All Quiet on the Western Front?

[Jos Elkink]

What's happening?

Is it just me, or are the English boards gradually getting less active? If I now check the 'posts since last visits' lists, it's far more in Polish than in English. I know we have more Polish players, but that shouldn't mean the English fall quiet ...

And we need some big boost in English players ... there are far, far more English speaking people in this world than Polish speaking people, so why should we have fewer players?!

Go recruiting!

[nitefyre]

Well, the less active forums could probably be explained by a few things. 1) After you play and visit a while, it just becomes the same old material recycled over and over (e.g. I check one of the topics, and Surly points out that swymir has accredited RP praise to a character yet again) until you bore to death of it 2) and if it's not boring you to death, it's probably not encouraging you to post. Sure, the fuel topic spiked a few posts, mostly in outcry and some in favor, but at least it has controversy. As someone said in the IRC the other day, "after you see a suggestion for the eleventh time in the suggestion forums," why bother? And why bother if fuel's going to be implemented anyways? 3) There's other English mediums, like the IRC, which is more responsive and usually more active and less about Cantr. Although recently, a lot of fuel discussion has occured in the IRC....

There's probably more similarities to "All Quiet on the Western Front" than you probably intended. Cantring, in a sense, is like playing chess when taking a shit.

[Jos Elkink]

I totally understand your explanation in the sense that for the same reasons, I read less and less of the forums as well. But I don't understand how that would suddenly reduce activity after 4 years ... I mean, many of those things you describe were already repetitive about 2 years ago ...

I'm curious to learn more about your (or my) analogy to the movie - I didn't quite get your point ...

[formerly known as hf]

Whilst the things that have got repettitive might have been repetitive two years ago, so many more players now find it repetitive.

And generally, new players are (very un-subtly) bludgeoned into thinking that there's nothing that they can say which is new.

I've seen a shift of focus from the suggestion/GD forums, to the non-cantr and games forums.

As for the IRC, I really doubt it takes 'business' away from the forums. The serious discussions still hapen here.

[nateflory]

I noticed the same thing. I've been playing the game for probably two months now, and this week the in-game chatter has markedly reduced. Perhaps I'm just not in the most populated towns or embroiled in political anarchy, but it was wierd to login after taking two days off for a business trip and finding only a few of my characters having anything happen except for the periodic "You ate X Grams of Y".

Perhaps the server lag is the cause, perhaps school or university is back in session? Or perhaps it's jsut that everyone is quietly working on projects to complete when my characters are, and the chatter will pick up shortly.

Otherwise, I love this game. It was tough spawning in an empty area there at first, but now I have a few other characters to play with and explore while my silent leader holds builds empty domain!

[EchoMan]

Perhaps the server lag is the cause

I think it may have something to do with it. It has been near impossible to have a constructive conversation in game the last week or so unfortunately.

[Ahoyhoy]

I try to keep things interesting on the forum, but nobody likes my humor

[WojD]

Yeah, here is quite quiet

Growth of Polish zone is really fast and perhaps next week we reach one thousand level. You perhaps also see that this isn't only growth of 'normal players' but also staff members so participation of our zone becomes really important for game.

Don't have fear - we are peaceful and good for our vict... friends

[Phalynx]

Server Lag would have a lot to do with it... When Cantr is dead, so is the forum, and when Cantr is alive I want to spend the precious minutes of lag free time on cantr not in the forum...


I'm fairly new around here and to be honest I started life on the forum posting in support/suggestions and very quickly found out that if you post saying good idea or bad idea, IE a short answer, you get called a post whore and if you post a longer more considered reply you get shot down in flames by people who, by virtue of their long term tenure in the game, feel they can, fairly harshly at times, dismiss someones thoughts, usually for fairl pathetic reasons... I actually find a number of people here can't post their responses to such things fully OOC.


Therefore why bother. I stick to posting in the general discussion and off topic forum, but this thread has made me think about that too. My time is precious, if I am going to take time skiving from work or away from my family its probably time wasted if its here posting about things that are'nt really cantr related and if it is cantr related more time wasted when prominent members can only see any aspect of the game in how it relates to their character.

[/RANT]

[Jos Elkink]

Hmm, this is actually a fairly serious issue being raised here. I mean, the server lag is important, but there's little point in discussing that here ... But it sounds like the forum is experienced as much less friendly than it used to be, which really is not a good development. Are there any solutions to this, or does it just require asking oldbies to be more friendly to newbies? It is definitely not good if people don't dare talking about the game anymore.

The fact that some suggestions are ignored has always been an issue, and is not one that is easy to solve. I don't think it is possible to maintain a quality game if the game design became entirely democratic - e.g. if many players want it, it happens. Players might often have shorter term goals than the game designers; different players often have different ideas; the more democratic, the more Cantr might lose it's unique character and become like so many other games. That said, good communication between ProgD/designers and players is still something that could improve, even though it improved a lot already since the involvement of Jur and especially Chris. It's usually communication that makes people feel ignored - not the fact that their ideas are not necessarily implemented.

I find it difficult to believe that the chat channel is an important cause in the reduction of communication through the forums. The chat channel is far less popular than the forums, as a recent poll showed, and ideas that come up in chats need to be moved to the forums anyway if they want to draw any attention from ProgD.

I didn't mean to say that it is bad that the Polish are talking more - I just mean that all language groups should grow and be big, not just one ... So the way the Polish zone is developing is brilliant; the way most others are not so much.

There is also very little chat about developments in the game, it seems. There is the 4-day-rule of course, and to be on the safe side and avoid CRBs, it's better to wait even longer, but even if you only look back at least a month, there are many cool developments in the game few people seem to be talking about. Observing the game from a distance is one of the things that makes it a cool game - not just playing it, also analysing it is generally quite interesting ...

Anyway, just a rant

[Ahoyhoy]

I try not to talk about in game developments on here. So there is only so much one can post about when talking about cantr but not events in Cantr.

[Stan]

Jos, my opinion is that the server lag IS the reason there's been little talk on the forums. I know you want to talk about it in another thread, but I think it directly correlates.

I've only spent a couple of minutes a day playing because of the lag. And when I do that I usually just browse the forums.

Perhaps I'm not representative of the majority, but that's the sense I get about why the forums are quiet.

[Ahoyhoy]

There's not usually lag when I play. Like there's no lag right now. But when everyone is online playing and it's laggy I'm sure it irritates people.

[nateflory]

Rant away grand master of Cantr!

Good points, and as a game-designer myself I understand the disconnect between democratic To-Do lists and my personal vision for the code I'm writing. Below is a rant of my own, which may or may not be appropriate in this topic. Moderate me at will!

However, I have to admit there is a sense of "distance" or "elitism" felt when I first accessed the forums. Sadly, no good suggestions on how to get around that, and as I stuck around and played I got a better sense of what happens here and find the pearls of wisdom hidden around the forums.

I think the main stumbling block when I first started is an indirect result of the "Find out In-game" rule. I initially avoided the WIKI, avoided the fourms except the OOC ones, and generally tried my best to ask around as a character. But it was tough trying to figure out "Ok, how do I join a project to help you, since the TownKing asked me to?" Whispering was met with more IC replies (when what I really needed was "Click Activities, click Search, Click the little 'P' for what you want to do.) , and it took me about a week to figure out how to make a loincloth since the green arrow is not shown to "Start Project" like I expected from gathering resource projects. I know, I know, this is easily available on the WIKI, but my first impressions of the game was to read the rules about being only IC, and find out things ONLY in-game.

I asked on the forums initially about my third character, who spawned in a rather empty place, and I was really confused as to how to even "Play the game". Some answers were good, but largely there was much discussion about how cool it was when their characters found an empty spot. (not to sound insulting to those replies!) If I was less dedicated to learning the game, I might have taken that opportunity to just stop in frustration or spend the rest of my days attacking animals with my bare hands and farming potatoes, since that's really the limit to what I understood that first real-life week I played my three characters.

The "First Cantr Day" wiki page was useful in getting started checking characters, but again there was a tone of "find out yourself" which deterred me from digging deeper into the forums for assistance. I personally liked the challenge, but I can see how it may turn off new players looking for more of an RPG hack&Slash game.
(which Cantr is NOT, and I'm a solid convert now)

[Marian]

There is also very little chat about developments in the game, it seems. There is the 4-day-rule of course, and to be on the safe side and avoid CRBs, it's better to wait even longer, but even if you only look back at least a month, there are many cool developments in the game few people seem to be talking about. Observing the game from a distance is one of the things that makes it a cool game - not just playing it, also analysing it is generally quite interesting ...

Well I agree, or at least I used to agree, in other RPI games I've played discussing characters and events after they happened was almost as fun as playing through them.

But it seemss like here it's strongly discouraged, even if you're followign the 4 day rule no one wants to hear about events on the forums, and it's not safe to even reveal who your characters are, let alone talk about they've done in detail, unless they've been dead about forty years, apparently. (Though at the same time there's been about two dozen threads where people can pat themselves on the back about their characters, so it's kind of strange to see two completely clashing views, but I'll never join in on one of those.)

Even though so many people here are so much into roleplaying it's like they can't always seperate OOC from IC...I notice that some of the people here are pretty nasty to each other and I wonder if that would carry over if they're characters ran into each other, and from what I've read it seems like everybody's cheated at some point, even members of the staff.

So yes, it seems like the forums not all that friendly sometimes, and if the only things that are okay to discuss are game mechanics, I either don't know enough about them to get involved or everything I think of has been thought up before, so I really don't bother to post as much as I did when I first joined and was still all excited about everything.