Make the game interesting - Stop repairing!

Out-of-character discussion forum for players of Cantr II to discuss new ideas for the development of the Cantr II game.

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g1asswa1ker
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Postby g1asswa1ker » Sat Aug 19, 2006 7:57 am

Solutions Maximus wrote:I agree with a recycling or trash machine. But, unless they are extremely cheap and easy to make, not every town will make one. I'm currently playing in a town that has about 50 bone knives on the ground. It's extremely annoying. Charries are made, they make the knives, they drop them, they end up leaving or dying. Makes a huge mess. Luckily, I know those knives will eventually rot and therefore be out of my way.


Even in the real recycling is not a cheap effort... so in compromise to some other post that I have not quoted. Let it be set for 8 hours to repair and item then you still have a "job" for newspawns to work at....(goddess I should really go to bed) with out the over lying enoumas cost of paying someone to do work on just repairs. And if you have been playing awhile you know what I mean.. unless of course your one of those people who supports slave labor.

You know ...
thanks for doing all the repairs he's 1000 grams of potatoes for all your time wasted....

*looks to the well dressed fully equiped person and then to the potatoes* What the frek is this!!!!

Cause you really know he just wants to take that nice shiny sabre you have and stick it up your cherry little well dressed arse.....
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Solutions Maximus
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Postby Solutions Maximus » Sat Aug 19, 2006 8:00 am

Of course, :D isn't it delightful?
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Chris Johnson
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Re: Make the game interesting - Stop repairing!

Postby Chris Johnson » Sat Aug 19, 2006 9:17 am

deadboy wrote:This is pretty simple. I call to get rid of repairs, get rid of deterioration.
......
To put it simply, count your loses with repairing, admit it was a failure and a bad idea, and get rid of it!


A very good idea, I also think we should never have introduced repair, it just irritates players and wastes their characters time to no meaningful purpose. So I back this idea in principle

On the other hand Item deterioration is essential for the game to have any meaningful future and provide any challenge for the players - without over time we'll end up with more crowbars and sabres than characters . Of course with repair as easy as it currently is we'll probably still end up with this situation.

This has already happened with buildings and vehicles - two types of objects which don't decay - 10 months ago there were 2 buildings/vehicles for every 3 characters , now - with no real change in the number of characters we have more than 1 building/vehicle per character. Yes - its good that there is development but ulimately a game where every newspawn goes off and builds his mud hut (then dies..) leaving yet another annoymous "Mud hut 456" doesn't really excite me .


Since players aren't really going to accept item rot with no repair then , I'll just have to back the status quo ad support what we currently have
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Mykey
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Postby Mykey » Sat Aug 19, 2006 9:22 am

I apologise, but, in my opinion, you are mistaken. I suggest it to discuss. Write to me in PM, we will talk.
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g1asswa1ker
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Postby g1asswa1ker » Sat Aug 19, 2006 9:34 am

g1asswa1ker wrote:I'm think why am I reposting this..... cause you don't want it to get lost in the pile because you really think it's a good thought and if it gets lost in the pile then it will never ever be seen by those that need to see it and even get concider as a possible fix to the problem...


Here is a thought.. if the repairing feature is only there to remove junk that isn't used anymore. Why not make it so you only have to spend and hour repairing it... thus ensuring it is a continued iexistance... Keep the existing terms of age as a warning that you may lose this item if you don't repair it but make the time of repair far quicker.

to further note age should be longer then account idle out

Songthrush wrote:Don't settle for kludgy compromises.

Let us lobby and encourage the complete abolishment of item decay!

There is no real item over-proliferation problem. It is only imagined by the same theorists who think "creating jobs" by adding meaningless time-sinks to the game is a good idea. If a crisis of item-oversaturation ever appears, trashcan machines can be created for every town to manually dispose of garbage in exchange for small amounts of raw goods (recycling) to be had by the player out of trashing an item.


And what of these suggestions chris? You comment on one guy out of the whole bunch actually discussing the issue yet thes are some really good suggestions... Reduction of over-proliferation of items due to Rot continues to exist yet the need for repairs is reduced for simplification purposes and recycling and active part of characters to reduce items that are just not needed...
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Chris Johnson
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Postby Chris Johnson » Sat Aug 19, 2006 10:06 am

g1asswa1ker

All I have done is given my view
There were 31 post before my one - do you want me to comment on all of them ?

But I will comment on the two you mention - I dissagree with both of these , As I've said, I believe there should be decay and it is essential for the game. In the case of you suggestion - how would making repair easier support my view , it fails to address what I feel is wrong with the current system and makes the problem of item prolifieration greater than it currently is .

Songthrush's suggestion just covers a means to dispose of unwanted objects - my view is that the problem lies with all objects - in particular the valuable objects - It is the proliferation of these (and not the trash) which kills part of the challenge of the game .

I suggest you read Witchita's post which reiterates what has been mentioned in many other threads that the current plan is to reduce time based decay and introduce usage based decay.
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g1asswa1ker
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Postby g1asswa1ker » Sat Aug 19, 2006 10:11 am

Thank you and I do agree with usage based decay...

And sorry my comment was a ploy for you to comment nothing more... It appears you have taken the hook so can I catch this fish or will it swim away...lol
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Postby deadboy » Sat Aug 19, 2006 10:28 am

H-ok then. Repairs don't work, we have already noticed that, but if you don't want a back-log of things of people who don't use them any more (buildings, vehicles, weapons etc) then you DO NOT need to use rot as the only way of getting rid of them.

I don't like rot, in any way shape or form, because it means that we have to repair, and you are right Chris, people would not accept rot without repairs because they would lose all of their hard earned things within weeks of building them. The game would suck. But you said that detereration is essential to the game. Wrong. Getting rid of items is essential to the game, not deterioration.

If you need to get rid of items then let's have some sort of smelting device. That way large towns will simply put their unused weapons, vehicles and things into them to make steel again (all other materials except iron should be lost) and that'll let them build the new things.

Or another suggestion. If there are already enough things in the world then let's make there a collecting a limit on resources, say 5k of limestone per year, but it builds up if you don't collect it. That way an undiscovered island could have a town with 500k of limestone ready to e collected when the main islands are struggling to collect enough, are being greedy, and are having to vie with each other for it. It would encourage exploration that's actually backed by towns and not just done for the interest of the players majorly, also, with lacks of resources it's going to make some interesting events happen "Who gets the resources! Hey, I'm leader of this town so I should get the resources! You must die!" or "Town C has more limestone than us, they can also collect 9k per year whereas we can only collect 5k, let's go to war with them!"

See, fun :)

And, on top of that, if towns begin to become greedy, then more wars will happen - especially if they have more time because they're not repairing. This'll solve your over-amount of buildings and weapons problem! An invading army should be able to pack a portable smelter, to throw any enemies weapons into once they find them that they don't need and turn them into steel, and should have some kind of siege equipment for razing buildings, which should include anything inside it, including people :twisted:

Also, if you are still worried about there being too many buildings include that the sledgehammer can destroy one, but it takes many days. The benefit is that you get the resources back, once towns start running out because they can't get hold of any any more because other towns are hoarding theirs they will have to break them down :D.

Now, there is one small problem you may see with all this, the resources are going to be ridiculously abundant if towns start to smelt everything and raze their own towns to the ground. BUT I have a solution to that as well. Make towns need almost every resource for some small function. Steel for upgrading items, yes you heard me, every item should start as a "small" or "weak" item, including all items already built, and adding two thirds of the amount that it took to build it in the first place worth of resources, steel in most cases with tools, and wood too, but also iron, should make them "medium" then "good" then something else. You get my point, and anyway, it should make them better. This'll also make sure that people only ever really need one of each tool, so it'll stop there being huge backlogs of them, people will smelt the rest.

If there is still too much steel then yes, I will let you at least make vehicles deteriorate so they can be used for repairing them :P. Oil of course used for keeping cars running, and clays etc for adding to deteriorated buildings (ie repairing, but with NO repair time, otherwise everything I have just said goes to pot), and then I'm sure that you can think of uses for the others items too

Now admit it, this is the greatest idea EVER :P
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Mykey
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Postby Mykey » Sat Aug 19, 2006 10:34 am

I do not doubt it.
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Postby Crosshair » Sat Aug 19, 2006 12:55 pm

It is true, no one fights because no one has any reason to hate each other. Apart from some circumstances, everyone just wants to keep everything peaceful, which is fine, but can't last forever without people getting totally bored. If someone wrote a history of K island, they would see that all the interesting and amazing feats of history happened before all this adding to Cantr, and practically nothing has happened since... I call for people to heed West's Signature.... and act upon it!
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pur
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Postby pur » Sat Aug 19, 2006 1:53 pm

I think Rot is great,

And why can`t we get explosives, to clear all those pesky buildings? Seriously look at quillanoi, are even half those buildings in use? It`s a joke. I can`t believe people`s characters are so egotistical they keep spamming buildings, only to say they have built it... I really wish the ideas I tried to spread for apartment buildings IG, so many years ago, would have caught on.....


Why are they still building buildings, probably because alot of older players hold more keys to buildings and vehicles than they can use at the same time. But i can only assume that..

Collecting and having stuff is probably one of humans nature.

And deadboy seems only be interested in Wars, something i dislike of most games. I hope cantr stays a more peacefull game. There are already enough war games.
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Mykey
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Postby Mykey » Sat Aug 19, 2006 1:59 pm

It is a pity, that now I can not express - it is very occupied. But I will return - I will necessarily write that I think.
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The Sociologist
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Postby The Sociologist » Sat Aug 19, 2006 2:06 pm

Agar wrote:When I was a newbie, a newspawn with a stolen saber could wreak as much havok as it took Bandit and his crew to cause.

The new system has completely neutered combat in favor of defense, perhaps in an over zealous attempt to keep that from happening again.

I think there is a happy middle ground between the two, and things could be a little more shifted towards the war end of things than the peace end we have now. For it to take 40 people, possibly cheating (probally), to cause as much damage as one used to be able to do, is silly. I'd like to see violence a little more, well vilolent.

I'm really glad to see there is now somebody on staff who is prepared to acknowledge that a problem exists. "One small step for staff, one giant leap for cantriankind" :wink: :D
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The Sociologist
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Postby The Sociologist » Sat Aug 19, 2006 2:21 pm

Chris Johnson wrote:I suggest you read Witchita's post which reiterates what has been mentioned in many other threads that the current plan is to reduce time based decay and introduce usage based decay.

Sorry, Chris, but this risks introducing further biases and perhaps making the situation worse. For example, what about all those islands where characters battle with huge animal hordes. How will hunting be calculated? Is every time you hit an animal 1 usage? Or every time you hit any/all animals that day 1 usage? You could end up with insanely high rates of "usage" burdening as usual the poorest struggling characters while the rich can hoard their giant stashes of weapons and tools for much longer periods of time.

I have repeatedly stated that repairs should either involve the addition of some material such as applying tool oil, or else small quantities of the original materials used to make them. Then the repair time as such can be radically reduced. To next to nothing, in fact.

What you have now is a phenomenon whereby bone items are left on the ground for newspawns to pick up, but of course you never see this with steel weapons even when the town has a surplus. Why not? Well it's obvious. The steel is still considered more valuable than the hassle of repairs. However, if characters had to face the prospect that over a certain (rather long) period of time they would end up using more steel on repairing the item than its actual steel content, you might see more selling off of such items, even for considerable discounts.

(edited spelling)
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deadboy
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Postby deadboy » Sat Aug 19, 2006 2:44 pm

Ok I suppose the sociologists idea would work and have about the same effect as mine in using up resources, however, something that I see as -essential- to the game is limiting resources in a town, otherwise yes, like other people have said, the game will stay boring and too peaceful like it is now just because there is no need for conflict, and conflict is what makes games, shows, just about everything interesting.

Now, I'm not saying make cantr a war game, but let's be frank, cantr was so much better when we had the TBR, bandits, dictators, wars. Everyone getting along means no real history other than leaders changing when the player gets bored of the game and quits. I still think that getting rid of repairing is pretty essential to taking the game back to that earlier stage when it was a -great- game, but also some of the other things need to be changed too, like the battle system. To be fair I didn't even realised that that had changed.

I started playing first about two years ago, way before many of the changes, abd the game was great fun. I then quit and restarted about a year ago.... or whenever repairing was introduced, I can't remember how long ago that was :), but anyway, since then I have seen the game become more and more dull, quiet, and frankly boring. I still play but if things don't change I may not for long. I have already killed off a few of my charris without making more. These last few months have been the only time that I have played with less than 15 characters, but now I figure there is no point in having that many.

Please just do -something- to make the game as good as it was, mainly add something to make history happen again, as right now there doesn't seem to be any. You know what I mean
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we" - George W. Bush

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