Was unlimited minutes the beginning of the end?

[HFrance]

For me this is a matter of principle, HFrance, not a matter of 'granted rights'.

This can not be your principle, but has always been the principle of Cantr: some people contribute voluntarily for the game remain free to others, without privilege for those who pay and/or work for this principle to work.

[Tiamo]

About the money suggestions: as soon as in-game advantages (like extra character slots) based upon real life money are introduced i'm out.

Apparently i wasn't clear enough. It is the advantages part i am having problems with, not monetisation itself (although i think going pay-to-play will soon be the end of Cantr). Plus, it doesn't matter whether i am granted any advantages or not.
I am not selfish, i have principles about equal chances/treatment.

[Money]

Pay to play sounds like you can only play if you pay. I prefer the phrase pay to play lots. No advantage can be gained by the player for their characters based on the number of characters they play, as long as it's not pay to win why care?

[HFrance]

Pay to play sounds like you can only play if you pay. I prefer the phrase pay to play lots. No advantage can be gained by the player for their characters based on the number of characters they play, as long as it's not pay to win why care?

Exactly. For the Capital Rule prohibits cooperation between the characters. Thus, there is no advantage to anyone who plays with more characters than the one playing with less. And as Joshua said, the average characters per player is seven, and the free seven characters limit is enough to meet the needs of most players.

[Alladinsane]

What difference does it make it someone buys extra character slots? How is this an advantage?
There is a thread on this forum where many players claim that having fewer char slots is an advantage to them in their free time and sanity.
I will try to search it out and necro it.

If Jos spends his own money to give us five(or more!) free slots...what are you going to say? He is greedy?

Greedy?

Really?

A "matter of principle" to ask a little compensation for his hours of work to give us a free game?

Principle?

Really? What principle is that? Working for free?
I don't do that...well except staff work here. I don't ask to get paid, nor any advantages.

Granted I live in a society of capitalism where a person is compensated for their work, and we are only discussing options here.

If nothing else, I think this conversation is bringing to light that cantr II does have financial issues.

I know that I can do more.

After all, its a matter of principle.

[SekoETC]

In a way if you're only playing one character, you are privileged because you will never be in a situation where you had to avoid towns because your other character is there, avoid associating with other people's characters because one of your other characters was associated with them, or having to find another source of a rare resource because one of your other characters had discovered it's location earlier, and if you went there it would look like you were using OOC knowledge. You can go where ever you want, unrestricted, and interact with who ever you like. Then again, if you're unlucky, you might spawn on an island that only has boring people and small sleepy towns and boring resources to boot. You might quit because you don't know there's something better out there. So most people play multiple characters to experience more of the world in the same time. If Cantr only allowed one character, I would've probably given up during the month or so that my first character spent traveling around Blaman Mountains, not meeting a single person. The fact that I was able to spawn a new character each day allowed me to see different sides of the game and be drawn into it.

[sherman]

To be honest spawning multiple characters gives you more. I'm finnish and to be honest if I would have only played finnish chars I would have quit. It's sleepy region where nothing happens. Multiple chars just opens more possibilities to do. I don't think unlimited minutes were beginning of the end though, it allows people to do more but also allows more and more to get bored cause they still expect everything to happen right away. I have to say it's getting more and more difficult as town leader to keep people awake, it must be something deeper reasons behind it. And I really can say that it seems most bored are the most active ones where as average player is quite content cause he plays much less and thus sees more going on.

I don't get this that people say people are boring just because their players play less time or like different things. I have seen this and it's kinda harsh.

Also most towns are pretty same with same set of laws... And people complain towns to be boring yet aren't not willing to contribute anything to it. I can try as leader make things but if nobody else wants to do anything I don't see much point trying to put too much effort into making things. You can't do things alone, people make towns not one person. And if you spawn on town with mudhuts you can't really expect a lot from it.. People should be realistic, not all places can do same things like some others

[Wolfsong]

Edit:

[MattWithoos]

About the money suggestions: as soon as in-game advantages (like extra character slots) based upon real life money are introduced i'm out.

Apparently i wasn't clear enough. It is the advantages part i am having problems with, not monetisation itself (although i think going pay-to-play will soon be the end of Cantr). Plus, it doesn't matter whether i am granted any advantages or not.
I am not selfish, i have principles about equal chances/treatment.

I don't think anyone has suggested, or will ever suggested, that one character will be given an advantage over the other.

Think about how hard the PD enforce the CR rule. No one, not PD, not ProgD, not even the players - i.e. you - would allow a "pay to play" or "pay to win" system.

This is a strawman argument. But I appreciate you stating it because at least it makes it clear that we all agree that paying to win would kill Cantr (...maybe).

One thing we must all get clear on during this discussion is the distinction between in-game/character advantages, and out-of-game/player advantages.

An in-game/character advantage is anything that gives your character an advantage over another, such as getting a starter set of tools. This would probably breach the CR too. I think being able to select a location with "10 or more" people is not an advantage, but maybe a gray area for some. I mean, right now, the system picks a place with 2 or more. Imagine if there was a suggestion to make this 10 or more so characters weren't stuck in the wilderness. We'd all accept it and move on. Offering a feature like this as a paid option is a great idea for revenue for Cantr.

An out-of-game/player advantage is something like - a sleek user interface, the ability to customise the CSS, no advertisements, perhaps you get to customise your forum posts (a special decoration around your posts, a signature, a badge saying "Donator"). Other out-of-game advantages could be - you get early access to test new features, perhaps even you can join a council of people who vote on suggestions (those suggestions that are successful still need to be approved by the GAB).

Monetizing Cantr isn't doom and gloom.

This isn't EA.

You're not buying a game for $99.95 and then paying $1,000 for DLC (downloadable content) just to be able to fully experience the game.

Any monetization suggestion will undoubtably ensure the game is fully free, fully playable, fully featured - and advantages would only be given to players instead of characters. I feel we all know this but I just need to reiterate it because maybe some people are worried we will turn into a pay-to-win game.

[Millhouse]

This discussion isn't even on-topic. If there's a serious suggestion about paid character blocks, shouldn't it be discussed in the suggestions forum?

[Joshuamonkey]

I also am against having Cantr pay-to-play, and I don't think that will ever happen (I say this to relieve possible worries).

The distinction between in-game/character advantages, and out-of-game/player advantages

I think this is a good way to put it.

no advertisements

And no advertisements would certainly be a reasonable addition.

perhaps even you can join a council of people who vote on suggestions

I think things like this would be best to avoid because of the bad feelings it would create.

There are a lot of ideas and a lot of ways to go about this (if it does happen). I think the concerns and emotions in this discussion are understandable, but I think we can at least know that the ideas that are actually implemented would be those that wouldn't give in-game advantages and would be for the benefit of the game. I think this discussion is helpful for seeing different view-points.

Also, the idea that Cantr may get donations to access new helpful features may motivate staff to add those kinds of feature.

[MattWithoos]

This discussion isn't even on-topic. If there's a serious suggestion about paid character blocks, shouldn't it be discussed in the suggestions forum?

It is on-topic, but maybe the reason was missed.

I believe unlimited minutes was the beginning of the end - but mostly because it was one of the only things that could easily be monetized for Cantr. Back then (I played during that time) you would have gladly paid $5 a month for an extra hour a day. Can you imagine where Cantr would be today with even 100 people contributing $5 a month? That's over $60,000 over 10 years that could have been used to revolutionise Cantr, and advertise Cantr like there's no tomorrow.

Interestingly, even when we had time limits, over 50% of people voted to keep it. One person who I remember fondly was vision-impaired and thus played a little slower, so they asked if the time limit could be increased slightly for them. Made sense.

Read here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1319&start=105

[HFrance]

One suspects that might be interesting: the limitation in time can affect the operation or even derail the CantrSpy...

[Rebma]

One suspects that might be interesting: the limitation in time can affect the operation or even derail the CantrSpy...

CantrySpy was created by a player after a bunch of us expressed a need to find a way to know our characters were "lit up" without actually having to log in and waste minutes. So, I fully doubt it would in any way affect CantrSpy or derail it, as the limitation was why it was created. And iirc it was a lot more popular when we still had limits.

[HFrance]

One suspects that might be interesting: the limitation in time can affect the operation or even derail the CantrSpy...

CantrySpy was created by a player after a bunch of us expressed a need to find a way to know our characters were "lit up" without actually having to log in and waste minutes. So, I fully doubt it would in any way affect CantrSpy or derail it, as the limitation was why it was created. And iirc it was a lot more popular when we still had limits.

Makes sense. Grateful for the information!