To the Programmers: Enough with the changes, please

[Jos Elkink]

Does it seriously negatively affect gameplay in any way? (and please answer that question in that forum, not here ...)

[mordiken]

Can we begin to go for more fun in the changes in the future? I hear now buildings are going to be needed to be repaired soon, why is it that you take the least fun parts of life and put them into a game? Half my characters arent doing anything because of the gathering limits and a couple more are repairing where is the fun in that? For the amount of time it takes to manage all my characters all i ask is that some more features be considered that would actually enhance the experience instead of neuter it, this feels like work.

[Jos Elkink]

I think the problem is not a difference between fun and not fun, but different ideas of what is fun between different players ...

Some like the game when everything is easy - gather as much as you want, build things quickly, develop your own char that way and travel around a bit - while others enjoy the game because of the competition - lack of resources means politics and conflict to find out who gets access; repair etc. requires that you need to mobilize people to stay rich; etc. I belong to the latter group ... Without scarcity there is no point in organising, except 'for fun'. People create rules and governments just for the sake of creating rules and governments - I think it's more interesting when they're created to organise things and avoid violent conflict.

[mordiken]

I agree to an extent but i think you will be hard pressed to find someone who enjoys reparing. Take a look in seatown hills, or garden i dont remember, there are dozens of repair jobs. It seems like you almost designed the repairing to give newbies something to do in exchange for food because you knew you would be restricting the gathering of materials. Maybe im spoiled because i started origionally playing back when iron was freely mined from the ground ready to use.

[Jos Elkink]

The implementation of repairing was because of the implementation of deterioration, which was because of the fact that it was too hard for new people to compete with old people, because whenever you had built up your wealth, it took very little to maintain it. Now it doesn't only take organisation to build up your wealth, but also to stay wealthy, so it's a slightly more fair competition with newer players.

I think the repair times are a bit long at the moment, though, and I believe the RD is working on that.

Land scarcity was a totally separate development, for which the idea is much older.

Note, though, that many people were suggesting deterioration before it was implemented - it didn't come out of the blue sky. Land scarcity I had planned a long time and wasn't really a suggestion from players, though.

Repairing is not the most exciting thing to play, but: 1) a fortunate thing about Cantr is that players have multiple chars, so some can be doing manual jobs, while others are more competing with the leaders; 2) it gives an extra challenge to the game to avoid repairing etc. in the first place. My favourite char used to be Jonathan Russell, who refused to work with his hands at all times. Except for gathering potatoes for one week or so, he managed to do so for the rest of his life; he had a house, plenty of food, a nice income, and a reputed position in society. Without working with his hands.

Probably when you start, your char will be forced to do basic jobs, indeed, for food and protection from established citizens. But that's exactly how it's interesting - when you play that, you can well play that your char hates this and wishes to get out of it, and there you have your goal to play ... So, you can have some chars that don't care, or you might not, and if you have chars that hate it, then that's only an extra motivation to demand higher wages from your boss, strive to make promotion, organise a rebellion or a workers' union, overthrow the government to establish a system where all born in your town are free from labour and you survive on maintaining armies and forcing neighbouring towns into slavery (the good old ancient Greek citystate we so admire ...), or just try to become more wealthy then all others so you can have newspawns work for you instead of the other way around, or establish a church and preach and ask for donations, or .... well, hundreds of options ...

Some seem to suggest on the forum that I only like cruel empires. That is nonsense. I like many different solutions to these issues - from empires to guild systems to democracies to interregional unions to pirate ships to communist communities to ... whatever. But I like to see problems of social cooperation and inventive solutions - not a game where everything is easy, everybody is nice to each other, and all are happy, peaceful, going their own way, etc. Yes, roleplay with love affairs, books written, hunting festivals, etc. are all really cool parts of the game - but they are the more interesting when they are in an environment where something really happens. E.g. it's cool if at the Drojf Festival people refer to the troubled wars of the past - it's not cool if the whole Cantr world is so smooth and peaceful and individualistic that there is basically no history worth referring to.

And yes, sometimes you end up playing boring characters, but the trick is to do something about it, not to complain to the programmers ...

Sorry for the ramble - was just in the mood ... Maybe it's the West Wing episode I just saw ...

[Jos Elkink]

Nah, I want to continue one paragraph more ... Note that there are also very peaceful solutions to these scarcity kind of problems. E.g. a government could decide that all citizens have to spend a certain number of days a year on communal repair projects, so that it is more fair for newspawns; or governments could give newspawns 'starting capital' to be able to build up more without working for others, or a 'starting loan'; or government can have regularly elected councils who allocate digging slots; or governments can decide on a digging-slot-voucher-market so that people can commercially compete for digging slots, etc. etc. It's not evil empires I'm trying to force, but competition, violent or peaceful.

[Savanik]

Nobody wants to play the janitors, secretaries, or clerks of the game. Everybody wants to be somebody, sometimes.

But seriously (and I may be beating a dead horse, since you appear to agree): Build a bone knife, 8 hours. Repair an old bone knife: 33+ hours. Enh?!

The PD was very responsive about mucking around with the gathering limits for specific towns... I just wonder what's taking so long to balance obviously broken repair times.

And that's all I have to say about repairing. As far as gathering limits go, I like one person's solution - kill off any newspawn that is 'awkward' at gathering, thus freeing up slots for the skilled people to gather faster!

Sav

[Sunni Daez]

kill awkward newspawns? Even the most awkward deserve to live...if they roleplay that is!! Newspawns need food as they have none...if you wish to free the space...give them food and drag them from the project

(added)Yes...it is easier to build a new bone knife than repair the old...drop the old one....let a newspawn steal it!!!

[Jos Elkink]

The PD was very responsive about mucking around with the gathering limits for specific towns... I just wonder what's taking so long to balance obviously broken repair times.

Adjusting the gathering limits was not as much work, and it was a different department. The ProgD (PD = Players Dept) handled that, while the RD is responsible for repair times. With Anthony absent, the RD is not going as efficiently a usual, but it's going ... Be patient ...

[mordiken]

Now that you explained it repairing makes more sense, like i said i was spoiled i'll get over it soon.

[wichita]

Yes, RD is working on it, slowly but surely. When troubleshooting a balance issue, it is often wise to sit back and carefully look at what is going on before adjustment are made. This idea hopefully cuts down on trying to fix it by trial and error, which would only lead to a thread titled something like "Dear Resources Department - Make Up Your Friggin' Minds" How many complaints will there likely be when the values change "irradically" every other day until nobody can tell what is going on with the rates anymore? I don't think that will be very productive towards fixing the game.

And yes, everyone does have their own sense of fun. I personally play a man running a repair business, trying to keep numbers of tools maintained for the town. Trust me, I know about the state of repair rates. I personally for a while started to feel Cantr becoming more and more vanilla, with characters everywhere just building the same stuff and making the same trade deals. In my opinion, I have noticed that the changes being debated here have lead to more dynamic economies - dynamic in the sense that trade varies a bit more from region to region than I used to notice it being.

But seriously (and I may be beating a dead horse, since you appear to agree): Build a bone knife, 8 hours. Repair an old bone knife: 33+ hours. Enh?!

Unless bones are hard to come by, throw the knife away once it starts to crumble and make a new one. If it is more expensive to fix it than build a new one, build a new one. Bone tools are cheap and disposable, or at least are intended to be. This may not be true in towns with sparse animal populations, which has also hopefully been adressed, but then again, with few animals you are having more problems than being able to make knives, more than likely.

Just one of a few pointers that have been discovered and pointed out ad nauseum throughout the forum that tend to go ignored.

[julie2]

But seriously (and I may be beating a dead horse, since you appear to agree): Build a bone knife, 8 hours. Repair an old bone knife: 33+ hours. Enh?!

Unless bones are hard to come by, throw the knife away once it starts to crumble and make a new one. If it is more expensive to fix it than build a new one, build a new one. Bone tools are cheap and disposable, or at least are intended to be. This may not be true in towns with sparse animal populations, which has also hopefully been adressed, but then again, with few animals you are having more problems than being able to make knives, more than likely.

That makes sense, but then why make the damned things repairable at all.
One of my chas has a factory full of workes who WILL keep on repair ingthings on their own initiative, and expect to be paid good iron for the time they spend repairing an outmoded bone knife. It'san economic disaster! (chuck'em away?Ican't even tell who's got one!. And once it's in repair, there's no geting rid of it. Some helpful soul will work on it sooner-or-later.)

OK so she's finally persuaded most of them not to repair anything made of bone or wood. But theystill repair chisels (one day to make, just10g of iron and atinybitof wood; similar repair time to abone knife) and there's no point in confuing them further by saying "Only repair SOME iron tools "). Of course mostof this stuff deteriorates way too fast anyway. We've got some specialised tools that become much-used after only one use, because there's seldom any call for them. ( and , nope, I can't stop people repairing those either)

[Jos Elkink]

That makes sense, but then why make the damned things repairable at all.

Because these things should be decided by players, not the RD ... and sometimes bones might get rare and you might need your bone stuff ...

[Savanik]

Bone tools are cheap and disposable, or at least are intended to be. This may not be true in towns with sparse animal populations, which has also hopefully been adressed, but then again, with few animals you are having more problems than being able to make knives, more than likely.

At least one of my characters is in an area where all the small-boned animals have been hunted to extinction. Meat and food isn't lacking, but small bones are.

Sav

[mordiken]

Quite a few towns don't allow hunting at all