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Do we really need to limit people's minutes?
Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2009 12:17 pm
by Idriveayugo
I highly doubt limiting people's minutes in Cantr is effective at reducing lag on the server. All a person has to do to go around the system is relog in. I bet the server is more worn down with people constantly relogging in than simply browsing around in the game.
Let's do an experiment, let's remove the minute restrictions for a week (if possible) and see what happens. The only change I can think of will be a positive one.
Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2009 1:43 pm
by Doug R.
I support this suggestion, even though it would render credits in their current form useless.
Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2009 1:45 pm
by Piscator
I think we had this suggestion already, but I'm to lazy to use the search button myself right now.
I think it would be a good idea, but I guess I'm biased at the moment because I ran out of minutes two times in the last few days.
Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2009 2:20 pm
by *Wiro
The limit is not to kill the lag, it's so everyone gets a fair chance and can't play 24/7, giving them a huge advantage over people who aren't that active.
Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2009 2:25 pm
by Marian
I like this idea...I have enough minutes right now because of so few characters, but I'm still constantly logging in, logging out, writing something, logging back in to paste it, just out of habit. (and also because I'm a bad typer and it's easier to triple check what I'm saying that way)
Especially in busy towns or during an 'ongoing conversation' where two people are awake at once, with that little timer thing that updates events you wouldn't need to refresh the page at all if you could just let it sit there without worrying about burning your minutes.
Maybe let people buy more character slots with the credits...if a person has the time and wants to play Cantr more, why not let them? We need more active characters around, and tthe way the game is set up you don't get any real benefit from playing more as far as anything other then Rp goes.
Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2009 2:38 pm
by Piscator
*Wiro wrote:The limit is not to kill the lag, it's so everyone gets a fair chance and can't play 24/7, giving them a huge advantage over people who aren't that active.
That's not the reason why it was introduced as far as I know. And how exactly will the time limit keep me from playing one or two characters full time?
People without much time have a disadvantage anyway and making the life harder for the people who have the time to add something to the game doesn't benefit Cantr at all.
Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2009 2:53 pm
by BlueNine
I agree with this idea, it might be good to have some people who are on 24/7 (town leaders etc). Plus i think it might get rid of some of the whole "town of zombie workers" syndrome, since people will have time to have idle chit-chat (otherwise known as RP) without worrying about having enough minutes left "just in case" they need to do something later
Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2009 3:06 pm
by *Wiro
Piscator wrote:*Wiro wrote:The limit is not to kill the lag, it's so everyone gets a fair chance and can't play 24/7, giving them a huge advantage over people who aren't that active.
That's not the reason why it was introduced as far as I know. And how exactly will the time limit keep me from playing one or two characters full time?
People without much time have a disadvantage anyway and making the life harder for the people who have the time to add something to the game doesn't benefit Cantr at all.
It's not why it was introduced, but it is why it was kept like that. (Or so they say, might just be that they're lazy.

)
I do agree with this though.
Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2009 7:35 pm
by Dudel
Dudel thinks it doesn't matter as I don't 'have enough' characters to 'limit my RP' BUT if I had more time/ticks I could have more then my 6 and still give EVERY character the same amount of um.. attention?
Dudel doesn't think his play habbits would change much personally, except maybe other characters might be more prone to RP with me instead of mindlessly try to break locks and farm. (Workers)
It might also give me the chance to fully work with my characters instead of only 1/2 way. Right now I do things like try and avoid clicking character descriptions and reading notes more then nessecary just because it drains minutes away, which is dumb.
In my 100% honest opinion, I think the minutes/ticks should stay but be reworked. Have 1 taken away for every event you type, or project your start not just a countdown. With 200 thats PLENTY, for me anyway and would still 'limit' others who are online 24/7.
Dudel is one of the 24/7s but I still don't use my minutes all the time, lag does drain my minutes WHICH ANNOYS but the main issue isn't that they are there its how they are being spent.
My idea makes it so that credits still work the way they do now.

Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2009 8:12 pm
by Idriveayugo
Restricting the amount of actions a person could undertake would only degrade the Cantr community and create more "workers".
Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2009 8:34 pm
by DylPickle
Though I'm a sluggish player nowadays and wouldn't benefit directly from an elimination of the time limit, I think it'd be good overall, because those active players could keep things going a little more. Sure beats logging into a gray player page all the time.
Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2009 8:47 pm
by SekoETC
Making each action consume a minute would only make people more calculative with their actions. However maybe more actions could give you tiredness, like entering buildings, picking up resources and such. It wouldn't prevent you from functioning but would make you temporarily exhausted if done excessively. If entering or leaving a room gave you 1-2% tiredness, it wouldn't notably affect your effectiveness if you just walked in and out once or twice a day, but something like searching a whole town should make you pretty exhausted.
Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2009 9:17 pm
by NaruShadow
I like Seko's idea, and I agree that we should try eliminating the minutes for a few days.
Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2009 9:56 pm
by The Latter
And if a town finishes a 200 000g carrot harvesting project that should be moved into the storage, which is a room inside a building and only the town leader has the access to that room, since it's one of many storages around. (one for food, one for animal resources, one for valuables, etc.)
I know an example of this kind of towns.
It would really suck if the carrots had to be moved in and doing so would give you (even if you had your entire inventory available for the carrots)
200 000 / 15 000 * 2 * 4 = 107% of tiredness.
(200 000 = the amount of carrots, 15 000 = the amount available in inventory, 2 = tiredness per room entered, 4 = amount of times entering a new space during one trip)
Plus any possible additions from picking up and dropping resources, like suggested.
And on top of that the town leader probably would need to set up some projects, perhaps trade (get resources from the storage(s))...
Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2009 10:47 pm
by Marian
SekoETC wrote:Making each action consume a minute would only make people more calculative with their actions. However maybe more actions could give you tiredness, like entering buildings, picking up resources and such. It wouldn't prevent you from functioning but would make you temporarily exhausted if done excessively. If entering or leaving a room gave you 1-2% tiredness, it wouldn't notably affect your effectiveness if you just walked in and out once or twice a day, but something like searching a whole town should make you pretty exhausted.
Sorry but I have to say I don'tn like this - for one thing tiredness just plain sucks . Sure I guess it COULD have a reason for existence to balance combat if the other restrictions were taken away, but right now it's just another useless bar and I don't want them to try and make it 'useful' by finding arbitrary ways to annoy people with it...there's just no reason to limit the amount of times a person can go in and out of a building...what benefit would that add to the game? And why can't we ever have anything positive like removing a pointless restriction without sticking a pointless negative in to 'balance it out'?
The second reason I disagre is that as far as programming goes removing minutes is probably easy, but removing minutes + adding in all this tiredness stuff is more complicated and they might not want to mess with it...like I've said before, I'd rather see one simple thing get added then nothing at all.