Conspicuous Consumption I: Lifestyle Evaluation

[Pirog]

Elkink>

Although I have no idea Cantr 2.0 will be there any time soon - might take years - I thought I had made quite clear by now that (1) the game will definitely not be reset; (2) Cantr is not a Medieval game and was never intended to be.

Oh, I read something a while back from an official or semi-official person that made me think that the game would be reset. I hope you will get a chance to rethink your decision, because it would benifit Cantr alot in a longer perspective.
And I know that Cantr isn't a medieval game, and was never intended to be...I just think it would be a hell of a lot better if it was
(edit: Hehe, originally I accidently wrote "I know that Cantr is a medieval game. Even my subconcious wants it )

If you want clothes to be the deciding factor in how your character intereacts with other characters, make it that way.

Noone claimed that. But people appearance does matter IRL, and currently it doesn't in Cantr. If you would look for workers for a company you have you would probably not hire the sweat stinking, unshaved man in dirty and torn clothes if there was an equally skilled man who had a more pleasent appearance, right?

Sociologist>

OK. Would you agree with my conclusion that the description page is too remote and insufficiently "readily seen"?

Yes, I very much agree.
I would like the descriptions to be as available as possibe, but I suspect it might slow down the server. But it should definately be on the conversation screen, as well as followed with a little "clothing marker" on the event page if it was up to me.

[Agar]

Secondly, the simulation isn't a psychological view of soceity, it's more like how a human resources department sees society. We don't care how people are muscled, or how they're dressed, we care that they are available to do work. Every person in cantr is the same strength, can do the same amount of work on the same kind of material, carry the same load, do the same amount of damage.

We aren't people. We are man-hours.

Clothing is irrelevant, just a fringe benifit or a badge of office. What we do is irrelevant, just that we do it.

Thanks for this. You have just summed up perfectly how the game currently operates. You have a model of characters as producers, yes? You said "We care that they are available to do work". However, an economist would be equally concerned that characters are available to consume products.

So, are you trying to move that the type of simulation be changed from what it is now to a psycological simulation, an economic simulation, or something else entirely?

The simulaiont currently operates in some manner. That is a desireable state to be in. Changing it in the manners you desire will firstly slow it down, and it is slow enough for everyone right now thank you, and secondly may not drive the effect you want.

It works like this: production->supply->MARKET<-demand<-consumption.

You keep citing the need for conusption, but I just don't see the need. Older player hoarding? Hoarding what? Things are produced, but unless they put them to use, they can't keep thier power.

New players and new characters provide the consuption. They want to establish thier characters in a society and look to the older characters for aid and guidance. Or, the older characters force the new characters into the society, it depends on the spot. Regardless things that are produced are consumed by players.

Production and consuption are balance. If you think older player are hoarding, you apparently aren't one of them, and are feeling a little excluded. Get over it and go dig you potatoes.

[The Industriallist]

There is no model driving consumption at all, except:
Food
Healing Food
Locks
rarely, boats

Every other good can (potentially) be made traded, and used (er..), but none of them are actually consumed. Consumption implies sustainable demand (economic sense) which doesn't exist for something that lasts forever, unless the population that demands it grows as fast as the amount of it in existance.

Your economic examples, at least are assuming an economy that I've never seen the like of in Cantr. In my experience, if you can obtain any iron or steel, you will be able to obtain more. The tricky part is joining the iron-age club in the first place.

I think economic views of cantr would be a lot more relevant if there were more actual traders, though. Trade is a rather rare event. I'm doing my part

As for marketing...you can aim for basic drives all you want. But aim for them in the roleplayed personalities of your potential customers, rather than trying to hard-code them. Now, RPing those drives might be something people should pay more attention to...(myself very much included)

I agree that a section added to the character description addressing some aspects of what a person has been doing recently (cleanlyness, say) would be a good idea. And an easier way to access (and read) the character description would also be good.

And for the rational agents business. By distorting the "context of how they perceive a situation and their place within it", you can justify all kinds of actions as rational. Literally. But that isn't a useful description unless you include the perception informaition. And you can't make assumptions about that. To put it in game theory terms, most people don't know their own value functions.
I've seen a number of 'stone shops'. I've never seen one of them do any business, or seen one close down. That isn't rational from any perspective I'm prepared to acknowledge.

[The Sociologist]

But to the main issue. I find the analysis of The Sociologist really very interesting and it opens my eyes a bit, and I mostly agree with Pirog's response (except for his point about clothes' quality). What I'm wondering is, to what extent would this be handled by the skills systems we have long designed just not yet implemented? The idea is that instead of 'strength' a character will have a series of characteristics ('drunkeness', 'tiredness', 'cleanliness', 'muscular strength', etc.), which are affected by a lot of different factors and which in turn affect the effectiveness of participation in different projects. So a tired person cannot work as hard, or a drunken person not aim as well. This while the actual level of the skills will be hidden from the user (not like the strength percentage now), except for clearly visible elements (someone who is exhausted will look exhausted). To what extent would this help in the context of The Sociologist's analysis?

Jos, alas, no, it's not really the same thing. What I'm trying to do mainly is to form a link between older, elite, high-status characters with surplus hoards, on the one side, and outlying sources of processed foodstuffs, clothing, jewelry and suchlike on the other side. That's why I suggested foodstuffs processed from 3 different sources for example. But this link was to be stimulated at the level of motivations, of desires, of what drives people. I would like to force Edwina Evilguts to buy some decent clothes and eat proper food--resources not available to the peasantry--but I don't want to turn Edwina into Superwoman merely because she can afford it.

Let me tell you an anecdote. In the early days of Ultima Online, one of the players did a bit of "hacking" and discovered how to make black clothes. Really really jet black. Now before the programmers managed to quash it, these clothes came to fetch huge prices, overwhelming even militarily significant special items, especially in the first few days. And this was because the Dread Lords in their castles (...this was in the early pk days) felt that they simply had to have such items. But this was based purely on desire. A Dread Lord mage in a jet black robe! No self-respecting Dread Lord could afford to be seen without one!

The reason for the stampede is the graphical nature of Ultima Online; as I said before, things are "readily seen". At the same time, such a graphical world tends to suppress roleplay, so there is a tightrope to be walked here. However, some reinforcement, some feedback, is nonetheless required for motivation to work.

Now, for shock effect, I made my descriptions at the lower end very harsh, and I realize now that this is not welcomed by players. So, you could make them more neutral, more "average". However, if anyone gets anything out of this thread, it should be:

Stimulate desire and you will stimulate the economy.

Moving some of the clothes/looks description to the events page would be nice, perhaps, but would also really slow down the server and increase the bandwidth usage. Since we're working at limits of those, we'll have to postpone such a change, I fear. But it would help roleplay, I must admit. Currently, most of my chars have no clothes, but it's hardly visible. If I would see it every time I act, it would really disturb me much more ...

Right, so there would be a problem both looking up all those tables and putting the descriptions together, and in the size of the file that gets returned, yes? Have you considered client-side processing... Javascript maybe? Alternatively, I would suggest the following: (1) You always see your own summary description at least once on the page; (2) You only see these summary descriptions for the last few other people who have performed some reported action. It would be like being in a crowd. You don't minutely inspect everybody but tend to look at those people to whom your attention is drawn. So long as there is some risk that an actor will be seen by others at least some of the time, then appearance becomes important. Again, I'm stressing the psychology of image, of impression. It is very very important in how societies function, and a crucial stimulus to consumerism.

Finally, my congratulations to you on a most remarkable project here. Considering that there's no auto-policing, no auto-banking, no auto-trading, no npc's, and even true death, its success has really stunned me. Just the economy needs a bit of fixing, and more sophisticated between-town relations should flow from that.
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