Cantr II Discussion Forum

Do you have something you'd like to share that Cantr can post on social media? We'd like to attract more players and encourage discussion.

Examples

• A drawing of a character
• An old story/event (vague details)
• A poem or song from a character
• A testimonial, or what you like about Cantr
• Tips for roleplay or understanding the game
• Stats or information about Cantr
• Something else cool about Cantr

Venues

• Webzine: For longer articles (e.g. stories, poems), detailed information, and graphs or images. Also for sequential episodes. Other social media venues can link to the Webzine.
• Facebook Page: Short or long posts. Images are not necessary but preferable. Good for sharing with friends. Posts can be promoted for a fee.
• Facebook Group: Good for discussions and for reaching Cantrians that are also on Facebook.
• Twitter: Short and to the point. Good for links, such as getting the word out about Webzine posts, and for sharing publically with other communities/hashtags. Also, Twitter posts show up on Cantr's front page.
• Instagram: Requires an image. We can promote posts here for a fee.

We welcome suggestions or ideas.

Thank you for participating in Cantr's success!

Since there isn't yet a forum for responding to the Q&A transcript and this is the only unlocked place to comment that I can find, I'm going to ask a follow-up question here.

In the 27-Apr-19 transcript it says:

<2:36> “Will there be major changes?” There will be some pretty major changes so my answer to that is yes but Cantr will still be Cantr.

This makes me question whether it's really a good idea to try to draw new players into the game right now. There are so many problems with the game as it is that I think many new players will, very likely, not have a good experience which will not only make them quit the game but spread bad reviews to other potential players.

Whatever changes are in the works will, hopefully, fix some of the major problems and make the game more enjoyable -- especially to new players. Therefore, I think it makes sense not to recruit until after those changes have gone into effect.

Just to illustrate what I am saying, when I started playing (about 1 1/2 years ago), I had the bad luck that all of my characters were spawned in areas with almost no population. The few characters who were in their spawn towns were either sleeping, just passing through or very unfriendly to my characters. My characters would go looking for other people, not knowing that there were almost no people to be found. They wandered alone for years. Finally, I had one character who spawned in what is probably the busiest city in Cantr but, since I didn't really know how to role play, she wound up being ignored and funneled into the worker-bee room which was just as boring as being alone. When I quit playing, I had only one character who had a relationship to one other character in the game.

I do like the concept of Cantr a lot, though, so I'm hoping to come back one day when some of the problems have been dealt with. However, I'm not sure that (m)any other new players would be willing to give Cantr a second chance.

Thanks. I've had similar thoughts in the sense that there are some things on my todo list still that come before major marketing initiatives. And you bring up a good point about giving new players a good first impression and experience. Improving spawning should be something we address right away.

Is this an acknowledgement that the tutorial island and manual account approvals will be scrapped, then? I had a friend create an account on Cantr a few weeks ago and between the horrible, boring experience he had in tutorial island, and the 48+ hours it took for his account to be approved, he lost all interest in Cantr and marveled that it had any new players at all.

Wolfsong wrote:Is this an acknowledgement that the tutorial island and manual account approvals will be scrapped, then?

No. It was worse without tutorial island, because without it they just wait. And without manual account approvals, Cantr would easily be hijacked by a single person with 300 accounts.
What we're working is making the tutorial island itself a good playing experience (which doesn't require any waiting) and then spawning into an active town in normal Cantr.
It's certainly true that Cantr isn't for the impatient, though I'm sorry it's a poor experience for new players and it deeply concerns me.

A poor experience is an understatement for how bad the tutorial island currently is. I would argue basic IP checking/flagging to prevent obvious account duplicates would be a better system, with some kind of optional review by staff once already in game, and about as fallible as the current manual method, while also allowing players to get into the game immediately.

As long as Cantr uses the tutorial island and totally manual account process, I fail to see it ever regaining a playerbase, or even stabilising its current playerbase.

I didn't mind tutorial island at all but I can see where gamers who are used to fast-paced games wouldn't like it. All of the videos about Cantr that I've seen are filled with exciting looking pictures which give a false impression of what new players can expect. Maybe a funny video illustrating the text based nature of Cantr before new players go to tutorial island would help.

The person I introduced to Cantr knows browser games and MUDs, and was fully aware of what he was getting into, since we've discussed Cantr in the past re: mechanics (what works, what doesn't, for future games.) It being a text based game was irrelevant.

The fact he was kept waiting over 48hrs (hadn't been approved after 3 days, in fact, and I'm not sure what happened after that as he went home after the long weekend) for account activation is part of what drove him away, as did the empty tutorial island and lack of player engagement. Finally, the atrocious website design had him cacking himself in disbelief.

These are the main issues, IMO, that keep Cantr from succeeding right now. Fix that, improve new player retention, and marketing campaigns can be renewed and be more useful since you'll keep what you net. Otherwise, any changes only pander to the dwindling existing player numbers, and that's not a recipe for success as the last 3-4+ years can show.

Wolfsong wrote:The fact he was kept waiting over 48hrs (hadn't been approved after 3 days, in fact, and I'm not sure what happened after that as he went home after the long weekend) for account activation is part of what drove him away, as did the empty tutorial island and lack of player engagement. Finally, the atrocious website design had him cacking himself in disbelief.

Those are very important issues that need to be addressed but they are all, also, issues that stem from lack of active staff and I'm not sure how that problem gets solved since it's a Catch-22 dilemma. For prospective players who don't have the benefit of having someone explain it to them, I still think a text based video would be very helpful.

I also think it would be good to send a series of automatic videos to new players each of which would provide some handy tip that makes the game so much easier to play. I know that most of them are in the Wiki but I didn't sit and read the entire Wiki so I didn't know about them unless someone told me on the forums. For instance, the 'Time Ticks' link is so incredibly helpful. http://joo.freehostia.com/cantr/ticks/

I think that receiving these helpful videos would give players a sense that the are not alone in the game and that the staff and other players want them to enjoy playing Cantr. For me, finding out after months of playing that these little helpful tips existed made me feel like the more experienced players had access to secrets and advantages that made the game easier and more pleasant for them.

PaintedbyRoses wrote:

Wolfsong wrote:The fact he was kept waiting over 48hrs (hadn't been approved after 3 days, in fact, and I'm not sure what happened after that as he went home after the long weekend) for account activation is part of what drove him away, as did the empty tutorial island and lack of player engagement. Finally, the atrocious website design had him cacking himself in disbelief.

Those are very important issues that need to be addressed but they are all, also, issues that stem from lack of active staff and I'm not sure how that problem gets solved since it's a Catch-22 dilemma.

As I said, it's a simple solution. Don't have manual account approval processes. Use some basic IP flagging to screen this omniscient bogeyman creating 300 accounts or whatever, and allow staff to review suspected accounts for further action as required. There are already preventatives IG keeping new characters from attacking for their first few days, and a limit on how many characters you can roll up based on account age.

Work smarter, not harder (or in this case - hardly at all?)

Was there a Q and A last Saturday (May 11th)? I can't find the recording n the G drive folder.

Money wrote:Was there a Q and A last Saturday (May 11th)? I can't find the recording n the G drive folder.

No, I believe it was because Josh was feeling unwell.

ToxikCoffee wrote:

Money wrote:Was there a Q and A last Saturday (May 11th)? I can't find the recording n the G drive folder.

No, I believe it was because Josh was feeling unwell.

Thanks!

As I said, it's a simple solution. Don't have manual account approval processes. Use some basic IP flagging to screen this omniscient bogeyman creating 300 accounts or whatever, and allow staff to review suspected accounts for further action as required. There are already preventatives IG keeping new characters from attacking for their first few days, and a limit on how many characters you can roll up based on account age.

Work smarter, not harder (or in this case - hardly at all?)

I appreciate your thinking about this, but IP checking is hardly a solution; people are smarter than that. The point of my example is that their wouldn't be something simple to check to verify; it has to be smarter than the humans who are trying to get around it. While I've long hoped for an automatic solution and I don't think it's impossible especially with machine learning, etc., if we were to have manual account approval it would be quite complex and require a lot of input from the people who are doing this approval process.

But allowing new characters to come in automatically created the problem where many new characters came in who did nothing and died; this was quite dramatic in the Portuguese region. Consequently, my understanding is this demotivated players from engaging with newspawns.

But why does the tutorial island have to be considered not entering the game? New players need help and attention, that's for sure, and the tutorial island gives us a way to do that. We just need to make it a good experience, a game of its own. This means it may actually be better for new players to stay a while in the intro server.

Also just recently we're allowing and encouraging all staff members to have a mentor character on the Intro server and already now mentors automatically see the language of new players and respond to them.