around to witness it.

I am witnessing what happened when a major char disappeared recently and the replacement(s) may not be inspiring equal amounts of confidence.

Leadership by a dictator sometimes leaves a power vacuum and we can see countless examples in RL too.
The mongol empire's dissolution.
Break up of the soviet union post-Stalin et. al.

I am sure that others can post their own examples

Alexander, the Great - a lot of zombies waiting him to fall down dead due "the sleeping sickness of that time" in order to get the keys and weapons.

[sherman]

Biggest problem what I see with these is that like on many other games a lot of is up to one person (be it running party or alliance or whatever) and then this person gets bored, quits or steps out from his position we got power vacuum because we rarely got the same kind of person. Instead what I have seen replacement might be even a person with no idea how to keep things running or just soon thinks it's too much work and leaves it to another. I see same things here too. Leaders need certain characteristics and not all have those.

Also because this game has ran long time there's another thing. Everyone wants to do their own thing, make their own name into history and like said.. Invent wheel again instead of leading existing organisation or religion (And with religion it's also that there's so many one man's thing that nobody really cares about being follower)

[SekoETC]

Sorry for reviving my own topic but I'm thinking of this same topic again, and it doesn't make any sense to start a new one. I feel like I've outlived my time and my new characters simply can't be as meaningful as the old ones. Maybe the world around them has changed, but I can often end up with characters up to their 50s or even 70s who feel trivial and few people would even care if they dropped dead. I just feel like I'm trivial myself.

[Snickie]

That's why I've stopped spawning English characters and my newest two English are dead. Currently my youngest living English character was spawned on 3333. I don't have the energy or time to play a newspawn with any significance. Any other characters I spawn, until I have more time, are for languages practice, and I'm not even up to date with those right now.

Most of my older characters have significance in their own way, at least to themselves.

[notsure]

" I just feel like I'm trivial myself."

Seko, I'm so sorry you're feeling that way. I admire you greatly for your talents, your wit, your courage. You are one of the least trivial people I know.

Sending a hug,

notsure :\

[SekoETC]

Right after writing that post I found out I also failed at getting a job I interviewed for, so there's that as well. I'm afraid to ask them how they decided whom to pick. The key thing may have been that I hadn't read up on the background of the company, so it seemed that I don't give a damn about them. I'm really frustrated because I've never worked in one place for longer than 6 weeks in a row. Some people say I'm a nice person, but apparently not nice enough that it would overcome my flaws. I read that there is a shortage of workers in my field but usually when I apply for jobs, I don't even get a reply. It would be good if job postings had a counter of how many people have applied so that I wouldn't even bother with ones that have over 300 applicants.

[Rmak]

Get someone to review your Cv if that helps.
I ignore applicants in their first page alone so a good Cv works well.

[Kyriel]

No such thing as "outliving your time". You get what you put in. You just haven't had the energy or motivation to put as much in as you used to. That's a vicious cycle in and of itself, that you are depressed enough that you can't take the bull by the horns that would get you to the place you want to be.