Has the Cantr player base gotten better or worse?

[Sho]

Some long-term players (myself included) feel that there has been a change in the people playing Cantr. We feel that many of the Cantr community's OOC groups are either losing player interest (Cantr radio, IRC) or being overrun by people who behave immaturely. We don't mean to offend, and this may just be wishful recall, but we feel that in the past the forums had more meaningful discussions, characters were played better (more effectively or with better RP), and the community was generally more closely knit. So, a poll.

My personal opinion is that these changes (I first noticed them about a year and a half ago) are the inevitable result of Cantr becoming more popular. For the first couple of years, most players were involved in the community and tried to behave responsibly in it, because they had to be. But as Cantr spreads, that is no longer the case, and the group selection that drives the original growth of the player base is no longer as active. This change may force out the original players, but is mostly unavoidable and not entirely a bad thing.

[tiddy ogg]

It's not got worse, despite my reservations about the plugging in voting sites... but it hasn't improved either. Far too many sleepers.

[Mafia Salad]

I haven't been around long enough to see any substantial changes. I guess I'm new school. but from what I know about and see as parallel to other communities that I've been involved with, your complaints mostly come from two roots. The first is that you remember the good more than the bad. Scroll back a couple dozen pages and you will see some stupid threads. And I'm sure that a lot of the bad RP from the days of old has been washed over in months and years of building stories.

The second root is along the lines of Cantr becoming more popular, it not that Cantr is attracting a new type of people (as far as I can tell), it's simply growth. I've seen it in some of the churches I've been involved in. When a group is small, it's easy to know everyone, follow their story and growth, influence them and be influenced by them. But as a group grows you begin to only get fragmented pictures of most of the people. Not to mention that you probably don't want to reveal as much to a larger group you don't know as well as you would to a close knit smaller group.

With such a big world for Cantr, and now a larger player base, it's hard to know a third of what's going on in the English area alone. There isn’t a lot of common ground for all the players to talk about. This along with CRB fear slowly kill the more game oriented OOC discussion as both factors grow. In the gap left by deeper conversation you get easy to do things like I AM and RP Praise, plus the silly gibberish we all know and hate.

There are a few smaller things that could play a factor in this too, part of it might be you're age, you are older and undoubtedly more mature than you were when you started playing X many years ago, so you view stuff as immature that you wouldn't have back in the day.

And part of it is the loss of a few big players, Rklenseth comes to mind more than anyone else because as I was reading through the old threads when I first got involved in this forum, he seemed to direct a lot of the conversation on top of influencing the game substantially.

It's something I've seen several time now in my life. As a group grows and the names involved change, the actions and communication of the group become more superficial but easily understood without knowing the person. Soon enough click groups will start to build up and a sense of tight knit community will return (look at the prominence of clans in the pay2play games), but it won't be quite the same as it was with one group, especially for the older player who have that one group to compare it all with.

[Dee]

I voted yes.

I see more players that are younger than 15 (no offense) Some of them act VERY mature, and some of them don't..

I now encounter more and more characters that behave in an immature way... And some are just copy cats. Like, suddenly, we have many retards in the game now.

[nitefyre]

Arguably being the epitome of old school, I feel Cantr's player base as a whole has been gradually declining in terms of quality. Then again, for the most part, the people I have played with have left (or have come back, only it's not the same). Nonetheless, I have met several newer players (mostly in the Highlands) in Cantr who still linger the desire in me to play Cantr.

[Surly]

To be fair... RKL left as much because of me as anything else. But don't be fooled... just because he and Anthony (examples) had a lot of posts and were very active does not mean that they were indispensible. In fact, I would say... actually, I will self edit here...

I think the changes in the Cantr game have also caused a change the players, and the game is heading in a certain direction. I dislike the direction, but I am aware that if it gets players... I cannot really criticise.

[formerly known as hf]

Bear in mind that those who use the forums and IRC are a minority of the players, and not indicative of those who play - older, more mature players usually avoid forums and IRC.

Anyone with any general experience of forums and IRC channels, knows that they are almost the preserve haunt of immature teenagers. As I am thankful for, and say time and time again, the forum community here is, by and large, much more mature than most others. Even so, it will always attract those with the free time to spend on it - primarily teenagers. Thankfully cantr teens are less insensitive and 'immature' than most.

I wouldn't base opinions of the wider player base on what you see here. However, I, personally, think that the forum, and especially IRC community, hold increasingly less interest for older players, myself included. I know the IRC especially is seen as quite 'cliquey' by those who don't use it often (again, myself included), and I think it's a fair enough comment, but there's little that can be done about that, almost all IRC channels are very cliquey, it doesn't make them unfriendly.

I do think the OOC community, amongst older players, has lost much of the previous tightness. I think the recent 'Players you'd like to see back' thread speaks volumes. Apart from the obvious nostalgia for a time when the OOC community was closer and there were older members around, it shows that we have lost, for a wide variety of reasons, some older players who were very influential in the OOC community. Also If you look at the posts, and see which current, active players, have posted there. Most of them are fairly heavy posters, but have posted very little in recent times.

As CD chair, I have noticed that what originally was quite a tight OOC community, especially amoingst older players, has dissipated somewhat, and I've wondered what I can do about it. Not much, I'm afraid is the answer.

There are less 'mature' players, and certainly less of the 'old skool' in the OOC community now who are able to take part in any meaningful discussion, and for some reasons there's less interest in having wider discussions on Cantr. I think there's a couple of main resons for this. We had a fair few major shake-ups fairly recently in how Cantr works, in a short space of time, which generated a lot of discussion at the time. A lot of people came out of that feeling that they went unheard, partly because they didn't get what they want, and partly because the 'powers that be' quite rightly didn't want to get into what were some fairly weighty arguments. Since then, there haven't been many major changes with which to inspire discussion, and where there has been some incentive, it's been tempered by the memory of epic, but fruitless, arguments.

I will refrain from making many comments about the nature of in-game experiences as I've never had more than seven characters at a time, of which only maybe three or four ever take much notice of what happens. What I think should be thought about, though, is whether the increased number of clearly new, possibly immature, players is actually an increased proportion? Cantr is increasingly popular, so of course there will be more players in general, and more immature RPers. And it's the crap RPers which stand out, unfortunately. Even despite some recent changes, with skills and the like, I think it's fair to say that Cantr still appeals to the hardcore roleplayers, who are generally going to be more mature.

Only time will really tell, but I think the nature of in-game RP is changing. I don't think the quality of individual RP is being affected, but I do think we are loosing players who were veru influential, in that they had characters who were holding onto major groups in Cantr, and hosting events on a large scale. Again, this can be seen in the clear nostalgia amongst older players, we have clearly lost very important players, who were the driving force behind major in-game organisations. As a result, these groups have either dissappeared, or become shadows of what they were. Apart from a few (one) notable exception that I can think of, no other major organisations have grown to replace them.

Also bear in mind the nature of current Cantr growth. The Polish section, especially, but also some of the other language areas, are growing faster than the English section. If you want to find the new, the exciting, the meaningful, both in-game and in the OOC community, it seems we'll need to learn Polish.

The OOC community has changed, considerably. but that's the nature of time - things change over the course of it. We've had a lot of people who were influential in the OOC community leave, and the new members are increasingly immature, but that should not be surprising considering the nature of forums. The OOC commuinty, at large, is still fun, albeit a lot less deep. As for in-game, I think we desperately need some people to organise some major changes, and be the driving force for large groups of people. It doesn't really matter what for, but I get the distinct impression that Cantrians are becomeing increasingly individualist.

[Hellzon]

Anyone with any general experience of forums and IRC channels, knows that they are almost the preserve haunt of immature teenagers.

I just had to reply to this. Out of the 7 forums I have experience with, there are:

3 rather mature roleplaying boards.
Cantr.net - slightly less mature than the 3 above.
One official roleplaying board (the Wizards of the Coast's* official board) full of immature teens. Official boards suck, IME.
The official Morrowind board. Nearing rock bottom in immaturity.
The Gunz Online** forum. Rock Bottom and digging. It's fun to watch the flamewars everytime the free BETATEST of this game dares to not work.

So this forum would actually be somewhere in the middle. Don't worry, the ones below are worse to a higher degre than the ones above are better.

*The guys behind Dungeons & Dragons
** A free online FPS game. It's currently in Beta, unless stuff happened in the last month.

/Hellzon - immature adult

[SekoETC]

People are quitting, new ones are coming. Some who quit come back after a while. A circle of life, sort of, we can't tell all newbies to "go away, we don't want your kind around here" since when you keep interracting with the same old faces, you eventually get a bit bored. And not all newbies are bad, though I would appriciate if there was some way of assuring people won't spawn saying

"sup? im new here"

"pick up stone"

You see N00b hitting a cow with his bare fist.

"is ne1 onlien??? how do u play this game??"

"HELLLLOOOOOOOO?"

You see N00b taking a road to unknown location.

Oooh, I could so make a Flash animation out of that! It might attract some players, or at least tell them what not to do. I still got ten precious days of Flash 8 trial left.

[formerly known as hf]

"sup? im new here"

"pick up stone"

You see N00b hitting a cow with his bare fist.

"is ne1 onlien??? how do u play this game??"

"HELLLLOOOOOOOO?"

You see N00b taking a road to unknown location.

Oooh, I could so make a Flash animation out of that! It might attract some players, or at least tell them what not to do. I still got ten precious days of Flash 8 trial left.

Please do

[west]

I guess I just miss feeling like the idiot newspawn. When i started, there was such an umbrella of ambitious, talented, serious people above me in most parts of the game, and I really felt like I had touched down into a whole new world. When my first character first poked his head into the Cantr City Inn...seeing my first bicycle...scrounging for iron in Drojf and hoping Fuktar didn't come out of his lair...

Perhaps it's a few things.

First, I guess having been around so long, and having seen so many influential people move on--Goodwin, RKL, Jerry, Nick, Tek, Cliffy--suddenly I find myself at the relative top of things. There's very few "legendary" characters around like there were when my firstborns were spawnlings. People like Lunatic Larry, Theodore in Pok, William Delano, Piers Anthony, DoUrden, Emperor Alexei, Craktar, Maynard, Vender Ghost... With the exception of Crag Rock and very few others, there's nobody my characters can really look up to in awe anymore. Now, that's partly because my characters are old and (usually) fairly powerful, and worked hard to get where they were, but I miss that sense of wonder.

By the same token, I miss feeling like I was dropping in on years and years of history. My characters helped MAKE history, now, or they were watching from the sidelines. Perhaps remembering most of it makes some of the magic go away.

I miss not knowing how to do things. I miss discussing boat mechanics. I miss the whole atmosphere that cantr used to have. Now it feels like we're trapped between the obnoxious RPers and the obnoxious achievers. I miss the people who were both.

I miss not knowing what was around that bend (I have a few explorers, but unpopulated islands aren't that interesting). I miss wondering what strange customs and history such-and-such place down the coast had. I miss unreliable maps, slow-traveling news, the unknown. That's one thing location-centric spawning was good for. Frontiers. Nowadays a frontier is just a place where you don't know where you are, and you're probably being slaughtered by animals.

I don't know. Maybe it's not the player base. Maybe it's me.

I'd love to hear the other side of the story. What's it like to venture into cantr for the first time? Do you still have that wonder, or has the creeping featurism scared it away?

I want to know.

[Missy]

I don't know. Maybe it's not the player base. Maybe it's me.

I keep asking myself the same thing, but it doesn't feel like it's just me...

[Phalynx]

I'm getting very mixed messages here..

You see Jos has introduced credits to encourage more people to visit and play...

Then I see a thread like this suggesting that new people really aren't welcome!

Maybe you can have Cantr Gold for the oldbies so they can reminisce...

The concept of mature RPers is to me is a misnomer. The whole point of it being escapism and a somewhere where you can explore your self free of consequence - the ultimate immaturity.

Please don't mistake keeping to an unwritten set of rules or ideals as maturity.. And I for one don't ever want to be mature here - I have eough of that in RL. By the way forums and prob even IRC are a form of roleplay. I guarrantee you I wouldn't be having these kind of discussions in RL, and I mean content and style.

[formerly known as hf]

I'm getting very mixed messages here..

You see Jos has introduced credits to encourage more people to visit and play...

Then I see a thread like this suggesting that new people really aren't welcome!

Maybe you can have Cantr Gold for the oldbies so they can reminisce...

The concept of mature RPers is to me is a misnomer. The whole point of it being escapism and a somewhere where you can explore your self free of consequence - the ultimate immaturity.

Please don't mistake keeping to an unwritten set of rules or ideals as maturity.. And I for one don't ever want to be mature here - I have eough of that in RL. By the way forums and prob even IRC are a form of roleplay. I guarrantee you I wouldn't be having these kind of discussions in RL, and I mean content and style.

It's not that new players and OOC community members are unwelcome, I think this is basically nostaligia on the part of many older players. Not being an oldbie myself, but not being a new player, I can see that the older community base has fragmented considerably, but I also see that there are new members coming in and holding their part. It doesn't have the same 'feel' to it, probably because nothing could.

I also, myself, get the feeling that the community is so large now, that individual personalities shine through a lot less often. Before, there was space for less overt, more inherently intelligent, personalities to take the fore. Now, the personalitites that become obvious are the annoying ones.

As for immatuirity, I use it only to denote the deeply immature, for much want of a better word. I will accept that RP in itself is an 'immature' activity, but there's a difference between Seko's suggestion and general RP, and I think describing it as a level of maturity is accurate.

[Missy]

I'm getting very mixed messages here..

You see Jos has introduced credits to encourage more people to visit and play...

Then I see a thread like this suggesting that new people really aren't welcome!

You know, I think that's a bit pointless of you to feel that way. You think the people making these posts haven't ever been made to feel that way? In fact I kind of feel like the newer "generation" of players don't enjoy the older generation. Not when you hear people complaining that older characters have everything as if the older characters didn't somehow earn what they'd gotten. Oh yes, the iron deal. You all suffered through the fact we the first gen could dig iron and pocket it and store it and have cars. Well I only have three or four of my origonal chars. None of them had stockpiles of iron and none of them weren't effected by that change. I've had chars that have proccessed thousands grams of iron only for it to get stolen, but I rebuilt that stock again. (Oh I know. "What do you want a medal?" No.)

I've seen several people on here say that the "oldbies" or "first generation" was nothing but cliques. But do you think that "second generation" or "newer generation" doesn't appear as cliques now?

Maybe you can have Cantr Gold for the oldbies so they can reminisce...

You saying that, doesn't make me feel welcome much either. *Shrugs.* You act like remeniscing is such a bad thing. But you forget the first generation of cantrers had a dream for how they'd like to see this game evolve too. Many of us have seen those/some of those dreams/wishes come true. There was a time when Cantr staff was hired on the basis that they had the games best interests in mind and it still may be the case, but don't you think we have a right to wonder if those values are still here?

Please don't mistake keeping to an unwritten set of rules or ideals as maturity.. And I for one don't ever want to be mature here - I have eough of that in RL. By the way forums and prob even IRC are a form of roleplay. I guarrantee you I wouldn't be having these kind of discussions in RL, and I mean content and style.

Im from a cantr time where I didn't call people noobs and even when there was someone on the forum whom I couldn't stand for saying things that made little sense, I still tried to get them to understand how the game worked. We didn't rejoice when we scared someone away and when someone had a spelling error we pointed it out and they learned to correct it rather than for people to harrass him/her day after day after day, making rude comments that if you can't spell that you shouldn't be allowed to visit the forum. We didn't announce how annoying those people were, having full faith that they could become full blown cantr'er just like you or I. At least was the case for me. I don't know where you get the impression you're not welcome here.


Did I mention that I hate the word "noob?"