Biggest problem in Cantr

[wichita]

In order for a chemical reaction to occur, two or more particles must collide with optimal velocity to form a productive encounter complex. Statistical thermodynamics suggests that the formation probability of said encounter complex is inversely proportional to the number of particles involved and directly proportional to the concentration of those particles.

As the Cantrian population has been spreading out over an ever increasing number of locations, the local population density of active characters has been decreasing. Lower population density, lower frequency of encounter complex formation, slower reaction rate, yields bored players. Bored players quit, dilution is amplified. The vicious cycle continues.

On top of the number of players decreasing, the density of quality players is declining even more markedly. I believe that every time a man or woman in their twenties says "how do i get wood? lol im a n00b", an oldbie dies inside. Unfortunately, our marketing does not seem to be drawing in roleplayers as much as it is drawing in plain old gamers, so the vaccuum of quality grows deeper and darker each day....

[Doug R.]

The islands are too big and K-Isle seems to be the perfect size. Islands like Treefeather and Cantr just dilute out the players causing sleeping sickness and boredom. Force characters together, and things will improve.

[javacougar]

Something I think would really help new players would be if all of us who have been playing for quite a while would welcome newspawns and give them some in character tips, maybe giving them a bone knife and needle or something. Maybe give a couple suggestions as to some of the career/job options in that particular area. It might be pushing the OOC envelope a little too far, but I think even a simple "hello, welcome here, if you are interested in finding out more about our fair town feel free to ask..." or something like that could do a world of difference in helping new players feel welcome.

I continue to be amazed at how many newspawns stick around if they are simply spoken to in the first couple hours of their lives. I think that the odds of a character sticking out the first few weeks is directly related to how many people interact directly with that person in their first day or two. I've heard lots of comments from characters about so-and-so being the first to talk to them when they were spawned.

Thats my two bits anyways.

[Nick]

Combat system is poorly designed.

Wood should be MUCH more common. Should be available in more places than just forests. I don't live in a forest, but there are trees outside.

To counterbalance that, maybe make the collection rate of a resource in a particular location variable?

[Schme]

The constant change in mechanics, perticularly changes that are not thought out, well planned, part of any greater scheme, and all around, most of them just aren't very good. Consistency is key to a game like this.

I do not know if there is a way to keep this game good and keep players from leaving, though.

[Mykey]

I can not participate now in discussion - there is no free time. I will be released - I will necessarily express the opinion on this question.

[Solutions Maximus]

Players have character bias.

[El_Skwidd]

Agreed. My favorite problem in Cantr is that all characters seem the same to me. Everywhere you go there's couple drama without reproduction and fighting for democracy without a real enemy. On paper, limiting limestone to two regions on an entire continent should solve iron scarcity and promote economics, but all that happens is people try to do it all alone. There's a lack of central strategy to the methods. This is the hardest to fix, if it is at all possible.

EDIT: I also had an interesting conversation with my girlfriend... yes, we are this bad... about why government in Cantr won't work. Aside from the fact that large-scale democracy is extremely hard to do with the Cantr setup - just from the nature of the game - most governments lack greed. Altruistic, rights-for-everyone types. They work on individual towns, but the reason you don't see economies sprawling is caused somewhat by a lack of artificial scarcity. Example: Karnon did all that work to get TBR off of K-isle and liberate Karnon Forest from those hematite-restricting tyrants, and all Karnon is getting out of it is dying generals and a lackluster town fueled by Page Zahan's RP. It doesn't make sense in Cantr or in RL that Karnon would liberate Karnon Forest for the sole purpose of liberating it, even after seeing that they're being dusted over. Everyone can get hematite, so nobody really cares what Karnon thinks, and thus they don't have the power they had before the war. By winning the war, they lost influence over the isle. Call it a bad decision by Vernes, but this sort of thing happens everywhere. Karnon was the biggest example I could think of. Nobody seems to want to be powerful... they just want to be. This was pretty long-winded... I hope it made sense.

Deterioration should be slowed for the short-term.

[N-Aldwitch]

The islands are too big and K-Isle seems to be the perfect size. Islands like Treefeather and Cantr just dilute out the players causing sleeping sickness and boredom. Force characters together, and things will improve.

Right on the ball.

Make a world disaster occur, that splits up Cantr and Treefeather in half down the center, and they drift away a little during this process.

[Lord_Igor]

It is too easy to get food.

[Piscator]

Thats right. Living in Cantr is a bit to easy. In the few places I was, food was abundant. And there are no other needs that have to be satisfied. In fact, live in Cantr is quite paradise-like. That may be quite idyllic, but it also prevents an interesting history. Happy people don´t battle each other.

[myszaq]

i translated the first post into polish and placed it in one of our forums - quite a lot of people from our language zone doesnt visit the english forums. there should be some replies, i'll translate them if i'll find some time (or somebody else will )

[lukaasz]

at some time game gets little borring.
you have every machine you need, every tool.
they never breake. Nothing surprising is happening. No disasters.
Just boring.

[Animated]

alcohol! cantrians need alcohol!!!

just joking of course...


i agree with wichita:

As the Cantrian population has been spreading out over an ever increasing number of locations, the local population density of active characters has been decreasing. Lower population density, lower frequency of encounter complex formation, slower reaction rate, yields bored players. Bored players quit, dilution is amplified. The vicious cycle continues.

you can observe this on the polish lands. some 15 years ago there were 3 main isles, from which only two had some sort of a civilization.
now still, on the biggest one, only 1 in 3 locations is habited by active chars.
newborns on that island die "instantly" after they know where they are. why? cause they know not much happens there and that char must be a kind of inactive...

so...
the biggest problem is that we got too many lands compared to the number of players.

[frenchfisher]

Cantr is billed as a "social simulator", but I have yet to see any societies being simulated. Oh, sure, you have a few clans and armies and such, but for the most part government seems to be restricted to a note on the ground written by some random person around 900. I'm sure that some of the older types will be like "oh no no no you just haven't seen X town yet, certainly if you see X then you will see a society in action!" but perhaps my experience reflects the experience of other people who came here for "society simulation" but did not find it because, say, they spawned somewhere uninteresting. My first character just happened to spawn shortly before some verrrry interesting stuff happened, which got me in the habit of checking Cantr on a regular basis. And habits for me are near-impossible to break