Cantr II Discussion Forum

The Surly Cantrian wrote:

Swymir wrote:Lad and Quillinoi used to be my two favorite. They still kind of are but they are getting farther away from their original principles which made them so good.

Lad. has become seriously boring... I used to love the oppressive regime of Lad... one of the few interesting governments.

Am I the only one that draws a parallel between the absence of large, multi-area, governments and the rush of unbalanced changes to Cantr?

I wonder if those days will ever be recaptured.

Well, you know, I did predict the effect of the changes way back but was roundly cursed at the time. Cantr suffered a decline in players who viewed the game from a strategic perspective, and at the same time combat swung towards a massive advantage for the defensive. This was also coupled to complete uncertainty as to what the effect of combat on any scale might actually be, since such combat never occurs (chasing down the odd suicide thief excepted). Law enforcement also became more difficult to achieve other than purely through ownership of keys.

Rules of the Pecking Order:
(1) If you have a locked building, a crowbar, a sidekick and enough iron for a new lock, you can be mean to everybody.
(2) If you have a locked building, a crowbar and a sidekick, but no iron, you can be mean to everybody except people with crowbars.
(3) If you have a locked building, but no crowbar or sidekick, you can be mean to everybody except people with locked buildings.
(4) If you have no locked building, no crowbar, no sidekick and no iron, then you must be incredibly nice to everybody with enough iron for a lock, irrespective of whether you are carrying a crossbow and iron shield and they are carrying a bone club or not.

The game has also been slowed down yet further by the tiredness system, which takes a little nick out of productivity every single day (and most players don't know how to compensate for it), and by repairing--the repair times, it now seems, are indeed rather longer than necessary to achieve the desired result. To balance the introduction of repairs, there should perhaps have been a global increase in productivity.

We currently have a high turnover of new players since there is insufficient excitement or interest to hold their attention; kissing contests and "questionaires" in Drojf are not it. To put it bluntly, there was a degree of tension between the "strategy" players (characterized especially by the pirates of old and some of the clans and empires) and the "pure" roleplayers (characterized by those who try to create "Middle America" in Cantr, even though it doesn't work). The latter group won out and got what they asked for. This was always a specific conflict of ideas between particular "oldies" in the game and the one bunch, it seems, managed to shout louder than the other bunch--perhaps because they specialize in noise-generation generally.

Of course every time someone raises these issues, and they are raised every week, then I give roughly the same answer. And every time I give the same answer (boring!) I get cursed for being paranoid, etc. And so it goes...

I totally agree with you, Sociologist. We were just calling you paranoid because you seemed to be thinking that these changes were somehow designed and implemented specifically to screw over your chars when, in fact, we're all getting scr...well, we're all experiencing the repercussions of these changes. I particularly hate the insanely high repair rates of which we have yet to have a response of any kind that I'm aware of.

I'm glad you keep complaining about these things. Just don't start accusing people of focusing on you in particular.

I'm sure there are people who would like to kill off or maim or lock up most of my chars but I know they won't... ...will they?

Sociologist... you speak words that are good.

What we need is a few good villains! It seems like most characters that spawn up are into the goody-goody-happy-happy way of life, let's all be friends. It's a pretty good way of life as far is staying alive is concerned, but it puts me to sleep.

The problem with up and spawning a villain is that you're insanely outnumbered by the goody-goody-happy-happy people, so it's hard to get support.

But a good villian would start out Goody Happy....to gain the trust of those around him/her...before turning evil...

Sunni Daez wrote:But a good villian would start out Goody Happy....to gain the trust of those around him/her...before turning evil...

Exactly.

Villians take time.

I dislike much how people say there are no villians in Cantr. Because the truth of it is, there are probably plenty formulating behind the scenes and you just don't know it. IT isn't as if a good villain would come out and say "HEYYYY IN twenty y ears from now when I own a boat, I'm going to rape and pillage your town." Now would they?

I have a char now who formulates a plan for war that ~will~ I assure you, take place.


Just because they aren't happening, doesn't mean they aren't there.

I have a few chars with well thought out plans. But the plans take time.

The Sociologist wrote:To put it bluntly, there was a degree of tension between the "strategy" players (characterized especially by the pirates of old and some of the clans and empires) and the "pure" roleplayers (characterized by those who try to create "Middle America" in Cantr, even though it doesn't work). The latter group won out and got what they asked for. This was always a specific conflict of ideas between particular "oldies" in the game and the one bunch, it seems, managed to shout louder than the other bunch--perhaps because they specialize in noise-generation generally.

I think this is totally unfair. I, for one, am members of both groups, if you want to seperate players like this. And I don't think in any way did one group shout louder, and win out on anything.

That's good to hear, Missy. We need some difference of opinion in the world. Here's to hoping you don't get found out.

The difficulty with villains or villainy plots, is to have some degree of success, you have to depend on other characters, and that leaves a very large factor of randomness, especially as larger plans require more characters, and this is the most unreliable factor in the equation. You'd have to be able to depend on a group of people, trust that none of them decided to switch sides at an inopportune moment, run off with whatever equipment you give them, stay awake to do your bidding, and find enough people willing to aid you to begin with. Its much easier it seems to get a bunch of people to stand around and say "I'll guard this city" or whatever, than to get even a smaller number of people prepared, willing and able to attack a city or somesuch.

The most common and successful type of villian is the coward villian. The ones that have the good weapons and iron shields who prey upon the little defenseless ones. Or the pirates who attack and rob while everyones asleep, dragging people off or stabbing them and undocking before anyone can realize it.

Current damage levels, one attack a day, random hits and misses, and tiredness factors have all changed the face of violent interactions.

Missy wrote:
I have a char now who formulates a plan for war that ~will~ I assure you, take place.


Just because they aren't happening, doesn't mean they aren't there.

I have a few chars with well thought out plans. But the plans take time.

Better not be the Praetorian!

Sunni Daez wrote:But a good villian would start out Goody Happy....to gain the trust of those around him/her...before turning evil...

Actually, I disagree. Sure, you watch the news long enough and you'll occasionally hear about these highly intelligent, sociopathic monsters who manage fool their victims until it's too late, but most of the time people who spend enough time around a bad person recognize them as being a bad person. Evil is hard to hide.

That's why I'm never sure how I feel about the "Goody Happy" villains. It's so easy to disguise your character's true intentions in a text-environment like Cantr that it almost feels like cheating. You can hate another character, plot their murder, even rant and rave about them in your diary, but as long as you remember to type *smiles* at the end of every conversation they'll never have a clue. The same with all these "secretly insane" characters I here about sometimes. Realistically, there's got to be a few cracks in the armor - most crimes are crimes of passion, not of careful planning.

I wish I would see more obvious villains in Cantr. And by villains I don't necessary mean they have to be Evil(tm) - no murder plots or piracy necessary, just your every day run of the mill unpleasantness will do the trick. Every character is part of an ongoing story, and stories need conflict. There don't seem to be many great looming threats on the horizons in Cantr these days, but a few recurring bad guys (or girls) would at least give communities something interesting to talk about.

Enough of this incessant friendliness and cooperation. Character flaws can be a good thing. Let's see a little selfishness and greed, cowardice, rudeness, insensitivity, cynicism, manipulation, lewdness, ungratefulness, bigotry and bitterness. A person can have one or more of those "qualities" and still function fairly well in society - things might occasionally spill over into violence, but that ought to be the exception, not the rule. It's not necessary to spend ten years making preparations before flipping the switch from a model citizen to a bandit. You can stand there and do nothing more strenuous than farming potatoes all your life and still add some much needed conflict and interest to the lives of the people around you.

Well spoken first post, Sociologist. I think it's well thought out, and rather accurate. I too miss the old days and dislike the "Middle America" (as you said) roleplaying-over-danger.

It seems that as the game environment has gotten less hazardous (except in some wilderness-type places), and violence is less likely to actually kill someone unless it's very one-sided, actual day-to-day life has gotten harder. I'm talking about constantly having to repair things, the many more steps involved in creating all but the simplest tools and weapons, and the higher rate of dropouts (due no doubt at least in part to the above changes) which makes it so hard for reliable, non-CR-breaching organizations to really happen.

Whoops, thanks for reminding me. I got off on a tangent about villains and forgot what I meant to say about Sociologist's post. Annnd...I still can't remember. Darn. I agree with just about all of it though, and it seems like the lack of truly dangerous people and organizations is directly related to the changes that make combat so unbalanced and ineffective. I still think it's possible to make unlikeable characters despite all that, but I dearly wish there was at least the possibility of a conquering or occupying army that couldn't just be dragged into a building and locked away to starve.

It is possible, I believe, for good bandits to still "make a living'. It just takes more organization and preparation. All the attacks I've seen were disorganized slash sessions not well planned raids. I believe that if a group of bandits or conquerers (whatever) had a carefully crafted plan that was executed well they would be able to take over a fairly "large" society of people. Remember, there aren't any towns of 100's of people (or at least they are rare). So, realistically, it should be possible for 7 or 8 well armed trained killers to create some major damage and still be "true to life" in most towns.

Thanks, Stan. You are one of the people who give evidence that villians can and do still happen, it just takes on a Cantrian image. The game is simulating a society, the results of the simulation just aren't what some people expect them to be...aka real life. It's not real life, it's Cantr, and I think that is fine. You are seeing how society will develop if this is the way physics worked, how people were able to interact, etc.

Could it be a bit different? Yes.

Should it be different? Who's to say?

Why is Cantrian universe so crappy compared to a parallel tangent that we could havce taken? Maybe that's the question we need to address. *shrugs*